The Distinction of Persons in The Holy Trinity

[DNB]

You're arguing not what is, but what you want to believe. God can and did appear as a man. Through Christ He revealed His grace, by suffering in the man, Christ.



That's not accurate. Jesus did not live under the Law as a sinner. The Law was designed for sinners. That's why the Law was filled with atonement and sacrifices. It had to do with purification. Christ had no need for purification. The only thing he fulfilled about the Law was its promise that God would Himself provide mercy, apart from the actions of flawed priests. Christ provided a better priesthood, one not associated with the Law of Moses.



God always comes down from heaven in one way or another to express His mercy. That's why He established the tabernacle in the midst of Israel, so that His glory would appear there. That showed, in a visible display, His active mercy among the Israelites, accepting them even with a sin nature. He had decided to show mercy to them.

But the Law, as much as it showed God's mercy, did not yet show eternal life. That came only when God came down to earth in the form of Christ. In this way the priesthood did not provide atonement, which was insufficient for that. Instead, Christ provided God's own form of atonement, which does lead to eternal life.

That's why no one can come to God except through Christ, because he is God's exclusive way of personally providing for atonement that leads to eternal life. It had to come from God alone, and not from the flawed works of man. We live for God only in dependence upon Him as our source, because we cannot ourselves be the source of Salvation.



I never said Man was compelled to sin before the Fall! But yes, Man could choose to sin even before he had a sin nature. That's exactly what Satan did. And due to Satan's influence, Adam and Eve capitulated to the same choice, although under duress.

Therefore, people can apologize to God for capitulating to evil, and return to a right path. But others will make the same choice Satan did, by willfully choosing to depart from God's lordship in order to establish self-dependence and independent choice.

Sorry Randy, again, you're making too much of God's perceived immanency, He did not come down at any point in history to show his mercy, not in the manner that you are trying to justify the same act in Christ.
God merely caused an effect in the material realm to physically and visually display to the Israelites, that He was in support of them. He guided them by night as a pillar of fire, and by day as a pillar of smoke, for example. No one believes that either pillar was God incarnate.
You are giving god's presence, which is not His actual presence, amongst humans an exclusive meaning of mercy, so that you can call's Christ's existence as that of mercy. When God exacts clemency, or offers forgiveness to men, that's it, His mercy starts and stops there. It can come in the form of an oracle from a prophet, written in tablets of stones, or decreed by a king from a vision or dream. It does not require God to become incarnate. God is transcendent, immaterial, immutable, non-corporeal, indivisible, unquantifiable, and invisible who resides in unapproachable light, and that no man has ever seen, or can see.

 

[Randy Kluth]

Sorry Randy, again, you're making too much of God's perceived immanency, He did not come down at any point in history to show his mercy, not in the manner that you are trying to justify the same act in Christ.
God merely caused an effect in the material realm to physically and visually display to the Israelites, that He was in support of them. He guided them by night as a pillar of fire, and by day as a pillar of smoke, for example. No one believes that either pillar was God incarnate.

I never said God's glorious presence was "God incarnate!" I suppose you have to manufacture something absurd that I didn't say in order to disagree with it?

You are giving god's presence, which is not His actual presence, amongst humans an exclusive meaning of mercy, so that you can call's Christ's existence as that of mercy.

You're making this too complicated! God's presence with us, in *any form,* can constitute God's pleasure in being with us, and may represent His mercy in tolerating our imperfections.

When God exacts clemency, or offers forgiveness to men, that's it, His mercy starts and stops there. It can come in the form of an oracle from a prophet, written in tablets of stones, or decreed by a king from a vision or dream. It does not require God to become incarnate. God is transcendent, immaterial, immutable, non-corporeal, indivisible, unquantifiable, and invisible who resides in unapproachable light, and that no man has ever seen, or can see.

That is the definition of the Father, from whom His Word issues. To say that God cannot express Himself beyond His infinite, transcendent self contradicts what the Scriptures say He does. And to say His verbal expression cannot be fashioned into a person that represents His own personality and self again contradicts the NT testimony of Christ.

You're entitled to believe what you will. But it certainly isn't based on the orthodox view of Scriptures!