Eh, thanks for trying, Jason. The meaning of what you wrote remains undecipherable to me, however. I suppose my degree in philosophy didn’t do me much good. 
••• If Jesus Christ was really God in the sense that he is an actual part of God that was uncreated in any sense, then who was running the universe when Jesus died? •••
Both critical parts of this question were addressed earlier in this thread, but this isn’t an unusual (or unreasonable) way to put them together.
To recap: if the action of God within Nature required the total abdication of God’s existence as the Independent Fact, then this would be an argument against God introducing effects within Nature at all. The problem isn’t with trinitarianism, but whether God can do miracles in Nature at all. This isn’t an unimportant issue, but it’s solved (one way or another) long before getting to trinitarian theism per se. (Relatedly, nominal deists and cosmological God/Nature dualists argue against the Incarnation precisely because they don’t or can’t expect God to operate in Nature at all.)
The question of the extent to which God can ‘die’, happens to be related to the question of how (and/or whether) God creates non-God entities at all. But, without going into a lot of philosophical discussion on this point (which again would be logically connected to the affirmation of supernaturalistic theism generally, not specifically to trinitarian theism), what can be more simply said is that most non-trinitarian Christians (along with most other theists, too) agree that even mere humans don’t utterly die at death (unless God annihilates them for being sinners) but continue spiritually existing somehow. The continuing spiritual existence of God at mortal death, is no more problematic than that. Also no more problematic than God ceasing to do any mere manifestation in Nature, either. (Although the Incarnation of Christ is rather more complex than that, admittedly. On the other hand, the OT manifestations turn out to have strong referential connections to Jesus!–see the 76-page digest for details.)
It should be noted that this answer doesn’t require specially dichotomizing between the death of Christ’s human nature and the death of Christ’s spiritual nature–not any moreso than a normal human’s spirit also survives death of the body. The divine spirit of Christ suffers as much death as a human spirit can (by the grace of God) suffer, so God still is sharing in our death and life. This actually has strong connections to soteriological and eschatological hope: we are to share in the death and so in the resurrection of Christ. As C. S. Lewis once paraphrased St. Paul: Christ does not die to merely save us from death, but He dies so that our deaths may be like His.
I suppose that we could still question the second point on the assumption of the immortality of our spirit? Although not an annihilationist, I still think any immortality we may have is conditional. At death, our spirit returns to God who gave it. But this does not, I think, guarantee any sort of consciousness to it? My understanding is that one of the things we were saved from is eternal death (annihilation). If Christ was not raised from the dead, then this is the result we would expect (annihilation). Also, I would’ve thought that the question of what extent God can or cannot die is moot, since the scripture says that he can’t.
Not really; the conditionality is dependent on God either way: the spirit of a person can only die so far. The same would be true to whatever extent God can die. Sure, He could annihilate Himself, but that would be literally self-defeating. 
(And permanently so.)
There are various scriptural testimonies otherwise (including from Jesus, though one of those may be considered only parabolical and so not to be pressed too far.) In fact, 1 Peter says that Christ preached to the dead (probably also referring to the rebel angels) during His own descent into hades after being slain. So He wasn’t any more completely dead than they were.
However, even if human (or angelic) consciousness ceased for a time in hades (for which there is also some scriptural testimony), this wouldn’t necessarily apply to God. Indeed, the consuming everlasting fire of Gehenna itself (which also appears operative in ‘hades’), must be God in some fashion (as the Holy Spirit most likely)–unless there are supposed to be two everlasting fires! (Which would be cosmological dualism.) And David says that God is with him even if he goes down into sheol (the pit/grave/death).
So it isn’t so much (scripturally speaking) that our spirit returns to God at death, but that God stays with our spirit, even in death, until He raises us to be with Him. (Which parallels 1 Peter’s teaching about Christ rather nicely; as well as paralleling, from another direction, the statement of Christ from GosJohn that He had not yet ascended to the Father, even after His resurrection.)
Back to the metaphysical side of things, though: if God completely died, that would be the end of God and of everything else (since everything continually depends on God for existence). And as it happens, I am prepared to believe and even to say that God can and does ‘die’ even further than derivative persons do (by God’s grace), in order for creation to occur at all. But the Son Incarnate doesn’t have to die that far to share in human death (since by God’s grace humans don’t die that far either); and even the extent to which God ‘dies’ in self-sacrifice (but not self-defeat!) for creational purposes, is not utter death.
