Sorry about the length btw. I considered making it two posts, but decided to just put it out in one.

 

"I am odd"

Well, yeah.

"I don't think our Lord ever exercised His own divinity during the incarnation"

How, then, do you explain the occasions in which the Gospels tell us that "Jesus knew," e.g. John 6:64?

 

David,

Is there anything in the text that says that the only way Jesus could have known was if He was God, or is that just an assumption you are making - that "because Jesus was God, that is why He knew"

Did Elisha know what Gehazi was doing because Elisha was also Christ?

Jesus didn't claim to be omniscient on earth - in fact He showed that He wasn't when He said that God the Father knew something that Jesus the man did not. If Christ knew things "because He was God" it must follow, with all the same force, that Christ failed to know things "because He wasn't God", if we are going to be consistent.

If on the other hand, Jesus knew because God made Him aware of it, then there is no inconsistency.

The problem when people read that Jesus didn't exercise His divinity on earth, is that typically they read into that - they say, "This man is denying the divinity of Christ!" when no such thing is happening.

I contest the idea that the only possible way that Christ could know such things is through His own divinity. I don't deny that He "could have" I just deny that it is the only possible way to understand it.

It seems obvious to me that if "that" presumption requires inconsistencies, and nother presumption removes every inconsistency - that the latter is more likely.

Does that make sense? These things didn't come quickly to me, so I doubt that, no matter how I articulate them, they would come quickly to anyone else.

 

And as an afterthought, I replied rather quickly, and didn't bother reading my response for tone. In my second, post submission reading, I decided that I didn't come across as warm and conversational, but perhaps more abrupt and confrontational. I hope that you know me well enough to see through the veil of text to my heart, and know that if I sound abrupt, it is only because, in my haste to answer, I failed to communicate the tone of my soul. You know I am not challenging you, in any sort of adversarial sense, I am just chatting.

 

Daniel, you surely have no need to reassure me regarding your "tone." My feelings are not so sensitive. Furthermore, cannot friends exchange straight talk, even occasional harsh words (though there were none here), without fear of offense?

Anyway ...

I want to reply to your reply, but, being American, I have to eat turkey and take a nap. Catch you later.

 

Oh, that's right, Happy Thanksgiving sir.

We have a day up here that we call "thanksgiving" but I think it is just a stolen holiday - like how the Romans, instead of inventing their own Gods, just renamed the Greek ones.

In this same way, I am convinced that we in Canada, instead of actually being thankful for something our selves, just co-opted your holiday and said, yeah, we are also thankful, but we we're thankful in October in order to avoid the charge of plagerism.

 

Daniel,

I hope you are still reading the comments on this entry.

I find this discussion fascinating.

I am reminded of Philippians revealing that Christ "made himself nothing", so in a sense I agree with you that he did not "use" his divine attributes during the incarnation, while retaining his divine nature.

But where does the Bible say God the Father "told" him anything? Two examples. Jesus knew the thoughts of the disciples in John 6, and that of the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. It is one thing to anticipate the reaction of someone, or a group of people, as it is the case of the former, but it is entirely another thing to tell someone "everything they ever did" as in the case of the latter. With the woman at the well, Jesus' abilities appear to have no other explanation than that he was omniscient. So I am left a bit confused.

I have always struggled with this doctrine. I do not deny the doctrine of the deity of Christ, of course. I just don't think I have a good understanding of it.

 

Jibbs, to be sure, we have no record of God speaking directly to, say, Elisha the prophet, and yet he knew what Gehazi did when Gehazi chased after Naaman. Do we (because we are consistent, right?) assume that Elisha must have been omniscient?

Now there is one thing recorded, that when read without presupposition or apology, tells us whether Christ's seeming omniscience, was in fact divine (i.e. perfect and without limit).

Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32 - "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."

If Christ was drawing upon the omniscience of His deity during the incarnation - then this verse tells us that either Christ's divine omniscience was limited - or Christ could only make use of it in a limited way.

