Answer for non-trinitarian Christian?

[fbl9]

I nearly responded with the same. Then I realized that the problem wasn’t the prophesy. The problem was the supposition:

What is lacking is the understanding of what a sacrifice is.
Is not Jesus’s sacrifice of same mode as the Ot sacrifices for sin.
That is an offering to God for sin.

 

[jcrichton]

I was talking to someone last night who believes in God and in Jesus, but believes Jesus was fully human–not fully divine. His reasoning (hopefully I’m relaying it accurately) is that if Jesus was fully divine, He had foreknowledge that he’d rise from the dead and be sitting one day at God’s right hand, and if you know it’s all going to come out right in the end, it’s not that great a sacrifice.

I don’t agree with some of the reasoning here, but I’m curious what the Church’s response to this is.

…this is an old heresy (catholic.com/tracts/the-great-heresies and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnation_(Christianity ) treated as such and terminated with the Dogma of the Holy Trinity: Christ is both fully God and fully human (remember the Credo: True God from True God?)… the problem people have is that they are far removed from the actual experience… Christ, the Word Incarnate, putting aside His Divinity became one of us, equal to us in everything except sin, in order that He should take upon His human body the scourge, pain, torture, rejection, and death that sin afforded humanity (the sinnless became the object of sin for our redemption)… but not only that… the Eternal, the I AM/BE, would need to separate Himself from the Father (this, in my belief, was truly the reason for His anguish both prior to and at the crucifixion) in order to take onto Himself the sin of the world… so while foreknowledge of some excruciating experience and the eventual victorious outcome gives one some solace, I doubt that anyone could have experienced Jesus’ extreme pain at the separation from the Father–specially knowing, as He did, that “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the Suffering Servant so that you may fully understand Jesus’ predicament!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

St. Paul explained this:
[BIBLEDRB]Philippians 2:6-8[/BIBLEDRB]

When Jesus incarnated, He “emptied himself” of His divinity. That includes His divine knowledge. Therefore, in His humanity, His foreknowledge was not as absolute as your friend alleges.

In fact, in the moments before His betrayal, Jesus asked that the cup of suffering pass without His partaking of it. That doesn’t sound to me like certainty.

The shortest homily I recall ever was at the Easter Vigil just two years ago. The priest indicated the surprise Jesus must have felt to find His own grave beneath His feet.

Hi, John!

I cannot agree with much of what you (and the Priest you’ve cited) say since we know, from Scriptures that Jesus did actually know Who He Was… even at age twelve Jesus was fully aware of Who He was and What He was Commissioned to do:

49 He replied, ‘Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ 50 But they did not understand what he meant. (St. Luke 2:49-50)

Conversely, at the wedding of Cana His Mom asks for His intercession and He Reveals that: “My hour has not come yet.”

…then there are the numerous incidents where He challenges the Jewish religious, orders Satan and his minions, as Scriptures Reveal that He knows all things.

Relinquishing His Divinity must therefore mean that He did not exercise His Omnipotence whenever His Divinity was challenged and that He actually submitted Himself to the Father as the Obedient Son that He Came to Manifest!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

But Jesus did know and prophesied it:

Matt.16
[21] From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Matt.17
[23] and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day." And they were greatly distressed.

Luke.9
[22] saying, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Luke.24
[7] that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise."
[46] and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,

Matt.16
[27] For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.

Matt.24
[30] then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory;

Matt.25
[31] "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

Mark.8
[38] For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Exactly!

