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One Love
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| Posted 2/15/2012 9:36 AM (GMT -6) |   | | The Offense: Believing the God became fully created/human, while remaining being fully uncreated/divine
The mental INABILITY to understand (and therefore SUBMIT to) the Hypostatic Union of the Uncreated/divine and Created/human in Christ. I seriously believe that this is why evangelical kenotic christology and all other misconceptions of who Jesus is exist. All the heresies and everything. But the Spirit kept the truth in there...through all the muck-a-muck.
Removing the Offense: Leap to faith that God, by some way, truly DID become fully created/human, while remaining being fully uncreated/divine. Basically believing that "with God, all things are possible."
SK was on this. It is only BY FREE CHOICE of the individual before God, not RATIONAL INDUCTION/DEDUCTION, that the truth of Christ is fully grasped by the "heart" in the present moment before God. This is ultimately what SK had against Hegel's system, as I understand it. It aided, not corrected, the already problematic Christendom in which he lived. I may have that wrong, but I don't think so. Do I, Corey?
Possible Helpful Aid: The (Wake-Induced) Lucid Dream Analogy/Model for the Bi-polar Assymetrical Relational Unity of Uncreated/Divinity and Created/Humanity within the singular Person of God the Word/Logos.
Hey. It works, baby. Just try the lens on. It's already convinced others, right, Tom? We on, sir. ;)
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/15/2012 9:39 AM (GMT -6) | | The offense...I hate to say this, but it's just true...to people like Greg (gasp) is that God can TRULY be said to be "one of us", meaning being identified with our natural finitude and limitation of perspective...while SIMULTANEOUSLY continuing to naturally possessing FULL Godhood as the sustaining force of all Creation. The "logos asarkos" idea.
He SPECIFICALLY TALKED about his "offense" in the Q&A answer after the God Lookalikes sermon...remember?
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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.
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"The most frequent objection raised against kenotic Christology is that it undermines Jesus' divine nature."
"Across the Spectrum"
Page 120
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Greg Boyd in Letters from a Skeptic, pp 76-77. Emphasis Boyd's.
You may remember that my first year in college I went through a long period of acute doubt over the truth of Christianity. This problem we've been discussing--the problem of evil--was at the heart of it. I was torn between two opposing convictions. The world, with all of its beauty, design, intricacy, and personal characteristics, demands that there must be a God. But, I thought at the time, the suffering of the world says that there can't be a God. It all came to a head for me one cold February night as I was walking back from an astronomy class at the University of Minnesota. Thinking of the grandeur of the stars we had just been looking at, I was saying to myself "there must be a God." But thinking of the nightmarish suffering in Auschwitz, I was saying to myself "there can't be a God." The two thoughts were battling with each other at hyperspeed. I was tormented.
Finally, just as I approached my car, I looked up to the sky and cried out with a loud, angry voice--"The only God I can believe in is one who knows firsthand what it's like to be a Jewish child buried alive, and knows what it's like to be a Jewish mother watching her child be buried!"
And just then it occurred to me (or it was revealed?): That is exactly the kind of God Christianity proclaims. There is no other belief which does this. Only the gospel dares to proclaim that God enters smack-dab into the middle of the hell we create. Only the gospel dares to proclaim that God was born a baby in a bloody, crap-filled stable, that He lived a life befriending the prostitutes and lepers no one else would befriend, and that He suffered, firsthand, the hellish depth of all that is nightmarish in human existence. Only the gospel portrait of God makes sense of the contradictory fact that the world is at once so beautiful and so ugly.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/15/2012 4:56:21 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/15/2012 10:58 AM (GMT -6) | | Jesus: Avatar or God?
Pdf files.
Please note that any evangelical kenotic christology person can (and will) agree with pretty much everything said. But the chief offense can still be there: the Eternal Son of God being FULLY uncreated/divine AT THE SAME TIME that he was FULLY a zygote in Mary's womb.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/15/2012 10:05:23 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 2/15/2012 11:06 AM (GMT -6) | | | Evangelicalism, to the degree that it is seduced by this "offense", will be susceptible to the evangelical kenotic view.
