Southern prof in middle of growing open theism debate

http://bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=14006 ^ | August 12, 2002 | Michael Foust

[drstevej]

Are you a modalist?

[Hank Kerchief]

You are an anti-Trinitarian Modalist.

I believe only what the Scripture teaches. Modalists add to the Scriptures just as you do. There is not one thing you believe about the God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Ghost that I do not believe. Please give me one example of one thing you believe the Scripture teaches about any aspect of God or His nature that I do no believe that does not require the use of words the Scripture does not use for the teaching.

Hank

[DittoJed2]

First, the wages of sin is death. Death is a payment which we pay for sinning. Your twisting of the word wages here does not square with Scripture.

For example, in the Old Testament, you had the atoning sacrifices which were meant to compensate for sins committed. God didn't command animals to be killed just for kicks, nor did he send his Son to die just cause he loved us. The sacrifices had a specific purpose and a role which they fulfilled. They atoned for the sin of the individual. The word used in the OT most often is the word Kaphar, which means to cover. The blood of atonement covered sin and allowed for reconciliation of sinful man and God. This theme is seen all the way in the beginning of the Bible with Adam and Eve and even Cain and Abel, where Abel's blood sacrifice was acceptable to God and Cain's was not. In all cases, God was the one to be appeased. Isaiah says that God would see the sacrifice of Christ and would be satisfied.(Isaiah 53:11). His holiness was that which had been offended. It was to God and His holiness that wages had to be paid. Sin had to be paid for in the name of the justness of God. And, the only way that sin could be covered and paid for was by the blood.

Fast forward to the New Testament and Jesus. Again, we see Jesus's death as that which pays the penalty for the sins of man. He took our sins upon Himself, even became sin for us, and paid the debt. His death was a ransom which would free others from bondage. The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45; see also 1 Peter 1:18-19). The word for ransom usually means deliverance from bondage in exchange for the payment of compensation or the offering of a substitute.

Going into the Pauline epistles, it is even more clear. Christ did what the law could not do. His blood paid the payment for sin once for all. Romans 5:8 says, for "what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man. "

Romans 8:32 says "He who did not spare his own Son, but GAVE HIM UP FOR US ALL- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"

That Jesus was a substitute, is clear too. "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21)

He bore the penalty for our sin So CHrist was sacrificed once to take awy the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."(Hebrews 9:28)

Hank, your heretical attack here is soundly rebuked by the Word of God. I would suggest you go back and read the Bible. Start with the book of Romans. Then try Hebrews. Both deal heavily with the mechanics of what transpired on the cross and what the death of Christ actually meant. Christ was not someone who died just to show us self-sacrifice or love. Christ came with a purpose in mind, to redeem, ransom, pay the penalty for the sins of, and reconcile to God, sinful man. In His last moments on the cross, His cry "IT IS FINISHED" actually meant something. The price had been paid. God's Holiness and justice were appeased. He paid the penalty for our sins through His death on Calvary and was our Substitute. One needn't have John Calvin's word to see that this is clearly taught in Scripture.

[drstevej]

***Modalists add to the Scriptures ***

Elaborate on a couple of these additions that you reject.

[DittoJed2]

Most CBFers still affiliate with the SBC in some capacity (even if it is just the annuity board). They do have separate conventions, but many are part of conventions with conservatives as well. Can't quite say they are separate yet. I can say they should be because they do not identify with the denomination in theology or in practice.

[drstevej]

***I would appreciate your fleshing out how you see open theism as negating or diminishing a commitment to inerrancy.***

If I find a good article I'll post it and comment. No time now to do justice to this.

Plain meaning does not rule out figurative (anthropopathic speech)and phenomenological language, drj said as the sun set slowly in the west.

[Hank Kerchief]

Are you a modalist?

No!

I've been called worse. I notice you picked up on the slander but didn't bother to consider the question that really matters. Christians world-wide use the expression, "Christ paid for sins ...," which is found nowhere in Scripture. This is so basic, it is almost impossbile to believe that so many could blithely accept this without question. Surely the power of Satan to deceive is greater than most imagine.

The whole question of whether Christ "paid" for the sins of all mankind or only "paid" for the sins of the elect is meaningless, because Christ never "paid" for the sin of a single person, ever, because, SIN CANNOT BE PAID FOR." There is no payment that cancels or allows the evil of sin.

