The Incarnation (Thomists vs. Scotists)

[Trevor_Stamm]

Ave Maria,

I’d like to see what the community here thinks about the Incarnation with the Thomistic thesis and the Franciscan thesis.

As St. Aquinas believed the Incarnation would not have happened if man did not sin, that Christ was begotten to Redeem mankind for Adam and Eve’s actions.

And Blessed John Duns Scotus believed the Incarnation would have happened regardless if man have sinned or not, that Jesus was the masterpiece of God and willed first.

I’m inclined to Bl. Scotus for five reasons. One, the Thomistic reason indirectly implies that Jesus and Mary owe their existence to sin, that does not sit very well with me IMO. Secondly, in John 1:1-3 it appears this supports the Scotistic stance, that Jesus was willed first. Thirdly, the Franciscan thesis here implies that since Christ is the materpiece of God, then it is Christ that we desire to be like, not to desire what Adam and Eve were before sin. Fourthly, God being omniscience knew sin would be fall man before creating man, thus He willed his masterpiece first which is justified in my fifth reason. Fifthly, Jesus is God the Son, God is atemporal and actively exists in all time (temporal and atemporal). E.g. we do not exist yet in the second (or attosecond, or however small you want to reduce this too) that is going to pass in time, we only exist in the present time, but God being atemporal is not bound by time and is therefore actively existing in all seconds, minutes, years, etc… that will come to pass. As Jesus is God the Son, He exists atemporal as well and therefore was existing before His Incarnation, though not bodily but as the Word.

Thoughts?

 

[SGWessells]

Ave Maria,

I’d like to see what the community here thinks about the Incarnation with the Thomistic thesis and the Franciscan thesis.

As St. Aquinas believed the Incarnation would not have happened if man did not sin, that Christ was begotten to Redeem mankind for Adam and Eve’s actions.

And Blessed John Duns Scotus believed the Incarnation would have happened regardless if man have sinned or not, that Jesus was the masterpiece of God and willed first.

I’m inclined to Bl. Scotus for five reasons. One, the Thomistic reason indirectly implies that Jesus and Mary owe their existence to sin, that does not sit very well with me IMO. Secondly, in John 1:1-3 it appears this supports the Scotistic stance, that Jesus was willed first. Thirdly, the Franciscan thesis here implies that since Christ is the materpiece of God, then it is Christ that we desire to be like, not to desire what Adam and Eve were before sin. Fourthly, God being omniscience knew sin would be fall man before creating man, thus He willed his masterpiece first which is justified in my fifth reason. Fifthly, Jesus is God the Son, God is atemporal and actively exists in all time (temporal and atemporal). E.g. we do not exist yet in the second (or attosecond, or however small you want to reduce this too) that is going to pass in time, we only exist in the present time, but God being atemporal is not bound by time and is therefore actively existing in all seconds, minutes, years, etc… that will come to pass. As Jesus is God the Son, He exists atemporal as well and therefore was existing before His Incarnation, though not bodily but as the Word.

Thoughts?

If so, then God sees all events in history as one eternal “now”; that being so, it is impossible for him to change anything that happens, because all the consequences that would follow to the end of time are equally present and happen simultaneously. This also makes nonsense of the numerous occasions when God in scripture refers to events that, relative to him, happen sequentially. For example, when he tells Abraham “now I know that you will not withhold your only son” or when he says the outcry against Sodom has reached my ears, so i go to see if it is true." If he sees all things at once, he already knows whether it’s true. Nor do conditional promises make any sense. How can God say"unless Nineveh repents in forty days, i will destroy it" when at the same time he sees Jonah in the fish, Jonah preaching in Nineveh, Nineveh repenting, and himself destroying it centuries later?

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I was under the impression that St. Thomas Aquinas denied that we can know whether the Incarnation would have happened without sin, rather than explicitly denying that it would have happened. I may have been misinformed about this though as I can’t recall reading anything directly by Aquinas on this subject. I guess another possibility would be that he said one thing earlier in life and another later in life.

Anyway, my opinion is that the question is in a sense unanswerable. C.S. Lewis, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, expressed in an imaginative way the idea that no one is ever told what would have happened if they had chosen to act differently than they did. Though I don’t know Lewis’s precise thinking behind this idea and in fact I disagree with some aspects of Lewis’s thought that might touch on this matter, I think there is ultimately something to this idea.

God, being perfectly good, will always do whatever is best for Him to do. This includes creating a world with a history that is, in the final analysis, the best world to exist. Note that I don’t say it’s necessarily the best possible world in terms of having the most good and the least evil, but rather that it is in any case the best world to exist. God could have created a world in which moral and physical evil never occurred and with more and greater things than this world has, but for some reason that hypothetical world would not, I submit, be as good for Him to create as this world with its actual history.