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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
HAVING MADE
(Aor Ptc) cleansing of our sins
SAT DOWN
(Aor Ind) on the right hand of the majesty on high
HAVING BECOME
(Aor Ptc) so much better than angels…
[Tom  ]
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/15/2012 10:20:57 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/15/2012 11:19 AM (GMT -6) | | Outcomes of the "Offense"...
Dr. C. Stephen Evans, a noted author and proponent of evangelical kenotic christology, ended up clearly stating that, post-Incarnation, God the Son as zygote ceases to actively (consciously) and interpersonally reciprocate (therefore consummate, as it were) the Father's self-communicating, self-giving love towards Him in the Spirit. This is effectively positing the cessation/annihilation of the inner tri-hypostatic "dance" of God while God the Son was in vitro.
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"...[C. Stephen] Evans makes use of a strong social trinitarian notion in suggesting that, while the divine Word was incarnate, his sustaining work was 'carried on by the other Persons' (C. Stephen Evans, 'The Self-Emptying of Love', 259)
Edwin Chr. van Driel
Chapter 11: "The Logic of Assumption"
Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God
C. Stephen Evans
Page 267, Note 4.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/15/2012 1:58:04 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 2/15/2012 6:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Dwayne: Basically believing that "with God, all things are possible."
SK was on this. It is only BY FREE CHOICE of the individual before God, not RATIONAL INDUCTION/DEDUCTION, that the truth of Christ is fully grasped by the "heart" in the present moment before God.
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I agree...IF...your statement is guarded by guide rails to keep from going into nonsense. Here is the needed guide rail:
There is the RATIONAL...the IRRATIONAL...and the SUPRA-RATIONAL. The irrational contradicts the rational, the supra-rational transcends the rational. There is no FREE CHOICE that means anything if it is contradictory to the rational. The supra-rational cannot be apprehended by the rational, but it has the important aspect of not contradicting the rational. Sure, hyper-empiricists are gonna have problems simply agreeing that there is a category that transcends the rational...but that's their eye of the needle that their supposed epistemological riches will keep them from passing through, but we can at least point in the right direction.
"with God, all things are possible." I just caution to take the statement in a weak fashion, not a strong one. The weak strain points to the maximization of God's ability and power...which is a very useful and assuring thing to grasp. The strong variety leads one into nonsense. Which many dogmatic Christians fall prey to. I think we can simply dismiss the strong variety with this example...with God...ALL things are possible...so...with God...is it possible that ALL things AREN'T possible? | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/15/2012 6:38 PM (GMT -6) | | Asher:
There is the RATIONAL...the IRRATIONAL...and the SUPRA-RATIONAL. The irrational contradicts the rational, the supra-rational transcends the rational. There is no FREE CHOICE that means anything if it is contradictory to the rational. The supra-rational cannot be apprehended by the rational, but it has the important aspect of not contradicting the rational. Sure, hyper-empiricists are gonna have problems simply agreeing that there is a category that transcends the rational...but that's their eye of the needle that their supposed epistemological riches will keep them from passing through, but we can at least point in the right direction.
Fair enough. In Knight's Move, Loder specifically speaks about the supra-rational, as well. Can't mention his stuff enough! 
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Asher:
"with God, all things are possible." I just caution to take the statement in a weak fashion, not a strong one. The weak strain points to the maximization of God's ability and power...which is a very useful and assuring thing to grasp. The strong variety leads one into nonsense. Which many dogmatic Christians fall prey to. I think we can simply dismiss the strong variety with this example...with God...ALL things are possible...so...with God...is it possible that ALL things AREN'T possible?