Were these two verses (the wording is identical in both Matthew and Mark) the only hint that Christ's humanity was untainted by His divinity, I think they themselves would suffice - providing we do not have a life's work of wrong theology that we are unwilling to divest ourselves of - but there are other passages which, while not as obvious/blatant, do paint a picture that harmonizes with these texts, all of which, I might as, does not rob Christ or God of glory, but magnifies it a trillion-fold.

Recall that Christ prayed to God the Father? Why? Why would an omniscient man pray? He would already know everything God would have him do, right? He would already know that God knew this, prayer would be redundant (at best). The JWs have figured that out too. They say, "if Jesus was God, why did He pray to God?" - and our textbook answer is that Jesus prayed to God because being found as a man He had to act(?) just like a real man would while He was here on earth... We don't say it that way, we say, being a man, Jesus behaved as a man, that is, He did what God commands men to do, and men are commanded to pray to God - and so Jesus, as an obedient man, prayed to God - but really, it was a necessary redundancy - Jesus didn't receive any info that He didn't already know, etc.

(cont)

 

(cont)

In Matthew 11:27 and again in Luke 10:22 Jesus says that, "all things have been handed over to Me by My Father..." Surely prior to the incarnation Jesus already had "all things" so this is talking about God the Father revealing things to Jesus during the incarnation. If Christ were exercising His own omniscience during the incarnation - that is, if it were not something He had received from God, as men receive gifts from God, then one should presume (if they are consistent) that Christ was not exercising just some part of His deity - but the whole of it.

That is, it is inconsistent to say that Jesus used bits and pieces of His deity, if He used His deific prerogative, He used all of it.

Now, think that through - if He emptied Himself, but continued to use everything, what could God possibly have handed over to Him?

Christ did not exercise His own deity to be omniscient while here on earth, for if He had, He would certainly have known the hour and time of the end.

Christ -did- know things, but scripture offers better explanations than the faux spiritual knee-jerk: "because He was God".

The last thing I want to do is rob Christ of glory, or teach something that scripture doesn't teach. But after studying the scriptures, I have found that the presumption that Jesus exercised His own divinity while incarnate is not only unnecessary, but it is inconsistent, and even robs Christ of glory, and the Christian of strength.

For consider this; if Christ walked in the strength of the Holy Spirit, rather than in His own strength, if He did what He did not "because He was God" but rather, "Because He relied entirely on God" - then He truly was the first amongst many brethren, and we can look to Him directly to see that relying on God does in fact work. etc.

That isn't to say that we will be able to raise the dead, heal the sick, and cure the deaf, blind, and mute - but rather that we will be able to live as scripture directs us to live, rather than have a theologically correct ideal that we fail to live up to every day.

I gotta run off to work, but we can pick this up if anything I have said sounds flaky.

 

Thanks, Daniel. That definitely helps me understand it a bit better. In a nutshell, it is not that Christ ceased to be God when he took the form of a man, but rather, he forfeited all the attributes of God. I am going to continue studying this.

 

Jibbs, that is how I see it. Scripture says that Jesus cast out demons by the Holy Spirit, and even that he could heal because the Spirit was present to heal. Basically Jesus lived, up until the Jordan, like Adam before the fall - sinless, and uncursed (living with an awareness of God that we who are cursed do not have). In the Jordan Jesus was born from above - the first Christian - annointed like every believer, with the fullness of the Holy Spirit who was thereafter with Him, and through Whom Christ was able to perform those miracles that God had prepared beforehand for Christ to do.

It all makes perfect sense once you see it.

 

I should add that this view that Christ ministered through the power and strength of the Holy Spirit can be sorely misconstrued.

In saying that this how I believe scripture paints the picture, I am not suggesting, as some might imagine, that Jesus was two people: God on the one hand, and the "man" Jesus on the other, being a body that inhabited two distinct personalities in the same flesh; one of which was active (His humanity) and one of which was dormant (His divinity). God forbid! No, my understanding is that Christ was ever and only one Person, before, during, and after the incarnation.

