The Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God
The answer to the question of whether it is scripturally consistent for god to be human and divine would seem obvious to many, however I do think there are some objections which at least require consideration. For instance, the incarnation seems to move away from the Torah and some major fiercely held beliefs. God in the Torah continues to assert himself as radically different from the various gods worshiped by the people groups that surrounded them. The Roman gods, for example, were seen to constantly be interacting with humans, frequently being depicted as having children with them. (This was a common theme among many cultures). (insert example) The Jews, however, held that there was one God and that he was distinctly ‘other’ from humans
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and his creation. In the Torah God says of himself "I am God and not man". Hosea 11:9. This emphasis on the transcendence of God was strongly defended in the Jewish tradition and held by Pharisees and Sadducees, who both rejected the Christian conception of Incarnation, as a move a way away from the concept of one transcendent God toward a pagan mixing of the human and divine. The Sadducees took this further, also not believing in the resurrection of the body and eternal life. This gave yet more reason for many Jews to be sceptical about the possibility of the immortal God to be human.
Discuss if it fits with tradition
In terms of tradition the incarnation is certainly orthodox, it is continually affirmed in various creeds for instance "incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary" (Nicene Creed) and "truly God and truly Man” (Chalcedonian Definition). I would go so far as to claim it is widely considered heresy to claim that Jesus is not both man and God. This will limit justification for arguments against the incarnation to scripture and reason. The scriptural arguments I have already demonstrated to be unconvincing, and I will now turn to examine the arguments from reason.
200
Discuss the logical objection
I think the most compelling objection against the incarnation is the logical one. This objection is that the idea of god/man is a logical contradiction i.e it could not be the case or is impossible. I think there can be some distinctions made about what we mean when we say something is impossible. For this argument I will use Wittgenstein’s distinction between logical impossibility and physical impossibility. He points this out in his Blue Book,
‘“The colours green and blue can't be in the same place simultaneously". Here the picture of physical impossibility which suggests itself is, perhaps, not that of a barrier; rather we feel that the two colours are in each other's way. What is the origin of this idea? -- We say three people can't sit side by side on this bench; they have no room. Now the case of the colours is not analogous to this; but it is somewhat analogous to saying: "3×18 inches won't go into 3 feet". This is a grammatical rule and states a logical impossibility.’
18 inches is the width of his people.
He goes on to say that the in the first bench case we require empirical testing in order to determine the physical impossibility. All this to say we can distinguish between a three sided square which is a logical impossibility and a human flying without some sort of assistance which is a practical impossibility this being because it is conceivable that a human could fly unassisted in some possible world. There is however physical limitations on humans in this world that prevent it happening but these can only be known based on empirical evidence. Logical impossibility is the stronger claim. If it can be proved that something is logically impossible, it is also physically impossible (P > Q). I will therefore firstly examine logical impossibility, because if it applies to the incarnation we have no need to question whether physical impossibility applies.
The question has now become, is God’s incarnation impossible in the logical sense? I find this intuitively not to be the case. It seems perfectly plausible that God could if he wish incarnate himself. It would certainly be a very mysterious thing for him to do, but perhaps I should not presume to know which of God’s actions would be mysterious and which not. Nicholas F. Gier presents what i consider to be the best argument against this intuition. He uses Dun Scotus' Law of Disjunction: we can say that God is infinite but we are finite; that God is necessary but we are contingent; that God is uncaused and we are caused; and that God is immortal but we are mortal. Using the last pair of attributes, Gier offers the following syllogism:
All humans are mortal.
Jesus was human (According to Christian doctrine).
Hence, Jesus was mortal.
God is not mortal.
Jesus was mortal (According to the syllogism above).
Hence, Jesus was not God.
I will reformulate this using The Very Hungry Caterpillar (VHC) to replace Jesus
All caterpillars cannot fly
VHC was a caterpillar (According to Eric Carle)
Hence, VHC cannot fly
Butterflies can fly
VHC cannot fly (According to the syllogism above).
Hence, VHC was not a Butterfly.
