SOLUSI UNIVERSITY

A CHARTERED SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST INSTITUTION

OF HIGHER LEARNING

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY AND CHAPLAINCY

An Assignment Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the course requirements

RELT 323: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

MID SEMESTER

PETROSFIY MULEYA #su200077t

Lecture Doctor C Sibanda

1ST SEMESTER 2021 HARMONIZED

1 . What is the teaching of Process theology concerning the foreknowledge
of God and

what is your response to it (the teaching of Process theology concerning

the

Foreknowledge of God)?

 Process theology is the idea that God is not omnipotent in the sense
of being coercive. The divine has a power of persuasion rather than
coercion. Process theologians interpret the classical doctrine of
omnipotence as involving force, and suggest instead of forbearance
in divine power. "Persuasion" in the causal sense means that God
does not exert unilateral control. Reality is not made up of material
substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events,
which are experiential in nature.
 These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experience
(male, female, atomic, and botanical) is important and contributes to
the on-going and interrelated process of reality. The universe is
characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free
will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not
just human beings. God cannot totally control any series of events or
any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this
universal free will by offering possibilities.
 To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not
everything that occurs is God's will. God contains the universe but is
not identical with it, to emphasize that God has always been related
to some world or another. Because God interacts with the changing
universe, God is changeable that is to say, God is affected by the
actions that take place in the universe over the course of time.
However, the abstract elements of God goodness, wisdom, remain
eternally solid.
 This idea though can be summarised as the denial of the existence of
God, or reducing God to the level of humanity that is to say that God
is depended on human being for him to be God meaning he is told
what to do how to do it what to say and how to say .He doesn’t have
a say on the life that he gave.
2. Explain and evaluate four theories of the atonement.

 Socinian theory of atonement

Is that atonement is only a metaphorical concept. All that is necessary,

according to them, for God and a human to have fellowship is that the
human have faith in and love for God. For God to have required something
more would have been contrary to his nature, and to have punished the
innocent Jesus in place of the guilty would have been contrary to justice.
Rather, God and humans are restored to their intended relationship by our
personal adoption of both the teachings of Jesus and the example he set in
life and especially in death.

The evaluation of this theory is that the Socinian theory of atonement, must
come to grips with the fact that numerous portions of Scripture to regard
Jesus’s death quite differently.

They speak of ransom, sacrifice, priesthood, sin bearing, and the like. Note,
in fact, the statement that follows just three verses after the Socinians
favourite text (1 Peter 2:21): “‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the
cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds
you have been healed.

Moral-influence theory of atonement

 Is Christ’s death as a demonstration of God’s love; it

emphasizes Christ’s divine dimension.
 There is a human tendency to ask why God does not remove
the evil in the world, or perhaps even to blame him for it. The
knowledge that God is great and all-sufficient leads us in this
direction and also to the assumption that God cannot suffer,
being infinite and unchangeable. The death of Christ, however,
is evidence that the sin of the world does not meet God’s eye
in the way a disgusting spectacle would meet a glass eye.
Christ’s death makes it clear that God has a sensitivity to the
pain that sin brings upon us. God is not to be blamed for the
 suffering in the world, for he feels the power and the tragedy
of it. His basic response is not condemnation, but compassion.
Such a God elicits our love and trust.

Governmental theory of atonement

 Emphasizes the seriousness of sin. It is a mediating view with

both objective elements (the atonement is regarded as
satisfying the demands of justice) and subjective elements
Christ’s death is seen as a deterrent to sin by impressing on the
sinner the gravity of what is involved in sin .
 But a satisfaction accepted as sufficient for purposes of
government does not exclude and preclude clemency on God’s
part. He does not exact the full penalty. There is therefore true
remission. Instead of insisting on the payment of every ounce
of every penalty, God’s loving nature wishes to forgive.
 It is almost as if, in his desire to forgive sin, God was looking for
an excuse not to enforce the full consequences. He found his
opportunity in the death of Christ, regarding it as sufficient to
preserve his moral government. As we examine the
governmental theory, we are struck by its lack of explicit
scriptural basis.

