Quote:
Originally Posted by Drake
Trapped,
I'll rephrase and try to say it more succinctly. The eternal God, the Word of God, the Creator, joined Himself to the creature - through incarnation. In so joining, the essence of the Godhead was not altered. Jesus, the incarnated God, the Only-begotten Son of God possessed both divinity and humanity, yet by some undefined capability that only God has, His becoming a man, joining Himself to the creature, as flesh, did not change the Godhead.
That undefined capability in incarnation, or some other similar capability also maintains the barrier between God's transcendence, Godhead , Godhood, and the many sons He is deifying through the impartation of His life and nature. We will always be the creature and the believers deification is always in Christ and not apart from Him.
God is quite capable of joining Himself to the creature without affecting His Godhead.... and He is equally capable of deifying His many sons also without affecting His Godhead. God knows how to do this even though it is a mystery to us. Incarnation is a major proof point of this mystery.
Some reject the idea that man can be deified by God because there is a concern that deification elevates men to the status of God in His Godhead and Godhood. All pagan, humanism, and religious heresies about deification are to be flatly rejected, by every believer yet, the deification that is according to God's plan and recorded in His Word should be understood and completely embraced by every believer.
thanks
Drake
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I just have to say - this is befuddling - God was always the same, inside and outside of Creation. There is none of "God's nature" that is "outside the Godhead," Godhead being defined as the entirety of God. The orthodox interpretation of the hypostatic union is not that God was changed, but "not in the Godhead." Instead, it's that although human nature was added to the Son of God, his divine nature was not altered in any way (otherwise this would violate the immutability of God in his essential existence, outside Creation). If you read any Eastern Orthodox literature, they are always careful to point out that God's nature is never transmitted to man, only his divine energies/attributes, like putting a sword in fire and it becoming red and hot. That is the deification of Eastern Orthodox, who take Athanasius' syllogism as the central point of sanctification. To sum up God's nature = God = Godhead. You can't take apart one without the other, ending up with a God not found at the beginning of the cosmos.