The issue I am try to highlight could be explained by the statement it both rains and doesn't rain in England. That is not to make the logical fallacy it both rains and does not rain, but rather that depending on the time or place in England it is either raining or it isn't. Essentially England is the type of thing that can be both raining and not raining depending on the time and place. In the same sense Jesus can be human and not human, mortal and immortal depending on the time. This I don't find in anyway to be logically impossible, whether it is physically possible I will consider next. I will firstly note that although this analogy goes some way in outlining how it is possible for something to have a certain set of properties at one time and a conflicting set at another, i.e VHC both can fly and not fly and Jesus is both mortal and immortal. This does not show how they could be both at the same time. This idea I will explore in the Two Minds account.
We now must examine if God’s incarnation is possible in the physical sense. For it to be possible God must be the type of thing for which being a human (at least in some sense) is possible without permanent loss or ever losing (for many Christians this is a requirement) those properties which are necessary for remaining god. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are commonly considered necessary properties of god. Many also include immutability (unchanging) and impassibility (unsuffering), etc. These properties are thought to be necessary mostly as a result of arguments such as St. Anselm's "Ontological" Argument for God's Existence (god is the greatest being that can be conceived, therefore the greatest being that can be conceived must have existence as one of its properties). Acceptance of this argument leads to wanting to attribute maximum greatness to god thus leading to the adding of omni attributes. If god is, by definition, maximally great, then all of his attributes are necessary. If he lacks any he could be greater and therefore cannot be god. Therefore, if these properties are necessary for god, he must at all points maintain these properties. And if we then say that certain properties we observe man to have, mortality, suffering, weakness to name but a few, are incompatible with God’s properties, we have a problem for the idea of incarnation. In this sense we are moving from Wittgenstein’s original bench case to his quantified bench case. Instead of saying:
“Three people can't sit side by side on this bench”
God cannot be human
We are now saying
“3×18 inches won't go into 3 feet”
Immortal, impassible and omnipotent won’t go into mortal, suffering and weak.
Having done our empirical work to define God and man’s properties, we are able to conclude that, as presented above, it is logically impossible for God to be both god and man and therefore the incarnation is logically impossible. But can we really call this work empirical? We have not gone out and tried to find out what god is like; we have only considered the concept of god and thence derived his properties.
It seems difficult to understand how it is possible to define God into existence.
The Australian philosopher Douglas Gasking perhaps best articulates what I am trying to say in his formulation of the ontological argument. He argued God’s creation of the universe is the greatest achievement imaginable. Just how great this achievement is depends on the quality and degree that the Creator was impaired. The greater the impairment the greater achievement the creation is. Gasking asserts that non-existence would be the greatest impairment to creating. Therefore if the universe was created by an existing creator he is not the greatest being that can be conceived, because a non-existent one would be greater. A non-existent creator is greater than one which exists, so God does not exist. His argument is a response to Anselm's assumption that existence is a predicate of perfection. Using this logic he assumes that non-existence must be an impairment. This is, of course, a ridiculous argument and is intended to be so. It does, however, go some way in demonstrating how there can be disagreement on what would be the necessary properties of the greatest being “God”. As a result we are unable to define what God is, based on reason alone. This means we still actually have some empirical work to do. We are left with the question, ‘How can we have any empirical knowledge of god?’. This leads me to postulate that God’s self-revelation is the only way we can have knowledge of god. Therefore only God can truly know if incarnation is physically possible and we don't even know if he does know, unless we have some type of revelation from God that would indicate he is the type of being that would know. Therefore we don’t have the necessary empirical information to claim it is physically impossible. This shifts the burden of proof to those attempting to quantify God. God’s incarnation therefore is not logically impossible and I don’t see how we can rule out that it is physically possible
without some appeal to revelation.
Argue against the ontological argument.
I will argue that mortality is not a necessary part of what it is to be human.
250
Section 2: describe the two-minds account and discuss objections to it
Intro
One of the best responses it the inconsistent objection is the two-mind approach which is an interesting adaptation of the classical interpretation of the incarnation. I will examine Thomas V. Morris use of the two-mind view in his response the inconsistent objection. Traditional there are two ways of solving the inconsistent objection the first one is elevate man by limiting the necessary properties of man. The other is it limit the necessary properties of God allowing him to lower himself to man’s level. Morris is human elevating in nature and he does this by emphasizing the difference between what he call being fully human and merely human. For something to be fully human it must only have all of the necessary properties for humanity. For something to be merely human is for to lack properties which all though compatible with being fully human are not human in themselves. Morris give the example of the differences between a diamond and a turtle. A turtle, like a diamond, is fully physical; in that it spatiotemporal location. However the turtle is not merely physical because it has higher-level properties which the diamond doesn’t, for instance, cellular composition and voluntary motion. In the same way, God the Son Incarnate is fully but not merely human. He has all of the properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for being human, but also higher-level divine properties.
