{"id":2370,"date":"2019-12-24T03:07:46","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T09:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2370"},"modified":"2019-12-24T20:38:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-25T02:38:07","slug":"christmas-amazement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/christmas-amazement\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Amazement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"331\" height=\"316\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/fetusgod.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/fetusgod.jpg 331w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/fetusgod-300x286.jpg 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/fetusgod-90x86.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 331px) 100vw, 331px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Charismatic Calvinist <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Sam Storms (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.samstorms.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sam Storms<\/a>, <a title=\"Most Amazing Verse post\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/credohouse.org\/blog\/the-most-amazing-verse-in-the-bible\" target=\"_blank\">in a post<\/a> at the Parchment and Pen blog:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>Conception<\/em>: God became a fertilized egg! An embryo. A fetus. God kicked Mary from within her womb!<\/p><p><em>Birth<\/em>: God entered the world as a baby, amid the stench of manure and cobwebs and prickly hay in a stable. Mary cradled the Creator in her arms. \u201cI never imagined God would look like <em>that<\/em>,\u201d she says to herself.<\/p><p>&#8230;Some are bothered when I speak of Jesus like this. They think it is irreverent and shocking!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But his purpose is not to shock, but to amaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The Word became flesh! Amazing! Merry Christmas!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It <\/strong><strong>certainly is shocking and amazing, this claim that God (or a divine person within God) became a man. But why? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Not just because&nbsp;it is unusual. (It certainly is &#8211; I haven&#8217;t met any human claiming to be a god, although claims like this are found in various religions.)<\/li><li>Not just because it involves a miracle (i.e. the miraculous conception of Jesus without a human father).<\/li><li>Not just because it involves a change in God (i.e. not being human, to being human).<\/li><li>Not just because it involves God having surprising qualities.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, the reason the claim shocks is that <strong>it seems incoherent<\/strong>, and for that reason, it seems false. <strong>But it takes some effort to see this<\/strong>. Storms simply bombards us with claims that sound surprising. e.g.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8230;the invisible became visible!<\/p><p>the untouchable became touchable!<\/p><p>&#8230;the unlimited became limited! the infinite became finite!<\/p><p>the immutable became mutable!<\/p><p>&#8230;spirit became matter!<\/p><p>&#8230;the almighty became weak!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>He wishes to produce amazement, but not disbelief <\/strong>(which would result from straightforwardly asserting one of the contradiction lying nearby). Thus, the reader is left to discern &#8211; and be amazed by &#8211; the contradiction which is always just out of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Take the last one &#8211; <strong>the omnipotent God becomes a weak fetus<\/strong> or baby. That&#8217;s just a change &#8211; no contradiction there. <em>But<\/em>, most careful, reflective Christian theists think that God is <em>essentially<\/em> omnipotent. It <em>is<\/em> a contradiction to say that a being which is <em>essentially <\/em>omnipotent became weak, for what is to any degree weak is not omnipotent. Again, the ancient, classical view of God has him being <em>essentially<\/em> immutable &#8211; not something which happens to be immutable, but might have been mutable. It is a contradiction to say that something which is essentially immutable changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I humbly suggest that we ought not indulge in amazement that a contradiction is true<\/strong>, for we all know that no contradiction can be true. No, not even on Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There are orthodox\/catholic theories which attempt to solve these problems &#8211; kenosis theory<\/strong> in particular, and unitarian Christians have their own solutions. But apparently &#8220;Reclaiming the Mind&#8221; is put on hold this time of year. Kenosis theory, as developed by recent Christian philosophers, holds that what are usually thought of as essential divine features &#8211; e.g. omnipotence, omniscience &#8211; are <em>not <\/em>essential to a divine being after all. Thus, the divine Word can at least temporarily be, e.g. to some degree ignorant and weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Interestingly, this move &#8211; demoting a traditional divine attribute from essential to non-essential doesn&#8217;t work in the case of immutability.<\/strong> The concept of any being <em>changing<\/em> from being immutable (unchangeable) to being mutable (changeable) is a contradiction &#8211; even if at the start it was only <em>contingently<\/em> (non-essentially) immutable. It looks like if something&#8217;s unchangeable, it must be <em>essentially <\/em>unchangeable. (Don&#8217;t get it? Suppose that a thing changes from being unchangeable to being changeable. That&#8217;s a change, right? So, it wasn&#8217;t, at the start, unchangeable. And yet, we stipulated that it was. The scenario as a whole is contradictory.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is why sophisticated contemporary proponents of kenosis theory like Stephen T. Davis <strong>simply deny that God is immutable<\/strong> in the classical sense. In their view, God can and does change &#8211; not in his character, but in some of his other features. In patristic times, they would have dismissed this out of hand, but I think theists are on strong grounds to think that God changes in some respects. Any real response, any free action on God&#8217;s part, is going to involve him changing, is it not? e.g. His creating the cosmos from nothing. To many reflective Christians, trinitarian and unitarian, divine immutability seems dispensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/girl-1740116_640.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42082\" width=\"576\" height=\"383\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/girl-1740116_640.jpg 640w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/girl-1740116_640-450x300.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But this is not true of several other divine <strong>attributes, ones which it seems Jesus could not have had.<\/strong> For instance, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"the man Jesus was tempted, but you can't tempt God (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-277-was-christ-tempted-in-every-way\/\" target=\"_blank\">the man Jesus was tempted, but you can&#8217;t tempt God<\/a>. <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Jesus died, but God is essentially immortal (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-145-tis-mystery-immortal-dies\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jesus died, but God is essentially immortal<\/a>. Jesus is under a god, but <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"God can't be (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/what-is-the-son-supposed-to-be-an-atheist-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\">God can&#8217;t be<\/a>. If you think that Jesus is God, or that he is divine in the way the one God is divine, you should lay aside amazement and try to deal with the contradictions your christology seems to imply!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So this Christmas, <strong><em>do<\/em> be amazed that<\/strong> God sent his one and only Son to redeem sinners like us. But, <strong><em>don&#8217;t<\/em> be amazed<\/strong> that God makes contradictions true, &#8217;cause he doesn&#8217;t. And if you agree that Jesus is the most important and interesting man in history, and indeed the unique Lord under the unique God, <strong>make it your project in this new year<\/strong> to find for yourself a consistent and biblical <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=s6wK-lRZP-k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"christology (opens in a new tab)\">christology<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Mary cradled the Creator in her arms. &#8216;I never imagined God would look like that,&#8217; she says to herself.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,33,8,10,20,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christology","category-incarnation","category-linkage","category-logic","category-mystery","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42094,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions\/42094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}