Since He is Eternal, there’s no time when He is not Divine… but because His Mission was not to demonstrate His Omnipotence, the Son of Man limited Himself to the Obedient Only Begotten Son of the Father’s Commission (the Messiah, Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God…); even when Scriptures reveal that He is all knowing, Jesus does not enjoy His Divinity to the extent of derailing the Salvific Plan!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[PeaceInChrist]

…this is an old heresy (catholic.com/tracts/the-great-heresies and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnation_(Christianity ) treated as such and terminated with the Dogma of the Holy Trinity: Christ is both fully God and fully human (remember the Credo: True God from True God?)… the problem people have is that they are far removed from the actual experience… Christ, the Word Incarnate, putting aside His Divinity became one of us, equal to us in everything except sin, in order that He should take upon His human body the scourge, pain, torture, rejection, and death that sin afforded humanity (the sinnless became the object of sin for our redemption)… but not only that… the Eternal, the I AM/BE, would need to separate Himself from the Father (this, in my belief, was truly the reason for His anguish both prior to and at the crucifixion) in order to take onto Himself the sin of the world… so while foreknowledge of some excruciating experience and the eventual victorious outcome gives one some solace, I doubt that anyone could have experienced Jesus’ extreme pain at the separation from the Father–specially knowing, as He did, that “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the Suffering Servant so that you may fully understand Jesus’ predicament!

Maran atha!

Angel

I could swear that the priests I’ve talked to about this stated that, in light of the eternal union of the Trinity, there could be no separation. Trinitarian theology doesn’t seem to allow this. I would be careful when making statements like this. We honestly don’t know what Christ went through, but based on our understanding of the Trinity, while Christ may have felt that His Father was far from Him, there could be no actual separation.

 

[zz912]

“First”, I was writing about the Agony in the Garden, not the Last Supper. The fact that it’s a “cup” Jesus was praying about is immaterial. Just because He was also teaching us about standing through adversity doesn’t mean there weren’t other places He would have rather been at that moment. The pain was real.

It is both/and, not either/or. The agony in the garden is related to the Last Supper, and the Crucifixion. The Last Supper ends with Jesus not finishing the final “cup” of wine (the fourth cup), because the fourth cup is drunk with His sacrifice on the cross, and the completion of the Paschal sacrifice (that is why He says “I thirst”, and the Gospels very specifically tell us in detail the wine He is offered and drinks). The fourth cup, which He if referencing in the Agony, is a real cup, and a metaphysical/spiritual cup as well.

 

[SonCatcher]

The unplumbable depth of the Mystery of the Incarnation reveals itself once more.

No, there is no inference to Nestorianism. I should have written that Jesus set aside full exercise of His divinity, including Divine knowledge (“No one knows … not even the Son”).

While He certainly knew who He was, He had to discover that in His humanity. How else could He “grow in wisdom”?

 

[PeaceInChrist]

The unplumbable depth of the Mystery of the Incarnation reveals itself once more.

No, there is no inference to Nestorianism. I should have written that Jesus set aside full exercise of His divinity, including Divine knowledge (“No one knows … not even the Son”).

While He certainly knew who He was, He had to discover that in His humanity. How else could He “grow in wisdom”?

“still, it is almost universally admitted that God infused into Christ’s human intellect a knowledge similar in kind to that of the angels. This is knowledge which is not acquired gradually by experience, but is poured into the soul in one flood”

“Jesus Christ had, no doubt, also an experimental knowledge acquired by the natural use of His faculties, through His senses and imagination, just as happens in the case of common human knowledge. To say that his human faculties were wholly inactive would resemble a profession of either Monothelitism or of Docetism.”

So it seems, in true fashion of the impossibility of our intellects to grasp the majesty of the Trinity, Christ’s soul had infused knowledge, as well as acquired knowledge. I think that’s what it means, anyway. Trinitarian theology and Christ’s nature are subjects in which a fall into accidental heresy is very easy.

Here’s where I got the above quotes. It’s a little thick for me right now (lack of sleep), I only skimmed the parts on infused and acquired knowledge:

newadvent.org/cathen/08675a.htm

 

[SonCatcher]

“still, it is almost universally admitted that God infused into Christ’s human intellect a knowledge similar in kind to that of the angels. This is knowledge which is not acquired gradually by experience, but is poured into the soul in one flood”

“Jesus Christ had, no doubt, also an experimental knowledge acquired by the natural use of His faculties, through His senses and imagination, just as happens in the case of common human knowledge. To say that his human faculties were wholly inactive would resemble a profession of either Monothelitism or of Docetism.”

