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Did the Incarnation Improve God?

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Earlier this week, the Gospel Coalition blog featured a post on the Incarnation and God’s immutability, which caught my attention. An individual asked,

How do we hold together the idea that God doesn’t change with what happened at the incarnation and resurrection—where Jesus was united to a human nature and took on an earthly body and ultimately a resurrection body? It’s hard to understand that God[’s] taking on a human nature and all that he experienced in the flesh is not [a] fundamental change for him.

James Anderson, Assistant Professor of Theology and Philosophy at RTS in Charlotte, blogger, and Van Tillian, responded with a several considerations that help to lessen, though not remove, the tension.

  1. “[T]he biblical statements about God[’s] not changing needn’t be taken in a way that rules out change in any sense.”
  2. One possibility is that, as William Lane Craig argues, “God is timeless apart from a creation but temporal with a creation.”
  3. “An alternative solution is to deny that God can experience intrinsic change while recognizing that God appears to change from the temporal standpoint of his creatures.”
  4. “[W]e can make a distinction between divine causes and divine effects. God’s actions take effect in time (and space) but God acts from timeless eternity.”
  5. “God the Son is timeless and unchangeable with respect to his divine nature but temporal and changeable with respect to his human nature.”
  6. “Perhaps the best solution here is to say that talk of ‘becoming’ human is really a loose way of speaking, one conditioned by our temporal perspective, and isn’t to be taken in the most literal sense.”

Here’s the heart of his “solution”:

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Carl Trueman, Hero Worship, and God’s Gifts

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Carl TruemanCarl Trueman wrote several provocative posts critiquing conservative evangelicalism in America and its purportedly unhealthy promotion of its prominent preachers and teachers—particularly as it relates to conferences like The Gospel Coalition.

Here they are:

  1. Home Thoughts from Abroad
  2. What hath Jerusalem to do with Hollywood?
  3. Thoughts on Marketing and Conferences
  4. Not guilty!
  5. The Lady Doth Protest Too Much
  6. Truly Honoured
  7. Fascinating Week
  8. An interesting email

Trueman makes some good points worth pondering, but I think his take is a little imbalanced—as did Thabiti Anyabwile:

  1. Really Trueman? Only in America?
  2. Uncle… Uncle!
  3. A Solution I Had Not Considered

For example, he said in his third post,

First, market conferences on the basis of content not speakers. Send a clear signal—from the design of the webpage to the wording of the fliers—that it is what is to be said, not who is saying it, that is important. Indeed, maybe one could be really radical: do not even let people know who is speaking; just tell them the titles of the talks. “Ah, but then no-one will come!”, you say. Well, if that is true, then the case for saying that conferences are all about idolising celebrities would seem to be irrefutable.

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How Do the Father, Son, and Spirit Differ?

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The Systematic Theology of John Brown of HaddingtonIn recent debates about the Trinity—particularly the ones that stem from the gender debate—the question of the differences among the persons of the Trinity comes to the forefront. How do the Father, Son, and Spirit differ from each other?

John Brown of Haddington answers this way:1

  1. By their names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Mt 28:19; 2 Co 8:14; Mt 3:16–17; 1 Jn 5:7; Jn 14:16–17.
  2. By their order of subsistence; the Father the first; the Son the second; and the Holy Ghost the third, 1 Jn 5:7; Mt 28:19. But to mark their equality, they are sometimes mentioned in a different order, 2 Co 8:14; Re 1:4–5; 1 Th 3:5.
  3. By their different order of operation. The Father acts from himself through the Son and by the Spirit. The Son acts from the Father and by the Spirit: And the Spirit acts from both the Father and the Son, Jn 2:16; 1:1–3; 5:17–19; 15:26; 14:26; 16:7.
  4. By their different stations, which, in a delightful correspondence with their natural order of subsistence, they have voluntarily assumed in the work of our redemption:—the Father as the Creditor, Judge Master, and Rewarder;—the Son as the Mediator, Surety, Servant, Pannel, &c.;—and the Holy Ghost as the Furnisher, Assistant, and Rewarder of the Mediator, and the Applier of the redemption purchased by him, Zech 3:8; 8:7; Is 42:1, 6–7; 49:1–9; 53:2–12, Jn 16:8–15; Eph 1:17–18; 3:16–19; 4:30; Ezek 36:27.
  5. And chiefly by their personal properties.—The Father is neither begotten by, nor preceeds from any other person, but, being first in order, he begets the Son, and hath the Holy Ghost proceeding from him. The Son is begotten by the Father, and hath the Holy Ghost proceeding form him. The Holy Ghost neither begets, nor is begotten, but proceeds from both the Father and the Son, John 1:14, 18; 3:16; 14:26; Ga 4:4–6; 1 Pe 1:11.

