quote:

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Why didn’t God create the world sooner?

“This problem can be formulated as follows (letting t represent any time prior to creation and n represent some finite amount of time):
1. If the past is infinite, then at t God delayed creating until t + n.
2. If at t God delayed creating until t + n, then he must have had a good reason for doing so.
3. If the past if infinite, God cannot have had a good reason for delaying at t creating until t + n.
4. Therefore, if the past is infinite, God must have had a good reason for delaying at t and God cannot have had a good reason for delaying at t.
5. Therefore the past is not infinite.”

---

Now, fact is a lot of philosophers don’t find this argument convincing in the least. For example, in the same volume Wolterstorff replies, “I have never been able to see any force in this objection, and nothing Bill says in his discussion helps me. Why must there be such a reason? When I reflect on my getting out of bed in the morning, I find that after lying awake for a while I just, at a certain moment, decide to get up. I don’t have a reason for deciding to get up precisely when I do; I just do at a certain moment decide to get up.” The argument doesn’t do much for me. Maybe it should. I don’t know.

Question for Craig: Couldn’t a similar argument apply equally to the atemporalist? Supposing God is atemporal in the absence of creation, how does God “decide” to create? What metaphysical context exists to provide an atemporal God room to make that needed FIRST act? Well, I suppose the one could say in the absence of creation God atemporally intends to create. Wouldn’t this undermine the belief that creation was a free choice for God, one God could have refrained from? See where I’m going on this?

Craig’s second argument against God’s temporal mode of existence in the absence of creation is the impossibility of an actual infinite. I struggle understanding this, but I think I’ve basically got it.

From Craig, Time and Eternity, pp. 221ff.:

quote:

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The impossibility of an actual infinite

“Consider, for example, the argument based on the impossibility of the existence of an actual infite. This argument may be formulated as follows:

1. An actual infinite cannot exist.
2. A beginningless series of equal past intervals of time is an actual infinite.
3. Therefore, a beginningless series of equal past intervals of time cannot exist.

But if there cannot be a beginningless series of equal past intervals of time, then time must have begun to exist.”

---

Let me break in here. As I see it, this argument applies equally to those who substitute “sequence” for “time.” So you take away all physical measurement of time. You then talking about a “beginningless series of intervals of ‘sequences’.” Doesn’t matter.

Back to Craig:

quote:

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“There is a difference between a potential infinite and an actual infinite. A potential infinite is a collection that is increasing toward infinity as a limit but never gets there. Such a collection is really indefinite, not infinite. For example, any finite distance can be subdivided into potentially infinitely many parts. You can just keep on dividing parts in half forever, but you will never arrive at an actual ‘infinitieth’ division or come up with an actually infinite number of parts. By contrast, as actual infinite is a collection in which the number of members really is infinite. The collection is not growing toward infinity; it is infinite, it is ‘complete.’ This sort of infinity is used in set theory to designate sets that have an infinite number of members, such as [1, 2, 3, …]. Now the argument is, not that a potentially infinite number of things cannot exist, but that an actually infinite number of things cannot exist. For if an actually infinite number of things could exist, this would spawn all sorts of absurdities.”

---

That’s the heart of it. Craig gives an interesting example to illustrate this. It’s called “Hilbert’s Hotel” (conceived by the German mathematician David Hilbert). It acts us to imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Imagine also that all the rooms are full. No vacant rooms. A guess shows up and asks for a room. The proprieter says, “Sure!” and shifts the person in room #1 into room #2, the person in room #2 into room #3, and so on, into infinity. As a result of these room changes room #1 now becomes vacant.

Now, I don’t feel right about this illustration. If the rooms are “all” full, can any shifting be done? Hilbert begins with an “infinite number of full rooms.” However you “shift” ‘em, none become vacant. I don’t know. Perhaps it makes sense.

Craig notes objections to his premise (1). One objection claims that “(1) must mean that an actual infinite is logically impossible.” But this objection argues that it’s easy to show that such a collection is logically possible. Take for example, the set of negative number […, -3, -2, -1]. This is an actually infinite collection with no first member [Tom here: This is precisely what WE are arguing, that there is an actual infinite collection of ‘sequences’ with no first member]. Craig’s reply:

quote:

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”The error of these thinkers lies in their failure to distinguish between what philosophers have called ‘strict logical possibility’ and ‘broad logical possibility.’ Something is strictly logically possible if it does not involve a contradiction. Something may be strictly logically possible, however, without being capable of existing in reality. For example, there is no logical contradiction in asserting, ‘Something has a shape but no a size,’ ‘An event occurs before itself,’ or, ‘Something came into existence without a cause,’ but all of these statements are plausibly broadly logically impossible. Broad logical possibility is thus usually identified with metaphysical possibility, that is to say, with what is possible in reality. Now infinite set theory is strictly logically consistent, granted its axioms and rules, but that does nothing to prove that such a system can exist in the real world.”

