Historical accuracy of the gospel of John

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tomdstone
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
One person (hypostasis), two distinct natures (physeis) united in “an unspeakable, inconceivable manner,” two wills that correspond to those two natures.

In His humanity, yes, Jesus is a flesh-and-blood human. But in His divinity, He is also the Logos of God. It is not an either-or, but a both-and.

In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, there’s this rather nice prayer that describes Jesus in His death: “in the grave bodily; in Hades with the soul; in Paradise with the thief; on the throne with the Father and the Spirit.” He was in all these places, it is said, because He is “boundless” and “fill all things.”
No, Jesus is not both spirit and flesh and blood human, the Spirit in Jesus is not Jesus. The Spirit is the Father that dwells in all Christians through the Holy spirit.
 
No, Jesus is not both spirit and flesh and blood human, the Spirit in Jesus is not Jesus. The Spirit is the Father that dwells in all Christians through the Holy spirit.
Seriously, you’re making it sound like it’s the Spirit / the Father within Jesus that makes Him to be the Son, i.e. God.

Do you believe Jesus is the second Person of the holy and undivided Trinity?
Do you believe Jesus is God in addition to being human?

If so, He is God in what way? In other words, what makes Jesus God? And if not, why not?

How can you claim to be Catholic if you don’t even believe what the Catholic Church teaches concerning the Trinity and the person of Jesus?
 
III. TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN

464
The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.

During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of faith against the heresies that falsified it.

465 The first heresies denied not so much Christ’s divinity as his true humanity (Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian faith has insisted on the true incarnation of God’s Son “come in the flesh”. But already in the third century, the Church in a council at Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. The first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is “begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father”, and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God “came to be from things that were not” and that he was “from another substance” than that of the Father.

466 The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God’s Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed “that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: “Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.”

467 The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed:

Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; “like us in all things but sin”. He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.

468 After the Council of Chalcedon, some made of Christ’s human nature a kind of personal subject. Against them, the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople in 553, confessed that “there is but one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity.” Thus everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: “He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity.”

469 The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother:

“What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed”, sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: “O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!”

IV. HOW IS THE SON OF GOD MAN?

470
Because “human nature was assumed, not absorbed”, in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity”. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity:

The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.

…]

480 Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men.

481 Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God’s Son.​
 
Protestants believe Jesus is human.
And so do Catholics, and so do the Orthodox. Just about every confessing Christian believes I think that Jesus was a human being.

If you mean that Protestants believe that Jesus is only human, then you’re wrong - if by ‘Protestant’ you mean ‘all Protestants’. Do not make general statements.
 
JB Brother 4446;13997239:
Protestants believe Jesus is human.
And so do Catholics, and so do the Orthodox. Just about every confessing Christian believes I think that Jesus was a human being.

If you mean that Jesus is only human, then you’re wrong - if by ‘Protestant’ you mean ‘all Protestants’. Do not make general statements.
No, Protestants doesn’t believe it’s real flesh and blood
 
PNEUMA;13997743:
No, Jesus is not both spirit and flesh and blood human, the Spirit in Jesus is not Jesus. The Spirit is the Father that dwells in all Christians through the Holy spirit.
Seriously, you’re making it sound like it’s the Spirit / the Father within Jesus that makes Him to be the Son, i.e. God…
No, that’s not what I said, that’s only you trying to fit my post in some fourth century isms
 
III. TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN

464
The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.

During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of faith against the heresies that falsified it.

465 The first heresies denied not so much Christ’s divinity as his true humanity (Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian faith has insisted on the true incarnation of God’s Son “come in the flesh”. But already in the third century, the Church in a council at Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. The first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is “begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father”, and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God “came to be from things that were not” and that he was “from another substance” than that of the Father.

466 The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God’s Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed “that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: “Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.”

467 The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed:

Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; “like us in all things but sin”. He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.

468 After the Council of Chalcedon, some made of Christ’s human nature a kind of personal subject. Against them, the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople in 553, confessed that “there is but one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity.” Thus everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: “He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity.”

469 The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother:

“What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed”, sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: “O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!”

IV. HOW IS THE SON OF GOD MAN?

470
Because “human nature was assumed, not absorbed”, in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity”. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity:

The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.

Do you notice it nowhere says Jesus is a spirit. Why do you think it’s so ?

