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One Love
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| Posted 10/24/2006 2:37 PM (GMT -6) |   | Check out this idea...
The reason why God allowed the eternal torment motif into this whole thing was to get across the sense of DESPAIR, HOPELESSNESS, and FUTILITY involved in the hellish state. Kind of like what Corey was saying...
Here's how I'm thinking about the scriptural language of an eternal hell. The point is, you can't outlast it. There's no sense thinking that if you can just grit your teeth and bear it, you can endure. It's un-endurable. In this sense, it's without end. It's a maximal sentance, you SHALL truly die. Hell is industrial strength, designed to break down beings as hardened as Satan. There's no way the machine is going to break down, that there will be any reprieve before its purpose is accomplished. The worm will not die; don't hope that it will.
But the thing was that people REALLY DID believe that hell was eternal. People like Jesus. But that was the only way at the time to truly convey the sense of the existential FEELING of despair, hopelessness and futility involved in the hellish experience.
REEEEEEEALY think about it.
If you were God in this time period...and you wanted people to understand that hell would be a big PAINFUL lesson in the ultimate FUTILITY and HOPELESSNESS of continued existence without God...
How would YOU have tried to convey that sense to persons IN JESUS'S TIME AND CONTEXT??
Remember the idea of eternal conscious torment was ALREADY in existence in Jewish eschatology before Jesus got on the scene. So, it is possible for Jesus to have picked that up from religious education...and that formed at some of his HUMANLY ENCULTURATED eschatological framework. Would Jesus have had to wrestle with the seeming unresolvable tension of eternal punishment and God's love for all? Possibly. But if Jesus had the strong conviction that this "eternal hell" was something to warn people about...and the Holy Spirit USED this conviction to express a TRUTH about the nature of the hellish afterlife...
...what ELSE would we expect Jesus to say...but what he said?
Example. Just go with this...
Imagine that the ONLY FORM of pain that is recognized and articulated in Society X is PHYSICAL PAIN. In other words, physical pain is the NORMATIVE UNDERSTANDING of "pain" and "suffering. Thus whenever a person describes pain (even EMOTIONAL pain) they can only describe it in terms of physical expression.
Imagine that someone who is raised in Society X has the belief that the human conscience "convicts" a person by way of a severely, painful electric shock that causes negative emotions in the body. In other words, they are socialized to believe that if someone violates their conscience, that they will experience serious pain and suffering as a result...that comes from a physical, electrical stimulus. Thus, this person does EVERYTHING they can to NOT violate their conscience.
Now, let's say that it's NOT TRUE that an actual severely, painful electric shock will accompany a person's violation of conscience. Even though it may NOT BE TRUE that a severe electric shock will follow a person's violation of their conscience, it IS the case that some form of intense pain and suffering can come from it.
Speaking pragmatically, would anyone be WRONG if they allowed this person to CONTINUE BELIEVING that a severe electric shock will definitely follow a person's violation of conscience... because their belief, though inaccurate, conveys ENOUGH MEANING to functionally keep them from doing what I don't want them to do...violate their conscience?
See what I'm trying to get at?
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) Post Edited (Namaste) : 10/24/2006 2:56:48 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Violin for God
Luke, I am your father. --Nooooooooo!!!!!
Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 690
| Posted 10/24/2006 6:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey, D (I don't know whether to say Meph or Nam... so I'll go with D  )But the thing was that people REALLY DID believe that hell was eternal. People like Jesus. But that was the only way at the time to truly convey the sense of the existential FEELING of despair, hopelessness and futility involved in the hellish experience.
I have a quick question though. If Jesus had some epistemic distance from reality, no matter how small that distance was, and specifically regarding the nature of hell, how could Jesus have been fully God? I mean, what you wrote here not only says that Jesus didn't know the full nature of hell, but that he was mistaken (even more severe than the "self-emptying" whatever-it's-called position (I'm having a getting-more-senior-everyday moment)).
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One Love
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| Posted 10/24/2006 7:05 PM (GMT -6) | | Violin:
I have a quick question though. If Jesus had some epistemic distance from reality, no matter how small that distance was, and specifically regarding the nature of hell, how could Jesus have been fully God? I mean, what you wrote here not only says that Jesus didn't know the full nature of hell, but that he was mistaken (even more severe than the "self-emptying" whatever-it's-called position (I'm having a getting-more-senior-everyday moment)).
How does Jesus not knowing something that the Father may know (like the time when the Consummation will happen) lead to idea of Jesus not being fully God?