---

Regarding premise (2) Craig comments, “If time [Tom: or ‘sequence’] never had a beginning, then if one were to add up all the temporal [or sequential] intervals of some finite extent, say, seconds, then there will have existed an actually infinite number of seconds prior to the present second.”

But I don’t see that all the seconds COULD be added up. Isn’t that the point?

Tom


"Kind of like donut holes--no one's ever eaten a donut hole because they don't exist." Starkman

Edited by - TGB on 11/05/2002 08:00:50 AM

quote:

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Tim:
What is the measurement of movement?
How is movement measured?
Where and when did movement first begin?
Who is the mover?

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quote:

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"For what paradox would there be if the Son were united to the Father and divided from Him only in the same manner as one human being is united to and divided form another, and nothing more?" (Saint Maximos the Confessor, The Philocalia, Second Century on Love, Vol. 2, p. 69-70).

---

Tom's head is hurting. This is not Crayola.

Tom framed a question this way: Should our understanding of “person” be imported into our understanding of God’s “personhood” without qualification?

Al: That is an important issue. The habit of the Greek Fathers has been that we 'cannot know God in his essence' (within the Trinity), but He has revealed himself, personally and directly in his opperations.

Nothing in the quotes from Zizioulas imply that change takes place in the begetting of the Son or the Procession of the Spirit. The Father is not changed. Nor is there any implication that the Father does this begetting or sending forth out of necessity. God is not changed. That fits Tim's definition for not having God exist in time.

This below is also a very interesting quote:

quote:

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The teaching about the Holy Trinity has a decisive importance for the spirituality of the believers. As the Persons of the Holy Trinity exists one in another, in an unity of being, the same the Christians constitute a spiritual communion of faith, hope and love in God. The Church is a unity of being and a communion of life after the image of the Holy Trinity.

"When our Lord says, I and My Father are oneí(John 10:30), He indicates their identity of essence. Again when He says, I am in the Father, and the Father in Me (John 14:11), He shows that the Persons cannot be divided. The tritheists, therefore, who divide the Son from the Father, but nevertheless divide Him form the Father, and so they are forced to say that He is not begotten form the Father; thus they fall into the error of claiming that there are three Gods and three firsts principles. Or else they say that the Son is begotten form the Father but nevertheless divide Him from the Father, and so they are forced to say that He is not coeternal with the Father, thus they make the Lord of time subject to time. For as Saint Gregory Nazianzos says, it is necessary both to maintain the one God and confess the three Persons, each in his own individuality. According to Saint Gregory, the Divinity is divided but without division and is united but with distinctions. Because of this both the division and the union are paradoxical.

"For what paradox would there be if the Son were united to the Father and divided from Him only in the same manner as one human being is united to and divided form another, and nothing more?" (Saint Maximos the Confessor, The Philocalia, Second Century on Love, Vol. 2, p. 69-70).

"The Holy Trinity in Orthodox Spirituality," by Stefan Crisbasan, January 1, 1999

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"As the Persons of the Holy Trinity exists one in another, in an unity of being..." Wow. For me to attempt to imagin "sequence" I have to sketch in my head two separate entities separated and squared off spatially, and doing something--even just two pools of water with fountains squirting into each other. BUT, that is not the picture in this quote! "Exist one in another, in an unity of being." THAT's "Communion."

Re-read the rest of that quote too!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now, to the really Good stuff that Tom urges us to recognize!!!!

quote:

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Al: No. I think that the OTHER way is more profitable! Our intendedness is to be both in the 'image' and the 'likeness' of God. If we are created in the image of God, then we should know what that image is of.

Tom: So, you're saying that 'personhood' IS the image of God?

