One Died For All

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
Okay I just gave three reasons already, in response to this post.
(4) The biblical arguments provided by Open Theists cast doubt on infinite foreknowledge. They base their position on a few key verses. I've forgotten them (been 20 years since I read their material) but I do recall one example - God's testing of Abraham. There doesn't seem to be much point if God foreknew the outcome, and God Himself claims to have LEARNED something in that ordeal, "Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son" (Gen 22).
(5) As noted earlier, a realized infinity is a nonsense-concept.
(6) Perhaps my main argument against infinite attributes, however, is the following. Infinite attributes are by their nature innate/immutable rather than gradually acquired over time. This creates a couple of conflicts with Scripture:
(A) Innate attributes do not merit praise.
(B) An immutable God cannot become man. For example if His knowledge is innate - not acquired - it is not something that He can relinquish for the Incarnation and then reacquire later. Theologians try to solve this via the Hypostatic Union but that theory is incomprehensible (and thus counts as gibberish) in my view.

As for point #6, here are the links I promised earlier, see posts 850 and 856. Those posts summarize my entire metaphysics. They explain who Yahweh really is, why He created us, how He created us, what the Trinity is, and how He became man.
What About Progressive Sanctification?
What About Progressive Sanctification?

I've lost the thread somehow, i.e. why we are talking about this, but to deal with your points:

4. I don't care what Open Theists think. I deal with them one at a time, as they talk with me. But "now I know", in Hebrew settings such as this one, doesn't mean "I just figured out" but more like judicial discovery-- "I find..." or "it has now been shown" or "now it is proven".

5. I don't remember what you are referring to here, but what is a "realized infinity" anyway? Are you saying God can't know all things? He INVENTED infinity --it depends on him, not he on it.

6. Oh boy are you ever wrong here!
A. "Innate attributes do not merit praise."???? WHAT????!!! Why not?
B. "An immutable God cannot become man." Again, WHAT??!! The Son of God, as a man, had two natures. You are complicating a rather simple concept. His human nature was not his Divine nature and his Divine nature was not his human nature. The two natures are mutually exclusive. This quote may help, from RC Sproul's Not A Chance, (God, Science and The Revolt Against Reason) or the newer edition, (The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology) "We are not saying that Christ's physical body is a divine body. We are saying that the single person has two natures. The divine nature is truly divine and the human nature is truly human. The two coexist or are united in one person, but the two natures are not mixed, confused, separated or divided. Each nature retains its own attributes (see the Chalcedonian creed). The divine nature is not both divine and human, and the human nature is not both human and divine. The person is both human and divine, but not in the same relationship." His use of the word, "relationship", hails back to the logical tenet of non-contradiction, sometimes stated as, "Contradictory propositions cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense (or same relationship)."

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
And? Suppose he creates beings with free will. What's your objection here? Seems to be a non-sequitur. You're reasoning seems to be
(1) He caused them to have free will
(2) Therefore they don't have free will since he caused them to have it.

Well, no, that isn't my reasoning. You are sloughing the term "free will" through at least two of several uses, and I'm not playing your game.

He caused them to have choice, and even caused their choices. "Free"? I use the term one way that most Reformed seem to object to, even though in final analysis we agree. All I mean by the sort of Free Will that I claim is "choice". Real choice. You can take it to mean something else, but there's no point in arguing its merits until we mutually settle on a meaning.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
While I disagree with your logic, I have no need to refute it directly, because it's really a moot point. Your logic doesn't apply to my metaphysics. You keep saying that God isn't one of us - you see Him as unique somehow. In my metaphysics He IS one of us, He is merely the first of us to achieve full sentience. He is LITERALLY our Father, that and nothing more. We are ALL of the same nature and thus we are ALL First Causes, equally so. (I'll provide some links shortly).

This is so full of logical leaps I see no need to bother. Sorry. I don't care for your metaphysics. If God is not Omnipotent and First Cause, he is not God. Your god is neither.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
LOL. You honestly don't see the irony in your statement? You don't recognize that your predilection for infinitude is a philosophical bias on your part?

I see my question was small. Your philosophical bias, your metaphysics, as you call it, is the lens you look through. Self-sovereignty of the creature is only one aspect of it. Progressive Theism has a tiny god.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
In my understanding, Yahweh's presence fills the whole universe, He literally has His hand on every particle of matter, monitoring it, managing it, nothing escapes His attention and supervision. And He oversees us with impeccable kindness, righteousness, fairness, skill, love, and justice.