His leads to the question what properties are required in order to be fully human. Morris answers this by stating that we are currently not at the point of having enough scientific advancement to determine what these properties are.
For Morris it is by incorrectly assuming that properties which are often put possessed by beings that are merely human somehow necessary properties were being fully human. This therefore leads to confusion about the incarnation and ultimately the inconsistent objection. On this account properties like limited knowledge and power would be common properties possessed by those who are merely human but not necessary properties for being fully human.
Scripture
Morris would also like to develop an account which would be consistent with the biblical Jesus. He was therefore justify how is it is possible that there appeared to be points where the son of God has limited power and knowledge. For instance versus like “what about that day or hour no one knows neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” Mark 13:32 and “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,” Luke 2:52. Morris’s solution is that God the Son his incarnate form possessed both the divine and human mind and on occasion he chose to limit himself to the use of only his human mind. Is primarily because of this that is referred two-mind approach.
. . . in the case of God Incarnate we must recognize something like two distinct minds or systems of mentality. There is first what we can call the eternal mind of God the Son, with its distinctively divine consciousness . . . encompassing the full scope of omniscience, empowered by the resources of omnipotence, and present in power and knowledge throughout the entirety of the creation. And, in addition to this divine mind, there is a distinctly earthly mind with its consciousness that came into existence and developed with the conception, human birth and growth of Christ’s earthly form of existence. . . . By living out his earthly life from on the resources of the human body and mind, he took on the form of our existence and shared the plight of our condition (Morris, 1991, 169).
Tradition
The two-mind approach is open to criticisms of it’s orthodoxy. Particularly the criticism of Nestorianism which emphasises that this union between the human and divine natures of Jesus. The problem being if we have divine mind and human we appear to have to beings one which is human and the other divine. Morris attempts to avoid this by arguing that “the divine consciousness of God the son contained, but was not contained by, the earthly range of consciousness… there was what can be called an asymmetric accessing relation between the two”. (Rationality and the Christian Revelation 223p. He uses the analogy of a computer program which contains but is not contained by the other. That individual’s personhood depends upon his ultimate metaphysical status, in this case divinity (Morris, 1991, 174).
Reason
750
Section 3: describe the kenotic account and discuss objections to it
We will now examine the second alternative which attempt to reduce the necessary properties of God allowing him to “empty himself” (Philippians 2:7) into human flesh this is called kenosis. Some have argued that kenosis is a theory for those in reason to believe that limited power knowledge the not merely human properties but necessary fully human properties because we are committed to holding that omniscience and omnipotent and no longer necessary divine properties. However I do not think proponent of kenosis would be committed to this idea the limited power knowledge are necessary human properties. It would be possible to hold that although God could have been incarnate with omnipotent and omniscience of the sacrifice and humility he chose not to be. For the same reasons he was born the son of a carpenter and not a king. Kenotic theologians are however committed to showing how omnipotent’s and omniscience are not necessary divine properties. Kenosis is different from the two-mind view in that God relinquishes properties rather than just choosing not to use them at one time or another.
The problem for kenosis then becomes how can God still be divine without a significant amount of divine properties. One solution is to add clauses to the necessary divine attributes. For instance God is fully omnipotent and omniscient unless these properties are freely given up for some greater good maintaining his omnibenevolence. An incarnate God would be able to keep this “unless” properties despite losing the unqualified “omni properties” if we deny that unqualified omni properties are necessarily for divinity. We are left with the problem that the Trinity would simultaneously abdicate power using the “unless” clause. If they were to be the same extent as Jesus (becoming babies) many humans would have more knowledge and power than God. This seems sufficient for a reductio ad absurdum of the kenotic view.
