Chrisentheism, a new way forward

Faith & Science Conversation
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The minimum age of the Himalayas is based on measurements, not assumptions: the minimum rates at which a whole range of rock types can bend without breaking have been lab-tested, and when the actual rocks in those mountains are compared with the results in the lab that is measurement.

I don’t give a whit about your TEism, but I do care about honesty – and by asserting that rock ages can’t be and aren’t determined by measurements you are either horrendously unaware of the actual science or you are being extremely dishonest.

No, they don’t. By the evidence, they haven’t even actually read the text of Genesis! What they do is read the English as though it was a friend’s great-grandfather’s diary of events he lived through, which isn’t even close to what the Hebrew literature is.
As for science… no: the primary approach of both of those organizations is to ignore a great deal of science and to lie about a great deal more. They are not offering “alternative theories” because they haven’t even done their homework to understand the text but instead have taken a position based on ignorance and then insist that the science has to fit their ignorance.

The SDA organization doesn’t even understand the Person and work of Christ.

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That denies what Paul wrote about Christ as the Prototokos. The term means “opener of the way”, and when Paul calls Christ the opener of the way of Creation, then – call it ontological if you want – the only possibility is that Christ’s enfleshment was the actual first act of Creation.

Um, what? His blood was spilled starting with the crown of thorns and the scourging! It continued with the nails driven through wrists and feet!

Don’t keep making the mistake of putting human logic above scripture.

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Now you’re moving the goalposts.

The Incarnation is “firstborn of all Creation” – “firstborn from the dead” is a different issue.

That sounds suspiciously like Gnosticism.

In English and from a modern worldview, that’s true. But read in the original with a decent grasp of the ways of thinking at the time it becomes evident even in the Old Testament that there are multiple ‘entities’ who are equally YHWH, one in heaven, one who walks on Earth with a human body, and one who strives with and inspires humans – this was recognized in second Temple Judaism and later rejected because it sounded like what Christians were talking about. The only difference in the New Testament is that the YHWH with a human body actually acquires that body in history by the Incarnation (and thus reveals Himself as the center of history) and the Holy Spirit is much more plainly a person.
The main reason this isn’t seen by many people is that they are expecting a late western method of propositional truth, but neither Testament is much interested in that much of the time; teaching by contradiction, teaching by inference, and teaching by incomplete lessons are common, as is teaching by parable.

“And He is the icon of the invisible God” fits quite well with this!

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Clarification, He did not bleed to death. He died from Gods forsaking : to renounce or turn away from entirely … Gods self removal so we all can exist thru Him. I’m suggesting the Fathers “turn away entirely” provided an ontological justification (space) for the universe. In this sense Jesus actually died, his death is unique from any other.

The blood, atonement of the elect was then applied for moral justification.

Not Gnostic but exhalation of Gods Glory to the level of infinitive actuality, thereby necessitating a safe place in which anything else can exist. Our embodied safe place in God. Many illustrations come to mind, Mt Sinai and cleft of the rock, no one can see Him and live. God is a consuming fire. Paul says He dwells in unapproachable light where no one can go. Daniel and the Fiery furnace, they were in the fire yet not destroyed. Burning bush as well. Elijah’s alter obliterated.

I’m suggesting the Trinitarian work of Christ justifies both ontological (universal) and moral (particular). Let me hide myself in thee! Jesus says He is “in” the Father (glory), but we are in Jesus, we cannot be in the Father directly.

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Omnipresence is an attribute that pertains to the relationship between God and Creation, it is not an eternal attribute; or to use standard theological language, omnipresence is an opera ad extra, not an opera ad intra.

Having to “vacate” part of Himself presumes that God and material creation are of the same order of being so that one must “make space” for the other – and that is a serious error; God is that which is in and of Himself, while created things are all dependent.

Pandeism is a similar error but not the same one; it proposes that God had to use not some of His substance to create but all of it.

I was just reading about this a week or so ago and the only thing I can remember as far as a source is that Origen got mentioned, as did Augustine.

Or at the very least that Creation is of the same order of being as God so that God has to “move aside” to “make room”.

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That’s no clarification, it’s confusion – it doesn’t even respond to what I wrote.

That’s not founded on the scriptures. The connection between Christ and Creation is found in His status as Prototokos, the Way-Opener. That tells us that it was the fact that the Logos became ‘made material’ by becoming flesh that made all the rest possible. God became man that we might become divine, and Christ being Prototokos is parallel to that: God became material that the material might come into existence.

I think my mathematician older brother’s proposal fits better with the scriptures: he said that all the “omnis” in relation to Creation are easily explained if God is seen as an entire universe and Creation is another universe; skipping the details, this doesn’t require God to vacate anything and doesn’t turn the beginning of the universe into something negative. From one perspective this suggests that God “budded” a second universe, and just as cosmologists tell us that our universe grew from tiny to immense without needing anything to expand into, so the making of our universe didn’t require God to vacate any of Himself in order to provide space for the universe.