---

Al: Careful not to "sound-bite" me, Tom. What you say may be partially true, and it may not be entirely true. But I won't seek to make things simple. This has facets and ambiguities. (I can't treat is like a coloring book. )

I'd start with a different statement than that. I'd say that OUR 'personhood' depends on God being Trinitarian. I'd start there. I'd also say that we can be more person-al or less person-al, depending on how free we are. THAT does inch steadily to your queery about "that 'personhood' IS the image of God."

But, lets use this opportunity to pause for a moment and notice what Zizioulas organizes for us with respect to what God's "eternality/immortality/" is: "we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom"; and "God, as Father, and not as substance, perpetually confirms through "being" His free will to exist", because "the one divine substance is consequently the being of God only because it has these three modes of existence, which it owes not to the substance but to the one person, the Father."[

This shows powerfully: "If God the Father is immortal, it is because His unique and unrepeatable identity as Father is distinguished eternally from that of the Son and of the Spirit, who call Him "Father." If the Son is immortal, He owes this primarily not to His substance but to His being the "only-begotten" (note here the concept of uniqueness) and His being the one in whom the Father is "well pleased." Likewise the Spirit is "live-giving" because He is "communion" (2 Cor. 13:14). The life of God is eternal because it is personal, that is to say, it is realized as an expression of free communion, as love. Life and love are identified in the person: the person does not die only because it is loved and loves; outside the communion of love the person loses its uniqueness and becomes a being like other beings, a "thing" without absolute unique and unrepeatable, whereas life for the person means the survival of the uniqueness of its hypostasis, which is affirmed and maintained by love."

(all from the Zizioulas portion quoted above)

How does THAT all apply to US -- to OUR personhood. Well, I'd venture that our own 'life' is proportional to how much we dwell IN HIM. Since that is rooted in Him, and not just a bank account in us, there is a manner in which we are not partially 'in Him." But, there is also an extent to which we are being "transformed" and some of us possibily "transfigured" (like the reversal of the fall evident to an extent with St. Anthony when the animals were no longer afraid of him. Does that happen to us when our hearts are purer? Hm.)

"GLORY TO HIM WHO HAS SHOWN US THE LIGHT."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

One quote said:

quote:

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The Church as the community of God has the mission to be in the world and by its presence and the manner of its existence, to confess, to praise and glorify the Holy Trinity. The unity of the Church as a worshipping community as in the manner of the Trinity, makes it capable of partaking organically in the divine and blessed life, that is, receiving the Grace of the Comforter and becoming witness to God the Holy Trinity Who loves the world. Fr Florovsky used to say in class that he or she who has really seen the Church has seen the Holy Trinity. It is a vision revealed to those who are baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity. Maximos the Confessor emphasized that those "who have attained not only union with the Holy Trinity, but also the unity which can be perceived within the Holy Trinity." (P.G.91:1196B.)

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Hmmmmm.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


MY RE-PHRASING OF THAT MIXIMUS QUOTE (the "living version" )

From that Maximus quote:

"[We]--the beings--who are mobile by nature should find in Him who is by essence absolutely immobile ... in themselves, always unchangeable, the enjoyment of this knowledge ... from the Logos--God by essence become man--messenger of the divine will ... [who] showed in Himself the goal for which created begins were created ... the Christic mystery, that all time and all that is in time has received in Christ its beginning and its end. The union between the determined and the indetermined, the finite and the infinite, the limited and the non-limited, and also between Creator and creature, between rest and movement was conceived before the times. It found its accomplishment at the end of time, giving through itself fullness to the preknowledge of God.

For US and OUR lives now: our "movement toward [our]selves and toward each other ha[s not] reached its goal"; and, we need to "gain, through experience, and active knowledge of Him, in whom they were made worthy to find their rest and have in themselves, always unchangeable, the enjoyment of this knowledge."

Notice again the talk about "mobile" and "non-mobile." Of course God can act.

And, of course, Tom, God "DOES ACT RELATIONALLY" (Though I don't see the necessity to describe The Trinity's relationality as an "act.") with respect to his "opperations." And, further, What is revealed to us is that in the Economy and in Creation the Trinity does ACT RELATIONALLY, in "time" and in "sequence" in very interesting ways. (But that is not inter-Trinitarian; which means that that is not part of the begetting or the proceeding. THAT is the definition of the domain of the inter-trinitarian-ness.)

When Tom wrote, "God cannot be atemporal" he was very close to saying that "God cannot not-create"; making creation a conpulsory thing for God -- which Tom does not mean to suggest.

