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According to some versions of the doctrine of kenosis, God, the Son, suspended the use of some of his divine powers while he walked the earth. The doctrine is generally taken to mean that Jesus voluntarily suspended the use of some of his powers while he walked the earth. His powers were not lessened in any way and, like a powerful army during peacetime, he could use them at any moment. However, according to other versions of kenosis, the doctrine implies that one divine power is the power to give up some powers for some time. On this view, Jesus not only restricts his use of some powers while on earth, but he could not use them even if he wanted to. I'll call this view the complete kenosis view.  In the following I will argue that nothing that has any power has some other power to give it up and reacquire it. If so, then the complete kenosis view is false. If S has power, P, then S can choose not to use P in order to do some action, A. But can S choose not to have P? An...

When we say that God is good or that he is all-powerful we are predicating something of a subject as we are when we say “Socrates is wise.” On a realist view, the predicate is a property that is instantiated by the particular. “Wise” is a property of Socrates and, as such, and given realism, the property of is what is referred to by the term “wise.” To say that God is wise, or good is to say that God has the property of wisdom or goodness. If there are such things, as realists suggest, then they must exist in order to be referred to. In common parlance, such things are called universals. They are eternally existent abstract objects. Properties should be distinguished from kinds and relations. Kinds are categories that entities belong to, whereas properties are things that are had by entities. Relations are exemplified by multiple entities in relation to one another such as being taller than or far from. The problem of coherence facing any account of God’s properties is this: If p...

You couldn't believe in something unless you knew something about it. If I said to you that a meroganon lives at the end of my street you might say I am nuts, but you would first want to know something about a meroganon. You couldn't know if I am nuts unless you knew something about a meroganon. I could describe one to you by listing some of its basic features. After some time you would have in your mind the concept of a meroganon and you could then be justified in thinking that I have lost my mind. Consider the person (there may be more than one) who has not read this blog. That person does not even know the name, 'meroganon'. The person does not have a concept of a meroganon and so does not believe in a meroganon. I don't know much science. There are probably many entities that some people have concepts for and that I do not. I couldn't have a positive belief about the existence of any of these entities unless I had a concept of them. It follows that to ...

Daniel Daniel was in a tight spot. He was huddled in the corner of a pit. Above the pit there was a high wall and across from him was a wooden wall in the pit with a gate in it. and then the door to the outside with a huge boulder preventing any thought of escape. The last face he had seen was the face of the king. He could see the pain in his face, the anguish of one who is regretting his own decision. What had he said? “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” That was what got him put here in the first place. The fact that he served continually. That was the trouble with refusing to bow before that statue of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel had always prayed. He knew this was the most important thing in his life. He could be all the CEOs rolled into one, but without prayer the whole lot would be useless. Jeremiah the prophet had taught him that. Daniel had his book back in his room. It says, “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hea...

God is marvelous. He causes in his worshipers a sense of wonder, awe and amazement. But does God feel the same? Can he marvel at himself? At the very least marveling implies finding something to be beyond conceptual reach. It appears to be connected with mystery. Sometimes our marveling can be because we do not have the concepts to understand what we see. A magic trick can be like this. We cannot understand how it is done even though we might be sure that, if someone explained the trick, we would understand it. A trick looses its mystery when we know how it is done. In other cases we marvel even when we do understand the relevant facts. We marvel at beauty in this way. A scene found in nature may, in principle, be fully conceptually comprehended, but yet have certain features that are beyond the grasp of concepts. This may even be true of the magic trick. Even when someone has explained how it is done we may yet marvel at the ingenuity of the trick or the courage of the magician (...

... What do we mean by "nothing"? To define nothing one has to be able to conceive of nothing. Some say that it is impossible to conceive of nothing since nothing entails somehow the non-existence of time and space. We might be able to conceive of a particle-free space, but spacelessness and timelessness seem illusive. Of course, this does not touch on abstract objects, if one believes in such things. Others suggest that the findings of logic conclude that necessarily, something exists. Logic cannot, on that reading, conclude that nothing is possible. One suggestion is to say that time and space are matter dependent, that time and space are  relations  of material things (or concrete things). Once one conceives of a particle-free zone time and space  cannot  exist in that zone. Others might propose that while nothing is conceptually impossible since one cannot ascribe properties to such a "thing," it is, rather, a negation of everything. The incomprehensib...

What if all the people who have ever existed got together in a massive wiki project and, with unlimited time, were tasked in defining God? There is one rule: they must do it without reference to the Bible. And what if they came to agreement, if they worked until they had an utterly coherent doctrine of God, what would they have achieved?

There are three conditions necessary for human learning. First, it must be possible, in principle, for human beings to obtain knowledge. They must be able to come to true beliefs. Second, it must be possible for human beings to make sense of experience; the world must be intelligible. Third, it must be possible for human beings to communicate with one another. A teacher has to be able to impart knowledge to the student. The question is: what reality would provide all three conditions? Answer: the God of the Bible. First, God is omniscient. Since God knows all things, past, present and future, God cannot be mistaken about anything. God defines truth. Since God is also the creator of human beings he is able to design human beings with the capacity to know truth. If God did not know all things then there would be a possibility that something he did not know would turn out to falsify something he did know and thereby disqualify that piece of knowledge. God would believe a lie. S...

After I wrote my last post , I was reminded of another solution to the problem of making gods in our own image, one put forward by Bruce McCormack, professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton. McCormack focuses on an age old debate over the theology of Karl Barth. Barth wrote, in part, to refute “consciousness” theologians who, according to Barth, had been making god in their own image. In contrast, Barth's theology sought to assert the transcendence of God. The question many have asked since is: did he succeed? McCormack, in a novel interpretation of Barth, seems to think that Barth has thrown the image making upstairs – instead of man making god in his own image, God makes himself in man's image. McCormack suggests that God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit could only be that way in relation to his creation. Therefore God must have determined his own nature in correlation to his creation - he determined his own triune nature, chose it. God could have be...

One of the ways to get a picture of God is to abstract from experience and maximize the property. For example, one might think something as good and therefore understand goodness. One might conclude that God is maximally good. Perhaps one might think of intelligence and conclude that God is maximally intelligent. And when one has built a collection of properties--maximal knowledge, strength, presence--one has a kind of theology of abstraction. God is a collection of abstracted properties of human experience. I met a man who lived on the Potomac River. When the space shuttle, Discovery, flew by on a hot sunny day, the man rushed into his yard with his iphone. He hastily pointed the camera into the sky and took a picture. He showed me the picture. As a result of failing to switch the camera's mode it was a picture of himself gazing into the sky. This is how many attempt to build a picture of God; they refuse to allow that God has revealed himself in creation and i...