His death is unique only in that it was God who died. In all other respects His death was an ordinary human death – if it was not an ordinary human death, it doesn’t apply to our deaths; to defeat death for us He had to die in the same fashion was we do.

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Science advances because it gets new data and has to adjust. What new data is there for theology?

Without new data, science crosses over into metaphysics (string theory and the multiverse are two examples). Without new data, theology must rely on what it has; anything else is conjecture and speculation which fall into the category of trying to grasp the wind.

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I’m sorry Adam, but you can’t just hand-wave away measurements by putting “measurements” in scare quotes and crying “assumptions” as if “assumptions” were some sort of get-out-of-jail-free-card that let you reject anything and everything about science that you don’t like.

If you want to refute measurements, you must do so by providing evidence that the measurements were not carried out properly. And if you want to refute assumptions, you must do so by providing evidence that the assumptions were not only incorrect, but that they were sufficiently incorrect to allow your alternative reality to be a possibility. To do anything less is either wilful ignorance about how science works, or else outright dishonesty.

No they don’t. As I’ve said repeatedly, science has rules and measurement has rules, and if “creation scientists” want to claim to be using “exactly the same science,” they need to be following exactly the same rules. It is their failure to do so that is why they are discredited. Atheism and not accepting God have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

No you don’t like science. You like cool YouTube videos and pretty pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. If you really liked science, and you really were not discounting it, you would not make passive-aggressive remarks about “secular science” or denounce it as “atheist” just because its rules lead to conclusions that you don’t like. You would learn, understand, respect and apply the basic rules, principles and methods of science, because it’s the basic rules, principles and methods that are what science is all about in the first place. The pretty pictures and cool YouTube videos are just the end result.

And yes, I find God by opening the Bible too. But what I find in the Bible is a whole lot about the things that God demands of us. One of which is honesty. And guess what? Honesty has rules too.

Translation: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

I don’t know what Bible you are reading, Adam, but my Bible tells us that we are to live out its commands in the context of the Real World. A Real World which testifies to our eyes and ears with every fibre of its being of a great antiquity of 4.5 billion years and not just six thousand. My Bible isn’t the manifesto for The Party in Nineteen Eighty Four and it doesn’t portray God as Big Brother.

In any case, “using science as the ultimate authority and making the Bible fit” is exactly what you yourself do when you acknowledge that the earth goes round the sun and not the other way around, and that it is a globe and not a flat plane covered by a solid dome.

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That sounds like your presumption. I saw no such presumption and he didn’t say any such thing. And I see no reason to believe in any of this “order of being” stuff neither.

I certainly think that God had to create something that is not Himself in order for there to be free will, and although “vacate part of Himself” is not the words I would choose for this, that could have been what he meant as far as I can tell. Coming from a modern physics point of view, your interpretation of his words as referring to the space in which the universe exists would not even occur to me. It was more natural to think of it more as God changing existence from that which is only Him to that which is Him plus something which is not Him.

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Thanks for hanging in there guys! Lots of great inputs :smiley:

No I am suggesting Gods Glory is of “Infinite Actuality” not potential infinite. There is a big distinction. Potentials can be place in one to one correspondence with other things. Potentials are as you say “equal powers to each other”. An actual infinite cannot be placed in correspondence with anything but itself. It has no beginning, no end, nothing can be measured it simply is, and is completed.
If we think of an actual infinite spatially it would occupy all. nothing else but itself, everywhere.

If we think of actual infinite energy (omnipotence), all the energy in the universe doesn’t take anything away from Gods energy as it is limitless. God could create an infinite amount of universes and his power wouldn’t change one bit. Hilbert’s hotel and Cantors Infinities as fascinating thoughts to ponder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj3_KqkI9Zo An actual infinite can contain an infinite number of potential things (created things and causal events) without altering its self at all.

A potential infinite amount of water can be placed within a infinite amount of buckets, you could keep on filling buckets forever. An actual infinite amount of water doesn’t allow buckets to exist at all, only water !

or imagine an actually infinite laser beam, it would be of maximal intensity and occupy everywhere. Now that laser beam is a still only a potential concept as light is measurable. Now think of something greater than that! something so powerful it could melt light. A power so fantastic even matter can’t form or exist. This is the substance of God’s Glory! If God is this powerful any other existence requires justification.
Mark 10:27, “Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”

I hope this has clarified something.

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The data is there to discover, it is not new. I mean it’s new to us, but it was there all along in the word, we have to discover it by humbly seeking. The doctrine of the Trinity for example. There is lots of advancement from the first mans theology until now. And I believe there is an eternity of discovery to come!

