Why I am Not Eastern Orthodox; Reasons 55-57 Sunday, Apr 29 2012

I have recently added to my page Why I am Not Eastern Orthodox 3 more arguments against the East.

“55. Per the Maximian soteriology, humanity participates in the atonement at the level of nature not hypostasis. Yet the Eastern Orthodox constantly make the argument that only persons act, not natures. If only persons act then only persons can participate in the atonement. If the atonement is made for all and infuses into all then it infuses into all persons, thus Universalism. Universalism has been a popular belief in the Eastern Church from its inception and I am shocked that the East would allow such an innovation as particular redemption in their Universalist system.

56. Perry Robinson said, “metaphysics applies to everything except God ad intra” (Post 181: http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/the-communication-of-attributes/#comments).

If that is true then by definition there could then be no ONTOLOGICAL DISTINCTION ad intra in God. That is ADS. The fact is their construction terminates with the Monad which can tolerate no ad intra distinction between nature and will as Perry admitted to us, “metaphysics applies to everything except God ad intra”. The energies are wills and attributes “around God” on the Eastern system. The energies also pertain to the economia and so as Bradshaw admits they could be something else than they are. So get this, the attributes of God are arbitrary economical actions of the Monad. The nature/will distinction is required for the eternal generation of the Son, ergo, the East is Arian.

57. Perry Robinson admitted, “If you had, trying to tar me with Gilbert’s position would be obviously absurd. I don’t separate the persons from the huperousia essence because I take the persons to be huper ousia also.” (Ibid.) If both essence and hypostasis are huperousia, then there is no hypostatic union. You would then be left with an energetic union. I am grateful to Aquinas for showing me that the union between divine and human in Christ is not at the level of nature but hypostasis. But if hypostasis is huperousia, energy is the only divine thing left for humanity to unite with in Christ.”

2 Responses »

 

Final Replies in the Debate with Catholic Nick Sunday, Apr 29 2012

I have updated the summary of my debate with Catholic Nick here. At the bottom you will find my final reply and conclusion. The entire debate can be found at Nick’s Blog.

One Response »

 

William Tyndale and The Divine Right of Kings Friday, Apr 27 2012

When King Henry VIII was seeking to break free from the Roman Papacy, a book was introduced to him by his wife Anne Boleyn (Who was sympathetic to the Protestants) entitled The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale (1528). This book advocated the evil doctrine of The Divine Right of Kings and affirmed the anti-protestant doctrine that the King is the head of the Church within his realm. For what reason Tyndale advocated such trash is beyond the reach of my reading at this point. However, I am writing this blog so that my readers do not make the mistake of thinking that The Divine Right of Kings doctrine was the product of the Roman Catholic Church. It wasn’t. The Roman Catholic Church has a paltry view of the state because of its exaggerated view of the Church. The Calvinist Reformation took a middle position between these two pernicious errors (See George Gillespie’s Aaron’s Rod Blossoming). They taught that the Church and the State are both holy institutions and are sovereigns in their own spheres of authority. Jesus Christ is the head of the Church, not the Pope nor the King.

Leave a Response »

 

Oliver Cromwell Friday, Apr 27 2012

I constantly run into Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox people who like to throw Oliver Cromwell into the face of Calvinist Protestants. This stems from an utter ignorance of the Calvinist Reformation. Oliver Cromwell was an enemy of the Calvinist Reformation. He was the man that fought against the Scottish Presbyterians and fought to keep the Westminster Standards from becoming established in England. When the Scottish Resolutioners compromised the Covenants with Charles I, God delivered these apostates into Cromwell’s hands.   Over all, the Resolutioner apostasy angered God enough to deliver the entire Covenanter movement into enemy hands in general. Oliver Cromwell is not in the Calvinist Reformation. He repealed Calvinist reforms and introduced atheistic principles of pluralism and utter toleration that came to be very popular in secular society.  This was the exact opposite of what the Calvinist Reformation believed.  Here is a good BBC Documentary on the history of Scotland. On this issue watch from 21:00 to about 27:00:

One Response »

 

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee Friday, Apr 27 2012

I would like to give my readers the works of Dr. Francis Nigel Lee whom I believe should be the contemporary Historiographer and Political writer of the Protestant Faith. You can read his works  here.

