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Dancelittleewok
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Did Jesus have a sin nature? If so, is this contrary to Catholicism?
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VociMike
Guest
I don’t think “sin nature” is a meaningful term. What do you mean by it?
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Dancelittleewok
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I am having a discussion with others at another forum that I won’t name here.
Here is their wording: By which I assume you mean concupiscence; the lust of the flesh; the inclination to sin.
The sin nature is much more than just the ability to be tempted or the ability to sin.
It is the tendency toward it which makes it inevitable.
I believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human. Being human, He was capable of sinning, but did not. Yet when I state this, I am told that this is not a Church teaching and that I, as a practicing Catholic, do not know what my Chruch teaches.
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InLight247
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Heb 4:15 **:“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.” **
The answer to your question is NO!
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FCEGM
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I’m not sure where your quote ends, but, yes, it is against the teaching of the Church that Christ Jesus was capable of sinning.
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Dancelittleewok
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I am trying to be a good Catholic. Set me straight. Why was He incapable of sinning? If he was fully human (and a human would need to die on the Cross) and then it would follow that He would be capable of sinning by nature itself?
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FCEGM
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It’s so admirable that you want to be in conformity with the teaching of the Church, Dance, so I hope you find this helpful:
Christ as a healer must have what He is going to share; He must be fully, i.e., perfectly human and Divine or He could not heal us. He gives us the health, as it were, He has. If He did not have this health we, being sick, could not receive healing.
He therefore has the fully human nature, i.e., one not wounded by sin. His humanity is therefore graced and in harmony with the Divine. For us to be tending toward sin is for us NOT to be fully human; therefore we are not the vantage point of healing of our wounded nature but He is. If follows that for Him to heal our infirmity He must bring health to our infirmity. We can’t give what we don’t have, so He must have this health of being fully human, i.e., in harmony with God in order to give it to us by grace. He therefore could not sin, which makes him perfectly human, not less human.
We must realize that it is abnormal for human nature to suffer and die. Our Lord chose to suffer and die; temptation for Him is not exactly the same as for us. The world and the devil would tempt Him from outside, but there was no concupiscence in Him that could pull Him towards sin within His humanity. What He experienced in the Passion is the natural repulsion of the flesh which ought not to die, is not supposed to die, to undergo that separation of body and soul.
Since He was fully human, He would have felt this separation and its preliminaries more than we do. Moreover, He would have felt the abandonment of His Father more than we do (since He was closer to Him than we ever were or could be). It is because He could not sin that when he undergoes this separation of death He experiences “temptation” in a way as we do. But in another way He doesn’t; He was not bent towards sin. He would not have experienced inordinate lust or greed, or gluttony, etc… His trials came from outside though they are experienced inside, e.g., suffering and death. While He has consciousness of being the Son, in His sacred humanity He is able to suffer from forces outside Himself (hunger, thirst, obduracy of others, etc.); and as Man He acquired sensible knowledge, had human emotions and thus could feel sorrow and fear; so He brings what He encounters in His Body to His Father because He is in relation to Him and is the Perfect Man at prayer, submitting His human will (Christ Jesus has two wills, Divine and Human) to the Will of the Father.
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VociMike
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The Church does not use the term “sin nature” for good reason. A “nature” is what a thing is “meant” to be. Humans were never “meant” to be sinful creatures. To talk about a “sin nature” as many Protestants do is to suggest that we are somehow made by God to sin. Instead, the Church talks about our fallen nature, or our fallen human nature. This conveys the understanding that what we were meant to be, our human nature, has been somehow damaged or corrupted.
Now, as to whether Jesus was capable of sinning, you must be clear what “capable” means. Did Jesus have the power, the means to sin? Yes, He did. But it is not in His nature, either His divine nature, or His (uncorrupted) human nature. Now we know that Adam and Eve, even with uncorrupted human natures, still sinned, so Jesus having an uncorrupted human nature would not have prevented Him from sinning. But we also know that it is a fact of the divine nature that it is incapable of sinning. So Jesus, by virtue of being divine, was incapable of sinning. But I don’t think this means that God could not sin, but rather that He will not sin. After all, humans are made in His image and likeness and we could sin. Angels, who have free will and intellect, could sin. To say that God could not sin is to say that He does not have perfect free will, and I’m not ready to say that. Rather, I think, He simply will not sin.
BTW, did those good folks actually point you to the Church’s teaching on this question, after they said you were wrong about it. If they claim to know the teaching they should certainly point you to it.
