by Paradox, I was meaning something that by all our understanding and thinking it cannot be true and yet it is…. two things being true, when they shouldn’t be?

Our thinking, science, logic etc tells us that God who is all powerful, all mighty and is not contained by the universe cannot be contained by a human body. So how can Jesus Christ be 100% God and 100% man…. it can;t be true, it doesn’t fit….. and yet it is true and I 100% believe it :-)

I belive our minds allow us to accept the thought, becuase God has designed us to be able to accpet things that go against logic, but our inner self always lean towards a 50:50 , or 80:80 split and (I think) this I believe is due to our inherent sinful nature and needing to understand God and Label it…..

This I think is also borne out in our understanding of Predestination and freewill. I see people often have an outward acceptance of such things…. but inwardly, their instinctive responses to life show a leaning…. so for example if some one has a leaning toward freewill, they might have to tendency to fight for human rights and have a strong zelous attituide towards preaching the gospel, as it depends on them…. where as some one with a leaning towards Predestination, might be more relaxed about it, based on the understanding that God will fullfill his will, whatever we do………

the truth lies in 100% of both. As Paul writes about. It is God who calls it is God who predestines it is God who saves, but Paul discharged his duty and if people didn;t accept once he had preached their blood was not on his hands….

I don’t even suggest that I understand all this, just that I, by faith, accept it… and like you say the ‘hypostatic union’ gives us some insight into this paradox,

Anyone, else? Is this sounding totally off beam?

How are you defining paradox? I don’t really think of the hypostatic union as a “paradox.” We certainly cannot understand all of what’s going on there, but there is enough revealed to understand some of the deeper implications of the “union;” esp. in re. to a discussion on salvation and free-will and values.

I think, not to get too off topic here, that if we ground election and “free-will” in the God-man then the tension you present goes away. Probably too much to explain here, but thought I would mention how the hypostatic union is very helpful in resolving the issues you’ve brought up.

What Ron says: “if we have a shared and reciprocal love of God, in Christ, we are fully free while full “bound” to him.”, I think is in line with what I’m getting at here. Our freedom is a “product” of our union with Christ; and this is brought to pass by the creative and communicative work of the Holy Spirit.

I don’t think we just want to say that we have “freewill” apart from grounding that in the humanity of Christ for us. Anyway, I could say more, but I don’t want to steer this discussion too far afield. :-)

That said, I’m not convinced that the Scriptures are creating some of the tensions you noted as much as our own categories do when we put too much weight on the function of our choosing. the question of how we choose must always be linked to a discussion of our hearts, even after conversion. Yet we’re still very inconsistent in our walk (per Romans 5-8).

Paul Helm in his book on Providence points to the compatiblity of two hearts having a shared set of values, while both are fully free. I think that’s a way forward here: if we have a shared and reciprocal love of God, in Christ, we are fully free while full “bound” to him.

I’d love to have some others engage us here.

To respond this time, I had to look up what Stoic and Epicurean options were, and I think I perhaps undertstand what you are trying to draw out.

Hmm ok, I believe scripture teaches that all are in bondage to sin, and within that bondage we have freedom to chose which sins we commit, but none the less we are slaves to the master of this world. But when we accept christ we are set free from that bondage, into a freedom that allows us to both sin and not sin, to chose, if we wish, to serve the living God (to have the knowledge of good and eveil). I think scripture teaches that we are predestined and in that sense we are bonded to the Triune God, but if all that happened was the switching of who we were in bondage to then we would not be free indeed.

I love the film ‘The Matrix’ and I think it has large parallels in the real world (and a lot of religious overtones due to the authors being of Catholic origin). I see scripture as teaching a Paradox. That is the paradox of Predestination and freewill. I see that God has created a ‘matrix’ or construct where both Predesination and freewill exist. And i see that this truth is so far beyound our understanding that it can’t even be described in our language.

I love the picture given by Carl Sagan on a 6th dimension. He gets the listener to imagine a world of 2 dimensions and then asks them to imagine a 3D apple passing through this 2D world and what would the inhabitants of this 2D world see. They could never describe an ‘apple’ and would only ever see a slice of it. So they might say an apple was an ever changing body. He then takes an inhabitant of this 2D world out into the third dimension and shows them his world. And when he puts them back into his own world the 2D person can remember how wonderful it was but can;t describe where he has been becuse he has no concept of ‘up’……..
2 Cor 12:2… the third heaven……. Wow! :-) and God is not even contained in that heaven 2 Chronicles 6:18……

We also see inconsistencies in the bible that show this paradox.

James 1:13 God does not cause anyone to sin…..
2Sam 24 God incites David to take a cenus, which was a sin….and he punishes Isreal for it…. Although we are told in 1 Chron 21 v1 that it was Satan who did the inciting…..

This is part of the Paradox of God and his creation. If he is soverign and created all things the way he wanted knowing how that would turn out then he is soverign over sin, and yet our Sin is down to our choice (evil desires)

Again,,,,

Mal 3 : 6 … the Lord does not change….
Exodus 4v24 The Lord was about to Kill moses but Zipporahs actions change Gods actions…..

Now our Minds try and explain these away with either one or the other being a misinterpretation depending on out leaning…. but I believe they highlight the paradox of this world that we live in wher God is Soverign in all things and we are free in Christ to Serve him (or not) as we please…….

NB although I do see the bible has a strong leaning towards to ‘Lord being soverign in all things’…..

I believe Luther was more right than Erasmus, but that both have their truths…. I think Gods design is more complex and wonderful than we can ever understand or even imagine…… and the reason it is not explained in the bible is that we don;t need to know (or can’t ever know or understand) its complexities…..

Well not sure if that is all clear….. and I might have even confused myself…. but please come back with any comments and anything you think I have wrong here… :-)

Let me say just a bit more about the options I see at stake here. On the one hand we’ve been raised in our Western world with a premise that a free will is the platform for our personal and moral responsibility. Petrarch, on the other hand, views life as a set of reciprocal relations: we exist in community and we are always making choices within the reciprocity of our given communities. Petrach, I should note, doesn’t land in a happy place with his own version of life . . . he swings between Stoic and Epicurean options in his own sense of community.

Luther, on the other hand, knew of Petrarch’s work and it may well have allowed him to read the Bible in the terms that emerge in his debate with Erasmus. Erasmus believed, fiercely, in the free will. Luther countered by insisting that our will is always in bondage. The only question is: to whom are we bonded? To the Triune One or to the world?