Scriptural definition of "chance" and implications

jdlongmire · Jun 7, 2008

the MAN part of the diagram seems flawed. If Jesus IS man, then the Spirit is ALWAYS in Him. In fact, MAN is not JESUS ["I in you and you in Me"] unless the Spirit ALWAYS dwells in him, right?)
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Props to skypair - see updated here.

Jesus has the Holy Spirit always with him as God and Man as a part of the Trinity.

skypair · Jun 7, 2008

jdlongmire said:

I think your confusion is around "time" - time was part of the creation event - before creation, no time - God is sovereign over time - Christ is the means time came to be.
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Yes, sir. I agree. In fact, God gave the physical creation to His Son.

Again - your premise is false, thus your conclusion is invalid. Jesus "learned" in the incarnation as a component of the 100% humanity paradigm - what he learned was confirmation and substantiation of what he knew - that is - his predetermined role as Messiah.
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What then about all those instances that "open theists" use to tell us that God repents or changes His mind, etc.? I really don't have time to look it up but I'll take my book with me and see if I can get online from Newport.

Jesus IS the mediator between the Father and Man. Not sure how this substantiates your premise, though.
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Yes, God exists outside time. We cannot speak directly to Him (in the paradigm I am suggesting) but everything passes through Christ into time.

[quoete]This sounds like Oneness theology. What does it truly mean "see His face" in term of phophetic utterances? I think of this in terms of our spiritual nearness and purity allowing this new proximity to the Father instead of an over-literal interpretation.[/quote] I don't know what the tenets of "oneness" doctrine are but they don't "hold" right now. Maybe, though, as I suggest in the age of ages in Rev 22.

Again - you are stretching the boundaries of orthodoxy - some things will be a mystery (Deut 29:29) until we actually experience the events. Why imagine up things that may lead folks astray? This is an area that we must be cautious.
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And yet doing so leaves us divided, right? Or does the "open theist-classical theist" division not bother you?

skypair

jdlongmire · Jun 7, 2008

Relevant:

Open Theism is a theological construct which claims that God's highest goal is to enter into a reciprocal relationship with man. In this scheme, the Bible is interpreted without any anthropomorphisms - that is, all references to God's feelings, surprise and lack of knowledge are literal and the result of His choice to create a world where He can be affected/changed by man's choices. God's exhaustive knowledge does not include knowledge of future free will choices by mankind because they have not yet occurred.

One of the leading spokesman of open theism, Clark Pinnock, in describing how libertarian freedom trumps God's omniscience says, "Decisions not yet made do not exist anywhere to be known even by God. They are potential--yet to be realized but not yet actual. God can predict a great deal of what we will choose to do, but not all of it, because some of it remains hidden in the mystery of human freedom ... The God of the Bible displays an openness to the future (i.e. ignorance of the future) that the traditional view of omniscience simply cannot accommodate." (Pinnock, "Augustine to Arminius, " 25-26)

Evangelicals cannot remain neutral in response to this unbiblical view.

The overriding presuppositions which open theists bring to the text are (1) libertarian freewill theism ["causeless choice"] (But can a natural man believe the gospel independent of the Holy Spirit? -- If not, I challenge Open Theists to tell me why not?) ... and (2) the Socinian belief that God does not have exhaustive foreknowledge of the future (i.e. that God is subject to part of his creation -"time"). Open Theists will also frequently point to biblical passages in which it is said that God changed his mind about something to prove his ignorance of future events. But usually it is the case that God is said to change His mind in sending judgment on people only after they repent of their sin. In Jeremiah 18:7-10 God simply shows that this type of relenting is a component of how He generally has decided to act:

"If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it."

In other words, many prophesies of blessings and cursing are conditional. God has the authority to reverse his judgment at any time. depending on the response of those prophesied against. Such warnings have tacit conditions such as when Jonah declared that Ninevah would be destroyed, but judgment does not take place because they repented. Jonah knew that God would have mercy on them and this is one of the reasons he runs away from the task at first. The prophet is supposed to hold out God's covenant terms, blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience.

Dr. Richard L. Pratt, Jr. from Historical Contingencies and Biblical Predictions
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Scriptural definition of "chance" and implications

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