Kenoticism Examined
I am not a Calvinist, and I do not agree with Dr. White on many things, but I thought he had some very perspicuous things to say on this topic.
--- Quoted from the Dividing Line ---
@42:00
If you look at that particular definition then obviously the large majority of people that are being accused of Kenoticism wouldn't wouldn't qualify, but what we have now up until this time period talking about the veiling of certain aspects of the divine nature was common language; you can fill pages with people going all the way back that have used terms veiling/hiding because you everybody has to.
@46:16
So Kenosis as I would understand it involves a fundamental change in the divine nature in the incarnation. So I had a student once I remember very clearly in which classroom at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminar, we were somewhere in this particular area of discussion, and I remember he said, "Well, if we really believe this, then we have to believe that God changed," and I remember he and I had quite an interesting back and forth conversation in class over that very issue.
@55:23
I've said, well you know it's possible that for the purpose of accomplishing his role as Messiah and sacrifice that the Son speaking in Matthew veils his knowledge, and people go, "Nope, can't happen, because the Son always has to be omniscient; the Divine Son always has to be omnicient, and can't be anything other." Does the Divine Son always have to be glorious, is that just as definitional of the divine nature? And if the glory was hidden, why couldn't the knowledge be? "Nope, can't do it, can't do it," because they differentiate somehow. I've never seen a Biblical argument, but they somehow go "The glory of the divine nature is different than the knowledge of the divine nature, the knowledge of divine nature cannot be veiled for any reason."
@58:55
[Quoting a Tweet from Mike Riccardi:]
"Through all of it, Functional Kenotic Christology teaches not that Christ surrendered the attributes themselves but limited them in some sense, or just curtailed their use and function during his humiliation."
This is serious Christological error? Okay so, John MacArthur was guilty of serious Christological error during his entire ministry.... So what terms do you want to use, because I've read the article. If you don't like veiling, all they're doing is coming up with other terms that mean the same thing. You have to deal with the reality that the Son did something, you've got to deal with what Kenosis means, and I say you define Kenosis on the basis of Paul's theology. The New Testament as a whole, yes, but first you start with Paul. He's the one using it. What does he say, how does he present this, and then you flesh that out with the Gospel and everything else that comes from that, but you have to deal with it, you can't just say nothing happened. So this is saying that you are in serious Christological error if you say there is limiting of the divine attributes in the incarnation, and I go, uh, you just made EVERYBODY a Christological heretic going all the way back in history, everybody has to has to deal with this. This is serious Christological error?! The Kenosis of Philippians 2:7 is not a surrender, a divesture, a limitation or a laying aside of any aspect of the Son's divine existence. Again, it is not that the Son does not cease to be, the question is what is the manifestation of all of the divine attributes in the incarnation? We know beyond question, no one can argue this, that there is the fundamental definitional reality of the glory of Yahweh that is veiled in the Son. He did not walk through the streets of Jerusalem glowing in the dark, no one was consumed in his presence. Okay, so there it is, that's the reputation of this hyper-limitation.... did the Son in no way have any reliance upon the Spirit of God at all?! I know that full-on Kenosis like the guy at Bethel, whatever his name is, yes Johnson, I know they take that as their big thing, that Jesus relies on the Spirit and then therefore we can rely in the Spirit the same way Jesus relied on the Spirit, the whole nine yards, so that every miraculous thing that Jesus does is just dependence upon the Spirit, and of course you know Jesus feels power coming out of himself when the woman touched him, all that. So you know that's not a balanced perspective, but there's no relationship at all in in the incarnation in regards to the Spirit of God?! Again, instead it is a taking on, an assumption of a distinct essence, a human one, by means of which such limitations can be experienced. What does that mean? How is that different than saying there's a veiling? I'm saying that by taking on a distinct essence, a human one, such limitations were experienced. That's what veiling means, we are arguing over minutia, and yet willing to say, "Ah, but you're in error, you are a heretic, if you don't agree with my terminology." Okay... all right.
@1:04:52
"To say something like Christ limited the use of his omniscience in his incarnation, is to deny what cannot be denied: his true deity, in order to affirm what must be affirmed: his true humanity."
