But...

1
But...

• Isaiah 638-9 For he said, "Surely they are my
  people, children who will not deal falsely." And
  he became their Savior. In all their affliction
  he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence
  saved them in his love and in his pity he
  redeemed them he lifted them up and carried them
  all the days of old."

2
Scriptural support for Gods immutability

• Psalm 10225-27 Of old you laid the foundation
  of the earth, and the heavens are the work of
  your hands. 26 They will perish, but you will
  remain they will all wear out like a garment.
  You will change them like a robe, and they will
  pass away, 27 but you are the same, and your
  years have no end.
• Malachi 36 "For I the LORD do not change
  therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not
  consumed.
  
• Numbers 2319 God is not man, that he should
  lie, or a son of man, that he should change his
  mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has
  he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
• 1 Samuel 1529 And also the Glory of Israel will
  not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that
  he should have regret.

3
Scripture passages that seem to be contradictory

• Exodus 3214 And the LORD relented from the
  disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his
  people.
  
• 2 Samuel 2416 And when the angel stretched out
  his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD
  relented from the calamity and said to the angel
  who was working destruction among the people, "It
  is enough now stay your hand" (Cf. 1 Chron
  2115).
• Psalm 10645 For their sake he remembered his
  covenant, and relented according to the abundance
  of his steadfast love.
  
• Jonah 37-10 And he issued a proclamation and
  published through Nineveh, "By the decree of the
  king and his nobles Let neither man nor beast,
  herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed
  or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be
  covered with sackcloth, and let them call out
  mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil
  way and from the violence that is in his hands.
  9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn
  from his fierce anger, so that we may not
  perish." 10 When God saw what they did, how they
  turned from their evil way, God relented of the
  disaster that he had said he would do to them,
  and he did not do it. (See also Amos 73-6)

4
Open Theism

• My fundamental thesis is that the classical
  theological tradition became misguided when,
  under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy, it
  defined Gods perfection in static, timeless
  terms. All change was considered an imperfection
  and thus not applicable to God. Given this
  definition of divine perfection, there was no way
  to conceive of God as entertaining real
  possibilities.

5
More Open Theism

• According to Scripture, God moves with his people
  through time. He is even described as wondering
  what they are going to do next! God says I
  thought, after she has done all this, she will
  return to me, but she did not return (Jer. 37).
  God had thought he could bless his people but
  they proved unfaithful (Jer. 319-20). God had
  planted a pleasant vineyard and put a lot of
  effort into it but it yielded only wild grapes,
  and in Isaiah 51-4 he asks why. He had hope for
  things to happen which did not happen and he was
  disappointed. God existed before creation and
  before creaturely time but since then has related
  to the world within the structures of time. God
  is not thought of in terms of timelessness. He
  makes plans and carries them out he anticipates
  the future and remembers the past. Since
  creation, divine life has been temporally
  ordered. God is participant, not onlooker he
  enters the time of the world and is not just
  above the flow of history looking down, as it
  were, from some supra-temporal vantage point.
  God is inside not outside time, sharing in
  history - past, present, and future.

6
If God is eternal...

• Then these statements are false
• God existed before Moses.
• Gods power will soon triumph over evil.
• Last week God wrought a miracle.
• God will always be wiser than human beings.

7
If God is Eternal, how can this be?

• He makes plans. He responds to what human beings
  do, e.g. their evil deeds or their acts of
  repentance. He seems to have temporal location
  and extension. The Bible does not hesitate to
  speak of Gods years and days... And God seems to
  act in temporal sequences-first he rescues the
  children of Israel from Egypt and later he gives
  them the Law...

8
Eternal?

• The other main difficulty about divine
  timelessness is that it is very hard to make
  clear logical sense of the doctrine. If God is
  truly timeless, so that temporal determinations
  of before and after do not apply to him, then
  how can God act in time...? How can he know what
  is occurring on the changing earthly scene? How
  can he respond when his children turn to him in
  prayer and obedience? And above all, if God is
  timeless and incapable of change, how can God be
  born, grow up, live with and among people, suffer
  and die, as we believe he did as incarnated in
  Jesus?