In the specific case of the Incarnation, what has happened in fact is that God has become man specifically in order to redeem mankind. A world in which God became man without this redemptive purpose would, I speculate, be inferior to this actual world in some sense, and so God would never have created/allowed it. There is an infinite, or at least an extremely large, number of possible worlds with possible histories which God in a sense “could” have created, so what sense is there in saying which inferior (in the sense of what God should create) world God would have created if He did not create this one? To create any other world would be unworthy of God’s goodness, so any possibility other than what actually happened would never have been brought about/allowed by God.
Hence the of the words of the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil: “Oh happy fault, which gained for us so great a redeemer!” Not that the Sin of Adam isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but according to the actual plan of history of which God is the master, this sin has been the occasion for the Incarnation and Redemption. The latter at least would not have been possible without sin, and the former would, perhaps, not have been as meaningful without the latter as its context and goal. By permitting moral evil, I suggest, God has brought about greater goods which otherwise would have been logically impossible, including an Incarnation with Redemption through Self-sacrifice as its goal.

 

[yablabo]

Ave Maria,

I’d like to see what the community here thinks about the Incarnation with the Thomistic thesis and the Franciscan thesis.

Thoughts?

To my understanding of the Thomistic position, which is posited as mere opinion on the part of St. Thomas, while God could certainly by his omnipotence make himself incarnate, were there not original sin, there would have been no Incarnation. Whereas the Fraciscan position, to my understanding, revealed by Duns Scotus, seems to be that the Incarnation was too important an event to be caused by/dependent upon sin.

St. Thomas Aquinas based his position on reason of what is revealed in Scripture, that the sin of the first man is assigned as the reason for the Incarnation. He deduces then that it is more in line with reason that God ordained the Incarnation as a means of freeing man from his sin.

It seems to me that the position of Duns Scotus is better (since it strikes me very leery these opinions which could lead one to believe there is change in God), however, I don’t think that the consideration of this subject is in the least bit “mission critical.” And I do think that this can often get in the way of “mission critical” matters.

Best wishes on your search

– Nicole

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

If so, then God sees all events in history as one eternal “now”; that being so, it is impossible for him to change anything that happens, because all the consequences that would follow to the end of time are equally present and happen simultaneously.

Remember, this eternal now is only applicable to Him. Which is why what was willed was eternally willed. Malachi 3:6 “For I the LORD do not change”. Our future is being observed in His eyes now and in the past. Though what is observed by Him in future tense is observable, it is not our present selves in those future points in time. E.G. if you see your chess opponent making a classic maneuver that is by the book, you already know what is going to happen before it happens, but the game is only presently active even though the future of the opponents moves are predicted. Or a more solid example would be a fixed game of cards, or card counters at the black jack tables. Take this concept to the nth degree that God is not just predicting was is coming to pass, He is already present in those passing moments in our temporal existence.

This also makes nonsense of the numerous occasions when God in scripture refers to events that, relative to him, happen sequentially. For example, when he tells Abraham “now I know that you will not withhold your only son”.

Ah. Remember a couple of verses back in Gen 22:5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the ***; I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” Abraham already knew in his heart that God will not let him do this as he stated, he and his son will return. If he knew, don’t you think God would’ve too? All this as well was prefigurements for the New Testament, as the appearance of the Ram was the representation of the Lamb of God sacrificed on the altar. This was a necessary event to not only establish where Jerusalem was going to be, but a revelation in scripture to fulfill the coming of Christ.

or when he says the outcry against Sodom has reached my ears, so i go to see if it is true." If he sees all things at once, he already knows whether it’s true.

Correct, so observe why it was written.

Nor do conditional promises make any sense. How can God say"unless Nineveh repents in forty days, i will destroy it" when at the same time he sees Jonah in the fish, Jonah preaching in Nineveh, Nineveh repenting, and himself destroying it centuries later?

I’m going to have to brush up my theology on this subject with a future reply. But I’m hoping your starting to see the pattern.

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

I was under the impression that St. Thomas Aquinas denied that we can know whether the Incarnation would have happened without sin, rather than explicitly denying that it would have happened. I may have been misinformed about this though as I can’t recall reading anything directly by Aquinas on this subject. I guess another possibility would be that he said one thing earlier in life and another later in life.

Our Angelic Doctor made it clear that this subject is of purely private thought for him and made it known that his beliefs on it is not a doctrine of his. He even stated that the opposite is very plausible, as his two professors shared the Franciscan thesis (though before it was called thus) and respected their opinions not just for their titles and superiority but for their argumentative points.