In this, again, God still is the Living God; just as He is still the Living God in the grave to which we ourselves go. And from a temporal perspective, the self-sacrificial ‘death’ of God for the sake of creating not-God entities, happens simultaneously (and at every temporal instant) with the dynamically active life of God, too. (From God’s perspective, this action would happen even ‘more simultaneously’, to coin a phrase! )
The answer to this, from the perspective of metaphysical analysis, is that there are different kinds and degrees of death. God cannot absolutely die and still exist, of course; but even trinitarians don’t normally propose this.
As to what the scriptures have to say on the matter, that’s covered in the scriptural thread (and even moreso in the scriptural digest). But even metaphysically there can be an operational distinction in this between the person of the Father and the person of the Son: it is the Son Who submits to the Father from all eternity; it is the Lamb (i.e. the Son) Who is slain not only from but as the foundation (literally the “explosive downpouring” as in a generating orgasm) of the world (for in Him we live and move and have our being and continually hold together); and while the Hebraist is extremely emphatic about the YHWH Who “remains” when all other things perish and Who is “the same, and Thy years will not come to an end” being the Son Jesus Who also suffers death (with us and for our sake), he does not claim that this is true about the person of the Father (even though he also is extremely emphatic about declaring the Father to be YHWH, too.)
In order to understand this better, though, the topic has to go back (metaphysically speaking) to how any not-God entity can come into existence, even by the action of God. Very briefly speaking, this requires the self-sacrifice of God, even (in some way) of the living action of God. Which (going back to the scriptures again) is one of the connotations of “Logos” in the scriptures. It doesn’t only mean ‘word’, as in the representation of an idea or meaning. More fundamentally, it means a rational action, even a foundationally rational action. (Literally the term is a noun version of the verb ‘to lay’. Note by the way that whenever New Testament authors speak of the “cornerstone”, they’re talking about Christ who they clearly state and even triumphantly proclaim to have died; but they’re also just as insistent that the cornerstone is the foundation of everything and is not itself ever destroyed–just as the cornerstone is treated prophetically in the OT.)
It is specifically the Son (not the Father nor the Spirit) Who is identified as the Logos, or in Aramaic/Hebrew the Memra, of God; but even the pre-Christian Jewish rabbis identified the Memra of God as being God Himself and intimately connected with the action of creation–back to Genesis 1:1. “The Memra of God” was by far the most common way of describing God Himself in the pre-Christian targums, which still survive today in the Jewish tradition, too.
(Although understandably, they don’t much like acknowledging the link to Christian doctrine thereby. Notably, the Talmudic deposits indicate that non-Christian rabbis developed a habit of treating the “Memra” as the Torah or Law–a habit Christians have sometimes gotten into, too–leading to some declarations so blasphemous I don’t even want to talk about them out of grief that Jewish teachers would have dared to say, teach and pass down such things. sigh. In fairness, this is similar to their reluctance to talk about us, too. 
)
Forum poster Melchizedek, back in the scriptural crit thread, gives an objection to the substantial unity of Christ with God as follows (which for ease of reference I’m reposting in total here):
First, prior references in the two “crit” threads to topics in this challenge:
A brief notice about the Petrine descent-into-hades data in the script crit thread here.
The script crit thread discussion of the Cry From the Cross is back here.
Prior entries here in the metaphysical crit thread, on the question of God dying (on a cross or otherwise): here; here (more specifically about the Cry From the Cross; and here and here (an earlier answer to Mel on this topic).
That’ll catch up on discussion so far; more specific discussion to follow.
On to the more specific answer, then.
The briefest exhaustive (but hopefully least exhausting 
) way I can put the reply to your difficulties, Mel, is perhaps as follows.
Either Jesus was annihilated, or he continued to exist in some way by the grace of God.
If Jesus was annihilated, then of course he couldn’t be God; but then also neither was he resurrected, nor ascended, nor did he cooperate with God in any way at all after being annihilated, nor will he ever be cooperating with God in any way ever again. I am unsure what kind of “Christianity” would remain, but I for one have no intention of putting my faith in a mere man annihilated like a sinner by God. (Like a sinner?! Which is it better to believe, that Jesus was an innocent man utterly destroyed by God as though he was a sinner?–or that Jesus was a sinner utterly destroyed by God!? If I must choose between believing one or the other, the choice seems clear enough to me!)
If Jesus continued to exist by God’s grace in any way (especially “spiritually”), then (as previously demonstrated) the Son Incarnate could continue to exist in “death” as the Son, too, just the same. In order to share the death of sinners, God need not die any further than sinners do.