Leave a Response »

 

More Foppery from Sean Gerety Friday, Apr 27 2012

Today, Sean Gerety posted a blog, Epistemological Confusion  on the recent Christological issues dealt with at Green Baggins. He is at it again, regurgitating issues that have already been answered for some time now. Sometimes I get so frustrated with other Christians I feel like this dude on the left.

Here is a small reply, because I am not allowed to comment on his blog:

“Of course, it doesn’t matter who does or who does not employ anything like Clark’s definition of “person,” the point is that Clark, unlike his opponents, had a clear, unambiguous and intelligible definition of “person” and even drew his definition from Scripture.”

>>>I disagree. Intellect can be taken two different ways. 1. The faculty 2. The hypostatic thinking of that faculty. Second, asking “what is a person” itself is not a question that exhausts the person in question. When you are asking what the person is, you are asking about its nature.  If you ask, “who” the person is you are hitting on a different aspect of the person that the previous question did not.

“Therefore it follows that all human knowledge is and can be only the analog of God’s knowledge”

>>>What kind of analog?

Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy is not one simple concept that the philosopher must master. There are numerous ways that analogy is used and even with the analogy of proportion there are a couple ways to understand proportion as well. Herman Reith wrote a very helpful book titled, The Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas (Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1958). Even within an analogy there are more analogies to be found. Reith says,

“analogy is itself analogical…Just as the meaning of person, for example, is derived from our own experience yet can be extended to divine persons, giving us some vague insight into what is really above us, so analogy can be transformed from a logical device to a mode of knowing necessary to the science of metaphysics.

For the logician analogy is based on the mode of signification of concepts and refers to the manner in which our mind attains its concepts. For the metaphysician analogy is a question of both the mode of signification and the modes of existence outside the mind and consequently refers more precisely to the thing signified.” (pg. 44)

This distinction between analogy as it operates with the Logician compared with the Metaphysician is referred to as a “difference in mode, that is, a difference between conceptual and real being.” (Reith, pg. 45) Scripturalists deny a distinction between conceptual and real being. Everything is real. The primary distinction of analogy that is used in man’s knowledge of God is the difference between an analogy of proportion and an analogy of proportionality. The latter is described by Reith as a “kind of relationship that exists between things that are related to each other by some kind of extrinsic bond, namely, by reason of a third thing to which the signification of a particular belongs primarily” (pg. 51) and the former as a “kind of relationship that exists between one thing and another in a one to one association.” (Reith, pg. 51)

“According to the Roman state/church ”

>>>This phrase entertains me whenever I read this from Robbins’ or your writings. Ever heard of the Scottish Presbyterian state Church? Ever heard of Denmark’s Lutheran State Church? Having a state Church is the human position on society Sean. Your atheistic/deistic Jeffersonian view of the magistrate is a complete fringe position in the history of humankind, Christianity and the Protestant Reformation. To even imply that having a state/church is somehow distinctly Roman Catholic is erroneous.

“Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 support this [Clark’s] view: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Since a rift within the eternal immutable Persons of the Trinity is absolutely impossible, Jesus is here speaking as a man. An impersonal human “nature” cannot speak. Nor is there much intelligibility in supposing that the Father could forsake a “nature.” Those words from Psalm 22:1 were the words of a true man, a real human being, whom the Father forsook, thus imposing the penalty of propitiation by which we are redeemed. The Incarnation 70-71”

>>>Col 1:15-29 makes this interpretation impossible. The same person who created the world is the same person who died and resurrected from the grave.

“Remember, the charge of Nestorianism against Clark cannot be sustained either historically or logically simply because neither Nestorious nor his opponents had any idea what a “person” is.”