Ronald J. Feenstra in his paper “A Kenotic Christological Method for Understanding the Divine Attributes” that incarnation can only happen for the purpose of reconciliation with his creatures, since through Jesus reconciliation has been achieved “there is neither a need nor a possibility of another divine kenotic incarnation. This solution however I consider problematic as I don’t see how you can rule out the possibility of God having vast numbers of other creatures for whom is incarnation is also required for the achievement of reconciliation. (Feenstra, 2006, 153).
There would, however, be another problem: the kenotic approach would appear ad hoc, inviting the following question: "Apart from rescuing a Chalcedonian account of the incarnation, is there any reason to suppose that God has these fine-tuned kenotic properties?" In response, the kenotic theologian might argue, in keeping with Alvin Plantinga's "Advice to Christian Philosophers" (Plantinga, 1984), that it is perfectly appropriate to begin with what we know about the incarnation and revise our concepts of God and humanity accordingly (Feenstra, 2006, 159).
An alternative approach is to argue divine attributes such as omnipotent and omniscient which might be necessary being divine are not necessarily for maintaining divinity. In the same sense a king would still be considered a king even if he without power having been imprisoned in a foreign nation. Use no longer functioning as a king but remains a king nonetheless.
Scripture
Tradition
Reason
Basically he was saying that if you hold that there is such a kind of knowledge as 'what it is like' to have certain experiences (look up Mary's Room if you don't know it) then having a kenotic Christology has some awkward consequences for God's knowledge because, by being incarnated, God is learning something new: what it is like FOR HIM to be man.
I kind of think that this thought is actually already implied if you think Jesus is necessary for us to have a relationship with God in that he plays some special role in mediating between man and the father in virtue of having both a human and divine nature.
However it obviously creates a bit of an issue with omniscience: prior to incarnation God was missing some kind of knowledge or ability (I'm guessing this wont bother you much) but more importantly it creates a problem for whether God was taking a risk (or in David's more careless words 'being irrational') by deciding to become incarnate. If God was choosing to do something he had no knowledge of, it follows that he could not possibly know the consequences for himself, ie what the incarnation would do TO HIM.
I think it's a similar, but better, argument about kenotic Christology being reckless: in the papers we had the argument that to give up divine powers is reckless, in David's pet thought I think what he's getting at is that to choose to gain a human perspective/human knowledge is reckless. I'm sure you could come up with a decent response using social Trinitarianism.
Anyway, don't know how helpful that is, but as he was going on about it I thought of you and your essay: if you are short on words and looking to put something in I'm pretty sure David should like it cause it's his idea.
and his creation. In the Torah God says of himself "I am God and not man". Hosea 11:9. This emphasis on the transcendence of God was strongly defended in the Jewish tradition and held by Pharisees and Sadducees, who both rejected the Christian conception of Incarnation, as a move a way away from the concept of one transcendent God toward a pagan mixing of the human and divine. The Sadducees took this further, also not believing in the resurrection of the body and eternal life. This gave yet more reason for many Jews to be sceptical about the possibility of the immortal God to be human.
Discuss if it fits with tradition
In terms of tradition the incarnation is certainly orthodox, it is continually affirmed in various creeds for instance "incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary" (Nicene Creed) and "truly God and truly Man” (Chalcedonian Definition). I would go so far as to claim it is widely considered heresy to claim that Jesus is not both man and God. This will limit justification for arguments against the incarnation to scripture and reason. The scriptural arguments I have already demonstrated to be unconvincing, and I will now turn to examine the arguments from reason.
200
Discuss the logical objection
I think the most compelling objection against the incarnation is the logical one. This objection is that the idea of god/man is a logical contradiction i.e it could not be the case or is impossible. I think there can be some distinctions made about what we mean when we say something is impossible. For this argument I will use Wittgenstein’s distinction between logical impossibility and physical impossibility. He points this out in his Blue Book,
‘“The colours green and blue can't be in the same place simultaneously". Here the picture of physical impossibility which suggests itself is, perhaps, not that of a barrier; rather we feel that the two colours are in each other's way. What is the origin of this idea? -- We say three people can't sit side by side on this bench; they have no room. Now the case of the colours is not analogous to this; but it is somewhat analogous to saying: "3×18 inches won't go into 3 feet". This is a grammatical rule and states a logical impossibility.’
18 inches is the width of his people.