If it is replied that sinners may continue to exist “apart from God”, then my answer is that I do not believe there are multiple Independent Facts; consequently I do not believe any sinner begins self-existence (especially by being a sinner!), nor does a sinner begin existing in ultimate dependence on anything other than God the Omnipresent, in Whom we move and live and have our being, and for Whom and into Whom (as well as from Whom) are all things, and by Whom all things hold together. If I did believe sinners could continue to exist “apart from God”, I would be tacitly refuting both naturalistic and supernaturalistic theism. This is an issue that is resolved one way or another, long before considering whether orthodox trinitarian theism is true.
(Admittedly, trinitarian theist teachers themselves have a bad habit of trying to present sinners as existing “apart from God”, even in a rawly ontological sense; but that’s because they either don’t know any better or are just being sloppy, maybe for rhetoric’s sake. Their problem; not mine.)
The problem, then, is a non-problem. If God annihilated Jesus, then any Christianity is false and should be immediately repudiated and abandoned (and, where possible, vigorously if charitably opposed.) Ironically, this wouldn’t mean trinitarian theism is necessarily false!–only that Jesus could not be the Incarnation of God self-begotten. If God didn’t annihilate Jesus, then neither would the Son, God Incarnate, the only-begotten, be any more annihilated (nor actually separated from the Father) in sharing death with sinners.
(This is aside from going into what atonement and/or propitiation can or must mean. Although I will briefly point out that if Jesus was annihilated by God, then not only was he not in fact the Christ but there could not possibly be atonement with God through him.)
If you want to try proposing that God can annihilate a person and then un-annihilate that same person, then things are going to get rather more technical. 
(By which I mean, six more pages worth of technical, at least. The short version, is that even God cannot unannihilate a person, or any other specific entity, that He has ontologically annihilated; and only that kind of annihilation is going to get past the but-even-sinners-don’t-cease-existing-so-neither-would-God-in-sharing-their-death rebuttal.)
To which I will reiterate a bit of scriptural data already mentioned (in another context) in the script crit thread. But I’ll put that reiteration there, and crosslink here.
So according to the short version, God cannot unannihilate an ontologically annihilated entity. Hm. I’m assuming this is a metaphysical argument, because the scripture I’m aware of states that all things are possible with God.
I actually don’t think things need to be that complicated, really. I’m going to have to go back and read the other links to get a fuller picture.
Even scripture doesn’t state that God can do that which is self-contradictory; and the longer version of the argument indicates this to be a self-contradictory proposition.
I’m working on polishing up my notes on the longer argument for either posting directly here, or (more likely) as a doc file attachment. It could be a couple more days, though. (Mainly due to busy-ness at work. )
Understood.
I’m just having trouble reconciling in my mind the “all things are possible” statement with God’s apparently logical self- limitations. I think I can see how from a logical metaphysical perspective, God could not remove part of himself from existence entirely and then be able to re-establish that existence. Perhaps an (albeit weak) human analogy would be the futility of attempting to restore a limb that you had cut off of yourself.
That’s basically it, though with more detail.
I will add that my line of analysis in the longer form does not depend on Jesus being God Incarnate in any way, and in fact treats Jesus as being only human in order to avoid begging questions. The principles work out the same either way: if God ontologically annihilates even a mere human person, that person is gone and is not coming back ever, period. It doesn’t matter whether Jesus is only a man, some kind of super-angel, fully man and fully God (modalistically or trinitarian or any other way), or docetic (not human at all, only some manifestation.)
I see… So every being must (once created, at least) continue to exist in some form, “somewhere”, although dead physically; as their removal from existence entirely at any point would be irrevocable.
I wonder if we could logically turn this around and make a metaphysical case for pre-existence (of the inner spirit man) ala Origen.
This jives somewhat with the scientific statement that matter is neither created or destroyed, it just changes form.
A bit more complex than that in some ways, but simpler too in some ways. If God chooses to utterly remove an entity or spirit from existence then that’s basically the same as saying He is already choosing not to bring it back. (To “balefire” it out of the existence of its own prior history–if I may borrow a term from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series --would on the other hand be self-contradictory; for God was, at those points of space-time, acting to keep that entity in existence. God would be acting directly against Himself to do that.)
The intention of God regarding any created entity exists distinct from the creation itself, of course, but that isn’t the kind of pre-existence Origen was talking about (and probably doesn’t count as “pre-existence” per se at all.)
This on the other hand has a lot of connection to what it means for something to cease existing, whether materially (in a natural sense) or ontologically (in relation to God). It also leads into some rather interesting thematic overlaps between supernaturalistic theism (especially trinitarian theism) and various non-Christian religious beliefs throughout the world.