>>>Just because James Anderson said that does not mean that it is so. The charge of Nestorianism can be sustained on Clark’s final book precisely because of the Clark quote above. The ‘Theopaschite’ Formula: “One of the Trinity Has Suffered”, was specifically the formula used against Nestorianism in the early Church. To say the divine person did not suffer in a human nature is by definition Nestorian. Natures cannot suffer only persons suffer as Clark admitted rightly. If the Logos did not suffer there had to be two persons.

“I think Strange’s approach to Scripture, which he derived from Cornelius Van Til, is completely foreign to what the divines at had in mind at Westminster.”

>>>I disagree. Turretin’s Institutes has a specific section on how the Bible’s Mysteries are above human reason. Van Til is not exactly a Scholastic but he is a chip off the Thomist block no doubt.

Leave a Response »

 

The Eggs That Rome Laid; The Jesuit Work Come Into Its Own Monday, Apr 23 2012

This is the exact group of people that the Jesuits had in mind with their Ratio Studiorum and their master disciple Rene Descartes. If the Roman Catholic Church as an institution failed to destroy the Protestant Reformation, they would create another institution-The Secularist Statists. Brainwashed by centuries of Roman Catholic Socialism up through Sir Thomas More, Rene Descartes and the Jesuit Communist Reductions, Karl Marx the Master Puppet of the Puppet Master Jesuits, would create a new enemy for the Protestant Reformation: Anti-Religious Secular Statism. Having now destroyed the Protestant Theocracies through their good servants John Locke (A devoted disciple of Rene Descartes) and Thomas Jefferson, the Roman Church has taken complete control of a country once protected from the Roman Church by the exact hate speech and homophobia these brainwashed nuts despise.

Leave a Response »

 

The Monarchy of the Father Compared to the “Deity of Christ” from Articuli Fidei Sunday, Apr 22 2012

I found these dialogues on the Articuli Fidei Blog, owned by David Waltz to be invaluable. Thanks David!

John 17:1 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, 2 even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to [a]all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. 3 This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Eph 4:5-6 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

1 Cor 8:6 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

1 Tim 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

Those who refuse to believe generic unity among the divine persons and the Monarchy of the Father point to many passages that use the word “Theos” of the Son:

John 20:28 28 Thomas answered and said to Him (Jesus), “My Lord and my God!”

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 [a]He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not [b]comprehend it…18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

Romans 9: 5 whose are the fathers, and from whom is [b]the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed [c]forever. Amen.

Hebrews 1:6 And [f]when He again brings the firstborn into [g]the world, He says,“AND LET ALL THE ANGELS OF GOD WORSHIP HIM.” 7 And of the angels He says, “WHO MAKES HIS ANGELS WINDS, AND HIS MINISTERS A FLAME OF FIRE.” 8 But of the Son He says, “YOUR THRONE, O GOD, IS FOREVER AND EVER,  AND THE RIGHTEOUS SCEPTER IS THE SCEPTER OF [h]HIS KINGDOM.

What they fail to provide for us is that the one essence/substance/nature is the one God in three persons which is not found in the Bible. The Scripture does describe the Father as the one person who is, “tou monou Theos” (John 5:44 “How can you believe, when you receive [fn]glory from one another and you do not seek the [fn]glory that is from the one and only God?), “ton monon alethinon theon” (John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.) and “eis theos” (1Cor 8:6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him; Eph 4:6 one God and Father of all ).

David Waltz says in his The Trinity: a ‘clear’ Biblical teaching, or a post-Biblical development? commenting on DECEMBER 27, 2010 12:43-44 PM,

“Now with this brief background in mind, I shall propose three interpretive options for John 20:28:

1. When Thomas exclaimed: My Lord and my God!”, he was affirming that the risen Jesus Christ was promised eschatological king; the appointed visible representative of “the one true God”, who is invisible, and whom “no man has seen”.

2. When Thomas exclaimed: My Lord and my God!”, he was affirming that the risen Jesus Christ was actually the invisible God of Israel. This view was understood in two different trajectories: modalism and Trinitarianism.