He goes on to say that the in the first bench case we require empirical testing in order to determine the physical impossibility. All this to say we can distinguish between a three sided square which is a logical impossibility and a human flying without some sort of assistance which is a practical impossibility this being because it is conceivable that a human could fly unassisted in some possible world. There is however physical limitations on humans in this world that prevent it happening but these can only be known based on empirical evidence. Logical impossibility is the stronger claim. If it can be proved that something is logically impossible, it is also physically impossible (P > Q). I will therefore firstly examine logical impossibility, because if it applies to the incarnation we have no need to question whether physical impossibility applies.
The question has now become, is God’s incarnation impossible in the logical sense? I find this intuitively not to be the case. It seems perfectly plausible that God could if he wish incarnate himself. It would certainly be a very mysterious thing for him to do, but perhaps I should not presume to know which of God’s actions would be mysterious and which not. Nicholas F. Gier presents what i consider to be the best argument against this intuition. He uses Dun Scotus' Law of Disjunction: we can say that God is infinite but we are finite; that God is necessary but we are contingent; that God is uncaused and we are caused; and that God is immortal but we are mortal. Using the last pair of attributes, Gier offers the following syllogism:
All humans are mortal.
Jesus was human (According to Christian doctrine).
Hence, Jesus was mortal.
God is not mortal.
Jesus was mortal (According to the syllogism above).
Hence, Jesus was not God.
I will reformulate this using The Very Hungry Caterpillar (VHC) to replace Jesus
All caterpillars cannot fly
VHC was a caterpillar (According to Eric Carle)
Hence, VHC cannot fly
Butterflies can fly
VHC cannot fly (According to the syllogism above).
Hence, VHC was not a Butterfly.
The issue I am try to highlight could be explained by the statement it both rains and doesn't rain in England. That is not to make the logical fallacy it both rains and does not rain, but rather that depending on the time or place in England it is either raining or it isn't. Essentially England is the type of thing that can be both raining and not raining depending on the time and place. In the same sense Jesus can be human and not human, mortal and immortal depending on the time. This I don't find in anyway to be logically impossible, whether it is physically possible I will consider next. I will firstly note that although this analogy goes some way in outlining how it is possible for something to have a certain set of properties at one time and a conflicting set at another, i.e VHC both can fly and not fly and Jesus is both mortal and immortal. This does not show how they could be both at the same time. This idea I will explore in the Two Minds account.
We now must examine if God’s incarnation is possible in the physical sense. For it to be possible God must be the type of thing for which being a human (at least in some sense) is possible without permanent loss or ever losing (for many Christians this is a requirement) those properties which are necessary for remaining god. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are commonly considered necessary properties of god. Many also include immutability (unchanging) and impassibility (unsuffering), etc. These properties are thought to be necessary mostly as a result of arguments such as St. Anselm's "Ontological" Argument for God's Existence (god is the greatest being that can be conceived, therefore the greatest being that can be conceived must have existence as one of its properties). Acceptance of this argument leads to wanting to attribute maximum greatness to god thus leading to the adding of omni attributes. If god is, by definition, maximally great, then all of his attributes are necessary. If he lacks any he could be greater and therefore cannot be god. Therefore, if these properties are necessary for god, he must at all points maintain these properties. And if we then say that certain properties we observe man to have, mortality, suffering, weakness to name but a few, are incompatible with God’s properties, we have a problem for the idea of incarnation. In this sense we are moving from Wittgenstein’s original bench case to his quantified bench case. Instead of saying:
“Three people can't sit side by side on this bench”
God cannot be human
We are now saying
“3×18 inches won't go into 3 feet”
Immortal, impassible and omnipotent won’t go into mortal, suffering and weak.
Having done our empirical work to define God and man’s properties, we are able to conclude that, as presented above, it is logically impossible for God to be both god and man and therefore the incarnation is logically impossible. But can we really call this work empirical? We have not gone out and tried to find out what god is like; we have only considered the concept of god and thence derived his properties.
It seems difficult to understand how it is possible to define God into existence.
