Christ was sinful

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Opey thanks for the link
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Was that a joke? I’ didn’t see a link at all, though I’d appreciate one, since as I say I’m no scholar of this and I’d be happy to learn what the Fathers had to say. I’m just shooting from the hip, but it kinda takes the edge off of “humbled himself to become man” if what he actually became was a perfect, ideal, homme nonpareil. And what would that mean, anyway? Was he the strongest man in history? The best looking? Everyone else sneezes, does the perfect man?

I’m not trying to be facetious; I’d really be glad to know what others have said about it. 🙂
 
I think these questions and reflections are great for us to think about.
It has caused me to wonder if sometimes I exceed boundaries in what should/could be attributed to Jesus.
For example, some say if Jesus didn’t experience this or that as a child, then they can not relate to him. But why?
I know he didn’t have PMS or pains of child birth, but does that make him any less my Savior or who he really is - or is it just a reflection of my “missing the point”.

You are welcome Mark.
 
Duh, now I see which link Roblox was talking about – the one in your post at the top of this page! Sorry. Your reflection was interesting, and although I feel comfortable with my view that the infant Jesus most likely cried when he was hungry or needed to be changed, I’m not sure what to think about throwing a tantrum as a toddler, which seems to be more what you are talking about.

Did Christ have the same temptations to sin that we do? Of course there’s nothing at all wrong with being tempted, and we know that the Devil tempted Jesus three times in the desert, but did his human nature offer the same temptations to sin that it afflicts us with? That’s a question I don’t have even the beginning of an answer to.
 
MarkThompson said:
Was that a joke? I’ didn’t see a link at all, though I’d appreciate one, since as I say I’m no scholar of this and I’d be happy to learn what the Fathers had to say. I’m just shooting from the hip, but it kinda takes the edge off of “humbled himself to become man” if what he actually became was a perfect, ideal, homme nonpareil. And what would that mean, anyway? Was he the strongest man in history? The best looking? Everyone else sneezes, does the perfect man?

I’m not trying to be facetious; I’d really be glad to know what others have said about it. 🙂
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The web page link is in post. It is highlighted in blue
 
dominicandinah said:
Absolutely! I don’t think Our Beloved Lord, as an infant, spoke up and said He was ready to nurse or needed his diaper/swaddles changed!

I think the person the OP might have heard this from has a very skewed, almost Jansenistic view of human nature. Please be assured that Christ did not sin when he cried, as an infant, or as an adult.
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Indeed, there was a group where I lived back when my oldest was a baby (he’s 16 now), and I was visiting for a Bible study (I wasn’t Catholic yet, either), and I’d brought my son along, and he started to cry because he’d woken up from sleeping and someone said “oh, that’s his sin nature”. I was deeply offended because he’d been startled awake and just needed a diaper change and to nurse to get settled back down … his crying was not sinful in any way shape or form. (Then again, they were all smiles and congratulations to a woman who had just found out she was pregnant with her second illegitimate child from the same father and no good reason why she wasn’t marrying the father of her two children except that her welfare check would get cut off … don’t even get me started there–so obviously, the group morals were SERIOUSLY malformed.) But perhaps someone expressed these same ideas to the OP … but the answer is, as others have said, that it’s a misinterpretation of normal infant behavior.
 
Yeah, if your baby doesn’t cry when he needs attention, that when you call the doctor! What a dumb thing for that mother to say. Mary may have been sinless, but she wasn’t a mind-reader. Babies communicate – for perfectly legitimate needs – by crying.
 
Jesus was certainly aware of his identity. Do you not recall St. Luke’s account of Jesus having been lost for three days and the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph finding him in the Temple? Jesus said He was in His Father’s House about His Father’s business. That should tell you something.

Part of the problem is that, as I see it, we tend to think that everything in those documentaries aired by the History Channel, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel are factual. They are not. We must rely, as Catholics, on the two pillars of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, not on what the secular TV programs state (which is usually in error).
 
