Tom: I take the view that the image of God in us is basically ‘personhood’, just a ‘way of relating’ (perceiving, valuing, and affirming one’s self and others in creative ways). This doesn’t mean there can’t or won’t be differences in how a necessary being (God) possesses personhood and now contingent/created beings (Us) come to be persons. The point is that the same perceiving and affirming of the value of self and others is what defines and expresses one’s personal identity. The same sort of thing is happening in both cases.

Mark: There once was a seminary dropout student that became a “creative” German art student that later “perceived” a notion of a new world order.  He placed a high “value” on certain interpersonal relationships and affirmed a selected group.  Can you guess this person’s identity and attribute your definition of Imago Dei to him?   Yes, he was a beast.  The point is PETA could probably negotiate your definition of personhood into their cherished creatures as well.   Finding God’s image in Laika’s pet “rock” would also be difficult.  Either one (rock or beast) would be a stark contrast to the image of God considering (as far as we know) they are without self-consciousness and the capacity for spiritual/ moral reflection and growth.  LFW allows the possibility for self-actualization and participation in a sacred reality. However, the freedom which makes us human in God's image is the same freedom which manifests itself in estrangement from God, as the story of the Fall (Adam & Eve) exemplifies their choice to deny or repress their moral conscience, their spiritual and moral likeness to God.

Initially I sided with Laika, JohnE and Zach on this whole issue of God being necessarily good, well that is until Alan shed some light on the subject. http://www.opentheismboard.org/default.aspx?f=12&p=1&m=56684  (How refreshing it is to actually see views changed on account of dialogue here on this board.)  I would add, I think you and Jeff have further slammed dunked the issue home.   However, where I differ with you is the essential nature of God and man.    This seems to create a theological difference that can be attributed to our disagreements on other issues (UR, Terri Shiver) i.e.   You seem to side more with a definition of God (as well as our Imago Dei) that places a higher stock in sentience, while I side more on a sapience.  You tend to put more of an emphasis on altruism as sentient-beings while I emphasis an innate truism as homo sapiens. 

While affirming the importance of relational communion, I humbly affirm an infinite qualitative distinction between the human and the divine.  I disavow the view of projecting the relationships of finite sentient-beings as a model for God’s nature, one used to describe the Almighty’s immanence in humans premised from being created in the image of God, a view that can foolishly lead to transcending contingent creatures as eternal gods.

Abraham Maslow, considered the father of humanistic psychology and a confirmed atheist, understood that our moral conscience was at the highest level of self-actualization. I disagree with his belief of a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority, putting that aside he wasn’t that far off the mark.

Post Edited (Truth Aficionado) : 7/14/2008 2:02:12 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/15/2008 8:43:17 PM (GMT-5)

Jeff: Tom, I follow your analogy. I just still have problems conceiving of bona-fide choice apart from competitive impulses. If God created with no contrary impulse, in what sense was He CHOOSING? When I think of humans choosing, I think of things like paying attention (choosing concentration over the comfort of a relaxed mind), foregoing immediate gratification for long-range good, etc. These are easily seen to be choices because one impulse is prevailed over for the sake of giving impetus to another. Apart from contrary impulses, it's hard for me to make sense of choice. Help me make sense of choice, psychologically, apart from contrary impulses.

Tom: And contrary impulses (regarding alternative choices) arise from the perception of contrary (not equal) goods. That’s what you’re saying?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/18/2008 2:15:22 AM (GMT-5)

J: Third, if the word tempted has to do with being tested, it doesn't even necessarily mean what we mean by temptation anyway.

Z: Hebrews: we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are.

J: OK, let me say it again. I've read that the Greek word translated “tempt” was used of “testing” metals by fire. Testing, in that sense, has nothing to do with temptation, per se. Metals aren't tempted. So if the devil TESTED Jesus, as opposed to causing him to be tempted to do evil, then it can still be true that Jesus was tested by the devil in the manners in which we are (physically, emotionally, etc) without actually having experienced temptation to do evil. Again, metals can be tested without being tempted. The devil “found no place” in him.

T: A few verses:

Jms 1.2, “Count it joy when you fall into diverse ‘peirasomoi’ (from ‘peirazo’; test/tempt) knowing that the ‘dokimios’ (test, like refining gold) of your faith works patience.”