Ironically, I'm in full agreement with this. How that translates to you to Progressive Theism is beyond me. Again --good day to you, sir. I've had quite enough for now.

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
5. I don't remember what you are referring to here, but what is a "realized infinity" anyway? Are you saying God can't know all things? He INVENTED infinity --it depends on him, not he on it.

Total nonsense. That's like saying God invented a formula for showing that 2 + 2 = 5. Again, an actualized infinity is incoherent gibberish. What would it mean, for example, to claim that God knows an infinite number of languages? How many languages is that, exactly? Doesn't make sense. Total nonsense.

6. Oh boy are you ever wrong here!
A. "Innate attributes do not merit praise."???? WHAT????!!! Why not?

I gave a link explaining that. Ignoring the argument is not a rebuttal.

I'll follow up when I get a chance Mark, but let's recall that you don't even have a theology. On your relatavistic assumptions, the whole Bible is useless! Why don't you start with something that even makes a lick of sense, and then we can debate the merits of your position versus mine?

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
6. Oh boy are you ever wrong here!
A. "Innate attributes do not merit praise."???? WHAT????!!! Why not?
B. "An immutable God cannot become man." Again, WHAT??!! The Son of God, as a man, had two natures. You are complicating a rather simple concept. His human nature was not his Divine nature and his Divine nature was not his human nature. The two natures are mutually exclusive.

Yes, Mark, I'm well aware of the COMPONENT ELEMENTS (the individual propositions) of the hypostatic union. The question is whether those components fuse into a position that actually makes sense to the human mind. The consensus among most PROFESSIONAL theologians is that it does NOT make sense, it is totally incomprehensible, it is gibberish. Example:

"No sane study of Christology even pretends to fathom it" (Charles Lee Feinberg, "The Hypostatic Union: Part 2," Bibliotheca Sacra, (1935), p. 412).

Did you catch that! He just called you INSANE for pretending to comprehend the 2-nature theory! You said that: "You are complicating a rather simple concept."

I won't spend much time critiquing the hypostatic union because forum rules militate against doing so, but I will (briefly) mention a couple of the issues that make it impossible to comprehend.
(1) In every context OTHER than the hypostatic union, the notion of 2 simultaneous natures is immediately dismissed as self-contradictory nonsense. The point can be illustrated thus:
(A) My friend Mike is a math genius. He knows all math.
(B) At the same time, He is mathematically ignorant. He doesn't know any math yet.
On this point Lewis Sperry Chafer commented on the hypostatic union: “How could He know and not know?…These are problems the finite mind cannot solve” (Lewis Sperry Chafer, “Trinitarianism Part 7,” Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol 98:391 (1941), p. 278).

Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer was president and founder of Dallas Theological Seminary.

(2) The hypostatic union claims that God added a created human soul to the Trinity. One of us. He literally could have picked your soul (or mine) in which case YOUR soul would now be a member of the Trinity. We would be bowing down and worshipping YOUR soul. How do they avoid a Quadrinity? In his famous systematic theology textbook named Christian Theology - probably the most popular one of this century and probably used in every seminary in the world - Millard J Erickson claimed that somehow God allowed, for the sake of the hypostatic union, that:

"2 + 1 = 2"

Now if you want to believe such mathematical insanity, that's on you. But certainly no one can make such allegations against MY theory of the Incarnation.

Again, the consensus of most PROFESSIONAL theologians is that the hypostatic union MAKES ZERO SENSE to the human mind.

So much for your patronizing nonsense.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
Yes, Mark, I'm well aware of the COMPONENT ELEMENTS (the individual propositions) of the hypostatic union. The question is whether those components fuse into a position that actually makes sense to the human mind. The consensus among most PROFESSIONAL theologians is that it does NOT make sense, it is totally incomprehensible, it is gibberish. Example:

"No sane study of Christology even pretends to fathom it" (Charles Lee Feinberg, "The Hypostatic Union: Part 2," Bibliotheca Sacra, (1935), p. 412).

Did you catch that! He just called you INSANE for pretending to comprehend the 2-nature theory! You said that: "You are complicating a rather simple concept."

