[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Drake

Absolutely Raptor.

And thanks for your patience...... I welcome your review and consideration of this first proposition.

The biblical revelation of the deification of man rests on the foundational matter that apart from Christ we are and have nothing. Everything the believer is and has is only a reality because of the steps and accomplishments of Christ's great and complete salvation (in both aspects - judicial and organic). Every believer was placed into Him as the sphere of salvation and He has entered into us as our life and content. We are in Him and He is in us. Therefore, it it helpful to understand who He is in His person to see what He is in the process of deifying His many sons.

The Incarnation itself confirms a distinction between God's incommunicable essence and His operations, economy, and energies. Here is what I mean:

Every true believer readily accepts that Jesus, the Only-Begotten Son of God, God as the eternal Word of God, became flesh, that is, became a real man, an authentic human, with true humanity as well as the pre-existing divinity He owned as God. The Only-Begotten Son of God refers to His eternal Deity, His status in the Godhead, from eternity past , as the Word, self-existing, ever existing in the Triune God, the Trinity, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He also often referred to Himself as the Son of Man, declaring His own status as a man. These two verses clearly show the dual status of the Lord Jesus and every genuine born again regenerated child of God believes and accepts this. These points were established in more details by others in the note "Is God a Trinity?"

John 1:1 , 14 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God".... " And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father ), full of grace and reality."

Rather, than replicate what has already been covered in the other note I will focus on the following point with that understanding as a basis "Does the incarnation of God as a man provide any support for the deification of man? If so, how?"

Yes, in this way. One of the oft stated or unstated objections to the aphorism "God became man to make God in life and nature..." is that even though the limiting qualifier " but not in the Godhead" is added, there is an underlying belief or suspicion that it is impossible to become God in life and nature without infringing upon the transcendence and otherness of God... that which makes God unique in His Godhead and Godhood. Or some might contend that though the aphorism may be true, yet it will certainly lead to the misunderstanding that there will be an infringement into the transcendence and otherness of God.

I am completely comfortable with the aphorism as stated because the incarnation itself reveals that God in His Godhead/Godhood was in no way intruded, trespassed, diminished, changed, or infringed upon when God was incarnated. God became human and at the same time maintained all that He is in His Godhead, Godhood, transcendence, and otherness. Nothing was lost or changed when God became man. Do I understand how God maintained the immutability of His Godhead and still became a genuine man? No, I'm no more capable than an ant trying to understand the ways of a human! Nevertheless, I can accept it because God's Word tells me it is so. I believe it because He calls me to believe His word even if I do not understand it. I accept this as I would any other article of God's salvation in the Scripture.... by faith.

Now, how is this related to the deification of man.... The communicable attributes of God revealed in the Scripture are His life and nature, and by placing us into Christ and by imparting His divine life and nature into every believer then we become God in that aspect only....WITHOUT violating what God is in His transcendence, otherness, Godhead, or Godhood... that is, all His incommunicable attributes. The incarnated God, the divine becoming flesh, the Creator joined to the creature, maintained the immutability of His Godhead and in like manner the deification of the believer also maintains the immutability of the Godhead. By whatever means or capabilities God used to manage this paradox in His incarnation, He also uses the same to manage this paradox in the many regenerated sons He is in the process of deifying.

Therefore, the concern or belief that man cannot be deified without infringing on God's transcendence is unfounded and has no biblical basis. Rather, such a concern is based on something else, perhaps a pagan notion of deification, or the heretical Mormon teaching of men becoming God because God was a human like us once, or the humanism idea of all humans having an innate divinity. Yet, whatever the idea, fear, concern, or even a logical reason for rejecting deification, those reasons are not founded in the Word of God because there is a biblical definition of deification that every believer should joyfully embrace. My point in this note is that even the incarnation itself shows us there is no cause for alarm or concern. God has a way, a method, and plan and though I may not understand how He does it, nevertheless I can joyfully accept that He has, is, and will execute the deification of His many sons by His own design without infringing on His immutability in the same or a similar way as He managed that paradox in the incarnation.

I look forward to your response on this point.

Drake

Drake,

I asked you to explain this a while back, so I feel like I have the OK to respond to this post even though you directed it to Raptor who also asked you to explain this. Like I said, I have the ability to respond as if I hold the viewpoint that God Himself became a man, that God is Triune, etc.... and I will respond from that viewpoint (the one you espoused in this post).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your reasoning is essentially that whatever mechanism allowed God to become a man without anything at all changing in His Godhead or His Godhood (your words are: "God became human and at the same time maintained all that He is in His Godhead, Godhood, transcendence, and otherness. Nothing was lost or changed when God became man"), that is the same mechanism by which man becomes God in life and nature without God's Godhead/Godhood becoming affected. Is that right?

I think I represented your argument accurately so I'll keep going as if I did.

The problem is the assumption that what worked one way also works the other way.

The formatting restrictions in this comment box make it difficult to do a diagram without being able to do borders or tables or tabs or numerous spaces, but I'll do my best.

What I hear you representing for God becoming man is:

[ Godhead/God in L&N ] ------becomes--------> [ Godhead/God in L&N ] [ man ]

When God becomes man, based on what you said, God loses and changes nothing. His Godhead and His life and nature don't get reduced, don't get lost, and don't get changed in any way.

In other words, His Godhead and His life & nature are not separated. God retains it all. Nothing is split up. God stays the same. You can see that on the "diagram" - [ Godhead/God in L&N ] are on both sides of the "equation" because nothing changes or is lost in that regard.

In short, the entirety of what it means to be God stays the same, while becoming the entirety of what it means to be a man.

Ok, let's switch to the man becoming God side of things.

What I hear you representing for man becoming God is:

[ man ] ------becomes------> [ man ] [ God in L&N ]

The problem, based on what I have said already, should be readily apparent. It is not the same mechanism in the other direction. In this mechanism, who God is gets split up. In the first direction God retains the wholeness of everything He is. Godhead, life and nature, etc... But in this reverse direction, you have a scenario where God's life and nature is separated from His Godhead. This is not a comparable mechanism to the one that resulted in the incarnation.

Here what we have is the entirety of what it means to be a man, becoming a carved out subset of what it means to be God.....in a way that divides up God to the point where it results in something that is simply not "becoming God".

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Going at this from another angle.....

You seem to indicate that God imparting His communicable attributes of God's L&N into man (let's call him "man A") is the vehicle by which man A becomes God in L&N.

God imparts God's L&N to man A -------> man A becomes God in L&N only

God had to communicate His communicable attributes of L&N to man A so that man A could become God in L&N.

Okay then, if this is the same opposing mechanism by which God became a man, then what you are saying is that in order for God to become a man, man had to communicate some communicable attributes to God.

Man A had to communicate his communicable attributes of L&N to God so that God could become man in L&N.

But this didn't happen. There is no "man A" that imparted human communicable attributes to God so that God could become man in L&N.

God didn't have human communicable attributes communicated to Him so He could become man. He simply became a man. And not "a man in L&N but not in the manhood" like would be required for your assertion to work.....He became a full man in every way it means to be a man.

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It's kind of like saying "a square can be called a rectangle for the same reasons a rectangle can be called a square"!

But what works in one direction does not by default work in the opposite direction. A square can be a rectangle. But a rectangle can never be a square without dismantling the core of what it means to be a square.....to the point where it's not a square anymore.

Trapped