According to some versions of the doctrine of kenosis, God, the Son, suspended the use of some of his divine powers while he walked the earth. The doctrine is generally taken to mean that Jesus voluntarily suspended the use of some of his powers while he walked the earth. His powers were not lessened in any way and, like a powerful army during peacetime, he could use them at any moment. However, according to other versions of kenosis, the doctrine implies that one divine power is the power to give up some powers for some time. On this view, Jesus not only restricts his use of some powers while on…
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Notes: Does God Have a Nature?
When we say that God is good or that he is all-powerful we are predicating something of a subject as we are when we say “Socrates is wise.” On a realist view, the predicate is a property that is instantiated by the particular. “Wise” is a property of Socrates and, as such, and given realism, the property of is what is referred to by the term “wise.” To say that God is wise, or good is to say that God has the property of wisdom or goodness. If there are such things, as realists suggest, then they must exist in order to be referred to. In common parlance, such things…
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No Concept, No Belief
You couldn’t believe in something unless you knew something about it. If I said to you that a meroganon lives at the end of my street you might say I am nuts, but you would first want to know something about a meroganon. You couldn’t know if I am nuts unless you knew something about a meroganon. I could describe one to you by listing some of its basic features. After some time you would have in your mind the concept of a meroganon and you could then be justified in thinking that I have lost my mind. Consider the person (there may be more than one) who has not…
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Sermon: Daniel in the Lion’s Den
Daniel Daniel was in a tight spot. He was huddled in the corner of a pit. Above the pit there was a high wall and across from him was a wooden wall in the pit with a gate in it. and then the door to the outside with a huge boulder preventing any thought of escape. The last face he had seen was the face of the king. He could see the pain in his face, the anguish of one who is regretting his own decision. What had he said? “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” That was what got him put here in the first place.…
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Can God Marvel?
God is marvelous. He causes in his worshipers a sense of wonder, awe and amazement. But does God feel the same? Can he marvel at himself? At the very least marveling implies finding something to be beyond conceptual reach. It appears to be connected with mystery. Sometimes our marveling can be because we do not have the concepts to understand what we see. A magic trick can be like this. We cannot understand how it is done even though we might be sure that, if someone explained the trick, we would understand it. A trick looses its mystery when we know how it is done. In other cases we marvel…
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Something and Nothing
… What do we mean by “nothing”? To define nothing one has to be able to conceive of nothing. Some say that it is impossible to conceive of nothing since nothing entails somehow the non-existence of time and space. We might be able to conceive of a particle-free space, but spacelessness and timelessness seem illusive. Of course, this does not touch on abstract objects, if one believes in such things. Others suggest that the findings of logic conclude that necessarily, something exists. Logic cannot, on that reading, conclude that nothing is possible. One suggestion is to say that time and space are matter dependent, that time and space are relations of material…
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Good Grouping, Bad Shot
What if all the people who have ever existed got together in a massive wiki project and, with unlimited time, were tasked in defining God? There is one rule: they must do it without reference to the Bible. And what if they came to agreement, if they worked until they had an utterly coherent doctrine of God, what would they have achieved? In target shooting there are two kinds of score, one that refers to proximity to a target and one that refers to proximity to other shots. Scoring well by virtue of consistency is called good grouping. If all my shots are close together, but far from the bull’s…
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Learning Conditions
There are three conditions necessary for human learning. First, it must be possible, in principle, for human beings to obtain knowledge. They must be able to come to true beliefs. Second, it must be possible for human beings to make sense of experience; the world must be intelligible. Third, it must be possible for human beings to communicate with one another. A teacher has to be able to impart knowledge to the student. The question is: what reality would provide all three conditions? Answer: the God of the Bible. First, God is omniscient. Since God knows all things, past, present and future, God cannot be mistaken about anything. God defines…