Who died on the cross? - a Hall of Fame thread.

[Sozo]

Please define "man" apart from the body.

Anyone want to answer the question?

I show up, and everyone is suddenly scared off?

 

[Evoken]

Nice straw man caricature of OT that underestimates God's glorious character and attributes freed from philosophical trappings of some of the classical view.

Yes, God may have a glorious character and attributes but it is still possible for him to sin (according to some openists). So, where is the caricature? Don't forget that the context of my comment is my discussion with Lion. Do you share his views?


Evo

 

[Lighthouse]

Do you, like Lion, believe the Second Person of the Trinity was geographically limited to wherever the physical body of Jesus happened to be?

I do! I do!:banana:

 

[Lighthouse]

Hold on. Hold on. Let me get this straight. godrulz says he believes in the hypostatic union of Christ, i.e. He had two natures. But whenever I say that we, as Christians, have two natures [the flesh/sinful and the Spirit/Christ] he calls it a heresy?

:bang:

 

[Ecumenicist]

Hold on. Hold on. Let me get this straight. godrulz says he believes in the hypostatic union of Christ, i.e. He had two natures. But whenever I say that we, as Christians, have two natures [the flesh/sinful and the Spirit/Christ] he calls it a heresy?

:bang:

Astute obsevation LH. That which was true for Christ is true for us as well.

Two natures from any perspective, God or human, is Heresy.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

I see two sides to this:

1) God can die and still be God. The whole hypostatic union of Jesus died as a perfect sacrifice.

:down:

2) God can't die and still be God. Half (the man half) The humanity aspect of the hypostatic union died as a perfect sacrifice.

:up:

 

[Lion]

So, if the Second Person of the Trinity was geographically limited to wherever the physical body of Jesus was, how do you reconcile the following?

Joh 1:48 Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

Jesus is still part of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit and the Father are the other parts of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit saw Nathaniel and conveyed it to Jesus.

I didn’t say Jesus couldn’t know information He needed or wanted. I said he wasn’t omnipresent. You will have to show that Christ was always aware of everything… every thought, every action everything. I only have to show one instance where He wasn’t.

Interesting that you didn’t answer my question though isn’t it? If Jesus was omnipresent why didn’t He know who had touched Him? Now I say He could have known, if he wanted to, through the Holy Spirit, but He didn’t have to, and in this case didn’t.

 

[Lion]

Sure he was a man[before incarnation] the anointed prince..The only part of him that could have been begotten was his humanity it sure was not His Divinity , For His Divinity is That of God the Son The second person of the Trinity..The Divine Son according to Divinity is no more begotten than the Father and the Spirit..

Like I said... it's a rabbit trail. Not gonna go there now.

 

[Lion]

Evoken said;

In your view not only are the Son and the Spirit not essential to the Godhead, since it is possible for the Father to continue to be as if both did not exist. But since the Father can sin, it is possible for the whole Godhead to destroy itself. Parting from what you have said so far, God is a contingent being who, while remaining righteous, his "parts" can fall away from him if they sin and he can as a whole fall into sin (against whom?) ultimately leading to his own destruction (that he does not do so is not the point, the point is that it could be the case). In other words, since God has parts he can fall apart.

Now, if the Son (and the Spirit) can sin against God and be separated forever from God, then on what sense do you think they are God? They cannot be said to be fully God, for they would then be sinning against themselves and separating themselves from themselves. For the Son or the Spirit to sin against God and for them to separate themselves from him, they would need to be dieties different from him whom they sin against and separate themselves from. God cannot be one and sin against himself, nor can he be one and separate himself from himself.

Are you sure that your views are based on Scripture?

Hmm… In order to explain this I would have to completely hijack this thread… something I do not wish to do at this time.

I will say this, scripture absolutely states that the Son subordinated Himself to the Father, showing the Father to be the head of the Trinity. Which I believe supports my earlier assertion.

Let me ask you this… and please really think about it. Try and resist the temptation to give a pat answer like, “Some things only God can know.”

Here it is. But before you answer think about the conversations between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Think about how they interact. Think about them as real instead of just some figurative words on a page.

What do we mean when we say there are three persons in the Godhead?

Oh, and please don’t try the Father to a son, Son to a father, husband to a wife deal. It just breaks down too easily.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

I used to believe -and still do- that He was omnipresent and finite/limited geographically, but this is hard to grasp. I am now open to more speculation since Scripture does not explicitly resolve how the divine and human natures relate in the God-Man. Do we emphasize essence or distinction? If the Word somehow totally changes when humanity is added, I would not perceive it to be a denial of the hypostatic union or His Deity/humanity.

Key here is that the divine Second Person took on humanity, not the other way around and no change in the essence of God occurred. We distinguish between the two natures but never separate, confuse, divide, or mix the two natures in our conceptualizations.

One can best understand the hypostatic union (together united in one subsistence and in one single person) by examining what it is not, thus from the process of elimination determine what it must be.

It is not:

1. a denial that Christ was truly God (Ebionites, Elkasites, Arians);
2. a dissimilar or different substance (anomoios) with the Father (semi-Arianism);
3. a denial that Christ had a genuine human soul (Apollinarians);
4. a denial of a distinct person in the Trinity (Dynamic Monarchianism);
5. God acting merely in the forms of the Son and Spirit (Modalistic Monarchianism/Sabellianism/United Pentecostal Church);
6. a mixture or change when the two natures were united (Eutychianism/Monophysitism);
7. two distinct persons (Nestorianism);
8. a denial of the true humanity of Christ (docetism and variations);
9. that God the Son laid aside all or some of His divine attributes (kenoticism);
10. that there was a communication of the attributes between the divine and human natures (Lutheranism, with respect to the Lord's Supper); and
11. that Jesus existed independently as a human before God entered His body (Adoptionism).