3. When Thomas exclaimed: My Lord and my God!”, he was addressing the Father in heaven who had resurrected Jesus Christ. (This was interpretation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, an early defender of the Nicene Creed, who wanted to eliminate all/any modalistic and/or docetic options.)” [Ioannes-the αυτω signals that Thomas was speaking to Jesus. The nominative is here used for the vocative, and barring indications to the contrary, the only natural interpretation is to take the vocatival address as directed to the person being spoken to.]…

As for Psalm 110:1, I shall let the highly respected Evangelical NT scholar, Dr. Craig L. Blomberg, speak for my view:

==[Matthew] 22:43-44 The Pharisees’ answer (v. 42b) sets up Jesus’ real question. If the Messiah is merely the human  offspring of David, why does David himself speak of him as “Lord”—a master or sovereign above the one who is king of Israel and the highest human authority in the land? Jesus here employs the rabbinic method of setting up an antinomy and then resolving it. He bases his argument on Ps. 110:1, assuming with the Judaism of his time the accuracy of the Davidic superscription, and the inspiration of the actual text itself., which would therefore imply its truthfulness. Given these assumptions, the second “Lord” (Heb. adōnāi, not Yahweh) only be the Messiah. Again Jesus’ reasoning finds pre-Christian Jewish precedent. This “lord” resides at the position of highest privilege and authority, second only to God the Father. He sits next to the Father’s throne and rules over all his enemies (Ps. 110:4), presumably including those in Jesus audience! (The New American Commentary – An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture – Matthew, p. 336.)==”…

(Continuing to David’s comment on DECEMBER 28, 2010 10:12 AM)

“[David quoting anther commenter] “The article in ho Theos mou (Jn 20:28) is grammatically conditioned, in that a vocatival nominative followed by a possessive pronoun is invariably articular, and strictly speaking without theological signifance.”

Me: Precisely. Dr. Karl Rahner is his essay “Theos in the New Testament” convincingly argues the same, and emphatically states:

“We maintain that in the New Testament ho Theos signifies the First Person of the Trinity, and does not merely stand for him often; and this apples to every case in which another meaning of ho Theos does not become clearly evident from the context. These few exceptions in no way support the opinion that ho Theos merely stands for the Father without actually signifying him.” (Theological Investigations, vol. 1, pp. 126, 127.)

A bit later he adds:

“The article in Jn 20:28 is explained by the mou, which normally requires the article before it; by its use with the vocative (Blass-Debrunner, Grammatik des ntl. Griechisch, § 147, 3); and by its presence in the established formula ho kurios kai ho Theos (cf. Apoc 4:11). It should further be noted that ho Theos mou, whether it is taken as vocative or nominative, is predicative in sense, and so cannot be used as evidence either way to show whether ho Theos in the New Testament usage ever appears as subject of a statement referring to Christ.” (Ibid., p. 136.) [Implying that a distinction between Theos and ho Theos needs to be made-DS]

And commenting on DECEMBER 28, 2010 4:21 PM David says, “I have been emphasizing that the Scriptures never address him (Christ-DS) as the “one God”, the “only God”, and the “only true God”.”

But what of I John 5:20’s reference to the Son as “the true God”? David says commenting on DECEMBER 29, 2010 2:04 PM “the Son of God, is the “monogenes Theos” [John 1:18-DS]. Certainly the Son of God, who is the “monogenes Theos”, is not a false God, and yet, I must acknowledge that in a very real sense it is God the Father alone who is, “ton monon alethinon theon”.

I have yet to find an aspect of David’s  Triadology that I disagree with.

Leave a Response »

 

Justification Debate With Catholic Nick Saturday, Apr 21 2012

I have posted all my essays and replies in full on one page here at The Kings Parlor for easy to use research purposes .

Leave a Response »

 

Justification Debate With Catholic Nick Saturday, Apr 21 2012

I have been participating in an essay debate with Nick’s Catholic Blog on the topic of Justifcation by Faith alone.  All of the essays are posted there and to answer Nick’s Five Questions I will offer my replies here: at the Kings Parlor: http://olivianus.thekingsparlor.com/justification/justification-debate-with-catholic-nick

Leave a Response »