God, being perfectly good, will always do whatever is best for Him to do. This includes creating a world with a history that is, in the final analysis, the best world to exist. Note that I don’t say it’s necessarily the best possible world in terms of having the most good and the least evil, but rather that it is in any case the best world to exist. God could have created a world in which moral and physical evil never occurred and with more and greater things than this world has, but for some reason that hypothetical world would not, I submit, be as good for Him to create as this world with its actual history.

110% agreed. Stole the words right out of my mind

In the specific case of the Incarnation, what has happened in fact is that God has become man specifically in order to redeem mankind. A world in which God became man without this redemptive purpose would, I speculate, be inferior to this actual world in some sense, and so God would never have created/allowed it. There is an infinite, or at least an extremely large, number of possible worlds with possible histories which God in a sense “could” have created, so what sense is there in saying which inferior (in the sense of what God should create) world God would have created if He did not create this one? To create any other world would be unworthy of God’s goodness, so any possibility other than what actually happened would never have been brought about/allowed by God.
Hence the of the words of the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil: “Oh happy fault, which gained for us so great a redeemer!” Not that the Sin of Adam isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but according to the actual plan of history of which God is the master, this sin has been the occasion for the Incarnation and Redemption. The latter at least would not have been possible without sin, and the former would, perhaps, not have been as meaningful without the latter as its context and goal. By permitting moral evil, I suggest, God has brought about greater goods which otherwise would have been logically impossible, including an Incarnation with Redemption through Self-sacrifice as its goal.

Exactly. Which is why I stated He is omniscience. The best reality was willed and any alternate reality contemplated is incoherent. The sin of Adam and Eve was not an accident as the Thomistic approach seems to suggest. But strangely enough, St. Aquinas stated that “The tree was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not because it had the power to cause knowledge, but because of the sequel: by eating of it man learned by experience the difference between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience.” With this observation it is fully open to suggest the fall was necessary for us to ultimately know why, by action of free will, we need to obey and to ultimately want to love Him freely. This does not suggest God willed sin into existence or evil to occur, for that which happened (Lucifer’s actions, The Fall, etc…) was done out the agents free will. The actual existing reality we live is the truest and best for created beings to know God, love God, and to serve God.

 

[SGWessells]

Trevor Stamm wrote: “Remember, this eternal now is only applicable to Him. Which is why what was willed was eternally willed. Malachi 3:6 “For I the LORD do not change”. Our future is being observed in His eyes now and in the past. Though what is observed by Him in future tense is observable, it is not our present selves in those future points in time.”

I don’t see how this meets the problem. It is not that God sees our future selves as different, but that God sees our past, present, and future selves all at once. As I sit at my keyboard now, I remember things that happened earlier; getting out of bed, eating breakfast, cleaning the apartment, going out to lunch and so on, but I am not still doing all those things; but as I understand the theory, God sees me doing all these things with no interval of time elapsing for him. Not only that, but he sees the earth forming from the sun, the evolution of life, the first humans, the development of architecture, the first cities, the early empires, and (not to be tedious), the incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, all the way to the sun going supernova and incinerating the earth (or however time ends), all at once, as if they were all happening “now.” There is no event in all of history which is future to God, which he does not see in the same way that we see events happening in our “now”. If that is so, scripture becomes even more nonsensical than it is without that theory. How can God influence the course of history when to him, there is no course of history, but everything is happening at the same time? No before or after. Since to God, no event follows another, there is no way to make an event happen the way he wants; it is already happening. The only way to be “in control of history” is to determine absolutely and unchangeably everything that happens before creating the world, then make it all at once. But then, where is free will?
Not only that, but how long will each event endure in God’s knowledge? Does God see events as we do, each one morphing into the next before we are hardly aware of it? That would be sequential, and would mean God was in time, not outside it. So God must see all events happening eternally and everlastingly the same; not one can slip from his present consciousness into a “past.” That means Christ hangs ion the cross in agony forever (because if he doesn’t, then it happened in God’s past, and God doesn’t have a past). Same with the resurrection, the ascension, the incarnation, the birth, etc. and with every other event. This is absurd and unthinkable. Nor can you take refuge behind God’s incomprehensibility, because this theory of God’s temporal transcendence is proposed as an explanation of why his foresight and our free will are both possible, and why he can prophesy events and so on. But an explanation that makes no sense cannot explain anything; an explanation that nobody can understand cannot resolve a contradiction. All it can do is give those who want to believe two incompatible things an excuse to ignore the contradiction.
In addition, God does change his mind, according to the Bible. He is sorry he made man (Gen. 6:6,7), repented of the evil he had thought to do to Israel (Ex. 32:14), sorry he made Saul king (1 Sam 15:11); when David made a census, God sent a plague, but 1 Chron 21:15 says that when the angel was at the point of destroying Jerusalem, “the LORD saw, and changed his mind, about the calamity, and said to the destroying angel, 'Enough…” (NAB). There are many more examples, but check out Jer. 18, 7-10; those verses refute both your contentions, by reporting God as saying, “At one moment I may decree concerning a nation or kingdom that I will uproot and tear down and destroy it; but if that nation against whom I have decreed turns from its evil, then I will have a change of heart regarding the evil I have decreed.” [Verse 9] “And at another moment…”. Here we have God living in a succession of moments, speaking as if he does not know yet how the nation will ct, and stand ready to change his mind accordingly. So much for “I the Lord do not change.”