Now think,. let's change that to say something like, "Christ limiting the expression of his glory in his incarnation is to deny what cannot be denied: his true deity, in order to affirm what must be affirmed: his true humanity." And that's exactly what everybody has to do. So obviously this argument isn't true, it's not true. What else could be said? So the affirmation is, Christ in the incarnation could NOT limit the use of any divine attribute. I'd say the incarnation itself requires a self-limitation. Not a changing of the divine nature—but the fundamental idea here is, "No God can't do it!" That's what the Muslims say! That's what the Muslims say! We don't want to go there. And I know he's not going there, this is a nice man, he's a good man, he's a good young scholar. But you don't want to go there. You don't want to go there.
"It is impossible for God to limit his Godness because part of what it means to be God is to be infinite and unlimited."
Uh, you really want to go there? 'Cause we're not talking about a change in the divine essence, we're talking about expression here. We're talking about demonstration, we're talking about, what does it mean to be incarnate? And shouldn't we all be sitting here going, "You know there is only one source for us to answer any questions on this subject and it's right here [pointing at Bible.]" And may I suggest to you that a lot of Post-Nicene theological speculation doesn't believe this Bible is enough, and goes way beyond this, way beyond this.
@1:07:16
Quotation from John Howe the Puritan:
"Whatsoever simplicity the ever blessed God hath by any express revelation claimed to himself, or can by evident and irrefragable reason be demonstrated to belong to him, as a perfection, we ought humbly and with all possible reverence and adoration, to ascribe to him. But such simplicity as he hath not claimed, as is arbitrarily ascribed to him by over-bold, and adventurous intruders into the deep and most profound arcana of the divine nature, such as can never be proved to belong to him, or to be any real perfection, such as would prove an imperfection, and a blemish, would render the divine nature less intelligible, more impossible to be so far conceived as is requisite, as would discompose and disturb our minds, confound our conceptions, make our apprehensions of his other known perfections less distinct or inconsistent, render him less adorable or less an object of religion, or such as is manifestly unreconcilable with his plain affirmations concerning himself, we ought not to impose it upon ourselves, or be so far imposed upon, as to ascribe to him such simplicity. It would be an over-officious and too meanly servile religiousness to be awed by the sophistry of presumptuous scholastic wits, into a subscription to their confident determinations concerning the being of God, that such and such things are necessary or impossible thereto, beyond what the plain undisguised reason of things, or his own express Word do evince: to imagine a sacredness in their rash conclusions, so as to be afraid of searching into then, or of examining whether they have any firm and solid ground or bottom: to allow the schools, the making of our Bible, or the forming of our creed, who license (and even sport) themselves to philosophize upon the nature of God with as petulent, and irreverent a liberty, as they would upon a worm, or any the meanest insect, while yet they can pronounce little with certainty even concerning that, hath nothing in it either of the Christian or the man. It will become as well as concern us, to disencumber our minds, and release them from the entanglements of their unproved dictates; whatsoever authority they may have acquired, only by having been long, and commonly, taken for granted. The more reverence we have of God, the less we are to have for such men, as have themselves expressed little."
@1:13:36
And so I would say getting back to Kenoticism, that the ultimate has to be found here [pointing at Bible], and that until especially my critics answer the challenge that I've read on this program and the article I've posted last year, I think it was October 22... on the Theology Matters blog, and I gave a paragraph where someone can go to Matthew, and go, so what you're saying is this means this that means that, and you're reading in a definition of Son that you're not reading out of the text, but reading into the text. How do you respond to that? No one has! Until you do, you're making the divine nature less intelligible, not more intelligible, okay.
[Resuming Tweet from Mike Riccardi:]
"The Son did not restrict or limit or dial back his infinity so he could sell fit himself into finite humanity, he assumed finite humanity into personal union with his infinite deity and subsisted in two whole perfect and distinct natures right alongside one another."
I agree... but why use infinity? Why not use glory? Because you can't. Because that was limited for the purpose of accomplishing what the incarnation is to accomplish... right? Tell me where I'm wrong, I just I want to hear. I keep hearing people say, "Well, but that's that's not what this is for," I don't care! Tell me where I'm wrong biblically. Please?! Think we can do that, we're supposed to be able to do that, right?
"He did not become less God in order to be man [agreed], so we must say the of the incarnate son he is infinite according to his deity at the same time he is finite according to his Humanity. It'd be wrong to say the sun limited his infinity during his incarnation."