During the incarnation the divine Person (Christ) was found to be in the likeness of a man. In order to be in the likeness of a man, and not merely God walking around dressed up like a man, Christ had to humble Himself - that is, to set aside all deific prerogative, but by this I by no means suggest that Christ set aside His personhood during the incarnation to take up another.

So I do not believe that Christ was two persons (man and God), but one Person, and has always and eternally been only one Person, before, during and after the incarnation. When Christ humbled Himself and became a man, He did not cease to be God, but for the duration of His humanity, ceased to exercise His divinity - that is, He did not dip into the well of His own divinity to drink, as it were, while here on the earth.

Having said that, I would be remiss if I did not mention that one of the 12 anathemas Cyril of Alexandria pronounced against Nestorius (the ninth anathema to be precise), reads:

If anyone says that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, as making use of an alien power that worked through him and as having received from him the power to master unclean spirits and to work divine wonders among people, and does not rather say that it was his own proper Spirit through whom he worked the divine wonders, let him be anathema.

As I understand it, Cyril of Alexandria, having understood the Holy Spirit as preceding from both God the Father, God the Son, concluded that (in the words of Petavius), "When Christ worked wonders through the Holy Ghost, He was working through a power which was His own, viz.: the Third Person of the Holy Trinity; from whom He never was and never could be separated, ever abiding with Him and the Eternal Father in the Divine Unity."

(cont)

 

(cont)

I do not and cannot disagree with Petavius - for when Christ worked wonders through the Holy Spirit, He was not drawing from some power that was alien to His own divine Personality - but was working through a power that was truly His own - by virtue of the Trinitarian nature of God. Notwithstanding, I make a distinction that here which, while separating me from a clear charge of Nestorianism, does not so separate me that one can examine it without extreme caution and careful discernment. The distinction I make is that Jesus, during the incarnation, after having been baptized into the Holy Spirit in the Jordan, did not personally direct His access to, and use of, His own divinity, but did so only according to the direction given Him by God the Father through the Holy Spirit. That is, everything Christ did, that was divine in nature, was done in accord with the Holy Spirit's leading, and relied upon the Holy Spirit's power (which remained Christ's power by virtue of the Trinity, but is differentiated here of necessity on behalf of the incarnation)

The bottom line is that I believe something here, that when misunderstood, can easily be painted as Nestorianism.

Not that everything about Nestorianism is all bad.

Most protestants would agree that while Mary is the mother of God incarnate, she is not (carte blanche) the mother of God (which implies that she is the Mother of the Trinity).

These things, while clear to me, are easily misunderstood, misapplied, misconstrued, and misrepresented. When I had this conversation with a knowledgeable Catholic, and he condemned me as an anathematized heretic. I was concerned of course, having been anathematized by several other Catholic doctrines as well, not the least of which was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. But I don't want to present this to you as an orthodox teaching.

 

"It all makes perfect sense once you see it."

Isn't that what we all think about our nutty ideas?

Daniel, I did mean to get back to you on this, but I see JIBBS has beaten me to it. I'm reading this discussion with interest, and you are making sense. Thanks to boyh of you.

 

David said, Isn't that what we all think about our nutty ideas?


Yes, exactly.

 

The crypto-kenotic controversy began in the fifteenth century when Balthasar Mentzer, a church elder from the German township of Giessen, in criticizing the reformation, argued that Jesus was not omnipresent, being confined as He was, during the incarnation, to the flesh. That is, Mentzer argued that you can't have it both ways, either Jesus was in all places simultaneously, or He existed in a localized capacity as all men do - and Mentzer argued for the latter, concluding something like this: The divinity of Christ was set aside during the incarnation and resumed after the resurrection.