 

[SGWessells]

God, being perfectly good, will always do whatever is best for Him to do. This includes creating a world with a history that is, in the final analysis, the best world to exist. Note that I don’t say it’s necessarily the best possible world in terms of having the most good and the least evil, but rather that it is in any case the best world to exist. God could have created a world in which moral and physical evil never occurred and with more and greater things than this world has, but for some reason that hypothetical world would not, I submit, be as good for Him to create as this world with its actual history.

To my mind, this almost borders on blasphemy. How can you say God’s goodness is infinite if there are possible worlds that would have more good and less evil than this one, but God didn’t create any of them? Seems to me that what we have as primary data is the world as it is, and we have to shape our ideas of God to fit. We don’t get to ask what kind of world a being of infinite power and goodness would have made, and say our world is it, because this world has too much evil, pain, and suffering in it to make that probable. We have to come up with all sorts of expedients because we begin with two incompatible assumptionsne, God has infinite power, goodness and knowledge, and two, he created this world, permitting all its evil (which we daily experience) for the sake of a hypothetical greater good (which we do not). But what makes us so sure that God is all good, or all-powerful? It is our obstinate clinging to that dogma at all costrs which makes us resort to mental contortions to make it fit this world we are stuck with.

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Trevor Stamm wrote: “Remember, this eternal now is only applicable to Him. Which is why what was willed was eternally willed. Malachi 3:6 “For I the LORD do not change”. Our future is being observed in His eyes now and in the past. Though what is observed by Him in future tense is observable, it is not our present selves in those future points in time.”

I don’t see how this meets the problem. It is not that God sees our future selves as different, but that God sees our past, present, and future selves all at once. As I sit at my keyboard now, I remember things that happened earlier; getting out of bed, eating breakfast, cleaning the apartment, going out to lunch and so on, but I am not still doing all those things; but as I understand the theory, God sees me doing all these things with no interval of time elapsing for him. Not only that, but he sees the earth forming from the sun, the evolution of life, the first humans, the development of architecture, the first cities, the early empires, and (not to be tedious), the incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, all the way to the sun going supernova and incinerating the earth (or however time ends), all at once, as if they were all happening “now.” There is no event in all of history which is future to God, which he does not see in the same way that we see events happening in our “now”. If that is so, scripture becomes even more nonsensical than it is without that theory. How can God influence the course of history when to him, there is no course of history, but everything is happening at the same time? No before or after. Since to God, no event follows another, there is no way to make an event happen the way he wants; it is already happening. The only way to be “in control of history” is to determine absolutely and unchangeably everything that happens before creating the world, then make it all at once. But then, where is free will?
Not only that, but how long will each event endure in God’s knowledge? Does God see events as we do, each one morphing into the next before we are hardly aware of it? That would be sequential, and would mean God was in time, not outside it. So God must see all events happening eternally and everlastingly the same; not one can slip from his present consciousness into a “past.” That means Christ hangs ion the cross in agony forever (because if he doesn’t, then it happened in God’s past, and God doesn’t have a past). Same with the resurrection, the ascension, the incarnation, the birth, etc. and with every other event. This is absurd and unthinkable. Nor can you take refuge behind God’s incomprehensibility, because this theory of God’s temporal transcendence is proposed as an explanation of why his foresight and our free will are both possible, and why he can prophesy events and so on. But an explanation that makes no sense cannot explain anything; an explanation that nobody can understand cannot resolve a contradiction. All it can do is give those who want to believe two incompatible things an excuse to ignore the contradiction.
In addition, God does change his mind, according to the Bible. He is sorry he made man (Gen. 6:6,7), repented of the evil he had thought to do to Israel (Ex. 32:14), sorry he made Saul king (1 Sam 15:11); when David made a census, God sent a plague, but 1 Chron 21:15 says that when the angel was at the point of destroying Jerusalem, “the LORD saw, and changed his mind, about the calamity, and said to the destroying angel, 'Enough…” (NAB). There are many more examples, but check out Jer. 18, 7-10; those verses refute both your contentions, by reporting God as saying, “At one moment I may decree concerning a nation or kingdom that I will uproot and tear down and destroy it; but if that nation against whom I have decreed turns from its evil, then I will have a change of heart regarding the evil I have decreed.” [Verse 9] “And at another moment…”. Here we have God living in a succession of moments, speaking as if he does not know yet how the nation will ct, and stand ready to change his mind accordingly. So much for “I the Lord do not change.”