9
Immutable?

• So the truth about atonement, about
  reconciliation to God, has to be represented to
  us as if it implied a change in God, and so an
  inconsistency, an apparent contradiction, in his
  actions towards us. But in fact there is no
  change in God he loves us from eternity. There
  is however, a change in us a change that occurs
  as by faith Christ's work is appropriated. The
  change is not from wrath to grace, but from our
  belief that we are under wrath to our belief that
  we are under grace.

10
Thomas

• Since therefore God is outside the whole order of
  creation, and all creatures are ordered to Him,
  and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures
  are really related to God Himself whereas in God
  there is no real relation to creatures, but a
  relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are
  referred to Him. Thus there is nothing to prevent
  these names which import relation to the creature
  from being predicated of God temporally, not by
  reason of any change in Him, but by reason of the
  change of the creature as a column is on the
  right of an animal, without change in itself, but
  by change in the animal. (ST IQ13,a7)

11
How To Conclude For Less-Than-God

• Take any of the essential attributes of God,
• Argue that God, because of the nature of
  creation, cannot have this attribute and
  
• Conclude that we must give up believing that God
  has this attribute.

12
How do we think about these incompatibilities?

• 1. We remember that such incompatibilities come
  because God has chosen to relate himself to the
  world
  
• 2. Then we ask, "What is the clearest, highest
  and most obvious biblical example of God relating
  himself to the world?"
  
• Answer?

13
WCF 82

• The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity,
  being very and eternal God, of one substance and
  equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of
  time was come, take upon Him man's nature, with
  all the essential properties and common
  infirmities thereof, yet without sin being
  conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the
  womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So
  that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures,
  the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably
  joined together in one person, without
  conversion, composition, or confusion. Which
  person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ,
  the only Mediator between God and man.

14
Phil. 25-7

• Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours
  in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the
  form of God, did not count equality with God a
  thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing,
  taking the form of a servant, being born in the
  likeness of men.
• ?? ?? µ??f? ?e?? ?p????? ??? ??pa?µ?? ???sat? t?
  e??a? ?sa ?e?, 7 ???? ?a?t?? ?????se? µ??f??
  d????? ?aß?? ?? ?µ???µat? ?????p?? ?e??µe???

15
Made Himself Nothing?

• Turretin - Here also belongs the verb ekenose,
  which is not to be taken simply and absolutely
  (as if he ceased to be God or was reduced to a
  nonentity, which is impious even to think
  concerning the eternal and unchangeable God), but
  in respect of state and comparatively because he
  concealed the divine glory under the veil of
  flesh and as it were laid it aside not by
  putting off what he was, but by assuming what he
  was not.

16
Chalcedonian Creed-451 A.D.

• "acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly
  (a)sugxutwv), unchangeably (a)re/ptwv),
  indivisibly (a)diaire/twv), and inseparably
  (a)xwri/stwv).
•  ...the distinction of natures is by no means
  taken away by the union, but rather the property
  of each nature is preserved, and concurring in
  one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or
  divided into two persons, but one and the same
  Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord
  Jesus Christ...

17
Hypostatic Union

• 1. Unio Personalis
• A. No new person
• B. The Temporal presupposes the ontological
• 2. Human nature of Christ is Anhypostatic and
  Enhypostatic
  
• Anhypostatic impersonal or non-self-subsistent
• Ehypostatic in-personality having its
  subsistence in the person of another.

18
Turretin on CI

• The communication of attributes...is an effect of
  the union by which the properties of both natures
  became common to the person. Hence the
  phraseology (or the manner of speaking)
  concerning Christ arises, by which the properties
  of either nature are predicated of the person of
  Christ, in whatever manner it is denominated.

19
Calvin

• It is, equally senseless to despise the
  communication of properties, a term long ago
  invented to some purpose by the holy fathers.
  Surely, when the Lord of glory is said to be
  crucified 1 Corinthians 28, Paul does not mean
  that he suffered anything in his divinity, but he
  says this because the same Christ, who was cast
  down and despised, and suffered in the flesh, was
  God and Lord of glory. In this way he was also
  Son of man in heaven John 313, for the very
  same Christ, who, according to the flesh, dwelt
  as Son of man on earth, was God in heaven.