I guess what I'm saying is...Jesus' divinity is not necessarily linked to Jesus possessing completely accurate information about the nature of hell.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/25/2006 1:53 AM (GMT -6) | | Violin:
Well... regarding the Consummation, Jesus simply said that "only the Father knows the day and time" and said the Son did not know, which is accurate knowledge about not knowing. But having false information (about whatever) is a different bird than having no information. We'd have to attribute the inaccurate information to Jesus' humanity then, but then we'd have to deal with the issue of how to discern correct information from Jesus vs. incorrect/false information. Basically, how do we decide what other information from Jesus was accurate and what was misinformation, and to what extent?
I mean, I can get with the idea of Jesus conveying a certain perspective on hell to convey more of the feeling of being there... with him basically speaking hyperbolically (intentionally), but I'm having a difficult time getting with Jesus simply being mistaken. That opens a whole can of worms for me. It also makes me wonder what's necessary for divinity?
Hmmmm...
1) All that is necessary for divinity is the possession of divine characteristics by way of divine DISPOSITIONS, not necessarily the EXERCISE of those divine characteristics. This would include Jesus's omniscience and omnipresence.
2) Jesus' accuracy or inaccuracy would just be a factor of Jesus' FINITUDE. Jesus is fully human, a contingent, FINITE expression of God. If Jesus made any mistakes of fact, they would NOT be a product of Jesus not being divine. I mean, seriously. We don't trip that a mustard seed is actually NOT the smallest of all seeds, right?
3) We don't have to fall into the whole morass of the so-called "slippery slope" that more conservative evangelicals try to avoid. The bottom line is that the whole reason WHY we are even thinking that perhaps Jesus may have been partially inaccurate about his view of hell is because all of the other theological and biblical considerations we are making. It's not like we are just willy-nilly questioning EVERYTHING Jesus said for no reason. That's not what's going on.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) Post Edited (Namaste) : 10/25/2006 2:16:10 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/25/2006 2:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Let's say this. There is NO WAY that we can crawl into Jesus' head and see what he was thinking. So if you (Vi) want to say that Jesus really DID know about hell being indefinite in duration...but just CHOSE to use ECT as a "helpful metaphor" that others actually believed to be REAL, I suppose that's fine. (But I guarantee that some conservative Christians somewhere would want to call that a form of DECEPTION, which they would say that Jesus cannot do. SK's idea of "Deceiving people into truth" is not a concept that some Christians can get with!) I know that some people just have a problem with the idea that Jesus could have made a mistake of fact on ANYTHING he said...because that (supposedly) throws everything in the air. I don't go with that view...but that's me.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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| Posted 10/25/2006 3:56 AM (GMT -6) | | What's necessary for divinity?
God is love. 1 John 4:16
Jesus gave up the Omni-s, but didn't give up the love.
His power (miracles, etc) was the power of the Holy Spirit, same as we have access to, and so we will do greater works than Jesus did John 14:12
His knowledge was an epistemology of love. Check out this N.T. Wright passage:
"Well, you see, it's at this point that the object-subject distinction really breaks down, doesn't it? As with most epistemology. The higher you go up the scale of knowledge, the more knowledge becomes love, and love becomes an interaction between lover and beloved, so that the lover is involved with the beloved, even while wanting the beloved to be what it or he or she is, and not something else. So, love is affirming the otherness, and in that sense, the objectivity of the beloved. Because it's love, the idea of something being objective, out there and against me, would be completely wrong. Now it seems to me that aesthetic appreciation is quite high up that scale. At the end of my book, ``The Challenge of Jesus,'' I have a little bit about an epistemology of love, which I've never developed, though I'm sure that others have developed it. The only other person I know whose done a bit of that is Bernad Lonergan, the great Catholic philosopher, and that's where I got it from in the first place, and my it makes a lot of sense. But we have tended in western culture to privilege mathematical epistemology, chemical epistemology, test-tube knowing, if you like, where it's very easy to think of subject and object, because I am the scientist and that is an object, and I am telling you what it is doing. We have then attempted to suppose that knowing a Shakespeare play or knowing the symphony or knowing another person, is a rather fuzzy, imprecise, kind of knowing. Where as in fact, I want to say that it is the other way around - in fact loving, and being loved by another human being, and ultimately by God, is the highest form of knowing there is, and me knowing that this is a flat table, although not unimportant in its own way, is a rather trivial, low-grade form of knowing. Compared with the knowledge that we have of God or even the knowledge we have of that birds in the garden. They're more interesting to me than the table."
or that's kinda where I'm at in my thinking anyways. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/25/2006 7:21 AM (GMT -6) | | Hmmm...
Seriously, y'all.
If the MTV generation gets a hold of our form of Christian optimistic universalism, with a focus on God's BEAUTY...
