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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Questions about Christianity > Immortality - Jesus' incarnation | Forum Quick Jump
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spenlake
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 1050
| Posted 1/4/2006 6:39 PM (GMT -6) |   |
Starkman said...
Spen,
My question isn't about what God promised—we know what He promised. I'm just asking if Jesus, hypothetically, would have lived if Mary were to have been killed. Same question as would Jesus have died if Here were to have fallen off a one hundred foot cliff, or have been stabbed in the heart, or whatever.
There is a great example of the second point that will prove the first point. Satan spoke to Jesus of leaping from the pinacle of the temple, perhaps one hundred feet high, and Satan was certain what would happen to Jesus - He wouldn't die because God had commanded supernatural protection such the He wouldn't die or even be injured.
for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’"
Jesus doesn't dispute that what the Father commanded concerning His supernatural protection was true. In fact, Jesus acknowledges that it is true by stating that He shouldn't tempt God by presuming on it for His own ends. If such supernatural protection was invalid, He wouldn't have been tempting God.
Thus, Jesus would have lived because His life was supernaturally invincible and only He had authority over it, not Satan and not death.
Spen Lake | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/4/2006 7:13 PM (GMT -6) | |
spenlake said...
Jesus would have lived because His life was supernaturally invincible and only He had authority over it, not Satan and not death.
PoW:
Spen and Starkman, Can we say two things?
1. That Jesus had the power to lay down his life or not, at any and every time.
2. That he always, from conception to death, had the capacity of dying.
The second is connected with the whole suffering thing that is coterminal from conception to death, when he said "It is finished."
The first is also connected, in that his suffering was VOLUNTARY. Or else it would not be a sacrifice. A sacrifice does not have to be a dying (wave offerings and grain offerings aren't.) But they are giving, and final. Jesus was not "punished" on the Cross, but was a sacrifice in substitution of his humanity that through death and resurrection restores humanity.
Voluntarily he finished death and sin in his body. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/5/2006 4:32:19 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 1/5/2006 4:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Spen,
So, if Jesus did fall off a cliff, He would have just gotten back up, brushed Himself off and gone on His way?
That Jesus didn't argue the fact with Satan (His having been tempted to jump) doesn't prove at all that what Satan said was true. That's an argument from silence. I don't argue about a lot of things with Satan. That certainly doesn't prove that what he tells me is true. Further, even if it were true, the issue would then be that the Father protects Jesus' body. But that's the exception. My question is clear: did Jesus possess a normal, earthly body that would have suffered death if pushed far enough (without, of course, external protection from the Father).
Was Jesus' body something different than ours? Was He not subject to any injury as we are? If He was, how much? Enough to feel pain but not break a bone? (Again, I have to argue that Jesus having the authority to lay down His life has nothing to do with what I'm asking. It has all to do, however, with no PERSON being able to take His life until He was ready to die. But this does not prove at all what you are saying. It just doesn't. You are coming from a thinking that has already concluded it being impossible for Jesus to be as human as the next person, because if He was He wasn't, then, divine, or He was under the "curse" or what have you.
I understand completely that you feel this way, but it really doesn't deal with the reality Jesus walked in. Al lthe protection He had by the Father is a given. That He was not destined to die until He decided it was time is perfectly clear. But none of this has any bearing on whether Jesus would have died if the Father's protection was not on Him; if Mary were to have been killed. Side stepping the matter by saying, "Well, that could never happen, so therefore, Jesus would never have died" is to conclude something logically false. That it would never happen is irrelevant. IF...IF it were to have happened, was Jesus' body a different kind of body than ours? Would it have held together if He were stabbed or were to have fallen 100 feet to the ground?