So it seems, in true fashion of the impossibility of our intellects to grasp the majesty of the Trinity, Christ’s soul had infused knowledge, as well as acquired knowledge. I think that’s what it means, anyway. Trinitarian theology and Christ’s nature are subjects in which a fall into accidental heresy is very easy.

Here’s where I got the above quotes. It’s a little thick for me right now (lack of sleep), I only skimmed the parts on infused and acquired knowledge:

newadvent.org/cathen/08675a.htm

The full paragraph under “Christ’s acquired knowedge” is fully copied below, emphasis added.

Jesus Christ had, no doubt, also an experimental knowledge acquired by the natural use of His faculties, through His senses and imagination, just as happens in the case of common human knowledge. To say that his human faculties were wholly inactive would resemble a profession of either Monothelitism or of Docetism. This knowledge naturally grew in Jesus in the process of time, according to the words of Luke 2:52: “And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men”. Understood in this way, the Evangelist speaks not merely of a successively greater manifestation of Christ’s Divine and infused knowledge, nor merely of an increase in His knowledge as far as outward effects were concerned, but of a real advance in His acquired knowledge. Not that this kind of knowledge implies an enlarged object of His science; but it signified that He gradually came to know, after a merely human way, some of the things which he had known from the beginning by His Divine and infused knowledge.

 

[jcrichton]

I could swear that the priests I’ve talked to about this stated that, in light of the eternal union of the Trinity, there could be no separation. Trinitarian theology doesn’t seem to allow this. I would be careful when making statements like this. We honestly don’t know what Christ went through, but based on our understanding of the Trinity, while Christ may have felt that His Father was far from Him, there could be no actual separation.

…as pedestrian as I am, I am speaking from what Scriptures state… did the Lamb of God take on the sin of the world or was it a symbolic act?

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

The unplumbable depth of the Mystery of the Incarnation reveals itself once more.

No, there is no inference to Nestorianism. I should have written that Jesus set aside full exercise of His divinity, including Divine knowledge (“No one knows … not even the Son”).

While He certainly knew who He was, He had to discover that in His humanity. How else could He “grow in wisdom”?

…and Creation took place in six days… Scriptures sometimes express things about God in terms that our mind can understand/cope with… this, of course, does not mean that, in effect, God is limited to what our minds can perceive and understand!

…my take on “not even the Son” is simply a factual statement because the Son of man did not come to demonstrate or uphold God’s Divinity; rather, the Son of man came to rescue the world so that those who Believe would have the ability to become children of God (St. John 1:1-14); the function of the Messiah was never to divulge God’s Omniscience.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

The full paragraph under “Christ’s acquired knowedge” is fully copied below, emphasis added.

Jesus Christ had, no doubt, also an experimental knowledge acquired by the natural use of His faculties, through His senses and imagination, just as happens in the case of common human knowledge. To say that his human faculties were wholly inactive would resemble a profession of either Monothelitism or of Docetism. This knowledge naturally grew in Jesus in the process of time, according to the words of Luke 2:52: “And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men”. Understood in this way, the Evangelist speaks not merely of a successively greater manifestation of Christ’s Divine and infused knowledge, nor merely of an increase in His knowledge as far as outward effects were concerned, but of a real advance in His acquired knowledge. Not that this kind of knowledge implies an enlarged object of His science; but it signified that He gradually came to know, after a merely human way, some of the things which he had known from the beginning by His Divine and infused knowledge.

…or the evangelist could very well be stating that Jesus did not perform miracles and other supernatural acts and developed as a “normal” child in the safety of His earthly home… that till the time of His Manisfestation, Jesus behaved as ordinary a person as the next guy, enjoying both God’s and man’s recognition as a child of God.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[PeaceInChrist]

The full paragraph under “Christ’s acquired knowedge” is fully copied below, emphasis added.

