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micah4
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2004
Total Posts : 8
| Posted 10/6/2004 4:45 PM (GMT -6) |   | I am curious how this is reconciled in the open view.
There is has always been some debate over whether it was a genuine possibility for Christ to fall in his redemptive mission as God incarnate- whether it was truly in some sense possible for Christ to sin, or to give in to temptation. I would think that open view theists would hold generally hold that Jesus was presented with genuine choices in his mission. For example, the temptation in the wilderness. If there was no possibility at all for Christ to be open to these temptations, it would seem to make this whole episode just a sort of play acting. I have always held that there was a real possibility for Christ to succumb to temptation (Heb 2:18) and that this episode represented a real victory where genuine possibilities existed for Christ to choose either way.
It would seem that the open view, by accepting the argument of theological fatalism, has to concede either that this encounter was either a foregone conclusion, and that therefore Christ had no genuine freewill choices to make in this experience- or that his victory could not have been known with certainty prior to his actual experience to resolve the possibilities into the certainty of realized victory.
That leaves me with the problem of reconciling the necessity of Christ's redemption of mankind for any to be saved with the salvation of many old testament saints prior to the certainty of Christ's having accomplished his redemptive mission! We know that enoch and elijah, for example were translated and taken directly to heaven, so we have to conclude that they were saved, and that therefore Christ's redemptive mission had to be certain.
If one rejects the argument of theological fatalism, this is easily reconcilable under the simple foreknowledge or middle knowledge views which would maintain that God could have foreknown the certainty of Christ's victory, and that the victory could still have involved genuine choices and the real possibility of failure. But with open theism accepting the argument of theological fatalism, it seems this solution is not available.
How would open theists reconcile this? It seems to me that OVT would either have to 1) deny that Christ faced the real possibility of failure in his redemptive mission, and that no genuine choice or possibility was present e.g., in the temptation in the wilderness, or 2) deny that Christ's redemptive mission in the incarnation was necessary for the salvation of the OT saints.
Both of these seem problematic to me. Is there an alternative I'm overlooking? | | Back to Top | | |
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micah4
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2004
Total Posts : 8
| Posted 10/6/2004 7:29 PM (GMT -6) | |
JEE- thanks, found the thread. Excellent discussion. It is interesting that Doc seems to lean towards a compatibilistic or "no risk" view on the incarnation. Not what I would have expected offhand from the open crowd, and apparently a different take than most openness proponents (pinnock, sanders)?- but it does seem almost inescapeable with the conclusions OVT leads to. Still have a bunch of the 10 page thread to read, so I'm still waiting to see if anybody steps up to defend the opposite position. | | Back to Top | | |
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