This is the age old argument of the supposed incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. I suggest St. Augustine, St. Boethius and St. Thomas Aquinas on this issue.

I’m a fan of Boethius, and a good start is google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGHP_enUS428US428&q=st.+Boethius#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGHP_enUS428US428&source=hp&q=boethius+divine+foreknowledge&pbx=1&oq=Boethius+divin&aq=0&aqi=g1g-v3&aql=1&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3837l8283l0l8907l7l7l0l0l0l0l234l967l0.5.1l6l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=b16aeffcf7de3bb4&biw=1680&bih=822

 

[thistle]

Ave Maria,

I’d like to see what the community here thinks about the Incarnation with the Thomistic thesis and the Franciscan thesis.

As St. Aquinas believed the Incarnation would not have happened if man did not sin, that Christ was begotten to Redeem mankind for Adam and Eve’s actions.

And Blessed John Duns Scotus believed the Incarnation would have happened regardless if man have sinned or not, that Jesus was the masterpiece of God and willed first.

I’m inclined to Bl. Scotus for five reasons. One, the Thomistic reason indirectly implies that Jesus and Mary owe their existence to sin, that does not sit very well with me IMO. Secondly, in John 1:1-3 it appears this supports the Scotistic stance, that Jesus was willed first. Thirdly, the Franciscan thesis here implies that since Christ is the materpiece of God, then it is Christ that we desire to be like, not to desire what Adam and Eve were before sin. Fourthly, God being omniscience knew sin would be fall man before creating man, thus He willed his masterpiece first which is justified in my fifth reason. Fifthly, Jesus is God the Son, God is atemporal and actively exists in all time (temporal and atemporal). E.g. we do not exist yet in the second (or attosecond, or however small you want to reduce this too) that is going to pass in time, we only exist in the present time, but God being atemporal is not bound by time and is therefore actively existing in all seconds, minutes, years, etc… that will come to pass. As Jesus is God the Son, He exists atemporal as well and therefore was existing before His Incarnation, though not bodily but as the Word.

Thoughts?

The Incarnation would not have been necessary if Adam and Eve had not fallen. In my view if the Fall had not happened Jesus would not have walked among us. No need.

CCC 457 The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God, who “loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins”: “the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world”, and “he was revealed to take away sins”:

Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Well, I’m no theologian, so I’ll make it short.

My theology is generally Thomist (I like the Jesuit/Congruist idea for grace, and thomist ideas for most of the rest of the stuff shown on newadvent and the Thomist section), so I think the incarnation would probably not have been necessary, since God would’ve known that Adam and Eve wouldn’t have sinned, therefore Jesus didn’t need to become man. But because God knew Adam and Eve would sin, God willed that his divine Son should become man.

My two cents.

JOey

 

[SGWessells]

This is the age old argument of the supposed incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. I suggest St. Augustine, St. Boethius and St. Thomas Aquinas on this issue.

I’m a fan of Boethius, and a good start is google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGHP_enUS428US428&q=st.+Boethius#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGHP_enUS428US428&source=hp&q=boethius+divine+foreknowledge&pbx=1&oq=Boethius+divin&aq=0&aqi=g1g-v3&aql=1&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3837l8283l0l8907l7l7l0l0l0l0l234l967l0.5.1l6l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=b16aeffcf7de3bb4&biw=1680&bih=822

Thank you for the recommendations. I looked at the first google article quoting Boethius, but it does not address the main issue I have. Here are relevant excerpts:

"6. Therefore the foreknowledge of God is not a foreknowledge of future events, but knowledge of a never changing present. (Providence is the name of God’s knowledge, not “prevision.”)
7. Therefore divine foreknowledge simply sees things present before it, as they will later turn out to be in what we regard as the future.
8. Therefore God knows that something will happen in the future (our future) and at the same time knows that it will not happen through necessity.

Answer: from the standpoint of divine knowledge, future things (including future acts of free will) are necessary, but only because of the condition of their being known by God. (For whatever is known, must be as it is known to be—conditional necessity.)

