# Did the Incarnation Introduce Change among the Persons of the Trinity?



## Pergamum (Jun 11, 2016)

Looking for good answers (and easy and concise) to the question aboe:

*Did the Incarnation Introduce Change among the Persons of the Trinity?*

Thanks. Any links, articles, books, quotes?


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 11, 2016)

Dabney's little paragraph. "Some suggest that the doctrine of God’s immutability is inconsistent with the incarnation of the Godhead in Christ, with God’s work enacted in time through Christ, and they claim it is especially inconsistent with the evidence of His creation, and with His reconciliation with sinners when they repent. To the first, it is enough to reply, that neither was God’s substance changed by the incarnation—for there was no confusion of natures in the person of Christ—nor was His plan modified; for He always intended and foresaw it. To the second, the purpose to create precisely all that is created, was from eternity to God, and to do it just at the time He did. Had He not executed that purpose when the set time arrived, there would have been the change. To the third, I reply, the change is not in God: but in the sinner. For God to change His treatment as the sinner’s character changes, this is precisely what His immutability dictates." ST, 187.


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 11, 2016)

WGT Shedd, Incarnation and Divine Immutability


The incarnation makes no change in the constitution of the Trinity. It leaves in the Godhead, as it finds in it, only three persons. For the addition of a human nature to the person of the Logos is not the addition of another person to him. The second trinitarian person, though so much modified by the incarnation as to become a God-man, is not so much modified as to lose his proper trinitarian personality, because incarnation is not the juxtaposition of a human person with a divine person, but the assumption of a human nature to a divine person. The incarnation produces a change in the humanity that is assumed by exalting and glorifying it, but no change in the deity that assumes. “Divine nature,” says Bull (Concerning Subordination 4.4.14), “flows through (immeat) the human nature, but the human nature does not flow through the divine.” If the Logos had united himself with a distinct and separate individual, the modification of the Logos by incarnation would have been essential, and a fourth person, namely, a human person, would have thereby entered into the Godhead, which would have been an alteration in the constitution of the Trinity, making it to consist of four persons instead of three. Says Ussher (Incarnation in Works 1.580):


We must consider that divine nature did not assume a human person, but the divine person did assume a human nature; and that of the three divine persons, it was neither the first nor the third that did assume this nature, but it was the middle person who was to be the middle one [mediator] that must undertake the mediation between God and us. For if the fullness of the Godhead should have thus dwelled in any human person, there should have been added to the Godhead a fourth kind of person; and if any of the three persons besides the second had been born of a woman, there should have been two Sons in the Trinity. Whereas, now, the Son of God and the Son of the blessed virgin, being but one person, is consequently but one Son; and so, no alteration at all made in the relations of the persons of the Trinity (see Hooker 5.54). (See supplement 5.1.5.)


The Logos, by his incarnation and exaltation, marvelous as it seems, took a human nature with him into the depths of the Godhead. A finite glorified human nature is now eternally united with the second trinitarian person, and a God-man is now the middle person of the Trinity:


No Paean there, no Bacchic song they raise;
But the three persons of the Trinity,
And the two natures joined in one they praise.
—Dante, Paradise 13.25–27


