tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post962615723263119096..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Can God experience pain?Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-6009097737926431092016-12-24T17:09:29.972-05:002016-12-24T17:09:29.972-05:00But I had a caveat. For instance, God may not be l...But I had a caveat. For instance, God may not be limited to instantiating one possible world, to the exclusion of all others. Perhaps he can and does instantiate multiple possible worlds, in a multiverse scenario where alternate timelines actually play out. I don't think God is unable to create parallel worlds with alternate histories. But whether he does so–God only knows. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-64874876747174186832016-12-24T16:05:26.695-05:002016-12-24T16:05:26.695-05:00You wrote in a previous post, "In principle, ...You wrote in a previous post, "In principle, the Calvinist God could regret his inability to save every possible person." Here you wrote, "Due to divine invulnerability, God can't experience fear or longing."<br /><br />Why can God, in principle, "regret" something, but not experience "fear" or "longing"? Isn't regret longing for a different option or outcome?varietyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04197587758094541983noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-74992160762546606182016-12-21T21:14:36.445-05:002016-12-21T21:14:36.445-05:00A common analogy is that what we want from a physi...A common analogy is that what we want from a physician is not someone who can empathize, who personally knows what we're going through, but someone who can cure us. And a physician with emotional detachment can treat us better than someone who's emotionally invested, which is why surgeons don't operate on their own family members. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-74171312699329263612016-12-21T13:56:43.845-05:002016-12-21T13:56:43.845-05:00I have to wonder what difference it makes if he di...I have to wonder what difference it makes if he did feel pain. We tend to like other people who have similar experiences to us because it makes them relatable to us. That simply makes us feel more comfortable to be around them. So it's a pretty common thing to assign a subjective relatability to the condescension of Christ in the incarnation.<br /><br />Does that mean that he wasn't relatable before? So there are two directions here that we can see from Scripture:<br /><br />1. The condescension of Christ was necessary for knowing the Father. John 14:9<br /><br />2. The condescension of Christ was not necessary for understanding the Father in the sense that he had already communicated clearly through the Holy Spirit through the prophets sans the incarnation. Luke 16:31<br /><br />The thing about the whole relatability issue is that there is also a tension between Jesus being like us and Jesus being different than us. If he were completely like us so that we could relate to him then there wouldn't be anything special about him to warrant faith in him. So there has to be a point at which the relatable sameness ends and the transcendent otherness begins. The Bible tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. Many teachers of the Bible tell us that the reason is so that Jesus can experience being human so that he could be like us so that he can relate to us. However, this really isn't explicit in the text of Scripture. I can't look at the passage in Luke 2 and make an assumption of the meaning beyond that it was simply a demonstration that he was really and fully human. It's clearly an ontological statement, but not clearly a teleological one. If teleological, then primarily soteriological rather than epistemological.Jim Pembertonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01446388434272680014noreply@blogger.com