I won't spend much time critiquing the hypostatic union because forum rules militate against doing so, but I will (briefly) mention a couple of the issues that make it impossible to comprehend.
(1) In every context OTHER than the hypostatic union, the notion of 2 simultaneous natures is immediately dismissed as self-contradictory nonsense. The point can be illustrated thus:
(A) My friend Mike is a math genius. He knows all math.
(B) At the same time, He is mathematically ignorant. He doesn't know any math yet.
On this point Lewis Sperry Chafer commented on the hypostatic union: “How could He know and not know?…These are problems the finite mind cannot solve” (Lewis Sperry Chafer, “Trinitarianism Part 7,” Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol 98:391 (1941), p. 278).

Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer was president and founder of Dallas Theological Seminary.

(2) The hypostatic union claims that God added a created human soul to the Trinity. One of us. He literally could have picked your soul (or mine) in which case YOUR soul would now be a member of the Trinity. We would be bowing down and worshipping YOUR soul. How do they avoid a Quadrinity? In his famous systematic theology textbook named Christian Theology - probably the most popular one of this century and probably used in every seminary in the world - Millard J Erickson claimed that somehow God allowed, for the sake of the hypostatic union, that:

"2 + 1 = 2"

Now if you want to believe such mathematical insanity, that's on you. But certainly no one can make such allegations against MY theory of the Incarnation.

Again, the consensus of most PROFESSIONAL theologians is that the hypostatic union MAKES ZERO SENSE to the human mind.

So much for your patronizing nonsense.

Lol wow. I guess I could say the same ("patronizing nonsense") concerning yours. Your lofty condescension does not qualify your arguments as logical. You want to characterize Reformed doctrine and my theology with your use of them, making logical leaps as you wish, as though you have blasted them to smithers.

Sir, you have postulated what to me is awful heresy, claiming God is not complete and perfect in Omnipotence. You have claimed a status for humanity that equals that of God, though perhaps at a lesser level of development, which is not only logical nonsense-- (there can be only one First Cause) --but is also heresy, and completely rejects the authority of Scripture.

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
This is so full of logical leaps I see no need to bother. Sorry. I don't care for your metaphysics. If God is not Omnipotent and First Cause, he is not God. Your god is neither.

You might want to read the account of the metaphysics before commenting on it. That might be expedient. I'm pretty sure you don't have a clue about what you are commenting on.

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
Lol wow. I guess I could say the same ("patronizing nonsense") concerning yours. Your lofty condescension does not qualify your arguments as logical. You want to characterize Reformed doctrine and my theology with your use of them, making logical leaps as you wish, as though you have blasted them to smithers.

Um...er....You're responding to a post where I quoted 3 mainstream evangelical theologians. I'm sorry that you regard them as guilty of lofty condescension. Take it up with them.

Sir, you have postulated what to me is awful heresy, claiming God is not complete and perfect in Omnipotence. You have claimed a status for humanity that equals that of God...

Your Calvinism already betrays your total oblivion to the concept of moral value. Newsflash: God doesn't pride Himself in His "innate status" - only a jerk would do that. He prides Himself in His moral value (acquired merit), defined as freely willed acts of self-sacrifice and righteousness, as ONLY my theodicy, to date, makes provision for.

In terms of THAT kind of status, my theodicy is the ONLY one that ascribes it to God.

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
Sir, you have postulated what to me is awful heresy, claiming God is not complete and perfect in Omnipotence.

Perfect in what sense? (A) Incoherent infinitude-nonsense?(B) Or perfection as a ruler, incapable of failing us in any way, shape, or form?

I'll go for B.

As demonstrated, your God's holiness has no merit, it is not praiseworthy. That IS heresy. You didn't even attempt to rebut that proof because you don't have a rebuttal.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
Total nonsense. That's like saying God invented a formula for showing that 2 + 2 = 5. Again, an actualized infinity is incoherent gibberish. What would it mean, for example, to claim that God knows an infinite number of languages? How many languages is that, exactly? Doesn't make sense. Total nonsense.

I don't claim he knows an infinite number of languages. That is YOUR take on what YOU call "actualized infinity" --itself total nonsense as you define it (or describe it; I have yet to hear a definition).

JAL said:
"No sane study of Christology even pretends to fathom it" (Charles Lee Feinberg, "The Hypostatic Union: Part 2," Bibliotheca Sacra, (1935), p. 412).

Did you catch that! He just called you INSANE for pretending to comprehend the 2-nature theory! You said that: "You are complicating a rather simple concept."

