Tag: Doctrine of God

Mike Ovey on The Will of the Father and The Son

I have been looking at the Eternal Functional Subordination debate over a series of posts. We started with a brief look at a couple of Bible passages and it is my plan to to return to them in a little more detail towards the end before making some practical application. We then saw that central… Continue reading Mike Ovey on The Will of the Father and The Son

How does a Father Relate to his Son?

EFS advocates are primarily concerned with how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to each other. There is no dispute about their oneness and equality when it comes to essence. The argument rather is that it is possible to identify distinctions in terms of persons and that this distinction includes a form of order.… Continue reading How does a Father Relate to his Son?

Why do we want to talk about one will in God?

The view of The Church over many centuries has been that the individual persons of the Trinity do not each have their own will, rather God has one will.  This will is a property of his nature. This also leads to the conclusion that Jesus, having two natures, must have two wills, one human and… Continue reading Why do we want to talk about one will in God?

Eternal Functional Subordination, The Will of God and The Creeds

In the last two articles on EFS, we picked up on what Jesus says in John 5 and Matthew 26. We saw, that on the face of it, The Son submits his will to The Father.  Proponents of EFS argue that this is exactly what the Son is doing and that this must be an… Continue reading Eternal Functional Subordination, The Will of God and The Creeds

“Not my will but yours” – who is talking to who?

In Matthew 26, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane after he has shared the last supper with the disciples. There in the garden he goes to pray on his own and says these famous words.  “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”[1]… Continue reading “Not my will but yours” – who is talking to who?

Conversations about God

There has been much debate about the Doctrine of God over the past few years. The technical end of the debate is about whether a particular historical approach known as Classical Theism is the benchmark of orthodoxy and whether certain theologians have strayed beyond that therefore making them heretics. There are two specific examples of… Continue reading Conversations about God

Simple

God is simple. That might be a surprising thing to say, shocking even.  We tend to use the word pejoratively.  In our world, simple is associated with inferiority and stupidity. In our world things move from simple to complex. So we had better sort out quickly what we mean by simple and complex in this… Continue reading Simple

An odd type of insult: – On being a Biblicist

Well, I’ve dipped my toe a little into the Wayne Grudem debate on twitter and re-shared a couple of posts linking to the longer debate. If you are new to this and trying to get your head round things, here’s a summary. Christians over many centuries have tried to provide structured teaching of our core… Continue reading An odd type of insult: – On being a Biblicist

God in the dock -challenges to his greatness and goodness

Here’s another article “out of the freezer” addressing questions about God changing and having emotions. We can choose to believe either truth or lies about God. Earlier, we named the lies: that God is not good and/or God is not great/ sovereign. That if there is a God, then he must be either infinite and… Continue reading God in the dock -challenges to his greatness and goodness