Did the Son limit the expression of his glory to the incarnation, yes or no? Yes or no. Is glory definitional of the divine being, yes or no?
"For the same reason it is wrong to say the Son limited his omniscience in his incarnation. God cannot limit his omniscience because omniscience is essential to the infinite perfections of being God."
Gloriousness isn't?! Of course it is. Of course it is.
"If a person is not omniscient, he may be many things, but he is not God."
So if a person is not glorious, he may be many things but he's not God?
"So the Son did not restrict or limit or dial back his omniscience, so he could fit himself into ignorant humanity, he assumed finite ignorance into personal union with his infinite omniscience, and subsisted in two whole perfect and distinct natures right along one another."
Again, that's a nice theological statement, but it's not dealing with it. This is meant to be this is meant to be saying, no, Matthew 24:36 cannot mean, that because of this. That's what the argument is. And again, how many times do I have to say, this is a really difficult text. But I can't take this kind of theology outside of the church and say you need to accept this before you can then understand what Matthew 24:36 is saying. Because they can turn around and say, "Well then you need to accept this, so you can understand what Titus 2:13 is saying, right?" And I guess the only response that is to say well we we don't have to worry about you know taking this stuff outside, we just need to have it it nice and neat and tidy for us.
"In other words because Jesus is truly and fully God and truly and fully man, Scripture makes statements about him, the whole person, that are true only because of one or the other nature. That doesn't mean that an opposite statement isn't true according to the other nature."
So this is your standard. Again, the confession itself says there are times the scripture speaks this way. I agree. Prove it in Matthew 24:36! You can't just quote from the Westminster or the London Baptist. You have to demonstrate that in that context you're deriving your interpretation from that text, and if you don't see that, if you don't do that, you will fundamentally eventually have to capitulate to the authority of external developed traditions over time. You can't avoid it. You can't avoid it! So yes, Scripture makes statements about him, the whole person, that are true only because of one or the other nature, agreed, and the context will show you that; but you're taking this and making it the overarching interpretive principle rather than doing what you have to do, which is demonstrating that my "partitive exgesis" in Matthew 24:36, is actually drawn from Matthew 24:36. And I think the honest folks in the great tradition movement would say we can't do that and we won't try. I think the honest folks would do that. That's why I'm ringing this big old bell and saying to the guys at Masters you can't go there without changing who you've always been. You can't go there! I know who's trying to drag you there. I know their names. I know when you've met. But you can't go there, you won't be consistent. Now again maybe you know I keep going, and I think it's important to be consistent, but why? Because I want to take this message outside of our little confines, and it's got to be consistent out there because those people out there are smart and they will see the inconsistencies.
"Sometimes you get them right next to each other, Acts 20:28 speaks of the blood of God, incarnational. God is a spirit and has no blood, there Paul predicates attributes of deity, and attributes of attributes of humanity (blood) to the same person Jesus according to his distinct Natures."
Yep, that's clearly what you have in what the incarnation is. No two ways about it. He doesn't use the one that I think is the best, and that is, "They would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." Lord Of Glory is obviously deity language, you can't crucify the Lord Of Glory; but you could, because the incarnation—because it was real, because he truly became man.
"So in John 16:30 he is said to know all things and in Mark 13:2 he is said to be ignorant of the time of his return, those aren't contradictory. John affirms something that's proper to his deity and Mark affirms something is proper to his Humanity."
Okay, but once again, and there's a textual issue there that we won't get into right now, derive it from the context. Pretty easy to do with John 16... how do you do it in Mark 13 or Matthew 24? That's the issue.
"It is wrong and a species of Kenoticism [because we now get to define these things for ourselves], to say that one of those things, omniscience or ignorance must be limited or curtailed in order to say the other one is genuine."