Jms 1.13f, “Let no man think when he is ‘peirazo’ (tempted) that I am ‘peirozo’ (tempted) by God. For God is ‘untried’ (‘apeirastos’) of evil and ‘peirozo’ (temps) no one. 14 “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.”

Heb. 4.15, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points ‘tempted’ (peirazo) as we are, yet without sin.”

The word used in Jms 1 and Heb 4 for ‘tempt/try/test’ does cover both meaning. It can mean to ‘tempt’ someone to sin, to entice, etc., and it also can mean to ‘try’ or ‘test’ someone. And the reason one word can stand in for both is, I think, because each are a side of one and the same two-sided event or experience. A ‘test’ wouldn’t BE a test if we didn’t perceive and experience it believing something was at stake, namely, failure and sin. At the same time, every ‘temptation’ to sin constitutes in a real sense a ‘test’ which, IF we succumb not to sin, makes us stronger for the next round.

God obviously ‘tests’ people (Gen. 22, “God tested Abraham” and hundreds of other such passages, “I tested you to know what was in your hearts,” etc.). God arranges the circumstances of our lives, wisely and lovingly, to strengthen and refine us.

Unfortunately, each of these tests is also the occasion for failure (our failing the test). But a) that’s not God’s intention, and b) God’s not on that side of the rope enticing people to sin. THAT, James says, is accounted by the person him/herself, or by other evil agents, whose nature (with other evil agents perhaps) is work in the same circumstances to entice us to evil.

So, we have clear statements that God cannot “be tempted” nor can he “tempt” and I think “tempt” is the right word here since James immediately follows with an explanation which obviously constitutes an instance of “enticement” to evil. James says God can’t be enticed to evil and doesn’t entice others to evil.

This is so interesting when applied to Jesus (a) because he’s God (who can’t be enticed to evil) and he’s a human being who, Hebrews tells us, was “peirazo” yet without sin. Does this mean “tempted” as in “enticed to evil” or just “tried.” I’m enclined to say Hebrews intends “tempt” because it’s followed with the mention “yet without sin.” But it doesn’t really matter. If he has “test” in mind, then it’s a test which is also a “temptation” to sin, otherwise it means nothing to add “yet without sin.”

So the question is, was Jesus peccable or impeccable? On the one hand we want to say God-incarnate is still truly God, and so cannot be enticed to sin. On the other we want to agree with Hebrews that Jesus, as the Second Adam, really did experience the ‘pull’ and ‘lure’ of evil “as we do” but was victorious where Adam failed; that the same human nature which failed in Adam was in Christ successful.

When discussing this years ago on the board here, Greg suggested that the incarnation (hypostatic union) helps explain this. The human mind of Jesus was not omniscient and so didn’t perceive all the truth there was to perceive (even about himself). He believed he was capable of sinning, and that’s enough (Greg says) to ground the psychological tension and struggle that goes with being tempted. Jesus was in fact impeccable but didn’t know this; as if Jesus was sitting in a room facing a door labeled the “Door to pleasure” but which he does not know is in fact locked and then he’s told to rise and open. He believes he’s free to rise and open and this “epistemic distance” creates the space required to ground the power of temptations lure, and responding TO THIS, Jesus says no (in spite of the fact that as God he could not have opened the door anyhow).

It’s like I have to make it coast to coast (hitching rides, eating, sleeping, whatever) from NY to LA. I’m a millionaire but on this occasion I have to make the trip on just $500. I have more resources that will ensure that I make it, but I in fact make it on $500, which is the same amount everybody else gets although everybody else fails to manage their resources well so they never make the trip.

Don’t know if it really works, but it’s the best I’ve found so far.

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

T: So perhaps, like D said years ago, God's choice between creating and not creating basically boils down to a divine "What the hell? Let's just do it!" though that doesn't cheapen the love or relationality the choice involves.

J: Well, it still seems hard for me. I think the main thing Berlinkski would want to know is how do we ACCOUNT for God's inability to do other than love perfectly. What I would say is that God's sentient nature is sympathetic while His perspective is exhaustive. The only way He could be motivated to be less than perfectly sympathetic is to be imperfectly informed.