 
Let’s round this up with some words from Jesus himself 😃

Luke 24:36 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

“As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

It is God that is spirit (John 4:24) and he dwells in Jesus (John 14:10)
 
Let’s round this up with some words from Jesus himself 😃

Luke 24:36 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

“As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

It is God that is spirit (John 4:24) and he dwells in Jesus (John 14:10)
In this context, spirit means ghost.
 
PNEUMA;13998242:
Let’s round this up with some words from Jesus himself 😃

Luke 24:36 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
“As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

It is God that is spirit (John 4:24) and he dwells in Jesus (John 14:10)In this context, spirit means ghost.
No, the Holy Father Pope Francis, got it right.

I think it’s time to ask, do you believe we physically eat the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy mass ? After I receive Jesus Christ in the Holy mass, Jesus Christ is in me physically, his blood is in my veins. Gnostics and protestants do not believe this, cause they believe Jesus is a spirit.

 
No, the Holy Father Pope Francis, got it right.

I think it’s time to ask, do you believe we physically eat the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy mass ? After I receive Jesus Christ in the Holy mass, Jesus Christ is in me physically, his blood is in my veins. Gnostics and protestants do not believe this, cause they believe Jesus is a spirit.

http://oi64.tinypic.com/tag111.jpg
I believe Jesus is God made into flesh. True God and True Man. Protestants believe that as well. You’re taking Pope Francis out of context.
 
Let’s round this up with some words from Jesus himself 😃

Luke 24:36 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

“As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

It is God that is spirit (John 4:24) and he dwells in Jesus (John 14:10)
Context, context.
 
Here’s the full context of Pope Francis, for the record.

He is the intercessor, he who prays, and prays to God with us and before us. Jesus has saved us. He prayed this great prayer—his sacrifice, his life—to save us, to justify us: we are justified thanks to him. Now, he is gone and he prays. But is Jesus a spirit? Jesus is not a spirit! Jesus is a person. He is a man, with flesh like our own but in glory. Jesus has the wounds on his hands, on his feet, and on his side. And when he prays, he shows the Father the price of our justification. And he prays for us, as if saying: ‘Father, may this not be lost!’

Now as everyone knows by this point, Pope Francis is not the most eloquent or the most clear and precise speaker. But he’s not saying heretical things here. The Pope is not saying that Jesus is just a human being. He is not saying that God or the Spirit of God ≠ Jesus. What he is saying that Jesus is a flesh-and-blood human being, not a bodiless ghost or phantom (in context, this is what the word ‘spirit’ means - granted, the pope is paraphrasing Luke 24 here). It is an affirmation of what the Church believes and has believed: Jesus is true God and true man.
 
Here’s the full context of Pope Francis, for the record.

He is the intercessor, he who prays, and prays to God with us and before us. Jesus has saved us. He prayed this great prayer—his sacrifice, his life—to save us, to justify us: we are justified thanks to him. Now, he is gone and he prays. But is Jesus a spirit? Jesus is not a spirit! Jesus is a person. He is a man, with flesh like our own but in glory. Jesus has the wounds on his hands, on his feet, and on his side. And when he prays, he shows the Father the price of our justification. And he prays for us, as if saying: ‘Father, may this not be lost!’

Now as everyone knows by this point, Pope Francis is not the most eloquent or the most clear and precise speaker. But he’s not saying heretical things here. The Pope is not saying that Jesus is just a human being. He is not saying that God or the Spirit of God ≠ Jesus. What he is saying that Jesus is a flesh-and-blood human being, not a bodiless ghost or phantom (in context, this is what the word ‘spirit’ means - granted, the pope is paraphrasing Luke 24 here). It is an affirmation of what the Church believes and has believed: Jesus is true God and true man.
“Jesus is a spirit” is found no where in the catechisms thousand pages. Pope Francis says Jesus is not a spirit, Jesus himself says his not a spirit, because Jesus is not a spirit !

The whole Jesus is a spirit claim is anti-Eucharist and based on the unwillingness to believe the words “this is my body” and “this is my blood” and unwillingness to believe that words, are spirit that give life to the bread and wine (make it become the body and blood of Christ)

And also the unwillingness to believe that a human can be God.

John 10:33 “You, a man, are making yourself God”
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top