Phil Gons

Bible & Tech

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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Why InDesign Crashes When Placing Word Documents and How to Fix It

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Adobe InDesign CS5 has stopped workingI occasionally create PDF documents using Adobe InDesign. The source document always comes from Microsoft Word. More often than not, when placing (think importing) the document in InDesign, it crashes and says, “Adobe InDesign CS5 has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.” It gives no indication of what the problem might be, forcing me to search the Word document to see if I can locate the issue myself.

I proceed by dividing the document in half and then trying to import each half. The one that fails, I divide in half. I repeat this process over and over (and over) until I’ve located the page or paragraph with the problem. Since there’s no visible problem with the text itself, I use PureText to wipe out all the formatting and problem code and then reformat it by hand to match the original. It’s not a fun process, but it gets the job done.

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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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Rob Bell on Hell

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Justin Taylor and Denny Burk point out a new video from Rob Bell about his forthcoming book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

Here’s the publisher’s description:

Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing that a loving God would never sentence human souls to eternal suffering. With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.

Hear it in Bell’s own words:

Scary stuff.

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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.