Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix
View Post
A person can change, and Jesus, a person of the Trinity, clearly does change. You pretty much need to accept that unless you want to say Jesus had both a human person and divine person as part of Himself.
A simple question Nick, does your human nature change when your emotions do?
As for Jacob, yes. Jacob is blessing his sons, but the ancients would also take this as prophetic and from God.
I've seen a lot of claims about what "the ancients" would believe, that are on groundless on closer examination. So, citation please.
Even if you're right about ancient views, it doesn't mean it is unconditional even if it is a prophecy from God. Even the promise to David seems to have been conditional. David being one of the few who fulfilled such conditions.
And with demons, yes. They do gain something from it. They gain that the people that God loves suffers and they at least get to see that. Your suffering is something they see as a good in their eyes. They do it because they want to see you suffer because that in some way is good to them. It's definitely not good, but they perceive it that way.
The first part I underlined up there would also mean no one would ever choose adultery if they knew it was wrong. This is so far out of touch with reality as to be mind boggling. The third part I underlined certainly seems to contradict itself. Ignoring something that should be considered might not be "ignorance" per se, but it's certainly stupidity. Stupidity is actually worse than ignorance. If they have no emotions to fetter their reason or intellect how can they be so stupid?
The more I read of Thomas Aquinas and his followers the less coherent his/their system seems.
You asked for Christians who were espousing Open Theism earlier, so I thought you would be interested in knowing of
an early proponent of Divine Passibility in Lactantius. I found it while looking for reviews of your book recommendation since i didn't have access to the book itself. My library isn't very good, and even if it was I have issues with my immune system, so can't really use books from there.
I found no less than Edward Feser arguing against your emotionless version of impassibility. I think I'll take his definition of impassibility over yours Nick.
Elsewhere I while looking up arguments for and against impassibility I found this work arguing against it.
It is clear that Grudem equates divine impassibility with the idea of a God who lacks emotions. Meisinger agrees with Grudem’s thesis writing: “Some theologians teach the impassibility of God, which if true means that God does not have emotion, or passion.” Meisinger then attacks this idea showing from the biblical data that God does indeed have emotion. The problems of this approach are straight forward. Any self-respecting classical theologian would not agree with this definition of impassibility.
He seems like the kind who can argue for impassibility better than one who holds to it. In fact, I thought he was doing just that as I was reading his work.
You like citations a lot, so head to the bottom for his list of works he uses to support his work.
You may be enamored by Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, but I'm not. I used to find the Unmoved Mover argument convincing, and once used it in the past myself. Like I said earlier, the more I read and study the system, the more incoherent it seems to be.
Comment