A note that I'd like to make is that with words, if we are not careful, we can too easily make the "essence" and the "energies"/operations of God either too much the same (Thomism, and a strong tendency of the Open View) or too separate (a newer tendency in the Open View). BOTH are uncreated divinity. But WE can only be directly part of the "energies"/operations -- becasue we are creatures. Were we to enter directly into the essence we would be God. But IN CHRIST we can participate in God's divinity, by Grace as addopted children.


Al last thing I want to mention:

I seem to remember that in vocalizations of the Social Model the Love of God is portrayed as NECESSARILY very different, very, very different from what I've quoted above. My old memory seems to say that in the Open View God's inter-Trinitarian Love MUST be sacraficial. If so, that is very, very, very wrong. And it will also have huge effects upon an understanding of ETHICS, and upon an understanding of ECCLESIOLOGY. That article on ecclesiology LINKED above could be very important.


Thank you for your time, and your attention, and especially for your interaction.

- Al

Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 11/05/2002 4:53:55 PM

quote:

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But in the plain existance of God where sequence takes place, there's no diffinitive starting point for sequence, because there's nothing to measure. Figure sequence to be ungraspable, because God's existance within sequence is a variable; neither constant nor with starting or finishing properties to enable one to say "Oh, there! He just sequenced within the eternal." The speed of physical properties (be they light as we know it or anything else) by which something is measured does not exist; there is no (read as "may not be any", as I'm thinking out loud) measurable speed by which God sequences, because there's (perhaps) no "universe" (in His essence) God lives in to measure His sequencing. (Gaps between creations? Perhaps, and that's the catchy part.) However, when he creates within measurable time, it is because he has established the blue print by which measurement is found; either before or during the whole of that particularly creation.

---

Zizioulas organizes for us with respect to what God's "eternality/immortality/" is: "we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom"; and "God, as Father, and not as substance, perpetually confirms through "being" His free will to exist", because "the one divine substance is consequently the being of God only because it has these three modes of existence, which it owes not to the substance but to the one person, the Father."

This shows powerfully: "If God the Father is immortal, it is because His unique and unrepeatable identity as Father is distinguished eternally from that of the Son and of the Spirit, who call Him "Father." If the Son is immortal, He owes this primarily not to His substance but to His being the "only-begotten" (note here the concept of uniqueness) and His being the one in whom the Father is "well pleased." Likewise the Spirit is "live-giving" because He is "communion" (2 Cor. 13:14). The life of God is eternal because it is personal, that is to say, it is realized as an expression of free communion, as love. Life and love are identified in the person: the person does not die only because it is loved and loves; outside the communion of love the person loses its uniqueness and becomes a being like other beings, a "thing" without absolute unique and unrepeatable, whereas life for the person means the survival of the uniqueness of its hypostasis, which is affirmed and maintained by love."

quote:

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"The Inconceivable is conceived in the womb of a Virgin;

the unmeasurable becomes three cubits high;

the Unqualifiable acquires a quality;

the Undefinable stands up, sits down, and lies down;

He who is everywhere is put into a crib;

He who is above time gradually reaches the age of twelve;

He who is formless appears with the shape of a man;

and the Incorporal enters into a body. . .

Therefore, He is describable and indescribable"


(Theodore the Studite)

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quote:

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Tom: But open theists to date have only claimed that “personhood” requires time. OK, but unpack the argument. There has been mention of God’s mutual love, but the whole argument hasn’t been unpacked. What are the essential properties of “personhood”? I don’t know. Should our understanding of “person” be imported into our understanding of God’s “personhood” without qualification? This is one of Al’s points I think. We are persons and God is a person. OK, but person is used “analogically” [both like and unlike] and not “univocally” [both are identical]. Somebody should write a master’s thesis on this.

---

So far on the table we see only a romantic notion of what feelings say "must" be. And feelings, without a counter, are allowed to win.

quote:

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Tom: I haven’t yet heard any reason for believing that this (analogical) ‘unlikeness’ between God’s inner-Trinitarian love and our love entails that truth that our love is temporal while God’s is atemporal.

---

But the romantic (and yet unpacked...or maybe lost by the airlines...) notion is so far, far from what Christians have always asserted, that the new, romantic notion itself is what needs unpacking. (Have I said this enough to prompt you to actually do it, Tom?)

AND

quote:

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Tom: Honestly, I’m not sure “atemporal love” is even a coherent concept.