No one's trying to fall into the whole "Can God make a rock he can't lift?" thing. Gotcha on that. It's much more about divine possibility: certain things that are impossible from merely a creaturely perspective ARE INDEED possible through God. Your "weaker" version, I guess.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/15/2012 6:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Kenotic Christology: Good Theology or Digression Towards Heresy?
Sept 28, 2011
First and last paragraphs...
For much of its history the Church has struggled to hold together the divine and human natures of Christ. This is largely because God’s becoming one with humanity is, as Kierkegaard said, the ultimate paradox. Nonetheless, merely appealing to ‘mystery’ is inadequate in our post-enlightenment context. Chalcedon did not attempt to fully investigate this mystery but rather to protect it; no answers regarding how the incarnation worked were offered thus leaving many questions unanswered. In the past two centuries this void in the Christian tradition has come to the fore. Dogmatic answers and pleas of ignorance appear to both the intellectually inquisitive and to relativistic sceptics to be an evasion, further solidifying their conviction that Christians are intellectually deficient, holding onto an archaic faith which is fundamentally flawed. Context demands coherent answers. Kenotic Christology seeks to better understand how the incarnation worked, attempting to articulate a perspective which makes coherent sense of both Christ’s divinity and humanity. Also, by revealing the genuineness of Christ’s humanity, kenoticism challenges those evangelical believers who have fallen for “naïve docetism”. Whether or not Jesus was legitimately human as we are human has significant implications; if he only faced temptation, struggle, hunger and suffering as a farce, how could we possibly find encouragement in knowing he endured that which we endure? But, “A God who empties himself out of love for human beings, who recklessly… gives up divine privileges to endure all the hard realities of human life, is a God whose love is credible and inspires love in return.” This essay will first, consider the history of Christology, second, offer a description of the general kenosis theory and mention some of its variants, and finally, use the Wesleyan Pentalateral as a platform to examine the theory’s strengths and challenges in order to determine whether kenotic Christology can be considered ‘good theology’.
...
The above examination demonstrates that the kenosis theory can be considered ‘good theology.’ The theory has attempted to develop and explain the doctrine of the hypostatic union by answering questions left open by the Chalcedonian Definition. This goal has been achieved by thorough use of Scripture, appropriate respect for tradition, much wrestling with reason, and fitting appeals to experience and nature. It has done this in a way which is both missional, showing the faith remains coherent post-enlightenment, and applicable, demonstrating that Jesus is the ultimate example of how human beings can and ought to live. Likewise, it is profoundly Trinitarian and has escaped the clutches of strong immutability and impassibility. Indeed, in the incarnation God came alongside humanity, choosing to suffer as we do. Thus, though some have presented forms of kenoticism which clearly stray from orthodoxy, overall the theory is a viable and useful resource for the Church.
As Barth cautioned, our approach to theology must “give primacy to the ‘Who’ questions over the ‘How’”.[49] We must recognize that we are wading in deep water which will inevitably go over our finite human heads.[50] However, this perspective must not be neglected as it helps us grasp the fact that the incarnation was very real, not a matter of pretence where Jesus appeared as if he was human. Christ really did endure temptation, live righteously, perform miracles and suffer as a human man, not simply by virtue of being divine. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there is a huge degree of mystery shrouding the incarnation, and that it appears God wanted it to be left as mystery. After-all, we can only truly celebrate a God who exceeds our understanding.
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YWAMer person. From the "Who I Am" section...
My goal in life is to train and equip young people for both life and ministry, helping them get their thinking about God and life right, since the way we think determines how we live. Thus, my chief goal is to empower believers for ground-level, real-life Christianity. Almost paradoxically, I also desires to interact on a more 'intellectual' level, exploring deep theological and biblical issues. My conviction is that solid theological understanding will significantly strengthen the efforts of YWAM students and staff, along with all other believers; one can be spiritually empowered, encountering God, seeing God move AND firmly grounded in the truth.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/15/2012 5:54:26 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 2/16/2012 12:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Just thinking about this. The selection of "the offense" seems somewhat arbitrary, and it affects what follows from that.
