Did Jesus have the ability to say "No" to the Father?

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Reuben_J said:
Jesus is a perfect example of human being. We are called to be obedient to our God. We are able disobey God, like Adam. We are given free choice, free will, but a perfect man in the eyes of God would be one who obeys Him and thus without sin.
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Agreed. He had the ability to do so but made the decision not to do so.
 
goout said:
It seems you are asking about potency when you say “ability”. Yes, Christ had the ability to say no to the Father.
However, the disposition of his will is perfectly aligned to loving his Father so in that sense, he will not sin.

It’s a great mystery that can open up deep reflection.
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Can you see how that opens a can of worms with concepts like the Immaculate Conception and Original Sin?
 
FrDavid96 said:
Recall the events of the Temptation in the Desert.

He could have sinned, but He did not sin.
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Can you see how His ability to possibly commit a sin then reflects on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? If Jesus had the ability then obviously so did Mary. Did we inherit from our first human parents some stain of their sin or their ability to commit sin… aka a conscience. (They supposedly ate from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”)
 
WileyC1949 said:
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goout:
It seems you are asking about potency when you say “ability”. Yes, Christ had the ability to say no to the Father.
However, the disposition of his will is perfectly aligned to loving his Father so in that sense, he will not sin.

It’s a great mystery that can open up deep reflection.
Click to expand...
Can you see how that opens a can of worms with concepts like the Immaculate Conception and Original Sin?
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Immaculate conception is the dogma the Mary was conceived without original sin. The fact that God willed to keep Mary pure from original sin does not deprive Mary of her free will.
 
WileyC1949 said:
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FrDavid96:
Recall the events of the Temptation in the Desert.

He could have sinned, but He did not sin.
Click to expand...
Can you see how His ability to possibly commit a sin then reflects on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? If Jesus had the ability then obviously so did Mary. Did we inherit from our first human parents some stain of their sin or their ability to commit sin… aka a conscience. (They supposedly ate from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”)
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Not sure you are connecting the right dots between eating of the tree and the conscience.

In any case, the interplay between human free will, divine attributes, original sin, are a deep mystery that will not provide satisfactory proofs, in my opinion.
 
WileyC1949 said:
Can you see how His ability to possibly commit a sin then reflects on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception?
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No. It does not.
If Jesus had the ability then obviously so did Mary. Did we inherit from our first human parents some stain of their sin or their ability to commit sin… aka a conscience. (They supposedly ate from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”)
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We inherited “some stain of sin” i.e. “Original Sin.”

Your premise that Original Sin is actually conscience is the flaw.

You are assuming that Adam did not know that it was wrong to eat from the tree until he actually did it.

The problem here is that he must have known that it was wrong. First, God told him not to do it, therefore Adam knew not to do it. Secondly, if Adam did not know it was wrong, then that means it would have been wrong for God to punish him; in other words, God is un-just because he punished Adam for doing something that was not Adam’s fault. That doesn’t make any sense.
 
WileyC1949 said:
I asked a similar question a while ago as to whether or not Jesus had the ability to sin. The consensus was variations of “No, He didn’t because He had to fulfill His mission.” It also would have raised a number of issues because if Jesus had the ability to sin than so did Mary and that brings in the Immaculate Conception and Original Sin.

But the more I thought about it I still feel as though I am correct. Jesus showed He had a will of His own when He asked God to take His task away from Him. But because He always placed His will as secondary to the Father’s. But He HAD TO HAVE the ability to say “No. I am not doing it.” and walking away. If He did not have the ability to do that then you are saying that He was programmed and in a sense forced to do the Father’s will. If that is the case then there was no sacrifice on His part and as a result no forgiveness of sin. For any sacrifice to be legitimate the people involved have to know what they are doing and making a free choice to do it. He had to decide to place His will as secondary to the Father’s. He could not be forced into it.

I see our mission in the physical realm as learning how to love selflessly Like Jesus’s sacrifice love cannot be forces and remain love. By its nature it MUST be freely given. It is for that reason that I believe the physical realm exists. Here were are given the complete freedom to select to do any and all evil, even though that leads away from God and from love, because it is only when we have the freedom to do evil that we also have the free choice to reject that evil and do the good that leads towards love and God. The same would hold true for Jesus. For His sacrifice to be a true, honest and personal sacrifice He had to have the ability to say “No”.

I know the ripple effects of my way of thinking and the other doctrines that would be affected by this, but if this is true then those doctrines are wrong and they shouldn’t be doctrines at all.
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Jesus can’t sin because He’s God and God can’t sin. Does that make Him less or not really human when He incarnated? No. Jesus was just like us in all things but sin.

Jesus (God incarnate)explains His mission

Jn 5:19
the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

Jn 6:
38* For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me;

Jn 8:29
The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him."