These will become more obvious when I finish editing the paper and post it up.
The longer discussion is now edited and attached to this comment.
Some things will be discussed here which are going to look rather… weird.
(I mean weird even to the usual orthodox trinitarian. )
This paper has relevance to annihilationism theories, too–not in refutation of annihilationism, but in clarification of what annihilation can and cannot entail if supernaturalistic theism (broadly speaking, though with some connection to ortho-trin) is true.
How far can anyone die.doc (35 KB)
I’m looking forward to reading that paper when I get a chance.
Oh, and 
@ the Wheel of Time reference… balefire 
. I loved those books, but eventually got away from them when I had to wait too long for the next installment. I can’t even remember which book I got to, now.
I can’t remember who TOR hired to compose the final book in that series (Book 12), after RJ died. But it’s on the way, probably next year.
(Knife of Dreams was Book 11; Crossroads of Twilight Book 10; Winter’s Heart was Book 9. I’ve read WH, and I think I may actually have CoT, but I decided to wait after WH until the whole series was concluded–hearing reviews of CoT from other fans, including the fan whose opinion I most treasure, didn’t encourage me to pick it up. But the general word on KoD, including from her, was that things picked up momentum again substantially. We’ll see about Book 12. I’m in no rush; I have plenty else to read. And to be writing, myself. )
I know I’ve read WH. I can’t recall if I read CoT or not, but the title sounds familiar and for some reason, I have book 10 in my head as the one I stopped with. I definitely haven’t read KoD yet. So it sounds like I’m one or two books behind at this point. I would like to read through to the conclusion of the series at some point, though.
I found this particular bit of the paper both surprising and interesting:
"The most ‘annihilated’ any natural entity can be, paradoxically, is for God to raise that entity to full deity in such a way that it ceases to be a non-God entity: God ceases self-sacrificing for the sake of that entity’s existence as a natural not-God entity (substantially different from God), and so that entity substantially becomes God once more and not not-God.
A derivatively existent not-God person, then, can only cease to exist ontologically, if supernaturalistic theism is true, by the re-ascension (analogically speaking) of the material of the spirit (whatever it may mean to say that a spirit has material existence) into substantial deity by the choice of God to cease His self-sacrifice in regard to that person."
What surprised and interested me is that this seems to me to be akin to what I have envisioned happening at the end of the ages, wherein God becomes all in all! (Though perhaps poor translation may have something to do with a misunderstanding of the phrase “all in all”, or “all and in all”, as some translations would have it.)
Although it does seem to me that in being filled with Christ, our goal is to decrease as he increases, to the point at which there is virtually no distinction between us and Christ (He being the head and us being the body of Christ.)
So is our ultimate goal as believers to become annihilated in this sense after all? To ultimately cease to be individuals altogether and be formed into one corporate body of Christ?
These are very interesting trains of thought and I can see the connection Melki draws with God ultimately being ‘All in All’ but I do have a problem with the ultimate aim being the complete losing of one’s individual identity in this process.
If the ultimate aim is to become ‘Christ-clones’ what is the point of this veil of tears with all of our individuality and struggle if in the final solution all of that experience and variety melts away. Personally I can’t imagine what is appealing about an existence where individuals don’t spark off each other in new and exciting ways (I expect you guys won’t see it like that and I am interested to know what you think as you peer through your glasses darkly ).
What do you think our individual personalities will add to the being(s) that will ultimately exist that couldn’t have been achieved by missing out the sin and redemption phase?
The distinction is that in scriptural eschatology, persons do not cease to exist. When God is altogether in all, the persons though ‘deified’ in a lesser sense (as the EOx like to stress) still exist as distinct and derivative persons.
The annihilation of which I was speaking is the kind of re-ascendence taught by some varieties of pantheism, though, which consider ‘creation’ to be some kind of ‘fall’ in itself that has to be repaired by the cessation of personal existence. (And then, denying that there is in fact some kind of substantial difference between final reality and apparent reality, they conclude in various ways that apparent reality is only an illusion.)
There would have been no point to God creating distinctly personal derivative persons if the individual person-ness did not continue. Even in the Trinity, which is a substantial singularity, the persons are distinctly personal.
However, we don’t exist now as independent “individuals”; though in rebellion we tend to seek just that kind of “individuality”. Our distinct person-ness is already (and always has been) dependent on union with God, both immediately and through natural mediation. Ontologically, we’re going to be in union with God one way or another. The question is whether we will finally be in full personal cooperation with God (and with each other, too!), echoing in our derivative way the unity of the Persons in the singular Deity (especially the subordination of the Son)–or not.