Couldn't one also similarly claim:
The Offense: Believing that Christ relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth
Removing the Offense: Leap to faith that God, by some way, truly DID relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth while remaining being fully uncreated/divine. Basically believing that "with God, all things are possible."
As far as I'm concerned, ALL the models that we make up to try to explain the incarnation necessarily entail offense of one sort or another.
I doubt very much that SK only had a particular model in mind when he talked about the offense of the incarnation, as if the alternative model(s) might avoid the offense. The fundamental problem does not lie in coming up with the right model, right?
I myself still remain most sympathetic to the "God-Man" model the Coptics talk about (Miaphysitism). Post Edited (Corey) : 2/16/2012 11:16:58 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/16/2012 1:41 PM (GMT -6) | | Hmmm...
Corey:
I myself still remain most sympathetic to the "God-Man" model the Coptics talk about (Miaphysitism).
Miaphysitism doesn't rule out dyothelitism (ie the one "God-Man" having two ontologically distinct wills corresponding with the two ontologically distinct natures). As I said before, Tom and I are miaphysites-cum-DYOthelites. Greg, Evans, and other evangelical kenotic theorists are miaphysites-cum-MONOthelites. As I'm sure that Tom will tell you, Cyril of Alexandria--the veritable originator of the miaphysite position--was decidedly dyothelite. Right, Tom? 
So, we don't disagree on the miaphysitism thing. The "mia-physis" is the bi-polar assymmetrical relational UNION between Uncreated/Divinity and Created/Human in the "one incarnate nature of God the Word". It is the THEANDRIC relationality for Incarnation, which reciprocally, leaves the door open for Theosis.'
Make sense?
**************************************** Corey: The selection of "the offense" seems somewhat arbitrary, and it affects what follows from that.Huh?
Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd. --------------------------------
The Offense: Believing that God became fully created/human while remaining being (or while never ceasing to be) fully uncreated/divine
Of course, the possibilities of offense at Christianity are not LIMITED to this. But with respect to evangelical kenotic christology, it's THIS offense that seems to be primary.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/16/2012 1:22:40 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/16/2012 1:59 PM (GMT -6) | | | One of the major problems I have with EKC is that it, as Tom has stated elsewhere, creates a "composite Jesus", who basically has ONLY the characteristics that can be shared between the uncreated/divine and created/human...which is why the ONLY real divinity in Jesus via EKC is his unchanging character of unfailing love. (Even though as we have shown even THIS doesn't exist when Jesus is in vitro!) Greg specifically says that the ONLY THING that doesn't change about God the Son--between pre- and post-Incarnation--is his loving character. What Greg doesn't see is that he just ends up making EVERYONE divine in some kind of proposed HENosis between uncreated/divine nature and created/human nature insofar as EVERYONE (at some point) will have unchanging character of unfailing love.
Doesn't work.
EKC tries to do away with the offense by pretty much subsuming the "eternal" INTO the "existential", NOT having a relational dynamic of held tension between the two realities.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/16/2012 1:13:58 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/16/2012 2:07 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
Couldn't one also similarly claim:
The Offense: Believing that Christ relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth
Removing the Offense: Leap to faith that God, by some way, truly DID relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth while remaining being fully uncreated/divine. Basically believing that "with God, all things are possible."
I don't think that SK would have ever done that. Again, from what I gather, he KNEW Christian dogmatics.
Actually, I don't think even the Coptics would say such a thing, right? They wouldn't say that the John 1:1 Word of God stopped upholding all things because of the Incarnation, would they? Nope.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/16/2012 1:23:45 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 2/16/2012 9:47 PM (GMT -6) | | D: As stated before, the sleep analogy fails.