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JimG
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FCEGM, that was a great reply. I think the term “sin nature” is misleading. Some people use it to refer to human nature, but God did not create human nature to be a “sin nature.” All that God created was good. What Catholics would call a “fallen nature” resulted from original sin. As a result we are less than fully human, being inclined to evil.
Jesus has two natures, human and divine. His human nature really IS fully human, not like ours. And He is only one Person, the second Person of the Trinity. It is a person, not a nature, who sins. And it would be a contradiction for the Person who is God to be able to sin.
Jesus has two natures, human and divine. His human nature really IS fully human, not like ours. And He is only one Person, the second Person of the Trinity. It is a person, not a nature, who sins. And it would be a contradiction for the Person who is God to be able to sin.
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JimG
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It seems to me that sin is a turning of the will away from God. For God to turn His will, the divine will, against God, would be a contradiction in terms.
The only reason humans (and angels at the time of their testing) are able to sin, is that we do not yet see God face to face. Once our will is presented with the face of God, so to speak, it has no power to resist. The only way that our will remains free to choose good or evil is by being denied the real presence during our earthly existence.
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VociMike
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You do bring up a critical point, which is “what is sin?” Indeed, it does seem to be impossible that a person could turn away from himself, even if that person had perfect free will.
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Orionthehunter
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We have all heard the false question-Can God make a mountain He can’t lift? So it is with the question of Can God/Jesus sin?
Sin is an offense against God, a deliberate thought, word, deed or ommission contrary to the eternal law of God. God/Jesus is perfect, unchanging, eternal. To sin would violate His or would be a self-contradiction. It is impossible for the Perfect to be imperfect, the Unchanging to change.
Sin is an offense against God, a deliberate thought, word, deed or ommission contrary to the eternal law of God. God/Jesus is perfect, unchanging, eternal. To sin would violate His or would be a self-contradiction. It is impossible for the Perfect to be imperfect, the Unchanging to change.
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itsjustdave1988
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This is indeed contrary to Church teaching.
Jesus is Divine. He assumed a human nature, but by doing so, he did stop being Divine. The Church teaches that Jesus was impeccable, that is, could not have sinned, by virtue of the perfect hypostatic union of the Divine and human nature.
Ask yourself, can those in heaven sin? Most would say no. This is because in heaven, we see God face to face.
Well, Jesus has always and will always possess the Beatific Vision of God. It is by virtue of this Vision, perfect within Jesus Christ, that Jesus did not have the possibility of sin.
See more here: Was it possible for Jesus to sin?
While the teaching that Jesus was free from the physical and moral possibility of sin is not a defined dogma of Catholicism, the Fifth General Council of Constantiople (553) condemend the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which asserted that Christ only became completely impeccable after the Resurrection (D 224). It follows from this that he was already impeccable.
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Verbum_Caro
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Dave.Ah, yes Theodore of Mopsuestia. I had a professor who referred to him as “Teddy the Mop”.
Dave, I think you meant he did NOT stop being Divine. [SIGN]typo![/SIGN]
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Free_Grace
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Do you believe me now, Dance? And thank you for finally asking your Catholic brethern.
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VociMike
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Actually, I’m still not sure of the answer. We agree that God cannot turn against God, but Christ had (has) two wills, a divine will and a human will. Could His human will have opposed His divine will? I’m not suggesting that it ever did, of course, but only asking the question of whether such a thing was possible. Does the Church teach definitively on this exact question?
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itsjustdave1988
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Oooooopsssss…I’ll have to have a talk with my editor.
Ah, yes Theodore of Mopsuestia. I had a professor who referred to him as “Teddy the Mop”.
Dave, I think you meant he did NOT stop being Divine. [sign]typo![/sign]
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Free_Grace
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Why are you approaching this in a Nestorian manner? Christ is one Person – not a body with two different people running around in it.
Other than that, how have you been?
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VociMike
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I’m approaching it from the teaching of the Church that Christ had two wills, a divine will and a human will. I know full well that Christ is one, Divine Person uniting two natures. And that includes two wills. So my question is, while we know that this never happened, is it possible that these two wills may have conflicted? Why or why not? If not, does that mean that His human will was not fully human? After all, we sure as heck know that the human will in general is capable of resisting the Divine will.
Been good. How about you?
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Free_Grace
Guest
Actually it would seem that your ending question has previously been answered by itsjustdave1988.
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