I really think we could see a new REVIVAL in the land.
And it would probably be opposed by some of the hardliners...but hey...
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/27/2006 5:57 AM (GMT -6) | | sorenkierkegaard.org/method.htm
Section B:4 "Godly Deception"
Basically, the premise is this, Jeff. Some people are where they are...and you need to WORK with them where they are...in order to bring them where you need to be. So, what one may do is to REPRESENT themselves a certain way (espousing a position or state of mind that they REALLY don't hold) in order to provide a means of indirect communication that will END UP having the desired effect.
I apply this to the hell discussion in the following manner:
The unconditional love and gracious activity of God has ALWAYS been too much for people to handle. People want other people JUDGED when God wants everyone saved. Look at Jonah! Look at the disciples that wanted to call down fire from Heaven on people. Look at even John the Baptist who began to wonder if Jesus was truly the Messiah BECAUSE he wasn't judging fast enough! I believe that God may have had to do some INDIRECT, LONG TERM work that would meet people where they were...KNOWING that, if we pursued our knowledge of God, that we would be "deceived into" understanding the manifold wisdom of God's perfect love. In other words, God would work with the ECT beliefs of the time...but he would PLANT SEEDS about God's universal love...and let those seeds germinate within the Church. And just like a parable that explodes in the head of a hearer a week later, so does the truth about God's unsurpassable love hit us when we LEAST expect it...but because of all the information that was already there.
We have listened to the long story of God's redemptive activity in history...through the history of the Church...and we have come to a point where the truth of God's MATCHLESS LOVE is exploding in our heads...even though I'd say MANY OF THE PEOPLE HERE (myself very included!!) may have started out their beliefs in God from an ECT (or at best annihilationist) standpoint. We had to be "deceived into the truth" over time. Think about it. When we first got "saved" and into the Christian faith, if someone had told us that eventual universalism existed, we've have been like "show us THAT in Scripture"...and thinking they were "of the devil", trying to deceive us...or some stuff like that. But after we have TASTED and SEEN over TIME...now we are able to really understand some things differently.
See what I'm saying?
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) Post Edited (Namaste) : 10/27/2006 6:00:08 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/27/2006 7:20 AM (GMT -6) | | Interesting thought.
Asher's on point. He said:
What's necessary for divinity?
God is love. 1 John 4:16
Jesus gave up the Omni-s, but didn't give up the love.
His power (miracles, etc) was the power of the Holy Spirit, same as we have access to, and so we will do greater works than Jesus did John 14:12
His knowledge was an epistemology of love.
God has been TRYING to tell us this..
1 Corinthians 13:13
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Colossians 3:12-14
Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Romans 13:8-10
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not covet," and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
1 John 4:7-21
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 1There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
We love because he first loved us. If we say we love God yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars. For if we do not love a fellow believer, whom we have seen, we cannot love God, whom we have not seen. And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love one another.
One of the divine characteristics that God the Son COULD exercise as the human Christ was his unconditional love. It is by this love that he gave himself for us. It is THIS love that is shed abroad in our hearts...because the Spirit of Christ is WITHIN US, both individually and as organic whole, as we are the "Temple Of the Holy Spirit"
When we participate with God in the formation of CHRIST within us, we have the ability to TAKE ON the "energies" of Christ's divine work in us. Like the metal that takes on light and heat from the fire, so also our HUMAN SPIRITS take on the dazzling LIGHT and ENERGY of God from our communion with the Holy Spirit of Christ.
We become so enveloped in LOVE...that every relationship that our spirits have to reality is PERMEATED with loving sensibilities. We love God, ourselves, other persons, and the rest of the universe. We see that everything is ONE insofar as everything is interrelated (by the Creator's design) and that everything is sustained and appreciated by God in some way. See panentheism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism (This was ANOTHER POINT at which Orthodox and Process thinkers had more agreement than disagreement.)
We become holy...as God is holy.
And perfect love casts out all "phobos" (all anxiety or fear)
We continually grow in God's grace to become BY that grace what God is by nature.
This, my people, is the pathway of Christian perfection.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/27/2006 9:06 AM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Here's a good example of "deceiving someone into truth"
Remember "The Matrix"? Do you remember how mysterious that Trinity and Morpheus seemed BEFORE Neo made the choice to take the RED PILL? It almost seemed like they were being INTENTIONALLY VAGUE for some reason.
Cypher was ANGRY at Morpheus about this, as you recall:
"He lied to us, Trinity. He tricked us. If you would have told us the TRUTH, we would have told you to shove that red pill right up your a$$!!"