It's the kind of body He had, Spen, that's the issue; not the promises or protection the Father gave Him. This is what I think we should address directly. scripture, I am convinced, does not address this by talking about Jesus having authority over His body. Hebrews 2, which I think clearly shows Jesus was fully human as to His body with no exceptions. The context is clear, and the arguemnt that the Greek can be translated this way or that way, I think, is neither here nor there. The author is trying to say, plainly, that Jesus was made just like you and me, that He had to be if He was to redeem us. And, as far as I can see, there is nothing in Jesus' life that insinuates differently.
Well, this is my last post on the matter, so you may post your rebuttal and we'll leave it at that.
Much gracious!
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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spenlake
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 1050
| Posted 1/5/2006 4:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Starkman,
If you would permit me to, I would like to approach your question diagonally. I think that you reject that Jesus' human body could be immortal as a human body and that our human body is not immortal but condemned to die. This disparity seems "unfair" or fails to meet your standard of Jesus being fully human.
Would you feel this way if I only stated that Jesus would have lived for 900 years if he had not allowed us to kill him. The fact that He lived for 900 years is certainly "not fair" and implies imparity in as much as we cannot expect to live for 900 years in our human bodies. In this case Jesus' humanity would also be suspect because current humanity does not possess this capability.
Obviously, Adam was human and every man, father to son from Adam to Moses were human and yet each and every one of them lived for ages that we are incapable of. They were genetically different and yet they were fully human. Moses, at 120 years old, was not subjected to the manifest process of old age.
Deut 34, "Athough Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died, his eye was not dim, nor his vigor abated."
Though Moses did not suffer old age, God decided to end his life prematurly and not allow him to live on and lead the people into Canaan. This was something Moses was certainly capable of living longer and performing. Yet Moses was also fully human.
I do not accept that just because Jesus' human body would not age and die like ours (any more than Noah's body aged and died like ours) that He was not fully human. Death and dying is something that was imposed upon an immortal humanity and is a cursed addition to humanity, not an integral part of humanity. Adam "aquired" this death imposed upon his humanity. Jesus, the second Adam incarnated directly by God and born of a virgin, did not inherit Adam's "addition" in His humanity. Jesus chose to bear this cursed addition for us on our behalf and this was possible beacuse He was fully human.
God bless you Starkman.
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 1/24/2006 10:07 PM (GMT -6) | | | An Orthodox take
The Orthodox view is that Jesus was conceived being neither mortal nor immortal, but being capable of each. The idea that Jesus was born immortal was a type of docetist heresy.  Jesus's humanity begins as Adam's did with the potential for immortality. The humanity of Mary is purified in the Incarnation which is why Jesus doesn't inherit any weakened or corrupted state.
This is because this degree of immortality is something personally acquired through freedom. It is a divine activity or energy. More specifically this level or degree of immortality is a virtue or a divine activity which is natural to humans in that they have a natural potential for it, but it is personally acquired. A more general kind of immortality or eternal existence is guaranteed for all in the Incarnation. Jesus takes upon himself all of human nature and unites it to his eternal divine person. This secures humanity against annihilation, which the devil wanted to accomplish. So everyone gets eternal existence, but how they spend it is up to them.
Because the eternal life of blessedness is acquired through freedom, it cannot be given in creation. This is why humans cannot be created immortal for their moral state would not be moral, but natural. That is, it wouldn't be personal, but natural. Moral responsibility and morality in general requires freedom, specifically a libertarian kind of freedom.
The Cross is not in the Orthodox view a way to appease an angry deity but rather the display of God's power in the face of the weapon of the enemy, death. Jesus by his divine power in the hypostatic union maintains the integrity or unity of human nature, body and soul in the face of the acid of death that would otherwise disolve the personal union between body and soul. So while Jesus dies and his soul is separated from his body, both are kept united together in his divine person.
The OT sacrifices were meant to expiate sin, to send it away and cleanse the offerer. This is why the scape goat was sent off into the desert to the region where the unclean spirits live. The desert is that place where evil spirits find it easiest to destroy life. So monks journey to the desert not to escape the world, but to manifest God's kingdom in the wilderness and defeat the powers of evil in restoring the desert to a garden existence.