Jn 12:49
For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.

Jn 12:50
whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say."

Jn 14:10
The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

Jn 14:31
I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

If we want to be Jesus to others, We are to follow Him.
 
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I believe but am not super knowledgeable on this. Jesus is like us in all things but sin doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t have the ability to sin, but that Jesus didn’t sin even when faced with agony and death. Jesus reveals the Father to us and you have to realize the Son of Man couldn’t say no to God, nor could Mary, because they did the will of the Father by choice, not because it was forced upon them. God doesn’t force His will on anyone not even His own Son. I agree if we want to be like Jesus we have to follow HIm and follow the will of the Father… To me Mary is separate issue anyway because Mary is not God but Jesus is and Jesus cant contradict His very self.I guess I’m going around and around with this… Sorry…😉
 
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WileyC1949 said:
I said:
My point is that EVERYONE is born without sin

Your reply:
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Roseeurekacross:
you would be wrong, we are all born with the stain of original sin. We are all capable of moving towards God or away from God and into evil and corruption of our souls.

Jesus was not born this way. Jesus had no stain.

And it doesn’t work that way, we don’t inherit the original sin, we don’t have it in our DNA. we are finite, human imperfect creatures, we have original sin which is disobedience to God because Adam was disobedient to God.
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That is sort of mincing words and trying to play on both sides of the fence. My point is that we did not inherit any stain of “Adam’s” sin.
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Yes, we did. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, we do not inherit the original holiness and justification granted to men and, lacking that, we experience concupiscence.
WileyC1949 said:
Nor was his disobedience to God a sin at all. Before He ate from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” he would have had no concept that eating from it and disobeying God was a “sin”. Knowledge is necessary for something to be sinful, and according to the story he did not have that knowledge until AFTER he ate from it.
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Adam was created rational and with a conscience. There are different approaches to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but we do not consider Adam lacking in knowledge that disobeying God was wrong. Adam had knowledge that this was so. One approach is to understand it is that Adam lacked any personal experience with sin and evil and the disunion that puts between him and God, though rationally he understood it was wrong.
WileyC1949 said:
According to the story his first true sin would have been not taking responsibility for his own actions and blaming Eve for giving him the fruit. What we inherited was not his or the stain of his sin but rather the knowledge of good and evil which gave us the ability to commit our own sins.
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Not repenting was consequential, but again, it’s about what we didn’t inherit that is the basis of original sin. You’re making up your own theology and interpretation of scripture.
WileyC1949 said:
If Mary and Jesus had the ability to say no to God then you are in fact agreeing with me. Both had the ABILITY to commit sin and refuse God but neither did. That is saying that they had the free will decision to choose between good and evil. And because they had that ability it brings into question the concept of the Immaculate Conception.
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No one can live a sinless life apart from the graces of God. It’s not something a human nature can accomplish on its own.
WileyC1949 said:
My main issue is that rather than inheriting some stain of sin from our first truly human parents we inherited their ability to commit sin. In other words we inherited a conscience.
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We lack the inheritance of original holiness and justice and so we are also left with concupiscence.
 
WileyC1949 said:
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FrDavid96:
Recall the events of the Temptation in the Desert.

He could have sinned, but He did not sin.
Click to expand...
Can you see how His ability to possibly commit a sin then reflects on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? If Jesus had the ability then obviously so did Mary. Did we inherit from our first human parents some stain of their sin or their ability to commit sin… aka a conscience. (They supposedly ate from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”)
Click to expand...
And it all goes wrong in your model of what original sin is.
 
Fr I hear what you’re saying… but I think and this is my opinion…bless you…
Jesus is the way… He shows us the way… and the way is obedience to God… How can we know what is expected of us if Jesus disobeyed God? More and more I think about it the more it make sense why it ‘appears’ Jesus had a choice to ‘us’ but really He couldn’t because Jesus is God and can’t contradict Himself. This is Jesus teaching us to obey…🙂
 
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What you have is basically an error I had before I returned to the faith: that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represents an awakening from animal-like awareness to human-like awareness, where animals can’t be held responsible because they lack rationality. That is not correct. Adam and Eve were rational animals before the fall with gifts above and beyond what we have, which makes their disobedience all the more tragic.
 
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I never heard of that Wesrock. The tree choice was a choice that humans made, but that’s separate from Jesus IMO, because Jesus, the Son of Man is in direct union with the Son of God, and came to reveal God to us. Jesus is Gods mercy on us which is a little more than a choice.
 
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Good question.

It would definitely be out of His nature to say no. I don’t know if I’d say He was incapable of saying no so much as that would be unable to be done.
 
Err I read that Wesrock and I feel it’s not really answering the question directly. Would you say Jesus had the ability to say No to the Father?
 
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