Jesus Christ had, no doubt, also an experimental knowledge acquired by the natural use of His faculties, through His senses and imagination, just as happens in the case of common human knowledge. To say that his human faculties were wholly inactive would resemble a profession of either Monothelitism or of Docetism. This knowledge naturally grew in Jesus in the process of time, according to the words of Luke 2:52: “And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men”. Understood in this way, the Evangelist speaks not merely of a successively greater manifestation of Christ’s Divine and infused knowledge, nor merely of an increase in His knowledge as far as outward effects were concerned, but of a real advance in His acquired knowledge. Not that this kind of knowledge implies an enlarged object of His science; but it signified that He gradually came to know, after a merely human way, some of the things which he had known from the beginning by His Divine and infused knowledge.

So He had infused knowledge, human knowledge, and came to knowledge gradually during His pre-Resurrection humanity… This is insane! I love it. Jesus is awesome. We could spend lifetimes trying to understand Him, and still there are mysteries. Someday we’ll see as face to face, rather than through a mirror.

 

[PeaceInChrist]

…as pedestrian as I am, I am speaking from what Scriptures state… did the Lamb of God take on the sin of the world or was it a symbolic act?

Maran atha!

Angel

Of course Jesus had to literally die for our sins. But I do not know the means by which He did it. I only know that the Trinity is in eternal union, three Persons in one God. User Guonophore (sp?) had recently posted about the concept that Christ separaring from the Father and bearing wrath or punishment in place of ours are both some type of heresy. That is all I know. I have no idea how Christ bore our sins while remaining pure and undefiled, and while in eternal union with the Trinity, but He did. That’s all i know.

Edit - see post 4. Apparently separation of the Father and Son violates Trinitarian theology.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=749443

 

[jcrichton]

Of course Jesus had to literally die for our sins. But I do not know the means by which He did it. I only know that the Trinity is in eternal union, three Persons in one God. User Guonophore (sp?) had recently posted about the concept that Christ separaring from the Father and bearing wrath or punishment in place of ours are both some type of heresy. That is all I know. I have no idea how Christ bore our sins while remaining pure and undefiled, and while in eternal union with the Trinity, but He did. That’s all i know.

Edit - see post 4. Apparently separation of the Father and Son violates Trinitarian theology.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=749443

…only because we come to a finite understanding of God…

Here’s what we know: 3 in 1 God; Jesus has never been alone since the Father is always with Him; God is Pure Light/Spirit so nothing unrighteous can touch Him; none who is not pure can enter Heaven; Christ/Jesus is the Word Incarnate; Christ is Eternal–existing Eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit; the Word Incarnate (Christ the man) had a beginning when the Holy Spirit Shadowed the Virgin Mary and Conceived the Messiah/Immanuel in her womb; hence forth Christ is both fully God (never stopped being Divine) and fully human (act of Faith–we must Trust God’s Revelation rather than human reason); Christ, the Divine Person, cannot ever die and cannot be touched by sin; Christ, the man, experiences everything human except for sin but is able to give up His human Life; there’s the Passion, Death and Resurrection which only the human Person of Jesus could fully experience since the Divine Person could never Die; it is also this human Person that has to be let go by the Father so that He can Redeem humanity by taking on the sin of the world (He Who Has Never Known Sin is Made Sin for our sake) so the Salvific Plan takes effect: God Knows No Sin while Christ, the man, is made sin for the sake of humanity… then there are the revelations Christ makes: prior to His Crucifixion He Reveals that He is with the Father while His Disciples remain in the world, He Promises the “good thief” that on the day of His very physical death He will take him to Paradise, He descends to Preach, in the Spirit, to the spirits of those who were imprisoned prior to His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, He warns Mary Magdalene not to touch Him cause He has not yet ascended onto the Father, and, at His Resurrection, His physical body and appearance is changed… when we put all these together: Christ, between His Death and Resurrection, is separated from the Father, takes on the sin of the world, morphs into a higher human, and rescues the “good thief” and the rest of the spirits who were convicted by His Preaching–after His Resurrection His Body and Appearance is changed, He returns to the Father (fully Divine and fully human), Appears to the Eleven and the rest of the Believers, ends His earthly Ministry and Ascends into Heaven…

