Brian P
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Brian PParticipant
Thanks for your response, Tim.
(Sorry, a wordpress glitch was not allowing me to respond to you on the thread I started)
Moderator: Now fixed.“Scripture is clear that God’s Agent in the OT, who is called the Messenger of the LORD, and often goes by God’s own name YHVH, was indeed learning by experience. He even changed His mind when He was about to destroy Israel, yet Moses interceded and reasoned with Him. It is clear from His encounter with Abraham in Gen. 22 that having tested Abraham’s faith, He learned something about Abraham that He did not know for certain previously. “For now I know that you fear God, because you did not withhold your only son from Me.”
This is an interesting theory, though I’m not sure it aligns perfectly with the biblical data. I’m curious how you might distinguish between the words of the Father & the Son in the OT. Is the Father ever the one to speak/interact with mankind? Could it also be the case that in those instances when it appears that God lacked specific knowledge, that its anthropomorphic language?
“Since God is unbegotten, but the Son was “begotten” at a point in time (“Today I have begotten You”), the Son has only existed in time not in eternity. While the term “begotten” indicates an origin at a specific point in time, something that does not apply to the Father..”
There is also strong evidence that God is temporal (that time itself is an attribute of God), and that divine timelessness is a product of faulty Greek philosophical presuppositions. I’m not suggesting you’re stating otherwise. I think you’re saying that the Father is eternal but the Son as a distinct person is not (though his substance is?). Yet, for the Father to “beget” wouldn’t that suggest that He’s “in time” when He “begets”? I just uploaded this clip to my YouTube channel on the discussion of God and Time (more to come on this topic as it touches on many areas within theology): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGXDlSut8E8&t=72s
In short, if God is temporal and if time is an attribute of God, both the Father and Son would share this quality, though the person of the Son would not be eternal, as he owes his identity as a person to the initiative of the Father to “beget.”
“Consequently, it is a mistake to claim that sameness of KIND requires sameness of knowledge. As far as we know, knowledge comes from experience and learning. Why would this not apply to the Son who was “begotten” like Seth was begotten?”
Again, interesting, but did not God promise Abraham innumerable descendants and foresee that Isaac would carry his seed (which Abraham fully believed)? Was the Son of God not privy to the Father’s plan of what would happen in the future? As we’re dealing with divinity, it may be a mistake to impose the human mind (with all its limitations and inability to know all things present and in the future) upon a mind that is either divine origin, or the product of a divine being.
Brian
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