How can Jesus have peace in the Garden, but still sweat blood (anxiety driven?)?

[GodHeals]

Hi,

How can Jesus have peace in the Garden, but still sweat blood (anxiety driven?)? I know we cannot separate the Divine and Human nature in Jesus. Maybe it goes deeper than I am thinking in that just like there is a righteous anger and a non-righteous anger, there is some sort of difference in the type of anxiety that Jesus experienced. Because being God, He couldn’t experience anxiety and we cannot just say it was His humanness that experience anxiety. That is if sweating blood actually means that he had anxiety in the first place, which i think i read somewhere or saw a TV program that said scientifically, it could be possible, i think (long time ago).

Everything doesn’t also have to have a natural explanation, so it could be supernatural. I think St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned something about this but I think I am digressing.

Thank you for your help in advance,
Brian

 

[mercytruth]

Hi,

How can Jesus have peace in the Garden, but still sweat blood (anxiety driven?)? I know we cannot separate the Divine and Human nature in Jesus. Maybe it goes deeper than I am thinking in that just like there is a righteous anger and a non-righteous anger, there is some sort of difference in the type of anxiety that Jesus experienced. Because being God, He couldn’t experience anxiety and we cannot just say it was His humanness that experience anxiety. That is if sweating blood actually means that he had anxiety in the first place, which i think i read somewhere or saw a TV program that said scientifically, it could be possible, i think (long time ago).

Everything doesn’t also have to have a natural explanation, so it could be supernatural. I think St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned something about this but I think I am digressing.

Thank you for your help in advance,
Brian

There are contemplatives such as St.John of the Cross, and also Catholic theologian Hans Balthasar who believe that our Lord Jesus was not suffering from anxiety of the crucifixion that he was about to face, but rather he was suffering from the great sorrow of bearing our sins.

God’s peace be with you

micah

 

[WoundedIcon]

Sure we can say it was His humanity that experienced the sorrow, just as much as we can say that His humanity ate but His divinity didn’t. That’s no violation of orthodoxy. We believe that His two natures comprise on person and that they can’t be separated, but we also believe they are unmixed. The only way your objection works is if inseparable = mixed.

 

[dshix]

Hi,

How can Jesus have peace in the Garden, but still sweat blood (anxiety driven?)? I know we cannot separate the Divine and Human nature in Jesus. Maybe it goes deeper than I am thinking in that just like there is a righteous anger and a non-righteous anger, there is some sort of difference in the type of anxiety that Jesus experienced. Because being God, He couldn’t experience anxiety and we cannot just say it was His humanness that experience anxiety. That is if sweating blood actually means that he had anxiety in the first place, which i think i read somewhere or saw a TV program that said scientifically, it could be possible, i think (long time ago).

Everything doesn’t also have to have a natural explanation, so it could be supernatural. I think St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned something about this but I think I am digressing.

Thank you for your help in advance,
Brian

There’s actually a very interesting scientific explanation to this.

I don’t remember the name of it, but there is a condition in which a person goes from being in the greatest state of ecstasy and happiness, to the deepest state of sorrow and remorse. This can happen vice-versa, or alternate.

This condition, when the person is really going from super-happy to super-sad, will cause the person to sweat blood.

It is rare, (bi-polar, anyone?) but is a well-documented and understood condition.

Most scientists believe this is what Jesus was experiencing at the Garden at Gethsemane.

 

[GodHeals]

Thank you for the posts… they were all interesting to read!

I still am unclear about this, whether His humanity and Divinity could have two opposing expressions at the same time? Or maybe I should ask, would it be wrong for Jesus to have anxiety, being both God and Man? He did after all get sick or feel the normal humanity we feel, i would imagine, and eventually go on to die for us… Thanks for more insights!

 

[GodHeals]

There are contemplatives such as St.John of the Cross, and also Catholic theologian Hans Balthasar who believe that our Lord Jesus was not suffering from anxiety of the crucifixion that he was about to face, but rather he was suffering from the great sorrow of bearing our sins.

God’s peace be with you

micah

The Peace of Jesus Christ be with you also, Micah!

 

[GodHeals]

There’s actually a very interesting scientific explanation to this.

I don’t remember the name of it, but there is a condition in which a person goes from being in the greatest state of ecstasy and happiness, to the deepest state of sorrow and remorse. This can happen vice-versa, or alternate.

This condition, when the person is really going from super-happy to super-sad, will cause the person to sweat blood.

It is rare, (bi-polar, anyone?) but is a well-documented and understood condition.