Basically he was saying that if Morpheus had set EVERYTHING OUT before the red pill, that Cypher would have, for one reason or another, told Morpheus to get lost! Cypher would have rather have been in despair than to deal with the ENORMITY of the truth...which was so different from his life experience up till then.
Even though Morpheus told Neo "I only offer you the truth. Nothing more."" even MORPHEUS knew that the truth was SO hard to believe that one can ONLY experience it for oneself. Can you imagine what would have happened if Morpheus had basically laid EVERYTHING OUT for people at the very beginning? People were so into the Matrix...and their self-understandings were so BASED on Matrix-thinking...that they would have thought that Morpheus was absolutely CRAZY...and dismissed him immediately.
No, he and the other freedom fighters had to talk PARABOLICALLY...from things that people in the Matrix COULD UNDERSTAND....
(The Kingdom of God is LIKE... Story with similie and metaphor.)
...hoping that IN TIME, the "splinter in the mind" would soon reach a point where at least some people could HANDLE the enormity of the truth. And be willing to take the LEAP OF FAITH...via taking the red pill.
And after the red pill has been taken...there is no going back. (Unless one wanted to APOSTASIZE like Cypher!)
Could it be that humanity JUST WASN'T READY to be released from the "Calling down Fire Upon Others" Matrix...into truly understanding the UNBELIEVABLE LOVE of God?? Could it be that God just HAD to work with what God had...JUST LIKE God had to work with the violent tribalism of the Ancient Near East?
Could it BE???
Seriously, y'all.
Isn't this just making SENSE??? Post Edited (Namaste) : 10/27/2006 9:19:49 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/27/2006 12:32 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Hmmmmm. I still have a REAL hard time believing Jesus was as much a victim of the matrix as this would mean but was as enabled as he was within this matrix to achieve what it did. It makes it impossible to argue that we should get free from the specific matrix program called "eternal conscious torment" so that we can BE like Jesus, LOVE like Jesus, etc. If Jesus achieved what he did as a believer in ECT, what the hell are we wasting our time trying to free peopel from ECT? And why are we experiencing SO MUCH FREEDOM when we DUMP ECT? Are we more free than Jesus? I mean, am I feeling a love and enjoyment of God Jesus didn't feel and couldn't have felt because he beleived in ECT and I don't? Come on.
It's way easier to say Jesus didn't believe in ECT.
Hey, that's fine with me. Like I told Violin. I can go either way.
I just know that there will be PROBLEMS either way.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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Violin for God
Luke, I am your father. --Nooooooooo!!!!!
Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 690
| Posted 10/28/2006 1:28 AM (GMT -6) | | Namaste: 1) All that is necessary for divinity is the possession of divine characteristics by way of divine DISPOSITIONS, not necessarily the EXERCISE of those divine characteristics. This would include Jesus's omniscience and omnipresence.
Vi: I'm having a difficult time understanding what you wrote here. You're saying in order to be X you have to have the capacity to be X by way of dispositions inherent to X? That seems like saying if one has the characteristics of X, then one is X. But isn't that circular? Because if one is X, they'd have the characteristics of X as well. I'm lost. What does BEING divine include, or rather, what are the specific CHARACTERISTICS one must have to actually be divine? There must be some NECESSARY characteristics of deity other than just eternality and love, right?
Now related to the thing about hiding the truth, that's a different story than being mistaken. Or... could perfect love lie? Would God deceive people to get them into heaven? Hmmm... Then what the heck is the point of free choice?
Post Edited (Violin for God) : 10/28/2006 1:44:32 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Violin for God
Luke, I am your father. --Nooooooooo!!!!!
Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 690
| Posted 10/28/2006 1:38 AM (GMT -6) | | Asher: Jesus gave up the Omni-s, but didn't give up the love.
Vi: I'm not sure how the omni-s could be given up while perfect love is kept because the action of perfectly loving another requires the omnis. In order to perfectly love A, you have to perfectly know A and everything that could come into contact with A in order to perfectly express your love for A. Additionally, to perfectly love A, you'd have to have sufficient power available to enact that love for A when necessary. A deficiency of power or knowledge would affect the expression of love (and love is not just a state of being, but a state of being AND expression). With the omni's vs. love, I don't see how you could have one without the other.
BTW, I agree about Wrights take of love being the higher form of knowledge. When you perfectly love another, you must know all the facts of the world as well in order to perfectly love, though knowing another IN LOVE is a much deeper form of knowledge, but that too ultimately can't be separated from "facts".... at least, I think. hmmm...