 

[novice]

Jesus is still part of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit and the Father are the other parts of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit saw Nathaniel and conveyed it to Jesus.

I didn’t say Jesus couldn’t know information He needed or wanted. I said he wasn’t omnipresent. You will have to show that Christ was always aware of everything… every thought, every action everything. I only have to show one instance where He wasn’t.

:think:

:up: :up: :up: :up: :up:

 

[Lion]

I think this is the exact point where people go wrong.
It's human nature to want to understand... no... need to understand.

So when we get into discussions about things which are unknowable, and try to pin them down to our limited human understanding and experiences, it's inevitable that we trip over ourselves and argue with each other like clowns.

Faith itself demands an acceptance of mystery (No, not the TOL character. ).

Unknowable? Yes, I suppose there are some things that are unknowable, but usually when God brings up the subject in the Bible there is more information for the finding.

 

[Lion]

I see two sides to this:

1) God can die and still be God. The whole hypostatic union of Jesus died as a perfect sacrifice.

2) God can't die and still be God. Half (the man half) of the hypostatic union died as a perfect sacrifice.

You missed a side. There is no hypostatic union and Jesus the man and God are one and the same.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Read it.

Please define "man" apart from the body.

Thanks for reading it. Not sure I follow you here. What point are you trying to make? This will help me understand the issue.

The “Word became flesh” does not mean that Christ took on a human person, nor merely that He took on a human body. The word sarx (flesh) denotes human nature, consisting of body and soul. The word is used in a somewhat similar sense in Romans 8:3; I Timothy 3:16; I John 4:2; II John 7 (comp. Phil. 2:7). Thus the incarnation constituted Christ as one of the human race (i.e., having a human nature).

The term 'nature' denotes the sum total of all the essential qualities of a thing, that which makes it what it is. A nature is a substance possessed in common, with all the essential qualities of such a substance. The human nature has its subsistence in His Person, and the human nature has a glory and excellence given it. Yet the human nature gives nothing at all to the nature and ‘person’ of the divine Word and Son of God. The church holds that the human consciousness and will belong to the ‘nature’ and not to the ‘person’. The joining of the two natures is a hypostatic joining of the divine to the human, not the human to the divine. The human nature was not itself hypostatic, that is, personal. There was only one person, and this person was divine.

The man Jesus could never exist apart from the union with the one divine Son of God. There were not two “self-consciousnesses” within Christ Incarnate. The ‘person’ of the Incarnation was self-consciously divine and consciously human. Hence, Incarnate Christ possessed a human will. The human will was distinct from the divine will, though not opposite, but in subjection to it (John 6:38; Luke 22:42). The self-consciousness of Christ was always divine, and the human consciousness could never act out of discord with the divine self-consciousness.

Christ: Incarnate
1. A single person in two natures (divine and human)
2. Each nature possessing capacities for expression and action
3. Each nature united in His personal being, but without mixture, confusion or division
4. Each nature retaining its own attributes
5. The Divine assuming the human

In order for a substitute to stand in for mankind to eliminate the guilt and penalty of sin and provide a perfect righteousness for a vast multitude of people, the substitute must be both fully God and fully man. Jesus had to be a man because it was man who was guilty of sin and deserving of punishment. The Messiah also had to be God. A mere man could not:
(1) render a sacrifice of infinite value from God, that could atone for the elect from every tribe, nation and tongue (Rev. 5:9);
(2) have withstood the assaults of Satan, the constant temptations and the immense suffering and agony that Jesus endured: and
(3) intercede or mediate between God and man. Who but the Lord of glory, the God-man could endure the unmitigated wrath of God that all mankind deserved in the space of a few hours?

 

[Lion]

Yeah...and not only could God sin, but he also doesn't knows the future, can make mistakes and his creatures can frustrate his plans. So, I guess we must always be on our knees praying that one day, sometime, God doesn't mess up, sins and ends up destroying himself.


Evo

Hmm.... I don't think anyone here will say God makes mistakes. He is wrong sometimes, because of hope and love, and the fact that He's working with knuckleheads like us. But that doesn't mean He makes mistakes. Rather He takes chances. He took a huge chance in deciding God the Son would become a man so that He could die for us and reinstate us with the Father. I believe the Bible when it states Jesus was tempted in all ways just as we are, and I don't need to come up with silly hypostatic union babble to believe it.

I'm sorry that you do.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Interesting that you didn’t answer my question though isn’t it? If Jesus was omnipresent why didn’t He know who had touched Him? Now I say He could have known, if he wanted to, through the Holy Spirit, but He didn’t have to, and in this case didn’t.

Please read this post very carefully. It answers your specific questions. Thank you.

 

[Newman]

You missed a side. There is no hypostatic union and Jesus the man and God are one and the same.

My bad. Do you think that God can die and still be God?

 

[Lion]

The "hypostatic union" is a false doctrine created without any biblical support. Jesus does not have two identities or natures. He is God manifested in the flesh.

WOW! Right on SOZO.:banana:

 

[Lion]

It could have been a proclamation of their doom, not a call to redemption like Mormons teach.

True...Except the demons were already doomed and had been there since the Flood.:surf: BTW I don't go for the Moron stuff either. But if you go through that word search I think a very nice story is puzzled out.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

You missed a side. There is no hypostatic union and Jesus the man and God are one and the same.

Welcome to the heresy of Eutychianism/Monophysitism.

Now you have a name for what you believe.