Yet the Trinity itself is not altered or modified by the incarnation. Only the second person is modified. The Trinity is not divine-human, nor is the Father nor is the Holy Spirit. But the eternal Son is. For this reason, the Son stands in a nearer relation to redeemed man than either the Father or the Spirit can. Neither of them is the “elder brother” of the p 625 redeemed. Neither of them is the “head” of which the church is the “body.” Neither of them is the divine person of whom it can be said, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30).
The union of the Logos with a human nature does not disturb either the trinitarian relation of the Logos or his relation to the created universe. When the Logos consents to unite with a human nature, he consents to exist and act in “the form of a servant.” But, as previously remarked, this does not imply that he ceases to exist and act “in a form of God.” Incarnation is not transubstantiation. Consequently, when incarnate, the Logos is capable of a twofold mode of existence, consciousness, and agency. Possessing a divine nature, he can still exist and act as a divine being, and he so exists and acts within the sphere of the infinite and eternal Godhead without any limitation. Possessing a human nature, he can also exist and act as a human being, and he so exists and acts within the sphere of finite and temporal humanity and under its limitations. The Son of Man was in heaven and upon earth simultaneously (John 3:13). In heaven he was in glory; on earth he was in sorrow and death. The God-man is both unlimited and limited, illocal and local. He has consequently a twofold consciousness: infinite and finite. He thinks like God; and he thinks like man. He has the eternal, all-comprehending, and successionless consciousness of God; and he has the imperfect, gradual, and sequacious consciousness of man. In this way, the trinitarian relations of the second person remain unchanged by his incarnation. Divine nature, though it condescends to exist and act in and through a human soul and body and to be trammeled by it, at the same time is existing and acting in an untrammeled manner throughout the universe of finite being and in the immensity of the Godhead.
Consider, for illustration, Christ’s relations to space. He lived a double life in this reference when he lived in Palestine eighteen centuries ago. He subsisted in both forms—that of God and that of a servant—at one and the same moment. He was simultaneously the absolute and eternal Spirit, unlocalized, filling immensity; and he was also that same Spirit localized, dwelling in and confined to the soul and body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because the Logos voluntarily confined and limited himself to the latter, it does not follow that he could not also continue to be unconfined and unlimited God. Because the sun is shining in and through a cloud, it does not follow that it cannot at the same time be shining through the remainder of universal space unobscured by any vapor whatever. The omnipresence of the Logos is that of the infinite Spirit. Consequently, he is all in every place and at every point. He is all in the human soul and body of Jesus of Nazareth, and simultaneously he is all at every other point of space. His total presence in the man Christ Jesus did not prevent his total presence throughout the universe. He was therefore both omnipresent and locally present. Says Calvin (2.15, “Although the infinite essence of the Logos is united in one person with the nature of man, yet we have no thought of its incarceration or confinement. For the Son of God miraculously descended from heaven, yet in such a manner that he never left heaven: he chose to be miraculously conceived in the womb of the virgin, to live on earth, and to be suspended on the cross; and yet he never ceased to fill the universe in the same manner as from the beginning.” “Who will say,” says Paraeus (Upon Hunnius, 21), “that the deity of the Word was only where p 626 his body was, say, in the mother’s womb, in the temple, on the cross, in the sepulcher, and was absent in other places where his body was not? Who will say that he did not fill heaven and earth; that he was not at Rome, at Athens, and everywhere outside of Judea, at the same time when his body was within the limits of Judea alone?” “The word of God,” says Augustine (Letter 137 to Volusianus), “did so assume a body from the virgin and manifest himself with mortal senses, as neither to destroy his own immortality nor to change his eternity nor to diminish his power nor to relinquish the government of the world nor to withdraw from the bosom of the Father, that is from the secret place where he is with him and in him.” Says Aquinas (3.5.2), “Christ is said to have descended from heaven from the standpoint of his divine nature—not in such a way that the divine nature ceased to be in heaven, but because he began to be here below in a new way, namely, according to the nature he assumed.” (See supplement 5.1.6.)
As the inspiration of a prophet by the Holy Spirit or his indwelling in a believer does not interfere with the trinitarian relations of the third person, so neither does the incarnation interfere with those of the second. The Holy Spirit makes intercessions that cannot be uttered and thereby unites himself to a certain degree to a particular man, but is still the same distinct person in the Trinity. Moreover, this intercession of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the believer does not disturb or prevent the single self-consciousness of the believer. Here are two distinct persons, confessedly, and yet only one self-consciousness in the believer. But if a single self-consciousness is not dualized and destroyed in the instance when the divine nature and the human, the Holy Spirit and the believer, do not constitute a God-man, still less need it be when they do. The two different modes or forms of consciousness—the divine and the human—in the God-man do not constitute two self-consciousnesses or two persons, any more than two or more different forms of consciousness in a man constitute two or more self-consciousnesses or persons. A man at one moment has a sensuous form of consciousness and at another moment a spiritual form; but he is one and the same person in both instances and has but a single self-consciousness.


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## Pergamum (Jun 11, 2016)

C. Matthew McMahon said:


> Dabney's little paragraph. "Some suggest that the doctrine of God’s immutability is inconsistent with the incarnation of the Godhead in Christ, with God’s work enacted in time through Christ, and they claim it is especially inconsistent with the evidence of His creation, and with His reconciliation with sinners when they repent. To the first, it is enough to reply, that neither was God’s substance changed by the incarnation—for there was no confusion of natures in the person of Christ—nor was His plan modified; for He always intended and foresaw it. To the second, the purpose to create precisely all that is created, was from eternity to God, and to do it just at the time He did. Had He not executed that purpose when the set time arrived, there would have been the change. To the third, I reply, the change is not in God: but in the sinner. For God to change His treatment as the sinner’s character changes, this is precisely what His immutability dictates." ST, 187.