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One Love
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| Posted 10/28/2006 8:22 AM (GMT -6) | | Violin:
I'm having a difficult time understanding what you wrote here. You're saying in order to be X you have to have the capacity to be X by way of dispositions inherent to X? That seems like saying if one has the characteristics of X, then one is X. But isn't that circular? Because if one is X, they'd have the characteristics of X as well. I'm lost. What does BEING divine include, or rather, what are the specific CHARACTERISTICS one must have to actually be divine? There must be some NECESSARY characteristics of deity other than just eternality and love, right?
All I'm talking about, Vi, is the kenotic idea. There are some necessary dispositional tendencies that the Son possesses as being a unique perspective in the INFINITE one necessary being. The Son possessed these dispositional tendencies even when he became the Incarnate Word. These include the dispositional tendencies of the 3 Omnis. But due to the nature of the intensification of God's contingent expression into non-glorified humanness, the dispositional tendencies of the 3 Omnis can be possessed by the human Jesus, but not expressed by way of their exercise. Jesus's non-glorified human state didn't allow for exercise of characteristics. Again, this is just the kenotic idea.
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Vi:
Now related to the thing about hiding the truth, that's a different story than being mistaken. Or... could perfect love lie? Would God deceive people to get them into heaven? Hmmm... Then what the heck is the point of free choice?
We are talking about ACCOMODATION to current belief, Vi. Sometimes one has to talk VERY INDIRECTLY to someone, using only the categories that they understand, even IF their categories are not totally representative of reality in order to bring a person to higher truth. Strictly speaking, this may be considered deception.
Do you see what I'm saying now?
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Vi:
I'm not sure how the omni-s could be given up while perfect love is kept because the action of perfectly loving another requires the omnis. In order to perfectly love A, you have to perfectly know A and everything that could come into contact with A in order to perfectly express your love for A. Additionally, to perfectly love A, you'd have to have sufficient power available to enact that love for A when necessary. A deficiency of power or knowledge would affect the expression of love (and love is not just a state of being, but a state of being AND expression). With the omni's vs. love, I don't see how you could have one without the other.
Hmmm...
What's your description of love, Vi?
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's love." -- the newest mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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| Posted 10/28/2006 10:50 AM (GMT -6) | | Vi:
I'm not sure how the omni-s could be given up while perfect love is kept
because the action of perfectly loving another requires the omnis.
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love." --1 John 4:18
From this, I think that the the omni's are not at all required to perfectly love. Having perfect love, being perfected in love is something that is capable of humans. Perfect love is not something that is too lofty for you or I to seek after and attain. We are made in the image of God, God is love, that we may love as God loves has to be at the very crux of what it means that we are made in the image of God.
My speculations....I further surmise that Jesus was/is a human. Sure, there is something different about Him than the rest of us. However, I think weight should be given to the utter lengths Jesus went to to be united with us. Hebrews 2:11 "He is not ashamed to call them brethren." We have no omniscience. And omniscience was not crucial to Jesus' mission, if anything omniscience would have been a hinderance to His mission. He laid omniscience down to become like His brethren.
Mark 13:32 "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."
Being in perfect communion with the Father, Jesus, of course, knew things others did not; but it was not because He had an omniscience, but that He had an omni-love-ence, if I can coin a phrase. The more perfect our communion with the Father, the more we know as well; whether by words of knowledge or simply being in tune with God so having the understanding that that brings. And again, we're talking about the kind of knowing that takes love as it's foundation and buttress, not a "mathematical" knowledge. A "mathematical" knowledge devoid of love is deceptive. I'm not saying that all "mathematical" knowing IS devoid of love, only that it can be, and so very often has been. Has the history of the world not shown that oppression more often than not has come at the hands of those who claim to be the masters of a "mathematical" knowing. Is this not the very essence of what all the postmoderns decry. I may disagree with their solution/remedy, but I think I have to agree with their diagnosis.
Jesus walked in perfect love. Apart from His particular mission, anything Jesus is constitutionally able to do, we are able to do. I know that sounds radical. Jesus is God. Jesus is human. Love is the common denominator between these two sets. Jesus could give up omniscience...to become a human...while still being God. Jesus could give up omnipotence...to become human...while still being God. Love. Jesus became a human, while remaining God, because love is deeper in to what it means to being God than either omniscience or omnipotence. I'm not castigating omniscience nor omnipotence, I'm only seeking to put first things first, and that's God's love. (All the while remembering that the Father and the Spirit DID NOT become human and continued exercising omniscience and omnipotence.)
Ephesians 3:17-19 "so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
Love surpasses knowledge.
How deep is the love of Christ?Post Edited (Asher) : 10/28/2006 11:08:33 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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