The Australian philosopher Douglas Gasking perhaps best articulates what I am trying to say in his formulation of the ontological argument. He argued God’s creation of the universe is the greatest achievement imaginable. Just how great this achievement is depends on the quality and degree that the Creator was impaired. The greater the impairment the greater achievement the creation is. Gasking asserts that non-existence would be the greatest impairment to creating. Therefore if the universe was created by an existing creator he is not the greatest being that can be conceived, because a non-existent one would be greater. A non-existent creator is greater than one which exists, so God does not exist. His argument is a response to Anselm's assumption that existence is a predicate of perfection. Using this logic he assumes that non-existence must be an impairment. This is, of course, a ridiculous argument and is intended to be so. It does, however, go some way in demonstrating how there can be disagreement on what would be the necessary properties of the greatest being “God”. As a result we are unable to define what God is, based on reason alone. This means we still actually have some empirical work to do. We are left with the question, ‘How can we have any empirical knowledge of god?’. This leads me to postulate that God’s self-revelation is the only way we can have knowledge of god. Therefore only God can truly know if incarnation is physically possible and we don't even know if he does know, unless we have some type of revelation from God that would indicate he is the type of being that would know. Therefore we don’t have the necessary empirical information to claim it is physically impossible. This shifts the burden of proof to those attempting to quantify God. God’s incarnation therefore is not logically impossible and I don’t see how we can rule out that it is physically possible
without some appeal to revelation.
Argue against the ontological argument.
I will argue that mortality is not a necessary part of what it is to be human.
250
Section 2: describe the two-minds account and discuss objections to it
Intro
One of the best responses it the inconsistent objection is the two-mind approach which is an interesting adaptation of the classical interpretation of the incarnation. I will examine Thomas V. Morris use of the two-mind view in his response the inconsistent objection. Traditional there are two ways of solving the inconsistent objection the first one is elevate man by limiting the necessary properties of man. The other is it limit the necessary properties of God allowing him to lower himself to man’s level. Morris is human elevating in nature and he does this by emphasizing the difference between what he call being fully human and merely human. For something to be fully human it must only have all of the necessary properties for humanity. For something to be merely human is for to lack properties which all though compatible with being fully human are not human in themselves. Morris give the example of the differences between a diamond and a turtle. A turtle, like a diamond, is fully physical; in that it spatiotemporal location. However the turtle is not merely physical because it has higher-level properties which the diamond doesn’t, for instance, cellular composition and voluntary motion. In the same way, God the Son Incarnate is fully but not merely human. He has all of the properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for being human, but also higher-level divine properties.
His leads to the question what properties are required in order to be fully human. Morris answers this by stating that we are currently not at the point of having enough scientific advancement to determine what these properties are.
For Morris it is by incorrectly assuming that properties which are often put possessed by beings that are merely human somehow necessary properties were being fully human. This therefore leads to confusion about the incarnation and ultimately the inconsistent objection. On this account properties like limited knowledge and power would be common properties possessed by those who are merely human but not necessary properties for being fully human.
Scripture
Morris would also like to develop an account which would be consistent with the biblical Jesus. He was therefore justify how is it is possible that there appeared to be points where the son of God has limited power and knowledge. For instance versus like “what about that day or hour no one knows neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” Mark 13:32 and “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,” Luke 2:52. Morris’s solution is that God the Son his incarnate form possessed both the divine and human mind and on occasion he chose to limit himself to the use of only his human mind. Is primarily because of this that is referred two-mind approach.
. . . in the case of God Incarnate we must recognize something like two distinct minds or systems of mentality. There is first what we can call the eternal mind of God the Son, with its distinctively divine consciousness . . . encompassing the full scope of omniscience, empowered by the resources of omnipotence, and present in power and knowledge throughout the entirety of the creation. And, in addition to this divine mind, there is a distinctly earthly mind with its consciousness that came into existence and developed with the conception, human birth and growth of Christ’s earthly form of existence. . . . By living out his earthly life from on the resources of the human body and mind, he took on the form of our existence and shared the plight of our condition (Morris, 1991, 169).
Tradition
The two-mind approach is open to criticisms of it’s orthodoxy. Particularly the criticism of Nestorianism which emphasises that this union between the human and divine natures of Jesus. The problem being if we have divine mind and human we appear to have to beings one which is human and the other divine. Morris attempts to avoid this by arguing that “the divine consciousness of God the son contained, but was not contained by, the earthly range of consciousness… there was what can be called an asymmetric accessing relation between the two”. (Rationality and the Christian Revelation 223p. He uses the analogy of a computer program which contains but is not contained by the other. That individual’s personhood depends upon his ultimate metaphysical status, in this case divinity (Morris, 1991, 174).