The penalty of sin is not debt, but punishment or wages, something that must be "received" and "born." Jesus bore the penalty of sin for us, for all men. The penalty was death. There is no measurement of death. That death was the substitute God accepted in the place of all who will repent and receive by faith the forgiveness that atoning (covering) death provides.

As for the modalist question, see post #22

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

Elaborate on a couple of these additions that you reject.

The word, "modes," for example.

Hank

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

There is not one thing you believe about the God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Ghost that I do not believe.

"For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit." -- Athanasian Creed. Yea, or Nay?

[drstevej]

Do you object to the word or the concept or both?

[George W. Bush]

Pinnock, Sanders and Boyd all argue that evangelicalism is a big enough tent to include open theism, with Pinnock simply saying, "There is room for us."

I fully agree.

The Southern Baptist Convention has twice rejected open theism. The revised Baptist Faith and Message, passed in 2000, says that God's "perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures." In 1999 convention messengers passed a resolution with similar language that was presented by Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr.

The soundness of Southern Baptists emerges. I suppose we're just not imaginative enough to believe that God inspired books of prophecy to be written prior to their fulfillment if God did not know and plan the very precise and unusual details of their fulfillment from the foundations of the world.

It's actually difficult for me to imagine how the open theists can even read the Bible. Entire portions would simply disappear in the confusion. I suspect these people are theologians of the same variety as the Jesus Seminar blasphemers.

[Hank Kerchief]

If you supply one verse of Scripture that says the atonement was a "payment" I will agree with your.

If you supply one verse of Scripture that says there is any such thing as a sin "debt," I will agree with you. Here is what I said in post #27:

The penalty of sin is not debt, but punishment or wages, something that must be "received" and "born." Jesus bore the penalty of sin for us, for all men. The penalty was death. There is no measurement of death. That death was the substitute God accepted in the place of all who will repent and receive by faith the forgiveness that atoning (covering) death provides.

I know you have always heard and used the expression, Jesus paid for our sins," and it seems incredible that it is not in the Bible, but it is not. There is a huge difference in the meaning of paying for sin, or receiving wages. It is not some minor thing. Suppose next payday your boss says, "your wages this week are $400.00," then expects you to pay him $400.00. You'll be the first to point out, wages are something you get, not somehting you pay.

Hank

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

I suspect these people are theologians of the same variety as the Jesus Seminar blasphemers.

Similar malady. The Jesus Seminar worships at the Idol of Modernist Materialism, the Open Theist worships at the Idol of Human Autonomy. Both insist that All Scripture must conform itself to their Idol, either to be discarded, or to be re-formulated as necessary, according to their respective hermeneutic.

[George W. Bush]

Pinnock, Sanders and Boyd all submit detailed defenses of open theism, presenting what they consider biblical evidence and asserting that God does not know the future because there is nothing to know.

Boyd, in fact, argues that Ware's argument denies "God's infinite intelligence" because it limits God to only one outcome for each future event. Boyd says that while God does not know the outcome of specific events, he knows the countless possibilities of future events and is prepared to react to each one.

"God's intelligence is not limited," Boyd writes. "... God can consider and anticipate each of trillion billion possibilities as though each one was the only possibility he had to consider. ... In other words, for a God of infinite intelligence, there is virtually no distinction between knowing a certainty and knowing a possibility."

I thought I'd ask OPie if he has any thoughts on this. It the tendency, shown in this argument, which seems to lead almost inexorably toward this line of thinking that makes me so leary of the idea of God as a theoretical thinker and planner.

Boyd argues that Christ paid the price for "possible" future sins and that he "over-paid" for all the sins of the world.

It's difficult to conceive how Christ atoned for any sins of those but His own flock. In the end, in eternity, Christ has paid for the sins of each member of His flock (the Elect) and for no other. If He paid for your sin, you are His and will be with Him in eternity. If He didn't pay for your sins, you will be in hell for all eternity.

This is more of the possible-grace, possible-atonement nonsense we've heard from the Arminian faction before.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

If you supply one verse of Scripture that says the atonement was a "payment" I will agree with your.

“...And He Himself is the Propitiation for our sins; And not for ours only, But also for those of the whole world.” ~~ 1 Jn 2:2

[drstevej]

*** I notice you picked up on the slander ***

No, I have been out and hadn't read previous posts. On another ocassion I repeatedly asked you to affirm or deny you are a modalist and you evaded answering (in a most lawyerly manner) the question you now answer.

