I certainly agree; and I am certainly not denying the sinlessness of Christ anywhere.
Ditto.
That kind of argument cuts in principle both ways: someone could apply it as “he couldn’t have failed or he wasn’t really God”. And there are people who do apply that argument, either to thus prove Christ couldn’t have failed (because He was very God) or to thus prove that Christ wasn’t God (because He could have failed).
As it happens, though, I wasn’t asking or questioning or complaining about the notion of Christ failing: that’s an important topic, too, but it wasn’t the notion I was addressing. I thought I made it pretty clear what I was (somewhat rhetorically) asking about, in the quote you quoted from me: Christ could have possibly failed at what? At this, this, this or that!?
It was the ‘this, this, this or that,’ that I was questioning (and complaining) about. Not the notion of Christ possibly failing to do something.
Which questions I was actually asking about, in the quote you quoted, you don’t then go on to talk about. For whatever unstated reason. (Preferring to address instead a notion I wasn’t actually questioning.)
I would put the matter rather more strongly: if Christ had sinned, all reality, past present and future would cease to exist, because God Himself would (per impossibility) cease to exist. Be that as it may.
I agree that if Christ had sinned, He (or he, rather, since God could not sin and even continue existing) would have been bearing his own sin. Why this would disqualify him from also bearing our sins, you haven’t explained; if God says a sinner bears everyone’s sins for sake of satisfying some legal procedure, there is the end of the matter. That would make slightly more sense than for God to punish an innocent mans for sins the innocent man didn’t commit, while letting the actual sinner who ought to have been punished go free: an action that would directly and totally contravene the supposed ‘justice’ requiring the punishment of the sinner in the first place (not to say any ‘justice’ which would refuse to punish the innocent for crimes not committed). Meaning that there is infinitely less than no point trying to claim that such an exchange somehow satisfies (much less again was necessary to satisfy) such a ‘justice’.
You would be better off (slightly), doing as some Christians do who believe God substituted punishing His own Son for punishing sinners instead, and claim that this act had absolutely nothing to do with ‘justice’ but was all about ‘mercy’ instead of ‘justice’: had God acted ‘justly’, He would have punished the sinners; but He had mercy on the sinners and unjustly punished His own innocent Son instead, sacrificing justice for mercy. (Though I rarely run across Christians who go this route who dare to state straight out that God thus acted unjustly instead of justly. But I’ve run into some who do.)
I will emphasize that I DO NOT FOR A MOMENT BELIEVE THAT GOD ACTS TO FULFILL INJUSTICE! But from past experience, I’m a little doubtful that even emphasizing it like that will protect me from some people somehow deciding I must be believing and proposing such a thing as God acting unjustly to fulfill His mercy instead, after all.
I will ask yet again: if Christ had failed at what? If Christ had failed to earn the grace of God in our place?
If God’s grace has to be earned, regardless of whether Christ succeeds or fails to earn God’s grace (a concept which must immediately strike against the notion of Christ Himself being very-God though distinct in Person compared to the Father), then frankly I have no idea how to regard God’s judgment in any case. What does it mean to say God’s judgment is “right” if God’s grace has to be earned–in other words, if God is not Himself intrinsically love in His own essential self-existence? God’s “rightness” couldn’t have anything necessarily or intrinsically to do then with “righteousness” (i.e. dikaiosune, fair-togetherness.)
At best, “right” would then be merely a question of effectual application of power, in which case the only question would be whether God is applying power in judgment with total competency: a question that answers itself if the entity we’re talking about really is the greatest possible power and source of all other (mere) power. Otherwise we’re not yet talking about God’s judgment at all, only the judgment of some lesser power (though still much greater than us in power, of course.)
So, no, I would say that any of us has lost any cogent ability to talk about God being ethically “right” in judgment, if God is not in fact love. Factually correct in judgment, I suppose; effective at mere power application in judgment, I suppose. If that is all you mean by right, then yes, God would be right to do whatever He purposed in regard to us–just like any other tyrant, except infinitely moreso. Christ’s success or failure to earn God’s grace would be entirely beside the point; it isn’t as though God would be less right to leave anyone He wanted as a dead and disembodied soul, if Christ somehow “earned” God’s “grace”: who is Christ to answer back to God? Oh: is Christ supposed to be God Himself, earning His own grace or something? So what?–that wouldn’t make it any less “right” for God to do whatever He damned well pleases to those rebellious souls, or to non-rebellious souls either.
Possibly you don’t actually believe Christ earns God’s grace (for us and/or for himself), either. If not, I hope you will clarify that. But then I’m back to asking, “if Christ had failed at what?”
I don’t much like using the term “deserve” outside a robustly understood and accepted trinitarian theology; but speaking from within that theology (and realizing my answer will be almost certainly misunderstood by anyone who doesn’t already understand why I would answer this as a corollary to trinitarian theology {sigh}), my answer to this is “yes”…
…but my answer to this is emphatically and absolutely NO!! Where have I ever argued, or even asserted, that God loves us because of anything other than Himself (much less because of some quality of ours; much much less because of some “self-redeeming” quality of ours)!?
I point out that I agree with the scriptures about us having a personal responsibility and choice in accepting the grace of God or not, without which acceptance our forgiveness is not in some sense complete; and I stress (as they do) that this responsibility (and even this ability at all) is utterly dependent on God Himself–and somehow this is supposed to involve us having some quality (“self-redeeming” or otherwise) that makes God love us??! That cannot be validly read out of my argument (or my theology) in any fashion; it certainly isn’t what I have ever specifically said–much the contrary.