I hope that helps.
Acolyte
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/25/2006 11:05 PM (GMT -6) | |
spenlake said...
I guess that is why I am not Orthodox. I understand the concepts but I don't see them supported by scriptures. Instead there is a mysticism and spiritism that sets aside reason for spiritual experiences. I am not saying that I don't believe that we have spiritual experiences or feelings, just that experiences are not the measure of truth and revelation - only objective truth revealed in scripture.
I beleive in objective revelations of the hidden spiritual world that were spoken audibly by a man to men. These men were not mystics but normal men who heard words, the very words of the Father communicated by the vocal cords of a man who claimed to be God. This claim was verified by His resurrection from the dead. I do not know exhaustively about all the spiritual world but I do know certain truth sufficient for all that is life an Godliness.
Dear Spen,
Honestly, I think it is logical to conclude that you wrote the above on "auto-pilot." Not that you don't believe it, or that you didn't carefully craft an original response. But it is certainly a post that you would have written about just any post of someone elses.
I bet you could not say it again if you actually took something actually in Acolyte's post. Your take on his post is not founded on what he posted. What he said comes from script ure. And it seems all you did say is that script ure is good and it teaches us about Christ. But Acolyte's post did not lack script ural truth about Christ, nor script ural basis of what was said. So, reading your's I'm left seeing mere prejudice as its basis.
Immediately I'm drawn to 1 John 4:10...
"In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins."
nand 1 John 2:1-2
"My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."
And, I was disappointed to see you accuse him of mysticism. As if he didn't get truth from the same preaching of the Word. And from the same witness of the Holy Spirit producing fruit in his life and in the lives of others in church who together are being fitted together and built up into Chirst as a sacrifice unto God... scripture says.
Give what he wrote a careful chance. Read it again. While he did not prooftext everything, neither did you.
And you don't appear to have refuted a single thing he said -- from scripture I mean. (Not partisan feelings.)
Dialog is made of more than that.
Peace...
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/25/2006 10:08:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 1/25/2006 11:51 PM (GMT -6) | | Spenlake,
If you want a scriptural exposition there are a number of books that will give you the scriptural basis for the concepts. Gustaf Aulen's Christus Victor, gives a nice summary of the scriptural material for what is essentially the Orthodox view of the atonement. It is important to keep in mind that just because you may not see the scriptural basis doesn't mean that there isn't any. Often times we understand a set of scriptures a specific way until one day our understanding shifts and we see something that we didn't see before.
As for mysticism, I don't see how you could conclude from my post much of anything about mysticism. I didn't say a word about it. Moreover, there are many different types of mysticism and the Bible has a lot to say about divine mysteries in any case. Orthodoxy isn't interested in spiritual experiences for the sake of having an experience, but of being united to Christ, to become partakers of the divine nature, as the Bible says. (2 Pet 1:4)
And historically the Orthodox have never degraded the scriptures as the revealed source of truth. The Orthodox Churches of the middle east and europe were the churches personally founded by the Apostles and to whom the Apostles committed the scriptures. It was these churches that canonized and preserved and taught the scriptures for century upon century. As St. Ireneaus wrote, "Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ." Our whorship services are constructed practically word for word just from scripture and all of the symbolism is taken practically entirely from scripture. We read the scriptures at every service and read the entire bible through between a 1-3 year cycle.
So please excuse me, but I can't see what you are talking about .
God never ceases from good works because he never began them. www.energeticprocession.com | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/28/2006 11:06 AM (GMT -6) | |
Acolyte said...
Gustaf Aulen's Christus Victor, gives a nice summary of the scriptural material for what is essentially the Orthodox view of the atonement.
"Gustaf Aulen's Christus Victor..."
I well remember JEE mentioning that Greg Boyd's theology (isn't it ironic) did not fit the "Christus Victor" model...........even though that was the name of his ministry.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/28/2006 10:15:21 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 1/28/2006 12:44 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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