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Ok your question caught me off guard a bit, forgive me, your right 100% the piercing of his flesh and blood shedding was occuring with thorns and terrible scourging of his innocent flesh. I was thinking mainly on the piercing roman spear which blood and water flowed signifying that he was already dead, and connecting the sprinkling of blood and water by the OT priests. But your right the whole ordeal was blood letting.

but upon further thought my folly raises a wonderful theological question, what was the cause of death ? it was not blood loss stopping a beating heart. Nor suffocation as some suppose. The roman guards witnessing many crucifixions were surprised by the quickness of his death. Usually the crucified legs were broken as act of mercy so as the victim could no longer press up and take a gasp of air. But he was already dead at this time no need to smash his femurs… So in the end the cause of death was the Father removal. So in one sense His clinical death was as you say human. But In another sense the cause of death was as supernatural as the incarnation. I suggest no one will die like jesus just like no one was born like jesus. His incarnation was of divine union, his death of divine separation. Common in once sense wholly divine in another. He was placed in a new tomb which no one had been laid… interesting A Garden Tomb ! sounds like a good poem! HA

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Mitchell You see it ! Your reasoning is correct I believe, applying infinitive actuality to Gods consciousness negates any other self awareness, and creates complete determinism by definition. This can be proven by a simple thought experiment. Tell me verbally the first real number between zero and one?

0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000… forever… you’ve fallen into a infinite regress. Now if that occupied your total consciousness you could not know anything else even that you exists as your consciousness is completely filled by the infinite regress .

But this is not our reality, we can contemplate God, self and other things, we have a level of freedom. Just like the whole numbers exist as potential within the greater real and actual infinite numbers on the number line. In this way there is a concession or stepping back, vacating, by God to allow for us to exist In not Of.

I’m applying that same metaphysical logic to Gods power.
Gen 1vs 1 ,2 death of christ is the stepping back, vacating of Gods Infinitive actuality, Gods self removal to allow anything else to exist at all.

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“So in the end the cause of death was the Father removal. So in one sense His clinical death was as you say human. But In another sense the cause of death was as supernatural as the incarnation.”

Troy, that sounds a bit dogmatic and unscriptural! We die when our body can no longer function in this world and our spirit is forced to leave. Christ’s life on earth was in every way like ours except for sin, so why shouldn’t his death be also? “But Jesus, again crying out in a loud voice, yielded up his spirit.” Matt. 27:50; “But Jesus gave and loud cry and breathed his last.” Mark 15:37; “Jesus cried out in a loud voice saying, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. With these words he breathed his last.” Luke 23:46; “After Jesus had taken the wine he said, ‘It is fulfilled’; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.” John 19:30. So scripture tells up that Jesus gave up his spirit and elsewhere (Paul?) that he then descended to Hades to preach to the souls of those waiting there. There is nothing here to suggest that the Father miraculously removed his spirit to accomplish his death in order to match the miracle of his conception in Mary’s womb, and I cannot see how it helps us today to indulge in such speculation let alone state it as if it were a fact.

[quote=“St.Roymond, post:122, topic:51537”]

“That denies what Paul wrote about Christ as the Prototokos. The term means “opener of the way”, and when Paul calls Christ the opener of the way of Creation, then – call it ontological if you want – the only possibility is that Christ’s enfleshment was the actual first act of Creation.”

Thank you, St Roymond, for your comment on ‘prototokos’.

Firstly, my online research tells me that in this context ‘prototokos’ means ‘firstborn’, not ‘opener of the way’. The following quotation on the meaning of ‘prototokos’ as used by Paul in 1 Col. 1:15 appears in the penultimate paragraph of an article on the aomin.org website entitled PROTOTOKOS (“Firstborn”): Its Meaning and Usage In the New Testament.

“Lightfoot gives a list of the Fathers that support this view, and says, ‘All the fathers of the second and third centuries without exception, so far as I have noticed, correctly refer it [the title prototokos] to the Eternal Word and not to the Incarnate Christ, to the Deity and not to the humanity of our Lord.’”

This summarises my position. This idea lies behind my reply to Adam when I quote my book’s argument that in the Word (the Father’s self-image, the only-begotten Son, the second person in the Trinity) the Father sees all the creative possibilities present in his divine nature and chooses to create our universe (and for all we know any other universes which fulfil his purposes) because he sees that his creative choice will be pleasing to him. Hence the phrase, “through him all things were created.” Before creation there is nothing for God to work with other than the creative potential present within his own nature, so I use the image of God as “a supreme artist creating his masterpieces on a canvas of nothing but potentiality.”