T: Exactly. This is how Greg explains the reality of Jesus’ temptations. His human mind is imperfectly informed, so the lure is psychologically real and Jesus can really say, as Hebrews says, “I feel your pain.” But because the one ‘hypostasis’ or ‘person’ of the Son is the only ‘personal subject’ in Christ, as God he cannot ‘in fact’ make the choice to sin even though psychologically he believed he could. He had a million dollars to spend but managed to make the trip WITHIN the $500 limitation, just as we are required to do.

J: Thus, whether there is mystery to this position or not is irrelevant. The alternative is to be without an explanation for moral obligation. In an analogous sense, God's mode of knowledge acquisition is mysterious to us, and yet He must have some mode of apprehension if He is to providentially act in an intelligent manner towards ends. Thus, the human mind can not BUT believe that God knows all that He needs to know to competently fulfill His purposes. To believe otherwise is to believe what seems completely absurd…

T: I agree. No one view answers every question. But some views do better than others, and if we formulate as plausible a view as we can, one which avoids outright contradiction, we will have done all we can do.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/19/2008 2:24:27 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 7/19/2008 6:50:47 AM (GMT-5)

Zach-

about the analogy, yes, intending to sin is definitive of the choice to sin which I’m suggesting God does not possess the capacity to make. The analogy isn’t meant to be pushed at each point (getting out of the chair, making his way to the door, extending his hand toward the knob, etc., to FINALLY commit “the” sin of opening the door). All these steps are definitive of one and the same choice I view God as incapable of making. God can’t ‘intend’ evil. To form an ‘intention’ or ‘design’ toward some end is itself a choice.

I don’t even like describing this sort of freedom as an “incapacity,” really (though I can go with that). It’s like saying a famous general lacks some real power because he “cannot lose in battle.”

How is temptation real if Jesus could not intend to sin? Easily. If Jesus, because of his limited knowledge, believes himself capable of intending evil, the temptation to form some evil design or intend some evil end, is fully ‘felt’. Existentially Jesus experiences the power of temptation’s lure. The subjective frame of mind is all that’s needed to secure that. But he never yields in the slightest, never leans toward the slightest failure of intention.

Greg wants to say such failure is a journey Jesus couldn’t even begin to make, not that he could finish making.

I had problems with this idea of Greg’s. It didn’t seem reasonable to me to suppose that we could expect Jesus not to be capable of the same deductive reasoning regarding himself as we claim to be so successful at! We can figure Christology out and deduce that God-incarnate can’t sin but Jesus knew he was God-incarnate but couldn’t figure out this meant he was impeccable? Jesus eventually comes to a full knowledge that he’s the divine Son. That identity is fully embraced, but he grows into that self-realization. So unless Jesus was theologically slow on the uptake, we ought to assume he was able to figure out what we claim to know, namely, that he ‘couldn’t’ sin. So what happens after that point?

Greg dismissed my point by suggesting that Jesus’ self-understanding as God-incarnate was perhaps not fully realized until very late in his life, perhaps during the passion week. He didn’t know he was God until the last minute, perhaps (I think Greg suggested; not sure, don’t quote me) he might never have really comprehended his ‘divinity’ in terms we today think.

Riiiight.

My guess is that the temptations of Christ were existentially ‘felt' early in his life while his self-understanding was still forming. How long that took I don’t know. Perhaps into his teens. Perhaps later. If we want to suppose that the wilderness temptations were experienced by Christ as temptations, then evidently up to the point at which he begins public ministry. I don’t know. But after the human mind rests in the realization of ‘who’ he is (the divine Son incarnate), I don’t see any possibility for any further ‘experience’ of temptation’s power, for that experience requires at least the subjective perception of sin’s possibility, something I think not possible for a subject who rightly perceives himself "as God the Son" in the flesh. Jesus ‘learned obedience through what he suffered’ (a reference to the wilderness temptations?). We don’t have to suppose that Jesus believed he was susceptible to sin right up to the end. All we have to do is posit enough time in the human life of Jesus for him to experience the power of temptation’s lure.

Gotta run.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/19/2008 10:36:44 AM (GMT-5)

J: But when it says Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. It could JUST AS PLAUSIBLY mean tested by the devil. Frankly, I find it quite implausible that Jesus was actually TEMPTED to worship Satan.