You can imagine no small controversy erupted over the matter (they gave it a name after all). The problem was bigger than answering the question of whether or not the incarnate Jesus could be in two places at the same time - it was whether or not Jesus was (functionally) God during the incarnation.

The controversy obviously orbited around the text in Paul's epistle to the church at Philippi, specifically where Paul writes that Christ did not cling to His divine simultude with God, but "emptied" Himself in becoming a man. In fact the controversy gets its name from the Greek word for empty: Kenosis.

The argument, as I understand it, had to do with the nature of the incarnation. If we affirm that Jesus was 100% man, and at the same time 100% God, does that mean that Jesus (because He was God), was physically everywhere simultaneously? Does that mean that Jesus was immutable? etc. Clearly Jesus' body didn't encompass all creation, and clearly Jesus aged, and even learned new things during the incarnation - that is, it was clear that some of those attributes that we understand belong to God, were not being physically manifested during the incarnation.

The solutions proposed varied in scope, but retained what I believed to be a flawed, but underlaying presumption - that Jesus actually set aside either some or all of His divine nature/attributes during the incarnation.

On the one hand you have some saying that Jesus set aside *all* of His deity during the incarnation, and that He picked it up briefly at the transfiguration, but ultimately only after the ascension. On the other hand you have some saying that Jesus laid aside a good measure of His deity - and all of His heavenly glory, and yet a third group argued that Jesus gave up none of his deity, but only gave up heavenly glory.

(cont)

 

(cont)

The controversy reimerged in the nineteenth century, and I think it was Warfield who argued that the notion that Christ set aside Hid deity was plain and simple heresy, and anyone who doubted that did so because they had emptied their heads of reason, or something like that.

I agree with Warfield: the notion that Christ set aside His deity during the incarnation is -not- biblical. That would mean that Jesus stopped being God for a while, and frankly, only an idiot would buy into that.

I mention all this, because I don't want to be misunderstood. When I say that Christ set aside His prerogative, I mean it in the sense that I set aside my ability to see every time I purposely close my eyes. It is not that I no longer have eyes, nor is it again that I am blind - but rather having eyes, I have emptied myself of the prerogative to use them.

I play this game with my little children where, as we leave a store, I hold their hand and close my eyes making them lead me to the car. At any time, if I think I am about to be lead into danger, I can open my eyes and end the game - but as I trust them, I am able to keep my eyes closed even until we get to the car. They enjoy leading me around in my self-imposed pseudo-blindness, and I enjoy building them up in the knowledge that I trust them implicitly with my life (and their own). To be sure, I am usually peeking, but that is beside the point. I imagine the incarnation to be just like that. Jesus is God, and doesn't set anything of His divine nature aside - and yet having full access to all of it, I believe He sets aside the prerogative to use any of it, and instead trust Himself entirely to God (in the Person of the Holy Spirit) and His perfect guiding will and ample provision, both in earthly things, and of course, in the miraculous, allowing Himself to be led and gifted just as any other man is, even though He was all the while God.

I make the distinction because I don't want to be misunderstood, or more properly, mislabeled. In examining these things, one might wrongly presume that my opinion is founded upon such things as other men's opinions - as though I had read these things somewhere and chosen a side in an already ancient and controversial discussion. Not so. I had no idea anyone had ever discussed such matters in the past, nor had I any inclination to adopt any previous doctrines to my own way of thinking. What I have come to believe, I have come to believe in the same manner in which I came to be a five point Calvinist. I saw the things in scriptures, and only later learned that other men thought otherwise.

So it is with this.

If that helps at all.

 

Daniel,

Deepest thanks to you for taking the time to spell all this out for me. I am wholeheartedly in agreement with everything you have said and am thankful you were able to put this into thoughts that make sense to me. I've never been "sure" of this doctrine, or at least I've never been sure of how to express it. I hope I will now be better equipped the next time the topic comes up, particularly with the JW door-to-doorers that frequent this area.