Thanks. 

So would you agree that God can be referred to as the Creator from all eternity? God as Creator was not a change within God at the Creation, but was eternally true of God from eternity past even prior to the Creation?


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## jwright82 (Jul 4, 2016)

All replies have been great but I think that k Scott oliphints book "God with us" is the best out there on this subject.


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## earl40 (Jul 5, 2016)

jwright82 said:


> All replies have been great but I think that k Scott oliphints book "God with us" is the best out there on this subject.



Not having read this book I shall not comment on it though I have heard Dr. Oliphint teach that one can go "too far" is ascribing God's impassibility. In reality Dr. Oliphint has not gone far enough which is the majority view not only in the membership but also in my opinion the eldership in our churches.


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## Contra_Mundum (Jul 5, 2016)

earl40 said:


> I have heard Dr. Oliphint teach that one can go "too far" is ascribing God's impassibility. In reality Dr. Oliphint has not gone far enough...


I don't know the book either, however it must be acknowledged by any who dispute him or his terms that "too far" can mean a number of things, depending on the chosen vector.

For example, if one's doctrine of impassibility left him with a god similar to that of Islam, that would be "too far" in some direction. Such a being is a caricature of the Living God. As is the god of philosophers, after the proposal of Aristotle: the unmoved mover, who lacks Personality.

All those who depart from Scripture, but who latch on to some partial fact of divinity mediated to them by natural revelation, end up turning the truth of God into a lie. Impassibility is not immune from this abuse. Being able to see the failures inherent in the gross passions of the Greek pantheon does not yield a philosophically derived religious truth by a radical inversion.

At this time, I do not know the strengths or weaknesses of KSO's proposals. But unless something specific of his is set forth to critique, his simple warning against an "extreme" should not be dismissed as indicative of a corrupt doctrine.


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## earl40 (Jul 5, 2016)

Contra_Mundum said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > I have heard Dr. Oliphint teach that one can go "too far" is ascribing God's impassibility. In reality Dr. Oliphint has not gone far enough...
> ...



As usual I appreciate you post.  I have in the past brought up the weakness and here is one example which starts at the 43rd minute of this broadcast http://reformedforum.org/ctc399/ with the Calvin quote which argues against what KSO asserts.

Also here is a thread that discusses this subject with a quote supplied by Ruben.

From Oliphint's Epilogue:

"The argument itself began to form when I first became aware of, and committed to, Reformed theology in the late 70s. I remember wrestling through (for a seminar that I was to give to a group of Christians leaders) the question of the relationship of God's decree to his desire . My conclusion in that seminar was that both things are true of God, he decrees and he also desires that which he has not decreed, but that we simply are not meant to be able completely to put these truths together. I still believe that to be the case."

http://www.puritanboard.com/showthread.php/64168-Impassibility-question


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## Afterthought (Jul 5, 2016)

Pergamum said:


> So would you agree that God can be referred to as the Creator from all eternity? God as Creator was not a change within God at the Creation, but was eternally true of God from eternity past even prior to the Creation?


Perhaps this thread may be helpful? Was God Creator before Creation?


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## Contra_Mundum (Jul 5, 2016)

earl40 said:


> From Oliphint's Epilogue:
> 
> "The argument...



We also must face with the reality of God's accommodated language for our sakes. We are the ones who have the true tensions, due to our limited ability to grasp or express divine things. We affirm in axiomatic fashion that God is not, indeed cannot be confused or conflicted in anything.

One of the facts of our existence is the notion of incommensurable goods or incompatible outcomes. If this, then not that. You and I may desire both, but cannot have both. In an absolute sense, therefore, what I forgo I DO NOT WANT. In fact, I wanted this more than that, and so had this instead of that; and I may never be perfectly sure I made the ideal choice. I have to live with conflict.

God has made a world according to his WILL. He did nothing out of necessity; his hand was never forced nor did he (for instance) elect Person A rather than Person B because independent actions of anything or anyone made his choice inevitable. So, in accommodated terms, God could without compromise to his integrity represent himself as making a choice between "goods."

For example: saving ALL men is one form of good that may be considered; but (at least potentially, in regard to particular subjects) this form comes at the cost of a certain display of divine justice. Saving SOME men is another form of good that may be considered, and is in fact what God has determined. Therefore, in absolute terms, saving ALL men is something God never even considered. Would he ever say of that consideration, as he said of child-sacrifice, "it never even entered "my mind" (Jer.32:35), so evil was it?