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  1. The Systematic Theology of John Brown of Haddington (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2002), 142. First published in 1782 as A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion. I updated the format of the Bible references to make them more readable and added bold to the five italicized terms. [↩]

What Is the Most Convincing Proof of the Deity of Christ?

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My immediate response would probably be God’s special revelation in His authoritative and inerrant Word.

Here’s what B. B. Warfield had to say in “The Deity of Christ”:

The Scriptures give us evidence enough, then, that Christ is God. But the Scriptures are far from giving us all the evidence we have. There is, for example, the revolution which Christ has wrought in the world. If, indeed, it were asked what the most convincing proof of the deity of Christ is, perhaps the best answer would be, just Christianity. The new life He has brought into the world; the new creation which He has produced by His life and work in the world; here are at least His most palpable credentials.

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Announcing the Best Book of 2011

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I haven’t gotten my copy of The Christian Faith yet, but I’m pretty confident that it’s great based on the feedback it’s getting.

However, it seems a tad premature to announce it as the best book of 2011 not even two months into the year, does it not?

Monergism Announced The Christian Faith As the 2011 Book of Year

It’s kind of like announcing the winner of the Super Bowl after the first touchdown.

Michael Horton’s New Systematic Theology

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Michael Horton’s long-awaited systematic theology, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Amazon | WTS Books), is due out very soon. Zondervan’s website says it’s “coming January 2011.” Amazon says “January 25, 2011.” WTS Books says “February 2011.”

Systematic theologies are one of my favorite categories of books, so I’m really looking forward to picking this one up and adding it to my library.

The Christian Faith

Details

The Christian Faith runs 1,052 pages (which is the last numbered page according to Zondervan’s “Browse Inside” feature).1 It has a list price of $49.99, but the Westminster Bookstore has will be selling it for $30.99, and Amazon has it available for pre-order for $31.17 (or $30.99 for Kindle).

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  1. WTS Books incorrectly lists 960 pages, and Zondervan and Amazon say 1056, perhaps including ads or blank pages at the end. [↩]

Doug Wilson on the Morality of Technology

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Doug Wilson has some good, balanced reflections on technology in a post entitled “Calvinism, Eschatology, and the New Media.”

He opens this way:

Jesus is the Lord of history, and this is why we don’t need to be afraid of Twitter. Or Facebook. Or teenagers typing with their thumbs. Jesus is the Lord of history, which is why we don’t need to worry about Google making us stupid.

Here’s a key paragraph:

And so here is my central thesis: technology in all its forms is a type of wealth. The Bible contains no warnings about technology as such, but is crammed with warnings about the bias of wealth. Which way does wealth set us up? The Bible says that the wealthy are tempted to hubris, self-sufficiency, lack of concern for the poor, oppression, and the rest of that sorry lot. Wealth is a good thing, but it brings temptations. A lot of wealth is a lot of a good thing, but it brings with it a lot of temptations.

Here’s his concluding paragraph:

The constant and ever present temptation in the Church is the gnostic temptation of locating sin in the stuff, sin in the matter, sin in the wealth, sin in the technology . . . instead of locating it where it belongs, in the heart of man.

Read the whole post.

HT: Andy Naselli via Google Reader