There was an actual time when the human person of Christ died and was resurrected and there was an actual momemt when Christ alone had to take on the sin of the world (in the human person) allowing God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) to remain untainted by sin!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[PeaceInChrist]

…only because we come to a finite understanding of God…

Here’s what we know: 3 in 1 God; Jesus has never been alone since the Father is always with Him; God is Pure Light/Spirit so nothing unrighteous can touch Him; none who is not pure can enter Heaven; Christ/Jesus is the Word Incarnate; Christ is Eternal–existing Eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit; the Word Incarnate (Christ the man) had a beginning when the Holy Spirit Shadowed the Virgin Mary and Conceived the Messiah/Immanuel in her womb; hence forth Christ is both fully God (never stopped being Divine) and fully human (act of Faith–we must Trust God’s Revelation rather than human reason); Christ, the Divine Person, cannot ever die and cannot be touched by sin; Christ, the man, experiences everything human except for sin but is able to give up His human Life; there’s the Passion, Death and Resurrection which only the human Person of Jesus could fully experience since the Divine Person could never Die; it is also this human Person that has to be let go by the Father so that He can Redeem humanity by taking on the sin of the world (He Who Has Never Known Sin is Made Sin for our sake) so the Salvific Plan takes effect: God Knows No Sin while Christ, the man, is made sin for the sake of humanity… then there are the revelations Christ makes: prior to His Crucifixion He Reveals that He is with the Father while His Disciples remain in the world, He Promises the “good thief” that on the day of His very physical death He will take him to Paradise, He descends to Preach, in the Spirit, to the spirits of those who were imprisoned prior to His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, He warns Mary Magdalene not to touch Him cause He has not yet ascended onto the Father, and, at His Resurrection, His physical body and appearance is changed… when we put all these together: Christ, between His Death and Resurrection, is separated from the Father, takes on the sin of the world, morphs into a higher human, and rescues the “good thief” and the rest of the spirits who were convicted by His Preaching–after His Resurrection His Body and Appearance is changed, He returns to the Father (fully Divine and fully human), Appears to the Eleven and the rest of the Believers, ends His earthly Ministry and Ascends into Heaven…

There was an actual time when the human person of Christ died and was resurrected and there was an actual momemt when Christ alone had to take on the sin of the world (in the human person) allowing God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) to remain untainted by sin!

Maran atha!

Angel

I will start another thread to get some answers. Guanophore seemed to state that, based on the truth of the Trinity and the hypostatic union of Christ’s natures, there could be absolutely no separation. I am unclear if this is what he meant, though.
Separating Christ from the Trinity to prevent tainting of the Trinity sounds like an attempt to limit God. Eternal union, on the other hand, appears to me to me to be simple Truth. Otherwise, if Christ was separated, how would He remain Divine (separation of nature) or how would there remain one God (separation of Christ from the Trinity)? It makes no logical sense to me. I can accept the mystery of the Crucifixion. But it is difficult for me to imagine God violating His own nature. It would be like saying ‘God committed evil.’ God can do anything, but by His nature, He will not violate His nature. I will research this

 

[jcrichton]

I will start another thread to get some answers. Guanophore seemed to state that, based on the truth of the Trinity and the hypostatic union of Christ’s natures, there could be absolutely no separation. I am unclear if this is what he meant, though.
Separating Christ from the Trinity to prevent tainting of the Trinity sounds like an attempt to limit God. Eternal union, on the other hand, appears to me to me to be simple Truth. Otherwise, if Christ was separated, how would He remain Divine (separation of nature) or how would there remain one God (separation of Christ from the Trinity)? It makes no logical sense to me. I can accept the mystery of the Crucifixion. But it is difficult for me to imagine God violating His own nature. It would be like saying ‘God committed evil.’ God can do anything, but by His nature, He will not violate His nature. I will research this

I think that it is best to stop here since all I offer seems to confound you further.

May the Holy Spirit enlighten your path!

Maran atha!

Angel