To call it "evil" is absurd. It is simply a good that God did not choose, because he knew what was BEST. So, in a hierarchy of values, one of these must be above the other, preferred to the other: ALL or SOME. But not both in this universe he instantiated. God is not confused or conflicted about his preference.

Now, in representing himself and his mind to us, is it better for us if we are convinced that he desires exactly what happens _to the exclusion of every other desire,_ and in fact he *abominates* all other options that (in theory) he had the freedom to choose within the perfections of his will? Is it proper to say that he HATES the very notion of one more or less elect person? Because any other number is, frankly, evil? It is not his desire, after all!

I do not see how, in a world where God made it necessary to forgo some good expression to allow for a better one, that he should not express himself toward us as weighing-out his desires. Ultimately, setting one (lesser) desire aside to allow his perfect desire to be realized. As long as we affirm: that unlike men, there is no conflict or confusion in God's ordering his will. Affirming: that what he DOES NOT WILL he DOES NOT DESIRE is true in the absolute sense. Nor is there any "shade" to his disposition or reluctance to carry out his preferences; so when he executes his justice, it is not with any reluctance due to his mercy being overridden. If we so spoke, we would be asserting divine desires in conflict; which thing we deny. God is not a man, that he should be the least bit fickle.

Whether KSO would admit of my construction, I don't know or think that he must. I can only say, that when I hear a Reformed teacher expressing the notion that God may be said to desire something which he has not then decreed, to make sense of it I must apply the relative or comparative sense to the idea, rather than the absolute. The world God decreed into existence left every other world unfulfilled; and this world contains a range of goods that have exactly the balance God preferred to any other scale; and a thing may be good in itself (and therefore desirable) yet undesirable on account of something better--and we do not therefore have to identify the lesser good as "evil" or utterly undesirable.


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## earl40 (Jul 5, 2016)

Contra_Mundum said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > From Oliphint's Epilogue:
> ...



I do think your argument is contra to KSO argument is correct if I am reading you correctly. To think that all of God's decrees are not in line with His desire is simply unbiblical. I think this all stems from a mistaken view between the decretive or volitional will of God in what men _will do_, and His prescriptive will of what men _should do_.


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## Contra_Mundum (Jul 5, 2016)

earl40 said:


> I do think your argument is contra to KSO argument is correct if I am reading you correctly.



I can't affirm or deny your opinion, because I don't have KSO's argument, other than the excerpt of his Epilogue. I've tried to construe him in a way that fits with my understanding of God's self-revelation.

Some men take as a starting point: "it is wrong to contemplate any such thing as an unfulfilled desire in God," fixing in their mind a simple equation--God does all his holy will, which is his desire _simpliciter._ *Desire* has (can have) no other referent.

As I've explained: if one equivocates on the term "desire," taking into account the world He created with incommensurable goods; and rather than resorting to distinguishing between decretive and prescriptive will, one uses desire/will in either an absolute or a comparative sense; then I think (since there is no conflict or confusion in the holy will of God) there is no difficulty in this matter--no more than to say of God's acts as his choice, that they are what he _preferred_ to be (which no better we can conceive).


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## earl40 (Jul 5, 2016)

Contra_Mundum said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > I do think your argument is contra to KSO argument is correct if I am reading you correctly.
> ...



Yes I agree if one equivocates on the term desire and qualifies that they are doing such I would have no problem either. The problem is that that I have noticed many teachers stop short of doing such. I understand you do not have any other reference to KSO teaching in this area and if I remember correctly in his lectures on I Tunes he goes on to say he denies qualification on this subject.


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## MW (Jul 5, 2016)

Both discussions -- the latter one on the decree and the original one on the incarnation -- could be enriched by looking at the distinction between what is necessary and what is voluntary. Theologians of the twentieth century started to see this as a purely metaphysical distinction and theology has been the poorer for neglecting it. That God is, is necessary. That God decrees or that God assumes human nature, is voluntary. Being voluntary, it is not essential to God. God in Himself remains the same. God in relation to others is free to assume different actions without change. From this we derive the concepts of transcendence and immanence. The modern confusion over transcendence and immanence could be cleared up with an understanding of some of the old metaphysical discussions.