Reason
750
Section 3: describe the kenotic account and discuss objections to it
We will now examine the second alternative which attempt to reduce the necessary properties of God allowing him to “empty himself” (Philippians 2:7) into human flesh this is called kenosis. Some have argued that kenosis is a theory for those in reason to believe that limited power knowledge the not merely human properties but necessary fully human properties because we are committed to holding that omniscience and omnipotent and no longer necessary divine properties. However I do not think proponent of kenosis would be committed to this idea the limited power knowledge are necessary human properties. It would be possible to hold that although God could have been incarnate with omnipotent and omniscience of the sacrifice and humility he chose not to be. For the same reasons he was born the son of a carpenter and not a king. Kenotic theologians are however committed to showing how omnipotent’s and omniscience are not necessary divine properties. Kenosis is different from the two-mind view in that God relinquishes properties rather than just choosing not to use them at one time or another.
The problem for kenosis then becomes how can God still be divine without a significant amount of divine properties. One solution is to add clauses to the necessary divine attributes. For instance God is fully omnipotent and omniscient unless these properties are freely given up for some greater good maintaining his omnibenevolence. An incarnate God would be able to keep this “unless” properties despite losing the unqualified “omni properties” if we deny that unqualified omni properties are necessarily for divinity. We are left with the problem that the Trinity would simultaneously abdicate power using the “unless” clause. If they were to be the same extent as Jesus (becoming babies) many humans would have more knowledge and power than God. This seems sufficient for a reductio ad absurdum of the kenotic view.
Ronald J. Feenstra in his paper “A Kenotic Christological Method for Understanding the Divine Attributes” that incarnation can only happen for the purpose of reconciliation with his creatures, since through Jesus reconciliation has been achieved “there is neither a need nor a possibility of another divine kenotic incarnation. This solution however I consider problematic as I don’t see how you can rule out the possibility of God having vast numbers of other creatures for whom is incarnation is also required for the achievement of reconciliation. (Feenstra, 2006, 153).
There would, however, be another problem: the kenotic approach would appear ad hoc, inviting the following question: "Apart from rescuing a Chalcedonian account of the incarnation, is there any reason to suppose that God has these fine-tuned kenotic properties?" In response, the kenotic theologian might argue, in keeping with Alvin Plantinga's "Advice to Christian Philosophers" (Plantinga, 1984), that it is perfectly appropriate to begin with what we know about the incarnation and revise our concepts of God and humanity accordingly (Feenstra, 2006, 159).
An alternative approach is to argue divine attributes such as omnipotent and omniscient which might be necessary being divine are not necessarily for maintaining divinity. In the same sense a king would still be considered a king even if he without power having been imprisoned in a foreign nation. Use no longer functioning as a king but remains a king nonetheless.
Scripture
Tradition
Reason
Basically he was saying that if you hold that there is such a kind of knowledge as 'what it is like' to have certain experiences (look up Mary's Room if you don't know it) then having a kenotic Christology has some awkward consequences for God's knowledge because, by being incarnated, God is learning something new: what it is like FOR HIM to be man.
I kind of think that this thought is actually already implied if you think Jesus is necessary for us to have a relationship with God in that he plays some special role in mediating between man and the father in virtue of having both a human and divine nature.
However it obviously creates a bit of an issue with omniscience: prior to incarnation God was missing some kind of knowledge or ability (I'm guessing this wont bother you much) but more importantly it creates a problem for whether God was taking a risk (or in David's more careless words 'being irrational') by deciding to become incarnate. If God was choosing to do something he had no knowledge of, it follows that he could not possibly know the consequences for himself, ie what the incarnation would do TO HIM.
I think it's a similar, but better, argument about kenotic Christology being reckless: in the papers we had the argument that to give up divine powers is reckless, in David's pet thought I think what he's getting at is that to choose to gain a human perspective/human knowledge is reckless. I'm sure you could come up with a decent response using social Trinitarianism.
Anyway, don't know how helpful that is, but as he was going on about it I thought of you and your essay: if you are short on words and looking to put something in I'm pretty sure David should like it cause it's his idea.