However, considered in themselves, acts of free will are not necessary (simple necessity); before they happened, they were able not to happen."

If God’s knowledge is in “a never changing present”,(#6), then to him, things are NOT “able not to happen” because he sees them happening at the same time as everything else (# 7). To God, there are no intervals between one event and the next, if he sees time as a “never changing present.” There is no place in that “stream” for him to alter or influence the course of events because all happen simultaneously. I can see where we, who experience time sequentially, can choose to do A rather than Non-A, and are accountable for our choice, because to us, intention is part of accountability, and whether or not we are, in God’s eyes, able to do Non-A, we can still want to, or resist our desire but unsuccessfully. But if God’s eye “simply sees things present before it, as they will later turn out to be in what we regard as the future”, then no event can either begin nor end; for if it begins, then there is a time when God did not see it, in which case it is not eternally present to him; and the same if it ends. Since God is eternally unchanging, this “solution” implies that all events in history, including the birth, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, are eternally present to God, with no ending, of infinite duration,.just as they happened / are happening / will happen on earth. For Jesus, this must be intolerably schizophrenic. Which one is he “in”, as it were? All at once" ? This requires him to be seated at the right hand of the Father, hanging in agony on the cross, and lying in the manger in Bethlehem, all at once. Even for God, that’s a stretch.
It also makes parts of scripture seem nonsensical, as when God says, “I will go down and see if such-and-such is the case,” or “I am sorry I did thus and so.” How can God say these things if he sees the event happening at the same time that he says “I will go see”? How can he be sorry he did X when all the consequences of X down to the end of time are as immediately present to his sight as X itself? The whole notion seems incoherent and inherently absurd to me.
I will look into the big A’s (Augustine and Aquinas) when time permits, but I remain baffled as to how this eternal present thing could work.

 

[Luke_K]

I’m inclined to the Scotist view, just because I think God in his graciousness would like to become man so we could relate to him more easily, whether or not we sinned. It’s kind of hard to be in a personal, intimate relationship with an infinite, transcendent super-being, particularly when we’re finite and physical.

 

[centurionguard]

The Incarnation would not have been necessary if Adam and Eve had not fallen. In my view if the Fall had not happened Jesus would not have walked among us. No need.

CCC 457 The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God, who “loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins”: “the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world”, and “he was revealed to take away sins”:

Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?

IMHO it was destined even before our Ancestral Parents were created in God’s Divine Plan that we were purposefully designed with the flaw of our lower nature.
God is All-Knowing. We were created as lower creatures than the Angels.
We would be like angelic creatures had their been no original temptation of sin.

Beside the fact after the Great War that broke out in heaven Lucifer/Satan lost most of his powers and was thrown to earth before humans even existed. Thus Satan once a great Angel of God himself loathed the thought of God sharing His thoughts of creating lower creatures and giving them the spiritual potential to become even greater than the Angels. God’s Divine Plan of Redemption already existed in eternity.

I sometimes wonder if this was one of the huge reasons why Lucifer once one of Gods most loved and greatest of angels turned against God when he learned of Gods Divine Plan of Redemption and creating lower creatures as humans. Pride entered Lucifer’s heart when he found out about Gods Plan.

 

[Jerry-Jet]

God did not create Adam and Eve flawed.

God is perfect.

He is incapable of creating junk!

 

[Aelred_Minor]

IMHO it was destined even before our Ancestral Parents were created in God’s Divine Plan that we were purposefully designed with the flaw of our lower nature.
God is All-Knowing. We were created as lower creatures than the Angels.
We would be like angelic creatures had their been no original temptation of sin.

Beside the fact after the Great War that broke out in heaven Lucifer/Satan lost most of his powers and was thrown to earth before humans even existed. Thus Satan once a great Angel of God himself loathed the thought of God sharing His thoughts of creating lower creatures and giving them the spiritual potential to become even greater than the Angels. God’s Divine Plan of Redemption already existed in eternity.

I sometimes wonder if this was one of the huge reasons why Lucifer once one of Gods most loved and greatest of angels turned against God when he learned of Gods Divine Plan of Redemption and creating lower creatures as humans. Pride entered Lucifer’s heart when he found out about Gods Plan.

The idea that Satan’s rebellion was prompted by a revelation to the angels either of the creation of human beings or of the Incarnation is a very old one, and I like it because of its implied criticism of anti-incarnational/anti-material heresies, though I have no idea if it’s true.

If by “flaw in our lower nature” you simply mean that we have a body, well this is the same anti-material ethic that is so antithetical to Christianity, in which we worship the God who became flesh. If you mean the fact of being able to be tempted to sin, well the angels are pure spirits and they had that.