So much for trusting in the Father then, Who foresakes even the innocent! (But I have more immediate problems with that anyway, as I already commented on in the post from which you’re quoting. Hopefully you’ll get to that later. Hindsight note: well, actually no you don’t ever get to my more immediate problems with that. They’re extremely important, though.)
I guess I wasn’t clear enough about what I was asking; but I’ll present your answers in parallel.
JRP: What is the Son receiving from the atonement and the propitiation enacted by the Son–something He wasn’t receiving from the Father before and that wasn’t being accomplished between them before?
Ran: What Christ received was being forsaken by his Father.
So, Christ had never received abandonment and rejection by his Father (I can believe that easily enough), but this was accomplished when Christ propitiated and atoned his Father. After which atoning and propitiation, the Father must have reversed and unaccomplished that again (since obviously Christ couldn’t have remained abandoned by the Father).
Christ, accomplishing his atoning and propitiating the Father, receives abandonment and rejection by the Father as a result of his accomplishment. What does the Father receive from Christ accomplishing this atonement and propitiation that He wasn’t receiving before from Christ?
Ran: What the Father received was a completely finished victory by and through his only son’s blood - the redemption of mankind.
Okay, so the Father receives the redemption of mankind (which obviously He isn’t doing in any way, shape, form or fashion) from Christ, whom He abandoned and rejected at the accomplishment of Christ’s atoning and propitiation of the Father. The Father accepts this from Christ while rejecting and abandoning Christ, cutting Christ off from (at the very least) fellowship with Himself. I can certainly see why people would have trouble wrapping their minds around this!
Afterward, the Father unaccomplishes His finished and total abandonment of Christ (who, being sinless, remained faithful to the Father instead)–impressed by Christ’s faithfulness compared to His own? Shamed by it maybe? Bribed into accepting Christ again (as He had done before Christ atoned and propitiated Him), by Christ’s gift of the redemption of mankind (whom the Father hadn’t cared about redeeming anyway, though Christ did–for which the Father cut him off, abandoning and forsaking him)?
I know perfectly well you don’t actually believe all that; but obviously there are at least a few pieces missing.
Well, that’s an interesting move! So, assuming all the NT docs which exhort us to repent and be reconciled with God were written before the destruction of the Temple, and assuming that there was some point to them exhorting us (well, not us apparently then, but their original readers for five or ten or fifteen or two years) to repent of our sin and be reconciled to God, pre-70; why does the Temple’s destruction mean that what they were meaning has changed? Or are you talking about something else that happened in 70 which changed the meaning of the NT authors for those of us who live afterward?
To recap, you answered this in reply to my observation that, even in the NT, “while it may be true to say that God’s forgiveness of sinners is already completed in various ways, especially from His eternal perspective and intentions, it is also true to say that insofar as any sinner is still impenitent, our sin is not yet forgiven. Which is why practically everyone from God on down in the scriptures is exhorting sinners to repent, as well as exhorting sinners to be reconciled with God.”
It’s things like this that lead me to keep wondering whether you think only redeemed people are raised from death. Because, once again, and as I said before (in one of those places you quoted, though you didn’t address this topic): it’s pretty damned obvious (so to speak) that when the impenitent wicked are raised from the dead, they sure aren’t being raised from all the consequences of their sins.
So again, while it may be true to say that God’s forgiveness of even those sinners is already completed in various ways, especially from His eternal perspective and intentions, it is also true to say that insofar as any sinner is still impenitent, then their sin (I said ‘our’ originally, speaking as someone who is still occasionally impenitent about my sins) is not yet forgiven. Which is why practically everyone from God on down in the scriptures, including in the final chapter of RevJohn, is exhorting sinners to repent and be healed–including in the final chapter of RevJohn (after the descent of the New Jerusalem from heaven, as well as after the general resurrection and the lake of fire judgment.)
The NT authors don’t think so; Jesus by report doesn’t think so. Neither do I. We do however all say that without repentance by the sinner, there will be no forgiveness. Because such repentance wins forgiveness? NO!!–none of us say that. Salvation isn’t about winning forgiveness at all.
It isn’t only “my idea”. But then, neither is it only “my idea” that in another way we are already forgiven. Both ideas ought to be kept in the theological account. You might find it at least a little less troublesome, if you did so–and even less troublesome if you ever came to understand that God’s forgiveness doesn’t have to be, and never had to be, earned.
(But, if God’s forgiveness does have to be earned after all, then I can see why the NT authors’ insistence that even Christian sinners are not yet forgiven in some way, would be extremely worrisome: who is going to earn that forgiveness, then?! Christ’s work is finished; and no sinner can earn forgiveness; so… Fortunately, not my problem, since I deny that God’s forgiveness has to be earned by anyone. )
You really haven’t been reading me with enough attention, if you think that my starting point is, in any way, “God hates your guts”. I don’t believe God has to be “endeared to us” by anyone at all.
On the contrary, I have been exceedingly consistent in saying what amounts to this: that the starting point of our salvation is God’s love for us. God’s love does not have to be earned, or bought, nor ‘propitiated’, much less ‘atoned’ by anyone. God is love. 1 John 4 says as plainly as anyone could possibly make it, that when God sends His Son as propitiation concerning our sins, He was already loving us by doing so.
Any understanding of what it means for God’s Son to be the {hilasmos}, which does not involve the Father already loving us (because God is love) when He sends the Son, is simply out of bounds from the outset. Similarly, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son”. Not “For God so hated the world that He sent His only-begotten Son so that the Son could somehow convince Him to love the world instead”, nor anything else like that.
God’s love come first; everything else follows from that, including our salvation from sin.