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What is inconceivable is objected to by romanticism. And romanticism also objects to fact. God is so 'other' that we object to the fact of that distinction. Yet we also object that we can not tinker. We want it both ways, and we can have it neither!

. . . . .

Reading last night by some Orthodox more concervative than Kallistos Ware -- and this has to be quick -- I saw many Patristic quotes of how God DOES NOT suffer when we suffer. (He is not actually hurt.) But those Fathers (like John of Damascus) affirm that what God does for us, is not for himself, but, rather, He does it FOR US OUT OF LOVE.

"LOVE." Boy, I'll stick that in my craw! (Not bad!!!)



TOM and his bell hop.

quote:

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The expression "God is love" (1 John 4:18) signifies that God "subsists" as Trinity, that is as person and not as substance. Love is not an emanation of "property" of the substance of God--this detail is significant in the light of...--but constitutive of His substance, i.e., it is that which makes God what He is, the one God. Thus love ceases to be a qualifying--i.e., secondary property of being and becomes the supreme ontological predicate. Love as God's mode of existence "hypostasizes" God constitutes His being. Therefore, as a result of love, the ontology of God is not subject to the necessity of the substance.

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And also:

quote:

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The survival of a personal identity is possible for God not on account of His substance but on account of His trinitarian existence…The life of God is eternal because it is personal, that is to say, it is realized as an expression of free communion, as love. Life and love are identified in the person: the person does not die only because it is loved and loves

---

OK, now I was able note something in these quotes that appealed to me. Zuzu says that “God is love” signifies Trinity. Cool. If I understand him, he’s simply saying that “love entails reciprocity.” And he’s saying (and can ONLY be saying this) because love FOR US entails reciprocity. [Aside: We can only make sense of the Bible’s claim that “God is love” if we START with what WE understand love to be. The same is true of the Cross. We can only categorize the Cross as “love” because we, though fallen, know what love is FOR US. We love, though imperfectly, and so THAT provides the context for us recognizing the Cross as God’s love. I think the same sort of thing works with applying the term “person” and “personal” to God.]

Zuzu seems to be saying that if God were a monad he could not be love. And why not? Well, because that’s how love functions FOR US. He’s doing exactly what I’m suggesting, working from what WE know about love and concluding what must be true of “God as love” in order for the claim to retain any meaning for us as a revelation of God. I like Z’s point. Love could not be God’s “supreme ontological predicate” if he were a monad. Trinity (e.g., community) follows from the Bible’s claim that God is love. Cool. “The person doesn’t die because it is loved and loves.” Very cool.

Question: How does any of this offer us help in deciding whether or not God is temporal in the absence of creation? You came out and categorically said, “It’s true that there was no time prior to creation.” And how do you know that?

As far as I can tell we can answer this question by appealing to 1) science (Does time ‘begin’ with the creation of a physical world?), 2) the nature of God (Is there anything about God’s nature that might suggest that God experiences sequence prior to the creation of a physical universe?), and 3) philosophy/reason (Craig’s only two reasons for rejecting God’s temporal existence in the absence of creation: Why did God wait so long to create? And, Is an actual infinite possible?).

On (1) I’m fairly convinced that Lorentz suggested a way of understanding relativity that does not imply that time is not real. You and I have been discussing (2). I don’t see anything in all that you’ve quoted about the Trinity and God’s personhood that even remotely suggests a theological reason for why God MUST be thought of as being atemporal in the absence of a physical creation. If I’m missing the key comments that clinch this argument in your mind, then give ‘em to me in your own words—short and sweet. I must be missing them when I read the quotes. Z’s comments above push me toward the temporal view.

On (3) I’m completely open. I want to hear from Neu’kem and Doc on Craig’s two arguments for timelessness in the absence of creation.

Now, on the distinction between “time” and “sequence,” I only find the distinction slightly helpful. If “time” is defined as the “measure” of distance or change (requiring clocks and calendars), then OK, there was no “time” prior to the creation of these conventions. There were no seconds, minutes, days, months, or years prior to creation. God was “sequencing.” It seems like splitting hairs to me. Starkman (unless I’m misunderstanding him ) argues that a “sequence” happens pretty fast. Well, lightning fast! Doesn’t matter. If it “happens,” if there’s a before and an after involved in God’s sequencing (experiences the community of his love), then you have time. And why not call it “time”? There’s no measurement of time because the instruments (sun, moon, clocks, etc.) don’t exist. But what they measure does exist, and that something appears to be an inherent quality of the love which is God. Call it time, sequence, pure duration, whatever.

