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Odell
Guest
one thing that gets me is why in the world would satan tempt Jesus? didnt satan know this?
also why would he turn aginst God whats the reason?
also why would he turn aginst God whats the reason?
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Free_Grace
Guest
Here is why I would disagree with you Mike. It seems to me, although that might not be your intent, that you are creating such a dichotomy between the two that I really don’t see how you can say they were united. I would also say that sin is the aberration, and not to be what it means to be fully human. Fallen humanity is just that – fallen humanity and not the state Adam and Eve were created in. In Jesus Christ, I would say that we see humanity as it was and it to be, completely holy and pure. But if you were to place such a dichotomy between wills in Christ, how could one ever say that He was in perfect unity with the Father?
I’ve been okay myself. Kind of bored though.
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Free_Grace
Guest
Hi Odell.
If I may, I would like to offer you an answer. You might not find it agreeable, but it is nevertheless one that I would like to offer. In the context of the scriptural account, we see Jesus going off into the “wilderness temptation” right after His baptism. If you recall, God the Father spoke and proclaimed that Jesus was His Son, thereby affirming deity. What followed in the wilderness would then be a demonstration of that proclimation. It showed Him not suceptable to temptation. That is, not in the sense that He could yield to it. It thereby became a witness to the Wicked one just who Jesus was, as well as a witness to use through oral tradition and finally through inscription in the holy scriptures.
That’s kinda my take on it anyway.
V
VociMike
Guest
Absolutely! And yet even in unfallen humanity (pre-fall Adam and Eve) we see that the existence of the human will can lead to sin.
Now, I don’t claim that there was a dichotomy. What I am asking (not claiming) is whether the perfect unity of Christ’s divine and human wills was due to an act of His human will to follow His divine will. Just as it was possible for Adam and Eve to conform their wills perfectly to God’s will (though they didn’t), is it the case that Christ, in His human will, did in fact make a lifelong act of human will to be in perfect conformity with His divine will (which was, of course, in perfect conformity with the will of the Father as well).
Or, did His human will simply have no choice in the matter? In which case, did He have a fully human will at all?
Remember, we Catholics have no problem imagining a human will conforming itself perfectly with God’s will, because we have the example of Mary.
You should start a thread about whether we’ll be bored in heaven.
Seriously, it’s an interesting question to ponder. Of course, we won’t, but why won’t we?
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Free_Grace
Guest
Hi Godisawake/Dancelittleewok,
I just wanted to tell you that what you did took guts. I am very proud of you. I am a nobody, but you have my respect.
J
JPrejean
Guest
Yup. Third Constantinope (the Sixth Ecumenical Council):
And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will.
dailycatholic.org/history/6ecumen.htm
St. Maximos Confessor is really good on this point, not to mention the question of whether we will be bored in Heaven. To put it simply, distinction is not opposition, so freedom doesn’t entail contradicting God. True natural freedom is the freedom to choose among the infinite number of ways of doing good, the numerous logoi in Logos, and being more and more conformed to the image of God within us.
Our freedom is like God’s freedom. Can God contradict Himself? Surely not, yet He is the most free of all beings. Incidentally, the notion that freedom can only be had between contraries (particularly the freedom to contradict one’s own nature) is indeed Nestorian. In fact, one could argue that the real reason for Nestorianism was an inability to get around that defective concept of freedom. Another similar view of freedom was the one endorsed by Origen, but unlike Nestorius, he applied it to both God and created things (hence, the notion of pre-existen souls that descended into matter by choosing to differentiate themselves from God). These should be sufficient counsel against viewing the possibility of sin as a necessary concomitant of freedom.
L
Liberian
Guest
Mike,
“Sin nature” is what Evangelicals call “orignal sin.”
Dancelittleewok,
Have I seen you under a different name on that other forum? I started a thread on this subject over there.
“Sin nature” is what Evangelicals call “orignal sin.”
Dancelittleewok,
Have I seen you under a different name on that other forum? I started a thread on this subject over there.
- Liberian
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Free_Grace
Guest
Hi Mike.
I’d like to commend you right here on this one. That is getting into some real depth. I’ll have to think about it some more before I could even begin to offer a real reply. However, I think some of this has to do with God’s eternal plan. For example, was redemption the forfront and purpose of creation? If so, how would that affect the being of Adam and Eve? While they were created in the image of God to reflect His glory, was their state one of absolute holiness or one of innocence?
If you know of any good Catholic works that deal with that, would you please recommend a few titles? I would be very interested in reading them.
I also don’t see how a will can act independently from one’s nature. By nature I mean something along the lines of a complex of attributes that acts and responds in relation to self, environment, and circumstance.
If you have any thoughts on this, I would love for you to share them.
J
JPrejean
Guest
Then you mean “person,” not “nature.” It’s probably worthwhile to spend a bit of time distinguishing the exercise of a faculty from the faculty itself. The use of a faculty is personal; the existence of a faculty is natural. Thus, we have wills by nature, but what we choose to do with those wills is personal, based on environment, circumstances, and the like.
The possibility to sin results from two factors: (1) having been created from nothing, and (2) having never personally exercised one’s will toward or away from non-being. (2) is what distinguishes the possibility of not sinning (posse non peccare) from the impossibility of sinning (non posse peccare).