20
Turretin on Christology

• In the Christian religion there are two questions
  above all others which are difficult. The first
  concerns the unity of the three persons in the
  one essence in the Trinity the other concerns
  the union of the two natures in the one person in
  the incarnation. Now while they mutually
  differ..., still the one greatly assists in the
  understanding of the other. For as in the
  Trinity, the unity of essence does not hinder the
  persons from being distinct from each other and
  their properties and operations from being
  incommunicable, so the union of natures in the
  person of Christ does not prevent both the
  natures and their properties from remaining
  unconfounded and distinct.

21
God's Work in the OT

• It is a saying generally admitted, that Opera
  Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa. There is no
  such division in the external operations of God
  that any one of them should be the act of one
  person, without the concurrence of the others
  and the reason of it is, because the nature of
  God, which is the principle of all divine
  operations, is one and the same, undivided in
  them all.

22
John 8.58 Rom. 14. 11 1 Cor. 10. 4 Heb. 1.
1013

• John 858 Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I
  say to you, before Abraham was, I am. (see Ex.
  314).
  
• Romans 1411 ...for it is written, As I live,
  says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and
  every tongue shall confess to God. (see also
  Phil. 210, 11 Cited from Isa. 4523).
• 1 Corinthians 104 ...and all drank the same
  spiritual drink. For they drank from the
  spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock
  was Christ. (See Ex. 176
• Hebrews 110-13 And, You, Lord, laid the
  foundation of the earth in the beginning and the
  heavens are the work of your hands they will
  perish, but you remain they will all wear out
  like a garment, like a robe you will roll them
  up, like a garment they will be changed. But you
  are the same, and your years will have no end.
  And to which of the angels has he ever said, Sit
  at my right hand until I make your enemies a
  footstool for your feet ? (Cited from Ps. 10225
  27)

23
Calvin

• Therefore, let us, first of all, set down this
  for a surety, that there was never since the
  beginning any communication between God and men,
  save only by Christ for we have nothing to do
  with God, unless the Mediator be present to
  purchase his favor for us.

24
Hodge on OT appearances

• The angel, who appeared to Hagar, to Abraham, to
  Moses, to Joshua, to Gideon, and to Manoah, who
  was called Jehovah and worshipped as Adonai, who
  claimed divine homage and exercised divine power,
  whom the psalmists and prophets set forth as the
  Son of God, as the Counsellor, the Prince of
  Peace, the mighty God, and whom they predicted
  was to be born of a virgin, and to whom every
  knee should bow and every tongue confess, of
  things in heaven and things on earth, and things
  under the earth, is none other than He whom we
  now recognize and worship as our God and Saviour
  Jesus Christ. It was the ????? asa???? whom the
  Israelites worshipped and obeyed and it is the
  ????? e?sa???? whom we acknowledge as our Lord
  and God.

25
Hodge again

• Besides this we have the express testimony of the
  inspired writers of the New Testament, that the
  angel of the Lord, the manifested Jehovah who led
  the Israelites through the wilderness, and who
  dwelt in the temple, was Christ that is, was the
  ?????, or Eternal Son of God, who became flesh
  and fulfilled the work which it was predicted the
  Messiah should accomplish. The Apostles do not
  hesitate to apply to Christ the language of the
  Old Testament used to set forth the majesty, the
  works, or the kingdom of the Jehovah of the
  Hebrew Scriptures. (John xii. 41 Rom. xiv. 11 1
  Cor. x. 4 Heb. i. 1013, and often elsewhere.)
  The New Testament, therefore, clearly identifies
  the Logos or Son of God with the Angel of
  Jehovah, or Messenger of the Covenant, of the Old
  Testament.

26
The "I Am" Condescends

• Does God change? Does the Son of God change?
• Is God eternal? Is the Son of God eternal?
• Is God simple? Is the Son of God simple?
• Does God remain independent when he creates?
  Does the Son of God remain independent when he
  takes on a created nature?

27
This is the Gospel

• From the beginning, God condescends. Since the
  fall, He condescends to deliver His people.
  
• Emmanu-El

28
John Owen

• I shall only say, that those who are inconversant
  with these objects of faith - whose minds are not
  delighted in the admiration of, and acquiescency
  in, things incomprehensible, such as is this
  constitution of the person of Christ - who would
  reduce all things to the measure of their own
  understandings, or else wilfully live in the
  neglect of what they cannot comprehend - do not
  much prepare themselves for that vision of these
  things in glory, wherein our blessedness doth
  consist (Works I152).