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
|