If you mean that there is something in our original natures as created by God that inherently tempts us, that would effectively mean that God tempts us (by positively creating something within us that inherently tempts us), and that idea is explicitly rejected in James 1:13.

What we do have though is a situation in which God creates us knowing that we will be tempted and will fall and, in my opinion, permissively willing that temptation and the Fall itself as a means of bringing about greater good, like the Incarnation and Redemption. In this sense I think you might have the right instinct in seeing a certain sense in which God “always” planned history to proceed the way it has, although we could also speak in another sense of the “original plan of God” in which we would always obeyed Him and everyone would have been happy, a world which could be entirely ordainingly willed by God, but which on the other hand would be inferior to this one in an overwhelming way.

 

[centurionguard]

The idea that Satan’s rebellion was prompted by a revelation to the angels either of the creation of human beings or of the Incarnation is a very old one, and I like it because of its implied criticism of anti-incarnational/anti-material heresies, though I have no idea if it’s true.

If by “flaw in our lower nature” you simply mean that we have a body, well this is the same anti-material ethic that is so antithetical to Christianity, in which we worship the God who became flesh. If you mean the fact of being able to be tempted to sin, well the angels are pure spirits and they had that.

If you mean that there is something in our original natures as created by God that inherently tempts us, that would effectively mean that God tempts us (by positively creating something within us that inherently tempts us), and that idea is explicitly rejected in James 1:13.

What we do have though is a situation in which God creates us knowing that we will be tempted and will fall and, in my opinion, permissively willing that temptation and the Fall itself as a means of bringing about greater good, like the Incarnation and Redemption. In this sense I think you might have the right instinct in seeing a certain sense in which God “always” planned history to proceed the way it has, although we could also speak in another sense of the “original plan of God” in which we would always obeyed Him and everyone would have been happy, a world which could be entirely ordainingly willed by God, but which on the other hand would be inferior to this one in an overwhelming way.

Interesting Thoughts !!!

What we do have though is a situation in which God creates us knowing that we will be tempted and will fall and, in my opinion, permissively willing that temptation and the Fall itself as a means of bringing about greater good, like the Incarnation and Redemption. In this sense I think you might have the right instinct in seeing a certain sense in which God “always” planned history to proceed the way it has, although we could also speak in another sense of the “original plan of God” in which we would always obeyed Him and everyone would have been happy, a world which could be entirely ordainingly willed by God, but which on the other hand would be inferior to this one in an overwhelming way

** although we could also speak in another sense of the “original plan of God” in which we would always obeyed Him and everyone would have been happy, a world which could be entirely ordainingly willed by God, but which on the other hand would be inferior to this one in an overwhelming way**

But if the above as you describe would have taken place #1. The Divine Plan of Redemption would never have taken place. #2. We wouldn’t be in this world speaking about it right now. All things past, present, future have been all Ordained by God who reigns inside and outside the (“human”) understanding of time.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

To my mind, this almost borders on blasphemy. How can you say God’s goodness is infinite if there are possible worlds that would have more good and less evil than this one, but God didn’t create any of them? Seems to me that what we have as primary data is the world as it is, and we have to shape our ideas of God to fit. We don’t get to ask what kind of world a being of infinite power and goodness would have made, and say our world is it, because this world has too much evil, pain, and suffering in it to make that probable. We have to come up with all sorts of expedients because we begin with two incompatible assumptionsne, God has infinite power, goodness and knowledge, and two, he created this world, permitting all its evil (which we daily experience) for the sake of a hypothetical greater good (which we do not). But what makes us so sure that God is all good, or all-powerful? It is our obstinate clinging to that dogma at all costrs which makes us resort to mental contortions to make it fit this world we are stuck with.

God, as conceived of in Christianity, is an infinite being, meaning He has infinite perfection. If God has infinite perfection then He has infinite goodness, since goodness is a perfection. He also has infinite power, since power is a perfection. Same with every other perfection, with the partial exception of perfections that inherently imply a finite being, like extension. But extension is just a finite mode of being, and God has infinite being. Of course, in God all these perfections are one and the same because of His complete simplicity (if God were complex He would be made up of parts each of which is less than the whole. Anything less than Infinite Being is finite, yet the sum of finite parts will always be finite, therefore the infinite being is not composed of parts) but this point doesn’t effect our discussion.