In Matthew 24:36 once again if what you're saying is, Jesus when he makes reference to the Son, is making reference to the human nature, okay, it's all I've been saying all along. I am not dogmatic on my interpretation of Matthew 24:36, I am dogmatic on you having to give an exegesis of Matthew 24:36, that's the difference between us. You guys aren't giving an exegesis, you're giving a theologesis. You're telling us what your theology says the text must say, and I'm sitting here going, you can't do that and be consistent. That's all I've been saying. "You Kenoticist!" No, I'm not a Kenoticist. Jesus' deity was not changed, but you have to believe that he had the power to, whatever term you want to use, veil, limit, not get rid of—but veil or limit his glory to do what he said that he did. His glory is just as definitional as anything else, and you cannot get around that no matter what, you do no matter what! You can stand on your head, you can spin in circles, you can't get around it. It's just reality. So I'm sorry that I'm not in the "in" group, I'm out here with the lost folks that already have religious beliefs, and I'm trying to go, "Hey guys, if you ever decide to come out here and help with this stuff, what you are doing in there ain't going to help much, you're not going to be able to do that! It's not going to work."
"So we have to say that Jesus predicated ignorance of himself according to the properties of his human nature; note, not the human nature is ignorant, but the one person Jesus could be spoken of as ignorant by virtue of the finitude of his human mind."
Except that the divine could reveal supernatural knowledge to that finite mind, right? So why would that particular piece of information be too much for the finitude of his human mind? That one I don't get, okay. And can we all admit we are way past Matthew 24 or Mark 13 now, right, can we all admit that we're not there anymore, we're four, five, six steps down the road now. Can we all admit that? You know for some folks they're like, yep, and we always have to be. And again I go, think about where that's going to lead you, where is that going to take you.
"But because he was subsisting in the divine nature at the very same time it can also be said that he did know the time of his return according to the properties of his divine nature by virtue of the infinity of his divine mind."
Look, I understand the theology, but A., you didn't get that from here [pointingat Bible]. Please don't pretend you did. And B., I start going, "would render the divine nature less intelligible, more impossible to be so far conceived as his requisite as would discompose and disturb our minds confound our conceptions make our apprehensions of his other known perfections less distinct or inconsistent render him less adorable or less an object of religion." [Quoting John Howe.]
I'm concerned that's where this type of stuff goes eventually. Not necessarily in this context but, I just remember a young man that I helped when he was in high school and in college and then he goes off to seminary and I just remember meeting with him before he left and I said to him "You become a liberal, you abandon the foundations that we've been talking about at seminary, and I'm going to get you, you'll never see it coming." If you fire from more than 500 yards away you, you never hear the shot. I've just seen it happen so many times, and sadly what a lot of these guys are doing is when I make that warning, they just say, "Oh see, there's White saying I'm going to become a Roman Catholic again." I didn't say anything about Roman Catholicism, that's one of the directions you can end up going once you lose confidence in Solo Scriptura. Yeah, that could end up there, or Orthodoxy and lots of other places. But it's like, why don't you just stop for a second, and listen to me. I've got a lot of experience with people that have done this, a lot more than you do, but you won't listen. I'm not talking about Mike Riccardi, I'm talking about the people pushing this stuff.
"It's counterintuitive, but it's not contradictory. It's the miracle of the Hypostatic Union."
Okay. I believe in the Hypostatic Union. Why do I believe in Hypostatic Union? Because I believe this [pointing at Bible]. And I have to make sense of this. Why do YOU believe in the Hypostatic Union? Is this enough? Or is this only enough to give you broad outlines and now we need something beyond that.
"He can know and be ignorant of the same fact at the same time, because he knows it according to the divine nature and he doesn't know it according to the human nature."
And all you got to do is prove that in Matthew 24:36, that's how you can use the term Son. Right? That's what you got to do. He says Calvin agrees, of course there's more to this context, we don't have time now, I was going to cover that. Wow. He goes Calvin, Gregory of Nazianzus, and concludes:
"Kenoticism whether ontological or functional does not behave consistently with the truths the Hypostatic Union and therefore Kenoticism should be rejected in all its forms."
Well, the real question is who gets to define it—and the real question I have to ask of Dr. Riccardi and everybody else is, "I thought, at the Master Seminary, this Bible was the final word for definition. Is it still?" That's the question. And am I being unfair, am I being unkind, because my belief all along has been that, without a doubt, without a doubt. On a Wednesday night I got to speak at Grace from behind the pulpit, (that's how I know that if you lean into it, it moves...), the night that I spoke there, there wasn't a person in that room or on that staff that would have for a second taken offense at being called a "Biblicist." And you know it, you know it, so do I, so does every graduate at that school. You know it... you know it!