There are difficulties with some of the modern definitions of "covenant." In neo-Calvinism it started to assume metaphysical concepts. From there the idea of "covenant" has been used to draw a correlation between what God is in Himself and what He is towards His creation. Instead of "covenant" being a voluntary condescension which creates a relationship between the infinite and the finite, it has been seen as having some reality within God Himself. Through the twentieth century theologians increasingly spoke of the "covenantal" life of God. "Covenant" came to provide substantive understanding of "consubstantiality," and in some cases replaced it. This is virtually a new metaphysic, and creates problems for the transcendence-immanence distinction of Christian theism.

Reactions: Edifying 1


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## earl40 (Jul 5, 2016)

Here is an example of an unqualified statement on how God anger is _really_ kindled and thus predicates a change in God.


K. Scott Oliphint

"There can be no question that the relation one has to God will significantly alter ones own disposition and destiny. That much is certainly true. But is it adequate simply to think that when Scripture speaks of God being gracious, on the one hand, and wrathful, on the other, the same disposition in God causes these differences in us? Is God's anger toward one person an identical disposition as his grace and covenant love toward another? There seems to be no reasons to think so, and it seems clear that Scripture does not speak in these terms; such ideas violate basic linguistic sensibilities.
Rather, when Scripture says that the Lord's anger was kindled, *it really was kindled*. Because God is personal, we should expect that he will react in different ways to things that please and displease him. These ascriptions of God in Scripture are not meant simply to tell us more about ourselves, but rather are meant to show us more of who God is, especially as he interacts with his human creatures. They are meant to show us who God is in light of his gracious condescension, generally, and of the gospel, more specifically, as given progressively throughout covenant history. (God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God)"


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## MW (Jul 5, 2016)

earl40 said:


> Here is an example of an unqualified statement on how God anger is _really_ kindled and thus predicates a change in God.



That should be understood against the background of his distinction between what God is in Himself and what He is covenantally. In that context he is speaking of what God is covenantally, not what He is essentially. The author's view of covenantal properties is problematic, as it requires the assumption of non-divine properties, but his general distinction is sound.


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## earl40 (Jul 6, 2016)

MW said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > Here is an example of an unqualified statement on how God anger is _really_ kindled and thus predicates a change in God.
> ...




Indeed I see that he is making such a distinction on how God works covenantally. Though it appears to me he is also saying that how God works shows us something of what "God is"....in se.

Or did you have some other teachings in mind he has produced?


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Jul 6, 2016)

Pergamum said:


> Looking for good answers (and easy and concise) to the question aboe:
> 
> *Did the Incarnation Introduce Change among the Persons of the Trinity?*
> 
> Thanks. Any links, articles, books, quotes?


James White's debate with open theist Bob Enyart is useful wherein Enyart asserts the Incarnation was a change in the divine essence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isRksh30ZUI


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## Pergamum (Jul 6, 2016)

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> Pergamum said:
> 
> 
> > Looking for good answers (and easy and concise) to the question aboe:
> ...



Where at, in case I don't want to watch the whole thing?


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Jul 6, 2016)

Pergamum said:


> Ask Mr. Religion said:
> 
> 
> > Pergamum said:
> ...


Start about 1:04 minutes in at the cross-examination section.


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## MW (Jul 6, 2016)

earl40 said:


> Indeed I see that he is making such a distinction on how God works covenantally. Though it appears to me he is also saying that how God works shows us something of what "God is"....in se.



That is his view of God assuming covenantal properties. As noted, it is problematic. But we should be clear the problem lies in attributing created properties to God, not in the doctrine of covenantal accommodation. In making the distinction between God IN SE and AD EXTRA we are not denying that it is God Himself who does the works. All we are saying is that God cannot be known IN SE.


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## earl40 (Jul 7, 2016)

MW said:


> earl40 said:
> 
> 
> > Indeed I see that he is making such a distinction on how God works covenantally. Though it appears to me he is also saying that how God works shows us something of what "God is"....in se.
> ...



Thank you. I wonder if you have ever been accused of thinking like a Muslim when you broach the topic of God's impassibility or not being able to know God IN SE, as I have had the pleasure to be accused of such thinking? BTW I am thankful this was not done here.


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## MW (Jul 7, 2016)

earl40 said:


> I wonder if you have ever been accused of thinking like a Muslim when you broach the topic of God's impassibility or not being able to know God IN SE, as I have had the pleasure to be accused of such thinking? BTW I am thankful this was not done here.



Yes; on account of predestination also. But Mohammed was a very poor counterfeiter.


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