T: It’s often thought that Jesus’ wilderness experience parallels Adams’ garden experience to portray Jesus (in an anticipation of Paul’s Second Adam Christology) succeeding where Adam failed. That WOULD suggest “temptation to sin.” But given the “forty days” and his being driven “into the wilderness,” it seems more likely that the gospel writers are using the story to parallel Israel’s wilderness experience, which would suggest “testing,” the point being that Jesus embodies the new Israel and succeeds the “test” where Israel as a nation caved in. But still, I think that for an experience to be experienced “as a test,” the one having the experience has to believe something is at stake whether or not something really is at stake or not.

T

Tom: But still, I think that for an experience to be experienced “as a test,” the one having the experience has to believe something is at stake whether or not something really is at stake or not.

Jeff: Someone needs to be ignorant for there to be a test; granted. But why can't it be Satan?

Tom: Silly rabbit… 

It can’t be Satan because the test has to impart to Jesus an experience of what we go through when we’re tempted/tested. The test qualifies Jesus to be a high priest.

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

Jeff: It specifically said that he was driven into the wilderness to be tested/tempted BY SATAN.

Tom: Yeah, but it also says he was driven into the wilderness TO BE TESTED.

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

Jeff: If Satan was the ignorant one, then the word can still mean "tested" (e.g., men are ignorant of the attributes of a metal until tried by fire. But God isn't. To God it isn't a test.) Then everything is explicable without jumping through hoops.

Tom: So the wilderness temptation was for Satan’s benefit? To reveal to him that Jesus was impeccable? Besides, if Satan is the ignorant one and there’s no experience of the power of sin’s lure by Christ, how does this justify/ground the claim that Jesus is touched with the feelings of our infirmities by virtue of his “being tested in all points like us yet without sin”?

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

Jeff: Again, is it really plausible that Christ was actually tempted to worship Satan just to receive lordship over the kingdoms of the earth earlier than his parousia?

Tom: Actually it might not implausible to suppose that this temptation is not about getting Jesus to doubt his identity (let’s suppose he’s secure in THAT) as much as to doubt his mission or the way to fulfill it. That is, what if Jesus’ understanding of the how/when of his mission is still developing in his own mind and Satan seizes upon this opportunity to influence the direction in which this understanding is to develop, i.e., get Jesus to avoid the pain and suffering of the cross to get what he wants and offer him another ‘way’ to achieve those ends? Here’s an easy short-cut to getting the goods the Strongman has. Instead of binding him through loving suffering, just worship him and he’ll give you the goods.

Jeff: As far as the eating of the bread, he already "hungered." The test was to see if he would make bread to eat.

Tom: Turning the stone into bread is the ‘form’ which the temptation takes. But the temptation is a deeper thing—i.e., to get Jesus to use his power in a self-serving way at the bidding of Satan. It’s about power I think, not about bread really.

Jeff: What would have been so tempting about proving angels would catch him if he already virtually knew they would, by faith, for example?

Tom: To give into this would have been at least for Jesus to doubt that God would care for him. If not to prove it to himself, then it seems a gratuitous display of power just to prove a point to Satan. The first is to not trust the Father. The second entails a trust in Satan (like his opinion matters). For Jesus to have adopted an attitude about himself or his mission that winked at such gratuitous displays of self-serving power is a pretty serious deal.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/19/2008 2:52:29 PM (GMT-5)

God did it himself...for us.

"It is finished."

And so it was.

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/19/2008 1:58:07 PM (GMT-5)

D: The Father's delight and work was Jesus' main desire.

J: "So Christ could desire to have a potential fall broken by angels and still not desire to test God. Can we not distinguish between desires, thus, and explain the meaning of James thereby."

I think we're pretty much saying the same thing, D. What do you think?

D: Jesus felt his freedom to be able to relate rightly to God or not.

J: Yes, but doesn't the Father also? In this sense, I agree with JEE and Zach. God IS free with respect to sheer power. God has the sheer power to do evil. God "feels this freedom." I say He is NOT free with respect to motivation. If God can not desensitize or harden or know less than all factors relevant to a contemplated end, He will be essentially compelled to His actual motivations unto benevolence. And yet, He IS a final cause in forming and executing purposes, I think. I'm thinking a final cause need not always act in such a way that it is conceivable that it could have been otherwise. And yet, by being a final cause, one "feels" the sheer "freedom" entailed in the power entailed therein.

The difference with us, is that we have to volitionally focus our minds to consider the factors relevant to a choice. God may have perfect perspective by nature.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/19/2008 2:39:21 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 7/19/2008 2:41:46 PM (GMT-5)