Scripture presents us with a time constrained history of salvation opening with the famous verse “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” This both scripturally and metaphysically is the ‘first’ act of creation. Howsoever Colossians 1:15 is understood, Paul plainly never intended his words to contradict this biblical opening by saying what I understand you to be saying, viz. “In the beginning God became incarnate in Jesus Christ to accomplish the salvation of fallen humanity by his death and resurrection and then created the universe and all its history leading up to that momentous event, including the Fall which triggered it.”

Thus expressed, you can see why such an inversion of actual biblical history is unacceptable. If, on the other hand, all you mean is that God’s principal motive in creating the universe was in anticipation of an event scientists tell us occurred 14 billion years after Big Bang then that doesn’t come over as your intention.

If I’ve misconstrued your argument then of course I apologise. But as you have presented the case, you seem to imply an impossible circularity in the sequence of events, i.e., creation-incarnation-creation or - worse still - incarnation-creation, impossible because the incarnation is an event in creation’s history and history can only occur if there is a prior act of creation.

The question has been raised in this debate of whether the incarnation was the primary purpose of God’s creation. Personally, I don’t think scripture says this, and as I said in my reply to Troy, this would imply that God could only achieve his creative purpose if Adam and Eve and their progeny failed to obey his will, thereby necessitating a plan of redemption. As if God’s goal in creating our universe could only be realised provided mankind sinned and opened up the awful possibility of final damnation. This seems a very strange, even repugnant, idea to me.

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No, I don’t think you have proven anything.

There is no such thing. It is like the asking you to tell me of the circle with seven straight lines and four 90 degree angles. It is incoherent to request something which is contrary to the definitions of the words you use.

Which is equivalent to 0.0 zero.

Speak for yourself.

0.333… forever is the same thing as 1/3. I don’t think one particular way of representing something being less efficient signifies anything. And my mind is not caught in infinite regress simply because it is contemplating infinite regress. It is like saying we cannot understand eleven because we cannot count that high on our fingers (with one finger each number). We learn how to do things more efficiently in order to accomplish more things.

…or… is that what you mean by saying…

?

I think it was more difficult than that. I think there is difficult engineering problem involved in an omnipotent being creating something which He does not control. Consider how you are the omnipotent being in your own daydreams and contemplate how you would add a being with free will to your daydream?

I do think that any real relationship with another abdicates some power and control over your life. I think this is just as much true in the case of God as it is with us. At least that is the kind of God I can believe in and admire. A God restricted to the limitations of a dreamer who must always be in control of everything does not impress me in the slightest – heck every kid on my block can do the same.

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Terry thank your thoughtful response. I am hypothesizing not dogmatizing, but if I can convince the pope…mabey… LOL

And apologies for a seeming lack of clarity these are deep and fun dives into theology. I am suggesting Christ accomplished more than the salvation of the elect in his work. I am not diminishing that aspect at all. What I am contemplating is that His work was necessary to create anything at all. I’m suggesting God is an actual infinitive being which is the greatest possible being. That type of God must first create that nothing of which you speak. God simply IS, and God is a completed totality. For that “nothing” to exist God needed to create it first. That “nothing” is Gods self removal at the cross. Therefore I believe Genesis is best understood as gospel truth not scientific facts or simply a ancient folklore.

I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things. (Isa 45:7)

“Create” here has a negative usage, “form” is a different word and is positive. The “Create” is the same word used of the initial creation. In the beginning God “Created”(same word as Isa 45:7) of a negative state. And that is what we see, a negative creation of dark, chaos, void. Then God “Forms” , light, order, life.

  1. Genesis 1 1-3 God raises the dead to life. Creation goes from dark, chaotic, desolate to light, order and life… a resurrection. “Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.”

This interpretation, magnifies the text to truth in the highest sence as metaphysical truth and evangelistic in aim. If God, can create life from death he can raise you to life after death as well !

Lets look at the creation narrative from another angle, Adam was made from the earth, that earth was first under the dark chaos waters of death, God raised the earth out of the waters and formed Adam, Adams body was dead on ground, then God breathed life into him. God firsts makes a dead body then makes him alive, Genesis is a resurrection narrative in so many aspects. Overlay Jonah’s prayer on top of Genesis.

“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me, all your waves and breakers, swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit”. (Jonah 2: 1-6)

The mixed up or circular timeline proves God’s power over time and His omnitemporality its well supported by scripture.
“I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.” (Ecc 3:14,15)

…The creation of all things. The universality of the work of Jesus.

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This contemplation began for me with Cantors infinite set theory. Are you familiar with him ?

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God deserves our praise regardless of any benefit to us. Not totally unlike the unlikely metaphor of a Lamborghini. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I still haven’t got past this, and I missed where you addressed it, if you have:

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Im viewing Gods glory as an Actual infinitive substance. unbounded and limitless energy. It allows for nothing but itself. So we have a distinction to clarify. Potential infinitives vs actual infinitives. I tried to describe below