Lastly, two things:

First, Al, regarding the similarity and dissimilarity which are both inherent in metaphorical language, I admit to having difficulty explaining the dissimilarity between the way we love and the way God loves. I’d locate the difference in our fallenness. We love imperfectly and partially. That’s enough of a dissimilarity between human and divine for me. It’s all I can see that Scripture warrants. Must we add to this dissimilarity the fact that we love temporally? Why? The notion of “atemporal love” seems to me to block the way for any meaningful similarity between the way we love and the way God loves. What’s left in human temporal love that allows “God is love” to remain a revelation of God to us? How are atemporal loving and temporal loving analogous?

Secondly, it occurred to me that there’s no good reason that we even have a view or position on the question of God’s relationship to time in the absence of creation. What’s at stake? Nothing that I can see. Whatever God’s relationship to time is sans creation, like we said earlier, it would not call into question the integrity of God’s real relations to us, his involvement with us now, his knowledge of tensed facts, i.e., his being temporal since creation. In as much as the debate about God and time affects open theism, this is all that’s needed. I don’t see that God’s being timeless or temporal without creation affects the open view much.

My interest in God’s relationship to time sans creation stems from the arguments of Geisler and others who (unlike Craig) want to argue from within the classical “package” of attributes that God’s timelessness explains how God is able to know the future as exhaustively definite. In the end, however, since simple foreknowledge is proven on other grounds to be providentially useless, there’s not a lot at stake in arguing this particular view of timelessness. If somebody wants to insist on such timelessness, fine. There’s no cash value in it. It cannot explain how God is able to possess knowledge of tensed facts. It cannot explain how God is able to interact with the world. It cannot explain a doctrine of “guidance,” and it cannot explain how God is able to providentially rule the world in the fulfillment of his purposes. Can tell us what value a doctrine of timelessness WOULD have?

Tom

PS Al, just got a glance of your last post. Back atcha later. "Romanticism" and "feelings"? Now now, Al, no name calling. Trust me, I'm not "feeling" my way through this discussoin. Talk to ya in a bit. I'm on my way to a friend's house to pray for my 80 year old Dad, who as I write is in an operation for stomach cancer. Gotta go!


"Kind of like donut holes--no one's ever eaten a donut hole because they don't exist." Starkman

Edited by - TGB on 11/06/2002 12:14:44 PM

Edited by - TGB on 11/06/2002 2:13:19 PM

quote:

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God was “sequencing.” It seems like splitting hairs to me. Starkman (unless I’m misunderstanding him ) argues that a “sequence” happens pretty fast. Well, lightning fast! Doesn’t matter. If it “happens,” if there’s a before and an after involved in God’s sequencing (experiences the community of his love), then you have time. And why not call it “time”?

There’s no measurement of time because the instruments (sun, moon, clocks, etc.) don’t exist. But what they measure does exist, and that something appears to be an inherent quality of the love which is God. Call it time, sequence, pure duration, whatever."

---

quote:

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So, let me offer you my confession. Anybody listening? No? OK, good.

Confession #1: I seldom read all, or even most, of the quotes you paste. If you underline stuff, I try to read that. If the post is short, I try to read it. If it’s long, I almost never read it. Sorry. Forgive me. I value your ideas very much! I just have too much to read and do (like everybody else) and have to pick and choose. I don’t know what rule I use to judge whether or not a pasted quote is too long to get read. It’s totally subjective and unpredictable. What I do is read what YOU say first. That’s valued the most. If I think I got the main idea from that then I don’t bother with the longer quotes because I almost always have backlogged stuff to attend to.

Confession #2: When the posted quote comes from a GO source and regards some theological intricacy, fact is (are you ready?) I don’t understand it. I read most of the quotes you posted from GO authorities about the Trinity more than once and simply could not understand what they were saying. I’m perfectly ready to admit that I’m not that intelligent. It’s true. I just can’t follow those guys. It’s like reading a detailed mathematical defense of some astrophysicist’s theory of worm holes. You have to possess a certain minimum level of intelligence and knowledge to follow along. I don’t possess that, so can’t follow. Sorry.

Hey, I do love you in Christ! THAT I understand!

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