Roblox84 said:
This might be a weird question to some, but I was wondering about the un-sinful nature of Christ. I know you can’t consider anything Christ did sinful because his intentions weren’t those of a regular person, but what I wanted to ask is that even when we are first-born and start to cry because we want something, it is considered a sin. When we cry because we need toy’s or other materialistic goods, this is still considered sinful human nature. Christ was a baby at some point, and for sure he had to cry or want toy’s, so were these actions not considered sinful because he was different then the rest? I just want to hear what people’s take on this is.
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you’re forgetting one aspect of sin that is willful consent to commit the act. babies are innocent and therefore cannot willfully consent to an act of sin, therefore babies cannot sin

that is why Christ wants us to be like children, for their innocence
 
My understanding from what I have read is that of course, if he needed to sneeze he did so. But things that are particular to our fallen nature - outbursts, etc, I would not consider him being subject to because he had control of all his passions and I think - perfect harmony inside and out. Now, if he wanted to be angry, he was angry. He wept. I am sure he was cold at times or hot. He experienced all that we experience in that regards - he had to learn to walk and talk.

We even do not believe all anger is sinful. There is righteous anger - it is only if it leads us into sin that it becomes sinful.

He experienced total rejection.
 
I just discussed this in my Theology Class in our Grad programe. I posed the question like this. Did require a sinful nature in order to fully experience being human. Evidently Rahner and others discussed this question. Christology tells us that Christ DID inherit sinful nature because he was fully human (and Fully divine). He did not however sin. Sooooo when he stubbed his toe it hurt and he likely Got colds and the flu. Oh that and other things like feeling pain when a spear was shoved in your side and wearing a crown of thorns and getting nails driven through ones hands.
 
Mark, be careful not to go so far in playing up Christ’s humanity that you forget His divinity.

If we can have imperfect human beings like DaVinci showing genius in several areas, are you going to posit that Christ --God made Man–was somehow ‘less’ gifted than DaVinci?

We don’t need to ‘bring him down to our level’. . .by simply becoming a human being–a **perfect human being but still, as a creature, infinitely ‘less’ than His God-nature–He was ALREADY **brought down ‘to our level’.

In the context of the time He lived and given the opportunities He was given (which we do not know completely as the Scripture and tradition are silent regarding the years from 12 to 30), Christ would have been a perfect man.

Our ‘standards’ of beauty/handsome are fickle and variant, therefore we don’t need to speculate over whether Christ had ‘matinee idol’ good looks. No doubt his face and body proportions were perfect, He had good health and treated His body as the temple of the Spirit (as we should) as current standards permitted. We tend to think of Judea in the first century AD as some kind of stinking cesspool. Romans had, however, water facilities, bathrooms, lavatories etc. that were remarkably superior to almost any until the 19th century. . .and Judea, even the ‘backwater’ areas, would have some kind of facilities in place for the Romans who would be stationed there. Plus, the prior 3 centuries of Hellenistic ‘overlordship’ also noted that gymnasiums etc. were built in the area (presupposing that locals were given Roman standards of cleanliness and scholarship etc.) The people who look at Jesus as being some filthy 1st century version of a tattered and torn hippie are off the mark. Why, even His tunic was so well-woven that the soldiers refused to give it away but actually threw dice for it because it was worth MONEY to them. That isn’t the mark of a ‘poor’ person who would have bad breath and poor bathing habits. . .
 
Christ was/is fully human and fully divine.
We know Christ cried because scripture tells us so. We know he sweated.
 
Let us not forget that Jesus was a Jew.

I had heard this somewhere and I’m sure someone here can verify/debunk it:

In the Jewish tradition, the sins of the child are the responsibility of his father until that child makes his rite of passage into adulthood–which I guess is his barmitzvah.

And we all know who Jesus’ father is.

-Patrick
blog.catholicfreeshipping.com
 
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