Friday, November 9, 2012

glory to God not robbed

It does not rob God of glory when he gives others glory. It is from Him so it brings him glory.

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. " Eph 5--Glory to Him ......and John 17:22 .The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.


2 cor 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,[a] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 cor 4:17:  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

I Peter 5:So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed:

below on this found here http://principiumunitatis.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-imitations-and-gospel.html

How does this imitation sell itself? By claiming to give God all the glory, and turning that into a theological methodology. This methodology leads to monocausalism, also called monergism. Since Christ should get all the glory, according to this methodology, therefore our salvation cannot at all involve our own will or activity of our will. That same intention to maximize God's glory drove the occasionalists in the Middle Ages to deny actual causal powers to created things, mistakenly thinking that they could ascribe more glory to God by ascribing every effect directly to God as its cause. The occasionlists thereby ended up with a position that runs contrary to the doctrine of creation. In the same way, the methodology of a philosophical theology that seeks to "maximize the glory given to God" presumes dangerously to know what it is, precisely, that maximizes the glory given to God. "We know what will maximize the glory given to God", it reasons; "God must do everything". But this presumptuous and rationalistic approach ends up blinding itself to what salvation actually is, and accepting a cheap substitute, one that doesn't actually save us (and thus, paradoxically, detracts from God's glory).

and
To give an illustration, the Reformed person—because of his zero-sum notion of divine action—should criticize Jesus for commanding and enabling the cripple to pick up his mat and go home. But the whole point of the Catholic gospel is seen in this action: Jesus doesn’t just heal the man and then carry him around for the rest of his life. Instead, he heals him and then enables him to live. And when that ex-cripple walks to the store the next day, he’s not threatening Jesus or robbing God of glory. Likewise, the Catholic understanding of Spirit-wrought obedience glorifies God rather than infringing on his turf.


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