madscientist wrote:Gman wrote:
Mad, are we driving you mad yet?
What a lot of it boils down to is how you interpret free will.. If God is not going to manipulate us, if He is going to offer us the opportunity to express our freewill, then is He is at the mercy of that freewill? And if he is, does he need to change his plans for us? That’s the million dollar question.. Some say yes, others say no.. Just do a word search on "free will" at this forum to find all the different views about it.. Sorry for the cheap answer..
Quite didnt understabd what you meant there. Mercy of the freewill?? Quite cinfused tehre...
Gman wrote:Matthew 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
Huh thats strange!! Coz if God is omniscient, and God isnt just father but akl 3 persons togetehjr then thats just a surprise to me
and will be to angels and Son as well then. But i thought God Fathe r Son and Spirit are equal in all aspects... So they are not??
That is a good question and a hard one to answer.
First, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same in substance but there are differences in terms of their roles and functions.
In the case of Christ, one explanation that is offered for this rest of the fact that Jesus was both Fully Human and Fully God from the time of His incarnation. Phil 2:5-11 speaks of Christ "emptying" himself of many things that were due him as God by setting them aside. While some have interpretted this (wrongly in my opinion) to indicate that Jesus is more than man, but less than God, it could give an explanation in this instance, where Jesus is showing that despite his right to know, he voluntarily set aside or apart the exercise of his omniscience in this regard submitting Himself to God the father in His humanity.
This would also explain the passage in Luke 2:40 (although there are some translation issues here too) where it speaks about Jesus growing in wisdom as a young man.
I'm not entirely sure of this explanation because there are other points in scripture that demonstrate Jesus' knowledge and wisdom beyond that of simply being a wise human being.
John 6:64; Matthew 12:25; Luke 6:8; 11:17 (examples)
First, I think you need to see Matt 24 in the whole context of what Jesus was talking about. It is an apoclyptic passage speaking of the future. The disciples in verse 1 of Matt 24 appear to be pretty impressed with the buildings and grandeur of the Temple. Jesus takes the opportunity to caution them about getting too attached or being too impressed. In fact, he tells them it will be destroyed. So then the scene shifts and we see the disciples coming to Jesus to ask Him when this will happen. Further they want to know the sign of his coming and the ending of the age.
Jesus didn't claim ignorance and say, "I don't know."
Instead Jesus gave them a lot of teaching about this very subject.
The sum is that he knows alot about what is coming, that the times will be very difficult, but above all the primary message is to "Be Ready."
The word in the Greek "to know" here is "oida." Remember that Jesus was probably not speaking Greek to his disciples. In Hebrew, the word translated into the greek "oida" has some additional shades of meaning that go beyond a simple knowing of fact. It often is used in terms of intimacy in a relationship. The same word is used shortly thereafter in Matt 25:12 in a parable where Jesus speaks of the ten virgins and the bridegroom returns and finds them unready. He responds to them, "I don't know you." In this setting, (granted it is a parable) the word clearly doesn't mean he doesn't know who they are, but rather than he has no intimate relationship with them and therefore they are not welcome.
I think what is at work here is a recognition by Christ of His role in relationship to His Father. The Son submits to the Father's will. This is consistently modeled by Christ and it teaches us as Humans how we are to look to and submit to God. I think in effect, Jesus is telling his disciples, knowing that they will get hung up on trying to fix a precise time, (just like many of us do, by the way) to focus on being ready and follow His example of submission to God for the details, rather than just a simple knowing or not knowing.
Jesus as God, should be presumed to know. Jesus as Man, can be seen here to model and direct us in our response.
For many, the first explanation is enough. I may be making it too complicated and writing on the fly I hope I'm being clear.
Those are some thoughts I recollect from looking at this some time ago.
Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin. ~ Dan Allender