Ransom theory

 Emphasizes that Christ died to satisfy a principle in the very

nature of God the Father.
 Inasmuch as the ransom theory holds that Christ’s atoning
work was not directed primarily toward humanity, it is an
objective theory of the atonement. To be sure, the ultimate
purpose of Christ’s death was the liberation of the human
race.
 This, however, was accomplished through a work that related
primarily to another party; as a result of that work, there was
an alteration of the human condition. The ransom theory is
 unique among the theories of the atonement in contending
that the direct effects of Christ’s atoning death were neither
on God nor on humans.

3. What are the theological pitfalls of the King James only Movement?

 The KJV Only movement is far more extreme and pervasive. This isn't
a passing thing, it has been around at least since the 60s. This
movement sets up the King James Version (Authorized Version) as
the sole standard by which all other Bibles should be judged. The
differences between the texts are deletions or additions to God's
Word.
 This movement is almost a cult, with many adherents claiming the
English of the KJV actually corrects the Greek original, or is better
than the Greek. Some circles claim it is a re-inspiration, and
translations into other languages are judged by their faithfulness to
the KJV English, not the Greek or Hebrew. They have arguments from
the textual data, but primarily argue from a fideistic view of God's
promised preservation of His Word. Hence their theological pitfalls
are that they neglect the use of the original languages.

4. "If Christ is divine, it means that we have discarded the concept of

monotheism." Is this statement theologically plausible? To a greater extant
it theological plausible because God cannot be limited because God was in
Christ reconciling the world to him hence if we discard it the concept of
monotheism because of Christ being divine we deny the biblical teaching of
John 1v1-3.
5. "On issues of oppression, God stands with the oppressed. Any theological
orientation that fails to represent God as the emancipator of the oppressed
must be regarded as the theology of the oppressor." What is your response
to this submission?

 The response to this submission is that, the religious persons destroy

the truth of their own equality with others through the injustice of
one person condemning another. That is why Paul repeats
throughout the book of Romans that only God is competent to
condemn human beings.
 Pagans destroy the truth of their being as God's creatures and as the
brothers and sisters of other human beings through the injustice of
thinking of themselves as unique and like God and regarding their
own wishes as the only moral norm.
 The processes described by Paul are the following. “Pagans” commit
of their own freedom; they oppress in this unjust the truth about the
dignity and freedom of others.
 God's anger is revealed against them because they find they have
become idolaters of things and, therefore, slaves to all the objects of
their desire.
 The excuse mechanism generated by “pagans” to justify the
divinization of their desires makes them become victim to them. On
the other hand, “Jews” make egoistical statements about their own
morality and their own belief in God, thus using the good and even
God as an excuse for setting themselves above others through the
injustice of their pride in being superior.
 They too become inexcusable because by judging others they end up
thinking of themselves as gods (like the pagans) and by raising
themselves above others, they become subject to the same
“dictatorship of desire” as the “pagans.”

6. What is the difference between inerrancy and infallibility and what how
can the Bible continue to be trusted as a reliable document despite
discarding the concept of inerrancy
 Inerrancy is the doctrine that the Bible is fully truthful in all of its
teachings, hence Infallibility is the belief that what the Bible says
regarding matters of faith and Christian practice is wholly useful and
true. It is the belief that the Bible is completely trustworthy as a
guide to salvation and the life of faith and will not fail to accomplish
its purpose.

 If the Bible is not inerrant, then our knowledge of God may be

inaccurate and unreliable. Inerrancy is a corollary to the full
inspiration of the Bible. Theologians have employed a number of
strategies to explain the apparent discrepancies between biblical
passages. While detailed scientific descriptions or mathematically
exact statements are not possible, inerrancy means that the Bible,
when judged by the usage of its time, teaches the truth without any
affirmation of error.