If the being I refer to as God exists, then He is all-good. What kind of world would a perfectly good God create? We might be tempted to say “the best world possible, with the most possible good and no evil.” Really though before we get to that question the real answer is that He would create the world that would be the best for Him to create. What would be the guiding principle, the highest good in light of which to create the world. There could be no higher principle than Himself, than his own “glorification” in traditional Christian terminology. Therefore God would create the world which best glorifies Himself. If a world with less good and some evil would give greater glory to God, for example by occasioning the punishment or forgiveness of evildoers, then He would create exactly such a world, never of course creating evil itself, but allowing it to come about so as to occasion an otherwise logically impossible greater good, all ultimately working towards the greater glory of God.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Now, SGWessells, you probably think I’m bordering on blasphemy again, or else have crossed the line- that the God I describe would be cruel, heartless, and above all totally selfish, putting us through misery so that He can have some additional finite glory besides the infinite beatitude He already has. I predict that you would react this way because it’s something I’ve struggled with myself. I would suggest there are two related problems of perception feeding this reaction.

First (though what I will talk about second has the logical priority), there is our selfishness to consider. When thinking about how we wish God would run the universe, we generally fall into wishing he would run it in the way that would most benefit ourselves, or even that would most benefit the created universe itself. This is because we clearly experience the goodness of ourselves and of the material things around us, but do not clearly and directly experience God’s goodness, and therefore we fall into the temptation to make the good of ourselves or of the material world absolute rather than keeping it relative to a higher good outside our experience.

The second of course is that in this life we don’t directly perceive God as He is. We might know of Him through faith or philosophy, but we don’t really know Him as He is. Because of this inability to see or even comprehend God as He is, we imagine up some sort of vague creature and put it in the place of God in our minds.

This is natural and inevitable, and even good and helpful to an extent, but we must remember that it’s only a mental icon indicating God and not God Himself. If we do not remember this then we can fall into thinking of God as if He were a finite creature, whose being the ultimate point of reference for what actually happens and does not happen would be unjust and evil- the god of the maltheists. Even if we do remember that God is incomprehensibly better than anything we can imagine, though, His incomprehensibility still can make Him seem distant and abstract, while lesser goods which are more available to our experience are perceived fully or nearly fully. This can lead to the temptation to dismiss God as too ethereal to be as good as the things we experience thoroughly and thus to exalt lesser goods, like human happiness, over God, or to demand that He always serve these lesser goods above all or else we will reject Him.

To this line of reasoning you might say, “well, tell that to a mother who just lost her child” or “exactly how did Auschwitz glorify God?” There is great power to these objections, because they are evils of such intensity. Confronting them helps us remember that why God permits evil is still truly a mystery and no theologian has even, I dare say, really explained it fully and satisfyingly. What we can say safely is that if God exists, then there is a reason for these things, and we can trust Him to run the universe in the way He really should. Maybe someday we will understand more fully. Before he was elected Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger once wrote something to the effect that at the Final Judgment perhaps it won’t just be us who are called to account for our actions, but God Himself will somehow be put on trial for the way He ran the universe, and the answer to the mystery of suffering, he speculated, will be displayed for the world to see in the wounds of Christ.

 

[centurionguard]

God, as conceived of in Christianity, is an infinite being, meaning He has infinite perfection. If God has infinite perfection then He has infinite goodness, since goodness is a perfection. He also has infinite power, since power is a perfection. Same with every other perfection, with the partial exception of perfections that inherently imply a finite being, like extension. But extension is just a finite mode of being, and God has infinite being. Of course, in God all these perfections are one and the same because of His complete simplicity (if God were complex He would be made up of parts each of which is less than the whole. Anything less than Infinite Being is finite, yet the sum of finite parts will always be finite, therefore the infinite being is not composed of parts) but this point doesn’t effect our discussion.

If the being I refer to as God exists, then He is all-good. What kind of world would a perfectly good God create? We might be tempted to say “the best world possible, with the most possible good and no evil.” Really though before we get to that question the real answer is that He would create the world that would be the best for Him to create. What would be the guiding principle, the highest good in light of which to create the world. There could be no higher principle than Himself, than his own “glorification” in traditional Christian terminology. Therefore God would create the world which best glorifies Himself. If a world with less good and some evil would give greater glory to God, for example by occasioning the punishment or forgiveness of evildoers, then He would create exactly such a world, never of course creating evil itself, but allowing it to come about so as to occasion an otherwise logically impossible greater good, all ultimately working towards the greater glory of God.

In Genesis Chapter One God never said He created a perfect world.
Near the end He said He Saw That It Was Good.

[1] In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. [2] And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. [3] And God said: Be light made. And light was made. [4] And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. [5] And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day.

[6] And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. [7] And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so. [8] And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day. [9] God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven, be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. [10] And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. ** And God saw that it was good.**