I don't pretend (nor does anyone else I consider to understand better than myself) to fathom it. I have only attempted to show a reason why it is reasonable. By the way, the term, Hypostatic Union, has a tendency to be used as the very meaning of what it tries to describe --that is, the Catholics, though their words may be similar, see something completely different by it from what the Calvinists mean by it, and even within Calvinism, all uses are not the same. So quoting what somebody said about it, and drawing from that the "insanity" of someone who believes in it, is bogus.

JAL said:
(2) The hypostatic union claims that God added a created human soul to the Trinity. One of us. He literally could have picked your soul (or mine) in which case YOUR soul would now be a member of the Trinity.

No, sir. There was a reason why he chose to be the actual Father of Christ, and not Joseph. But for all I know you reject that account.

JAL said:
In his famous systematic theology textbook named Christian Theology - probably the most popular one of this century and probably used in every seminary in the world - Millard J Erickson claimed that somehow God allowed, for the sake of the hypostatic union, that:

"2 + 1 = 2"

Now if you want to believe such mathematical insanity, that's on you. But certainly no one can make such allegations against MY theory of the Incarnation.

Again, the consensus of most PROFESSIONAL theologians is that the hypostatic union MAKES ZERO SENSE to the human mind.

I don't give a flying flip about what most PROFESSIONAL theologians think about the hypostatic union, but I speculate that your representative quote ("2 + 1 = 2") is extracted from a rhetorical structure, and is not a stand alone statement on the dual nature view of Christ. And no, I'm not even going to bother to look it up.

I'd be done with you long ago, lol, but I have a hard time letting a heretical statement go unresponded to.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
You might want to read the account of the metaphysics before commenting on it. That might be expedient. I'm pretty sure you don't have a clue about what you are commenting on.

I read enough to know I don't care anymore than to name it for what it is --heresy, and nonsense.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
Perfect in what sense? (A) Incoherent infinitude-nonsense?(B) Or perfection as a ruler, incapable of failing us in any way, shape, or form?

I'll go for B.

As demonstrated, your God's holiness has no merit, it is not praiseworthy. That IS heresy. You didn't even attempt to rebut that proof because you don't have a rebuttal.

You demonstrated nothing except to assert that God in perfection merits no praise. What was your word --bologna?

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
I don't claim he knows an infinite number of languages. That is YOUR take on what YOU call "actualized infinity" --itself total nonsense as you define it (or describe it; I have yet to hear a definition).

So God knows a finite number of languages? He has finite knowledge? Thanks. You just blew your whole stance.

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
You demonstrated nothing except to assert that God in perfection merits no praise. What was your word --bologna?

Another example of refusing to address the ACTUAL ARGUMENT. How telling.

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
Um...er....You're responding to a post where I quoted 3 mainstream evangelical theologians. I'm sorry that you regard them as guilty of lofty condescension. Take it up with them.

Your Calvinism already betrays your total oblivion to the concept of moral value. Newsflash: God doesn't pride Himself in His "innate status" - only a jerk would do that. He prides Himself in His moral value (acquired merit), defined as freely willed acts of self-sacrifice and righteousness, as ONLY my theodicy, to date, makes provision for.

In terms of THAT kind of status, my theodicy is the ONLY one that ascribes it to God.

Not that appeal to consensus means anything, but since you use it --why not allow yourself to succumb to the consensus of modern (and historic orthodox) Christianity, and admit that a god that is not perfect and complete and of himself both Omnipotent and Existent as First Cause is not God.

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
I don't pretend (nor does anyone else I consider to understand better than myself) to fathom it.

Backpedaling. A moment ago you called it a "simple concept" (your term).

Mark Quayle · Dec 7, 2020

JAL said:
So God knows a finite number of languages? He has finite knowledge? Thanks. You just blew your whole stance.

There you go letting words push you around. Of course he has knowledge of the finite. What in the world is wrong with you, man? He is infinite in knowledge!

JAL · Dec 7, 2020

Mark Quayle said:
Not that appeal to consensus means anything, but since you use it --why not allow yourself to succumb to the consensus of modern (and historic orthodox) Christianity, and admit that a god that is not perfect and complete and of himself both Omnipotent and Existent as First Cause is not God.

He IS perfect. He does His job IMPECCABLY. That job is the administration of justice and the protection of all of us. You seem to think that there is some detrimental inadequacy in my God - that He would fail me in some way. Be explicit. In what way do you think He will fail me?

One Died For All

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

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Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

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Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

Monergist; and by reputation, Reformed Calvinist

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