Most scientists believe this is what Jesus was experiencing at the Garden at Gethsemane.

Sounds interesting… maybe it is the same thing I saw or heard awhile back, but i forget what it is…

 

[dshix]

Thank you for the posts… they were all interesting to read!

I still am unclear about this, whether His humanity and Divinity could have two opposing expressions at the same time? Or maybe I should ask, would it be wrong for Jesus to have anxiety, being both God and Man? He did after all get sick or feel the normal humanity we feel, i would imagine, and eventually go on to die for us… Thanks for more insights!

I’m sure he had anxiety; he was human, after all; but I don’t think the anxiety clouded His will as it does ours, because he did not have a fallen nature and because He was God.

 

[jcrichton]

Hi,

How can Jesus have peace in the Garden, but still sweat blood (anxiety driven?)? I know we cannot separate the Divine and Human nature in Jesus. Maybe it goes deeper than I am thinking in that just like there is a righteous anger and a non-righteous anger, there is some sort of difference in the type of anxiety that Jesus experienced. Because being God, He couldn’t experience anxiety and we cannot just say it was His humanness that experience anxiety. That is if sweating blood actually means that he had anxiety in the first place, which i think i read somewhere or saw a TV program that said scientifically, it could be possible, i think (long time ago).

Everything doesn’t also have to have a natural explanation, so it could be supernatural. I think St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned something about this but I think I am digressing.

Thank you for your help in advance,
Brian

Hi, Brian!

…Welcomed (back) Home!

…there are many programs (science, ng and other networks) that purport to be seeking the truth about the Bible… from my experience, theirs is a search to denounce God, not for truth! …they bend over backwards to translate everything Biblical into some natural event or deny anything that seems to point to the supernatural… I too saw a program that spoke about a “natural” condition where a human body can secrete blood due to some sort of strees/anxiety response… the jest of the matter was to denounce any special reason why Jesus could have done such thing…

…yes, the scenic environment of the Garden could well have place a mind at ease or even offer such solace that a person would automatically feel its tranquility… but Jesus did not seek comfort! …and it was not simple human reaction to the Passion and Death that He would have to endure in the impending hours… Jesus had been declaring the expediency of such travail from early on in His Ministry… I think that there were two factors that totally recked His humanity and could very well have singed His Divinity:

Factor 1: Separation from the Father, even if but for a fraction of a nano second:

…And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. (St. John 16:32b)

And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (St. Matthew 27:46)

Factor 2: man’s disbelief:

Then Abraham said to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.” (St. Luke 16:31)

But, as I have told you, you can see me and still you do not believe. (St. John 6:36)

…no pleasant ambiance could compensate for these torments!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[patrick457]

Sounds interesting… maybe it is the same thing I saw or heard awhile back, but i forget what it is…

Hematidrosis.

 

[DaveBj]

Hi,

How can Jesus have peace in the Garden, but still sweat blood (anxiety driven?)? I know we cannot separate the Divine and Human nature in Jesus. Maybe it goes deeper than I am thinking in that just like there is a righteous anger and a non-righteous anger, there is some sort of difference in the type of anxiety that Jesus experienced. Because being God, He couldn’t experience anxiety and we cannot just say it was His humanness that experience anxiety. That is if sweating blood actually means that he had anxiety in the first place, which i think i read somewhere or saw a TV program that said scientifically, it could be possible, i think (long time ago).

Everything doesn’t also have to have a natural explanation, so it could be supernatural. I think St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned something about this but I think I am digressing.

Thank you for your help in advance,
Brian

Without going into a deep study on the subject (no time at the moment), I think you may be trying to take two conditions that were sequential (deep anxiety, and then peace) and make them simultaneous. There have been times that I have been deeply anxious about a situation, and then later had peace about it.

 

[Tigg]

I believe that in His perfection, both human and divine, Jesus would have experienced and understood the total depth of His passion on both levels to the extent that the complete range of emotions would have been fully felt.

 

[GodHeals]

Hematidrosis.

Thank you.

 

[Mintaka]

First off, Jesus was the Truth. He couldn’t fool Himself about how painful that His crucifixion was going to be, for Himself and for His friends and relatives. He couldn’t tell Himself that it wasn’t going to be hard to resist sin and temptation, either. And He’d been having to stay strong for His disciples all week, even while knowing that one of His friends kept going off to betray Him (which would end in his own suicide), and that His other friends were going to behave badly (for the most part).

