Showing posts with label Robert Reymond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Reymond. Show all posts

Monday, January 11, 2016

Reymond might be an Arminian

On Pg. 178 "By what they have said about his immutability, as a consequence of their understanding of God's eternality as involving timelessness, classical theists have sometimes portrayed God as One virtually frozen in timeless immobility or inactivity (this is one example of the theological mischief which accrues to the ascription of timelessness to God)." Who has said that God's immutability means that God is basically frozen in time?
"These theists correctly argue that since God is a perfect being, he is incapable of any ontological change, since any change must be either for the better or for the worse. He cannot change for the better since he is already perfect, and he cannot change for the worse since that would result in his becoming imperfect. The same holds true, it is incorrectly argued, with regard to any motion or activity on his part. Any movement must either improve his condition or detract from it. But neither is possible for a perfect Deity. Therefore, he remains in an 'eternally frozen pose' (Packer's characterization) as the impassible God. But this is not the biblical description of God." -It isn't, then what is?
"The God of Scripture is CONSTANTLY acting into and reacting to the human condition. In no sense is he metaphysically insulated or detached from, unconcerned with, or insensitive or indifferent to the condition of fallen men."
So God reacts to man's actions? WOW! There you have it Reymond is an Arminian at best, but according to the previous status he might be a humanist or atheist at worse.

Is Raymond an atheist?


This is what Raymond says, "Third, there seems to be an inherent contradiction in saying that a timeless person lives in the 'eternal present' because the referent of the word 'present' has significance only in the ordering category which includes past and future as well. Nicholas Wolterstorff points out:
In order for something to be timeless, none of these ordering relationships [past, present, future] can be applicable to that being. If a being is truly timeless, it should be impossible for it to exist simultaneously with anything else, or before anything else, or after anything else. Once it is established [or argued, as Hodge does - author] that a being does occupy one of the ordering relations, then that being is clearly temporal." - A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, Pg. 175


I do not know about you but Raymond's argument is ridiculous and his support for Wolterstorff is also. So God being present means that he is temporal? At best I do not know what this means, but at worse this is pure atheism - If a being is truly timeless, it should be impossible for it to exist simultaneously with anything else...

Monday, September 7, 2015

God's thoughts are not our thoughts but that does not mean we cannot think God's thoughts after Him

"As for Deuteronomy 29:29, Matthew 11:27, Luke 10:22, and John 1:18, 6:46 (see v. 45), these verses actually teach that human beings can know God and his thoughts truly to the degree that he reveals himself in his spoken word. Finally, Isaiah 55:8-9 far from depicting 'the gulf which separates the divine knowledge from human knowledge,' actually holds out the real possibility that people may know God's thoughts and urges them to turn away from their own thoughts and to learn ...God's thoughts from him. In 55:7 God calls upon the wicked man to forsake his way and thoughts. Where is he to turn? To the Lord, of course (55:6-7). Why should he forsake his way and thoughts? 'Because,' says the Lord, 'my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways' (55:8). The entire context, far from affirming that God's ways and thoughts are beyond the capacity of humans to know, on the contrary, expressly calls upon the wicked man to turn away from his ways and thoughts and to seek God's ways and thoughts. In doing so, the wicked man gains ways and thoughts which, just as the heavens transcend the earth, transcend his own. Far from teaching that an unbridgeable gulf exists between God's thoughts and our thoughts, these verses actually call upon the wicked man, in repentance and humility, to seek and to think God's thoughts after him." - Robert Reymond, A New Systematic of the Christian Faith, Pg. 101 2nd ed.