The most common reply to arguments for a high Christology is an appeal to divine delegation, or agency. A Christian might say something like, "Jesus calmed the storm in Mark, who but God can do that?" The dissenter replies, "That's because Jesus was given divinely authorized power, just as Moses was when he split the Red Sea. You wouldn't call Moses God, would you?" At first glance, the symmetry seems accurate. But look beneath the surface, and a serious problem emerges. What the dissenter is really doing is anchoring their interpretive framework to adjacent Jewish agency texts, passages featuring mediatorial figures such as prophets, angels, and messengers, or even inanimate objects like the ark of the covenant. The goal is to draw a parallel between Jesus and figures who mediated the presence of YHWH without ever being YHWH. The trouble is that no such parallel actually works in totality. Now you might be thinking, "But doesn't Jesus carry out divine prerogatives, just as those other figures did?" Yes, He does, but that's a distraction from the real point of contention. The real issue is what I'll call the overextension problem. The overextension problem: Agency-only models use Jewish agency parallels to explain more than those parallels can bear. They can account for how an authorized agent represents YHWH, but they cannot, on their own, explain why Christ personally occupies the YHWH-only subject-position. That subject-position turns on something I'll call identity-emphasis. Identity-emphasis: the way a text signals which figure is being made the focal bearer of divine significance in a given passage. How do we know this is the crux? Simple: in every proposed parallel, whatever mediates YHWH's presence and authority never retains an identity of its own, it functions purely as a channel for YHWH's speech and action. So here's the logic of the agency-only model: YHWH commands → the human agent obeys and signifies the act → YHWH completes it. Take Moses at the sea. He stretches out his hand, but it is YHWH who drives the waters back:

Interpreting the Bible is always a controversy. I’m curious what sort of frameworks you guys read scripture in light of. To give an example, most evangelical sermons will emphasize the reader response aspect, “what does this mean to me” and it often restricts the fullness of scripture. Even Christocentric models can do the same. It seems that there are these basic aspects of authorial intent, textual meaning, original audience intepretation, christological fulfillment, typological interpretation, allegorical intepretation, and reader response. How do we rank these different aspects of interpreting scripture in order to have the “loveliest” explanation of scripture?

*Disclaimer, I talk about "Free will" and know the nuance of the topic, but I'm curious of what you guys think of my use of the phrase and if you would change anything about this post! So I was having this conversation with a friend of mine about why it isn't compatible for someone to be a Homosexual and still be a Christian, and when I define the term "Homosexual" I mean a declaration (or coming out as they would say) and a regular carrying out of explicit or implied sensual actions towards the opposite sex. More to define, but I don’t want to digress. Her first argument would usually go as followed: “There are numerous species within the animal kingdom that engage in homosexual behavior.” Now I can say we as Christians believe we are divinely inspired (Genesis 1:26), to derive your morals from the cruelty of nature isn’t a strong argument. Regardless of my rebuttals I'm still trapped in a sense, and this is where it gets tricky.. “Why aren’t we permitted to carry out “wrong” moral actions that nature around us seems to grant flexibility, which itself was created by a creator that deems certain actions wrong?” I wanted to ask this question at Q&A but I mostly work on Saturdays, but here is my best argument for the time being, bear with me still a work in progress and I am by no means an experienced philosopher/theologian.. God starts the process for a life habitable universe, with such life some of which possessing a distinct programming to follow a task, with granted free will, and other life (humans) having the ability to express desires outside of one's programming, and an awareness of one's decisions. Free will agents without the added awareness of one's self or actions, having a distinct purpose, but an absence of destiny (or maybe they do have a destiny, need to read more), can’t be morally responsible for the same actions of a free will agent with (1) An awareness of one's actions (2) A law given distinctly to them for a divine purpose. Let me know how I did, or what you guys come up with! :D

Hey everyone! Just wondering what y’all’s thoughts on the abortion debate from a philosophical standpoint. I know that many people believe that something is not a “person” until it has a mind. Dustin Crummett gave a couple of arguments in favor of this position in a video on Joe Schmid’s channel “Majesty of Reason” where he was debating Trent Horn on abortion. One argument he gave was called the cerebrum transplant argument, where he essentially said that if one’s mind and organism separate, one goes with the mind and not the organism. Hence, one must be their mind, and not their organism. What are y’all’s thoughts on this? Edit: Just FYI, I'm working on responses to y'all's replies. Thanks for responding to my post!

Many atheists bring up the PoE as a point for them on the overall debate. However I ask what model they follow that would suggest an amount of suffering that is overcome able? As I see it if random chance is the thing at play, then a world with no suffering, a world with insurmountable suffering, and a world like ours are equally as likely. Wouldn't this actually turn the PoE in our favor?