On Thu, 06 Sep 2001 15:51:33 -0400 "George Andrews Jr."
<gandrews@as.wm.edu> writes:
> Hi Dave;
>
> I asked:
>
> > > Why would a view of a deity who limits him/herself be
> "improper"?
> > > Perhaps
> > > God really wanted to know what Adam would call the animals
> without
> > > "tapping
> > > into His/Her omniscience." This surly would make things more
> > > interesting
> > > for the deity; at least from our point of view. :-)
> > >
> > > Sincerely
> > > George A.
> > >
>
> You wrote:
>
> >
> > Your question seems to me to assume that somehow God is in time
> > eternally. I contend that this is not possible if he is the
> Creator of
> > time, space and mass-energy.
>
> If time is abstracted to change (i.e. more than entropy arrows) --
> then
> God is in time in that things that are not Holy (i.e. non - Divine)
> are
> changing "around Him". If Holy implies Other, then the statement God
> is
> alone Holy can be understood (among other things :-) ) as meaning
> God is
> not changing ontologically; but this doesn't preclude God existing
> in an
> ever changing environment (heaven). All we know of God is found in
> Christ
> and it is evident from the Christian doctrine of incarnation, that
> God
> indulges in limiting Himself to temporality as we observe it. What
> is
> eternal can be thought of as timeless only in that there is no
> beginning or
> ending.
>
I cannot ask for a better illustration of the transfer of the strictures
of our existence to the environment of the deity and, implicitly, to the
Eternal himself.
> > Our Lord declared that no one comes to the Father except through
> him.
> > This is a limitation. Could he have set things up differently. Of
> course.
> > Could he change that? He declares that his statements are true. So
> what
> > he has established he will not change.
> > Dave
>
> But what about the New Covenant; is it not different than the Old?
> And what
> of God's winking at divorce? He has changed His relationship with us
> and
> will do so again.
>
There are differences in the two covenants in that the earlier
anticipated the latter, so that obedient faith to the revelation then
given fits perfectly with our faith to what is now revealed. Abraham's
faith made him righteous in God's sight, though he anticipated the Old
Covenant given at Sinai. As for God changing his relationship with us
again, I think you must mean the fullness of redemption. I see that as a
change in the human state so that we may fully enjoy the relationship
with God of which we now perceive only the first fruits.
Dave
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