[Hank Kerchief]

Do you object to the word or the concept or both?

What are you asking?

The word is a fine word, when it applies to things that have modes, like music, or literature.

I do not know what "concept" the modalists mean to identify by the word "mode" which is one of the reasons I object to the word in this case. The other is, it is not Scriptural, and all we need to know about God, God's nature, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Soirit are clearly taught in Scripture, and we don't need any words with vague meanings added by men to understand what God expects us to understand.

(Long sentence, huh?)

Listen, I can count, I know God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit add up to three, and I know these three are also the one God. I know God the Son is eternally God the Son, and that He became a man. I know that as a man on earth God the Son prayed to God the Father, and that another time God the Father made himself audibly heard with the words, "this is my Beloved Son, hear ye Him." How could these things be? I do not know, but I know the addition of a bunch of words invented by men to explain it do not make it any easier to understand.

I reject only the words and teachings of men and tradition. For this I am called a heretic. (To that I have no objection. Puts me in very good company.) Go read what Jesus had to say about man's teachings and traditions.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

If you supply one verse of Scripture that says the atonement was a "payment" I will agree with your.

“...And He Himself is the Propitiation for our sins; And not for ours only, But also for those of the whole world.” ~~ 1 Jn 2:2

I suppose you know there is no way you can twist the meaning of the word, "propitiation," to mean "payment." Certainly His shed blood and death are the complete satisfaction (what propitiation means) for the demands of a Holy and Just God that there be a just recompense of reward for all sin. (Heb 2:2 For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward.) Notice, a reward is something you get, not something you pay.

Hank

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

I thought I'd ask OPie if he has any thoughts on this. It the tendency, shown in this argument, which seems to lead almost inexorably toward this line of thinking that makes me so leary of the idea of God as a theoretical thinker and planner.

I'd say that the essential difference between my syllogism on Matthew 11:20-27, and the probability-argumentation of the Open Theists, is that I am arguing that prior to Creation, God in His omnipotence enjoys an infinite number of Creative Potentialities comprehensive, precisely and absolutely Foreknown to Him from Beginning to End, and He has the Divine Freedom to Elect to Actualize (create) that Foreknown Potentiality which He elects to actualize.**

The Open Theist essentially denies God's comprehensive foreknowledge, for He denies that God precisely foreknows exactly what a Free Agent WILL choose; He "only" knows all that a Free Agent can choose, and "plans around" those "posibilities". In other words, to use Open Theist terminology, He is "a god who takes risks".

---

** -- incidentally, I appreciate your belief that, prior to Creation, God did not sit around "worrying Himself" about just which Potential creation He was going to Create... "Oh me, oh my, whatever shall I do with My omnipotence??" It's a worthy criticism, and I assure you that neither do I suppose that God sat around worrying Himself about His alternatives -- He has a defined Plan which accords perfectly with His good pleasure, and from the beginning of creation He has inexorably carried it out. I am merely pointing out that, prior to Creation, God enjoyed infinte Creative alternatives equally available to His omnipotent freedom. A simple enough explanation will serve to demonstrate the point:
• God cannot Foreknow the Possibility of Actioning a Course of Action which He cannot do. Example -- God cannot Lie (i.e., it is impossible that His Word should conflict with Reality, for His Word creates Reality in its wake). Ergo, God cannot Foreknow the Possibility of God Lying.
• God Foreknew the Possibility of performing Miracles which would bring Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom to Repentace.
• Ergo, this Creative Possibility was available to His Omnipotence, else He could not Foreknow it.
• However, this Possibility, though Freely Available to His Omnipotence, is not the Potentiality which He Elected to Actualize. He elected to permit Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom to remain in Non-Repentance, instead.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Certainly His shed blood and death are the complete satisfaction (what propitiation means) for the demands of a Holy and Just God that there be a just recompense of reward for all sin. (Heb 2:2 For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward.) Notice, a reward is something you get, not something you pay.

A "recompense", OTOH, is something paid. If you do not want a Creditor to Reward a Debtor with Debtor's Prison, you must recompense the Creditor for the Debt which He is owed.

That is, you must PAY him.

Flip the equation, HK. The bone of contention is not "reward", but "recompense".

A Recompense is a Payment.