Thursday, November 01, 2018

Jonathan Edwards on Immutability results in a New Physical Law

Excerpts from Edwards's sermon "Jesus Christ, The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever"

When it is said that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, by yesterday is meant all time past; by today, the time present; and by forever, all that is future, from the present time to eternity. 
Doctrine. Jesus Christ is the same now that he ever has been and ever will be.
Christ is thus unchangeable in two respects. 
I. In his divine nature. As Christ is one of the persons of the Trinity, he is God, and so has the divine nature, or the Godhead dwelling in him, and all the divine attributes belong to him, of which immutability or unchangeableness is one. Christ in his human nature was not absolutely unchangeable, though his human nature, by reason of its union with the divine, was not liable to those changes to which it was liable, as a mere creature. As for instance, it was indestructible and imperishable. Having the divine nature to uphold it, it was not liable to fall and commit sin, as Adam and the fallen angels did, but yet the human nature of Christ, when he was upon earth, was subject to many changes. It had a beginning. It was conceived in the womb of the Virgin. It was in a state of infancy, and afterwards changed from that state to a state of manhood, and this was attended not only with a change on his body, by his increasing in stature, but also on his mind. For we read that he not only increased in stature but also in wisdom. Luke 2:52. And the human nature of Christ was subject to sorrowful changes, though not to sinful ones...
II. Christ is unchangeable in his office. He is unchangeable as the Mediator and Savior of his church and people. That unchangeableness of Christ in his office of Mediator, appears in several things...
Comparing this with modern position papers on Divine Immutability has inspired me to propose a new physical law: The Inverse Square Law of Theological Clarity:

V = k/(1 + O2),       (Eq. 1)

where V is a measure of the value (and clarity, and comprehensibility) of the explanation (measured in units of Sprouls, in honor of RC), k is a universal constant that must be determined by experiment, and O2 is the square of the number of times the word ontological is used in the theological explanation.

4 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you're blogging more often, you always have such great sly humor. I've often wondered if you're this clever as a profeasir/lecturer? I need to see if any of your classes are online 😁

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  2. Units of Sprouls - This is perfect. One of his gifts was taking what was theologically complex and explaining it simply and clearly.

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  3. O for ontological, eh? Why not?

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