Beyond all that, as God, He knew the suffering of every Christian ever to call upon Him, and He had to be strong for them also – for the saints dying horrifying deaths, suffering terrible wounds, for normal people who are just having a hard time, and even for those Christians who will ultimately turn their backs on Him and decide to go to Hell.

So yeah, He was probably quite tense, as a human. Tense enough to make his sweat gland capillaries bleed. His Body wasn’t made of iron; He was true Man as well as true God.

 

[patrick457]

Just a little addition if I may. What Luke (the passage BTW does not appear in some early manuscripts of Luke, but is equally attested in other sources, but that’s for another time) says is not so much that Jesus explicitly perspirated blood, but that His sweat “became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground” - so you have the option of reading this literally (emphasis on the “drops of blood” - i.e. He had hematidrosis) or as a vivid simile, in other words He sweated so hard that His sweat trickled down like blood. Either way, it shows how anxious Jesus is (after all, people sweat a lot when under stress).

Oh, and the word agōnia was understood not so much as ‘excruciating pain’ as it does today, but as the ‘competition’ or ‘(intense) struggle’ of an athlete or warrior: the kind of preparation that athletes undergo before an athletic contest, which could indeed be very painful. (Agōnia, quite literally, derives from agōn ‘contest’.) So when Jesus ‘agonized’ at Gethsemane, it meant that He was like an athlete preparing, ‘struggling’ hard before the start of a gruelling competition. (Cue the training sequences from the Rocky movies. )

 

[GodHeals]

So yeah, He was probably quite tense, as a human. Tense enough to make his sweat gland capillaries bleed. His Body wasn’t made of iron; He was true Man as well as true God.

Just a little addition if I may. What Luke (the passage BTW does not appear in some early manuscripts of Luke, but is equally attested in other sources, but that’s for another time) says is not so much that Jesus explicitly perspirated blood, but that His sweat “became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground” - so you have the option of reading this literally (emphasis on the “drops of blood” - i.e. He had hematidrosis) or as a vivid simile, in other words He sweated so hard that His sweat trickled down like blood. Either way, it shows how anxious Jesus is (after all, people sweat a lot when under stress).

Oh, and the word agōnia was understood not so much as ‘excruciating pain’ as it does today, but as the ‘competition’ or ‘(intense) struggle’ of an athlete or warrior: the kind of preparation that athletes undergo before an athletic contest, which could indeed be very painful. (Agōnia, quite literally, derives from agōn ‘contest’.) So when Jesus ‘agonized’ at Gethsemane, it meant that He was like an athlete preparing, ‘struggling’ hard before the start of a gruelling competition. (Cue the training sequences from the Rocky movies. )

Thank you both for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I appreciate it! What is interesting, my mother just gave me an interesting relic, Agnoiae Jerusalem Ex Rupe, not sure where it came from, not much online about it. Maybe, I’ll ask on another post. I think it has a piece of rock or something in it.

I guess my question is more philosophical in that how could Jesus be both at perfect peace and have anxiety at the same time. When He was sweating blood or sweat from anxiety, did Jesus have peace at the same time? If so, how could that be possible since the body seems to work off of what we think of as psychosomatic principles?

I think the below answer is going where I am trying to get it, but the the language “We believe that His two natures comprise on person and that they can’t be separated, but we also believe they are unmixed” doesn’t make sense to me… can’t be separated, but unmixed. It is probably St. Thomas Aquinas who might have more of the detailed answer that i am looking to read, but not sure.

Thank you again for sharing, it was interesting to read all of your thoughts!
Brian

Sure we can say it was His humanity that experienced the sorrow, just as much as we can say that His humanity ate but His divinity didn’t. That’s no violation of orthodoxy. We believe that His two natures comprise on person and that they can’t be separated, but we also believe they are unmixed. The only way your objection works is if inseparable = mixed.

 

[patrick457]

Thank you both for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I appreciate it! What is interesting, my mother just gave me an interesting relic, Agnoiae Jerusalem Ex Rupe, not sure where it came from, not much online about it. Maybe, I’ll ask on another post. I think it has a piece of rock or something in it.

Based on the label (ex Rupe Agoniae), I’d say that it’s a piece of the rock from the Basilica of the Agony (aka the Church of All Nations) in the Mount of Olives.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[fred_conty]

Here is a quote from the Jerusalem bible.

Luke 22;44
“In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.”

Notice that he did not sweat blood.

Jesus we know had the beatific vision and with this it would have been incompatible with suffering. St. Thomas Aquinas mentions some where, because I read it, tho you can’t always believe what you read, that Jesus suspended the vision so he could suffer.

Just a thought.