J: Not if a person is, as I hold, the being in which attributes inhere as opposed to a mere set of attributes. Beings don't cease to exist just because accidental attributes come and go. But I certainly see why the traditional view, supposing the persons of the godhead aren't beings, look at it differently. And since Greg agrees with the traditiona view (I'm assuming so, anyway), I can see why his approach is problematic where mine is not. I only insist that persons, as beings, have attributes. But attributes can be mere capacities for experience while experiences, per se, can be mere accidental attributes.
As for the "the triune interpersonal 'dance'," that's tradition, not scripture confirmed with an abundance of evidence in the form of signs and wonders attending the authors or their close associates.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 2/16/2012 8:51:04 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/17/2012 9:33 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
And since Greg agrees with the traditiona view (I'm assuming so, anyway), I can see why his approach is problematic where mine is not.
Yes.
*********************************
Jeff:
Not if a person is, as I hold, the being in which attributes inhere as opposed to a mere set of attributes. Beings don't cease to exist just because accidental attributes come and go
So then, post-Immaculate Conception, God the Son AS A BEING was transformed from omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient spiritual reality completely into a non-sentient group of cells (blastocyst) in Mary's Womb. The post-Incarnation blastocyst in Mary--AND ONLY THAT--is the being, God the Son.
Hmm.
 Well, you and I are just going to disagree on that. But what else is new. 
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 2/18/2012 12:36 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Moreover, I'm at a loss to even understand how omnipresence is known to be an attribute of deity at all. In the first place, omnipresence of a being/person creates the same problem for understanding the principle for individuation of material entities as does an origin of space. In fact, it just adds on to that problem. Nor is location a sufficient condition for knowledge. Indeed, there is no evidence I'm aware of that indicates that a given human's location is a necessary condition of specific knowledge EXCEPT in the sense that humans know in a MEDIATED fashion. Thus, to say that God's "whereabouts" serves as a condition for certain instances of His knowledge is, seemingly, to say that God's knowledge is mediated. But as far as I'm concerned, the annihilation of a principle of individuation for material entities is fatal enough for either the claim that God is omnipresent or that His "whereabouts" somehow accounts for what or how He knows.
As for an essential attribute, omnipresence can't be deemed essential to deity for those who deny the reality of space or spatial relationality SANS creation.
The authors of "The Divine Attributes" make a good case for the incoherence of positing omnipresence to God, but they seem to suggest that no principle of individuation for material entities is necessary for human knowledge. But this seems clearly contrary to fact. People seemingly have no a priori way to just KNOW what ontological material units are. We change our mind all the time about what are the TRUE fundamental (i.e., actual) material entities/particles ("atoms"). Thus, it seems we are, indeed, using some PRINCIPLE of individuation to change our minds INFERENTIALLY based on new data.
The same psalmist who tells us that we can't escape God because He is always "there" tells us he can't understand that kind of knowledge. I agree. God's mode of knowledge attainment is not known to us. Rather, we know that He must know SOME kinds of things simply because that divine knowledge is correlative to other teleological inferences we make about Him. E.g., if we infer that the only way God can be truly benevolent is that He will, post-mortem, bring about just accountability, then it simply MUST be the case, per our ability to know analogically at all, that He knows what people are doing and can remember it all. Otherwise, we have no way to analogically account for how He could render just accountability in the FUTURE. But given such an analogical way of explaining it, we are rationally bound to believe it if it's the ONLY way to account for it AT ALL.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 2/18/2012 11:48:33 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 2/18/2012 1:12 PM (GMT -6) | | By omnipresence all that is meant is that God is fully present to all that is. It doesn't suppose that there is anything other than God. If only God exists, then God is fully present to Godself. If a universe exists, then God is that "in whom" that universe lives and moves and has its being. If we want to reserve "omnipresnce" to describe how all which might exist other than God lives and moves and has its being in God, fine. The point's the same.
It would be really nice to see you embrace this, Jeff. Drinks are on me if you do! (I'm reduced to bribing as a way to debate.)
T
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg BoydPost Edited (Tom) : 2/18/2012 1:05:38 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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