[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by mfblume

People flip out when they think God is both the Son and Father, as if God is speaking to himself. Meanwhile, the bible shows a MaN SPEAKING TO HIMSELF:

Luk 12:16.. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:..

Watch how he THINKS WITHIN HIMSELF:

Luk 12:17.. And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?..

He just asked himself a question!

Then he answers himself:

Luk 12:18.. And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

Then he actually speaks to his own soul:
..
Luk 12:19.. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry...


And then we read God took counsel of his own will!


Ephesians 1:11 KJV.. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

In the case of God, He so perfectly manifested as a human being that that man had to pray and rely on deity! And to say that God cannot do that as a single person is to weaken his abilities and base them on the limitations that human beings have, who cannot manifest themselves with another nature. So simple yet so many make that fatal error.

Mike,

The situation in Luke 12 and the rich man and his private, internal cogitations is not at all the same as the situation we see between Jesus and the Father. You quoted the text at length and even emboldened some of the text as proof. Let me show you:

And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?..

Notice what the man does as he thinks within himself: He asks Himself "What shall I do?

He then responds to His own personal musings:

And he said, This will I do

Notice again the use of "I", the first person referent to Himself.

Then, as you show, he speaks to his own soul here:

And I will say to my soul, Soul,

Note the specificity of the Greek for "my soul":

τῇ ψυχῇ μου (tē psychē mou)

Literally, it reads "the soul of me". Mou is found in the Genitive Case, meaning personal possession or source of origin.

See: https://biblehub.com/interlinear/luke/12-19.htm

In every instance you shared from Luke 12, the narrative never suggests that the man is in any way speaking to anyone other than himself.

He, like many of us humans, is referring to himself in 3rd person. But when we do such things, we are not actually presupposing that our self is actually another person.

But note what Jesus says in John 17:5,

5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

Jesus says quite clearly that the Father has a "self" that is differentiated and wholly not the self of Jesus/the Son.

The Greek phrasing is as follows:

παρὰ σεαυτῷ (para seautō)

Or literally, "with Yourself", noting that σεαυτῷ (seautō) "Yourself" is a compound of two words, namely:

σέ (se) meaning "you" and αὐτός (autos), meaning "self".

See:

https://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/17-5.htm
https://biblehub.com/greek/4572.htm
https://biblehub.com/greek/4571.htm
https://biblehub.com/greek/846.htm

This means that as far as Jesus was concerned, the Father was an entirely different person, if you will, or entity and identity, with a "self" that was not at all the self of the Son, but was unique to the Father alone.

It is therefore a mistake to use the situation of Luke 12 and the rich man's internal monologue as descriptive of the nature of the relationship between, and the differentiation of of the persons of, the Father and the Son.

The issue then is not limiting God or His ability. The limitations are from the Scriptures themselves, and from what Jesus actually said with the language He Himself employed, for our understanding.