Like the angels, Adam was drawn from non-being, but he had never personally appropriated or exercised his natural faculty of the will directing him away from non-being and following the grace provided to Him by God. The tasks given to Adam were opportunities for Adam to recognize and personally appropriate the natural and gracious mode of willing given to him, but he hesitated and delayed to do so, and ultimately rejected it.
Christ is in a drastically different state, because He is already personally self-determined to the good, so he has no possibility of sinning. This is because Christ is the self-same person as the Word of God, permanently and unchangingly in perfect accord with the divine will. Because Christ has a distinct human will, He can will things different from the divine will, but they are never in opposition or conflict. For example, Christ genuinely did not wish to die on the Cross, but at the same time, He did not assert this genuine will of self-preservation so as to contradict the divine will (Luke 22:42 “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”). Thus, any theory of Christ’s temptation must simply assert that Christ was presented with the same objects by which we are tempted, not that He had to fight some disordered inclination toward them.
Edit –
Oops! Forgot to mention two Catholic works on St. Maximos:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (you may want to note the corrections made by Lars Thunberg as well)
Aidan Nicholas, OP, Byzantine Gospel
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Free_Grace
Guest
Hi JPrejean,
Thank you so very much for your reply, and of course for the corrective points as well. Thanks also for the titles.
I know this would be a side note, but I would like to ask your reference on any modern works concerning Ireneaus and Justin. I have really fallen in love with their writings, and would like to persue a more indepth study of those two. Are there any works you might could recommend on that? Also, is there a good modern translation of their works available? Like I said, I have simply fallen in love with their writings so any help you could give, I surely would appreciate.
And most of all, thank you for taking the time out to answer in the first place.
Blessings to you.
J
JPrejean
Guest
Eric Osborn’s Irenaeus of Lyons is the best survey I can think of off hand; he isn’t as polemical or as prone to oversimplification as a lot of Protestant authors, and he knows the time period quite well. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any recommendations on Justin Martyr. He gets mentioned a lot in other books that I’ve read (e.g., about Clement of Alexandria), but it occurs to me that I’ve never read anything about him in his own right. Like Clement, Justin falls in the Middle Platonic period that just hasn’t been studied as much as it should have, because it falls philosophically in the relative lull of classical philosophy before Neoplatonism and theologically between the Apostolic Fathers and Nicaea, so it will probably take some work digging up information on him.
D
Dancelittleewok
Guest
Yub, yub…
I am Godisawake on CARM. Thanks for answers, bretheren. I think I got warped with my own experience of sin, but I understand the Church’s teaching now.
T
Truthstalker
Guest
Somewhere C.S.Lewis speculated on Christ’s temptation, I think perhaps in Perelandra or about that work. I think it was along the lines that the temptation wasn’t just a “going through the motions”: there was a real possibility that Christ could fail, and if He did, the effects of the fall of Adam would have been inconsequential in comparison. The Godhead ripped asunder.
He was tempted, so something in Him must have, in some way, responded in some measure to the temptation; there was something He must have said no to. One does not say no without a reason.
I don’t know if that sheds any light on it but reading this thread made me think of that. He would, in Catholic thought, have had to utterly deny who he was in order to sin: the perfect would have been flawed, the sinless sin, the healthy sick, but more than that: holiness would have had to become sin, health become illness, and righteousness become evil, in a way and on a level that we cannot even fathom. But the question remains: was the temptation a real temptation, was the test a real test - could His human nature have failed, His human will quailed, His humanity have defeated His divinity? I think in that last phrase we have our answer, and I think that lines up with Catholic thought. But I could be wrong.
He was tempted, so something in Him must have, in some way, responded in some measure to the temptation; there was something He must have said no to. One does not say no without a reason.
I don’t know if that sheds any light on it but reading this thread made me think of that. He would, in Catholic thought, have had to utterly deny who he was in order to sin: the perfect would have been flawed, the sinless sin, the healthy sick, but more than that: holiness would have had to become sin, health become illness, and righteousness become evil, in a way and on a level that we cannot even fathom. But the question remains: was the temptation a real temptation, was the test a real test - could His human nature have failed, His human will quailed, His humanity have defeated His divinity? I think in that last phrase we have our answer, and I think that lines up with Catholic thought. But I could be wrong.
C
corvidae
Guest
I think a good thing to remember is the 'if"
When Satan begins tempting Christ he says “if you are the Son of Man”
I would say that the reason Satan tempted Christ was to discern if Christ was God.
The thing being, Satan does not know what God is thinking or what God is doing, so could not have known Jesus was God without testing.
just my two cents
A lone Raven
p.s.- I hope everyone here helped rin, There are people here who are much more knowledgeable than I. I am glad you got their advice
When Satan begins tempting Christ he says “if you are the Son of Man”
I would say that the reason Satan tempted Christ was to discern if Christ was God.
The thing being, Satan does not know what God is thinking or what God is doing, so could not have known Jesus was God without testing.
just my two cents
A lone Raven
p.s.- I hope everyone here helped rin, There are people here who are much more knowledgeable than I. I am glad you got their advice
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