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Bezant
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Yeee-ikkkes a Christology thread…
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tonyrey
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“In God we live, move and have our being.” Jesus is no exception!The incarnation implies that one person in God now has a resurrected human body. A human body is contingent. God is not contingent. God cannot change. If God changes, then it means that God is contingent, but that’s a contradiction. But by taking on human nature, the second person in God has changed. He has become what he was not. How is this possible?
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Jaaanosik
Guest
His human nature is no exception.“In God we live, move and have our being.” Jesus is no exception!
His human nature lives, moves and has His human being in His divine nature - God.
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Pfaffenhoffen
Guest
Tree is contingent ? How come it is always the SAME tree ?Tree is contingent. My argument is that God CANNOT change. Anything that changes is subject to time. God, being a timeless being, cannot change.
So, God does not change, so what is the problem?
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levinas12
Guest
Well said.In the context of the bible, prosopon refers to presence and/or face and not mask.
The medieval, modern and contemporary philosophical meaning of “person” is not to be understood as a “mask” worn by a character in a play … as a dramatis persona … rather, “person” denotes the actual “who” … the singularity of the individual human being … corresponding to the proper name of someone …
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levinas12
Guest
The bold should be revised:Well said.
The medieval, modern and contemporary philosophical meaning of “person” is not to be understood as a “mask” worn by a character in a play … as a dramatis persona … rather, “person” denotes the actual “who” … the singularity of the individual human being … corresponding to the proper name of someone …
" … the singularity corresponding to the proper name of someone" …
This would include both Divine and human persons
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levinas12
Guest
“Face” is a key word for many philosophical discussions today.In the context of the bible, prosopon refers to presence and/or face …
The real Levinas devoted a great deal of his writing to the meaning of “face”.
“Face” is a very Jewish theme. Greek metaphysics did not address the “face” because it did not have a notion of “person” as a singularity (not definable by species/genus or form).
All of this is relevant to explaining the Incarnation: Jesus is the veritable “Face” of God.
C
Crux_Sancta
Guest
I once heard the argument of a group of evil metaphysicians who oppose the Church who once criticized Kenosis, or the self-emptying of Christ’s divine attributes to assume human form, and their argument was something along the lines that it was like the purest light of God contaminating itself as it sank into slime and ooze, that human nature was so base compared to the perfection of the Divine that when God assumes human qualities, He simply ceases to be God, that it is impossible for God to have human qualities and not be a corrupt shell of what He is, because no matter how sinless he is, even the most perfect human is totally debased compared to God just because of the nature of existence in this world.
I was not a Christian at the time I heard this argument, but it is a very challenging argument, a very evil one, but one that refuting now would actually show the essence of the Incarnation, the saving light of God which is humiliated, scorned, misunderstood, vilified…that even life as a mundane mortal for God would be a most painful thing, and that to be raised to the Divine nature one must have as one’s God the True Light which DID descend into the corruption of this world, did restrict His attributes and experience human-ness for a time, a humanness which must have been torment if He was still aware of Heaven.
God shocked humanity out of its own vanity through the example of Christ, who debased himself, whose weakness was stronger than the vain pretenses of strength that men have. The strongest man on Earth is totally weak compared to God, so why should God come as a strong person, if he wants to communicate His Truth? He has no need to, and to realize that one has been made lower than a Jewish carpenter of peasant birth, Jews having a laughable reputation as a race destined for servitude among the pagans of the time, totally destroys human beings’ pretenses to any pride at all, and crushes any notions of vanity or superiority in people, allowing them to come to God.
I was not a Christian at the time I heard this argument, but it is a very challenging argument, a very evil one, but one that refuting now would actually show the essence of the Incarnation, the saving light of God which is humiliated, scorned, misunderstood, vilified…that even life as a mundane mortal for God would be a most painful thing, and that to be raised to the Divine nature one must have as one’s God the True Light which DID descend into the corruption of this world, did restrict His attributes and experience human-ness for a time, a humanness which must have been torment if He was still aware of Heaven.
God shocked humanity out of its own vanity through the example of Christ, who debased himself, whose weakness was stronger than the vain pretenses of strength that men have. The strongest man on Earth is totally weak compared to God, so why should God come as a strong person, if he wants to communicate His Truth? He has no need to, and to realize that one has been made lower than a Jewish carpenter of peasant birth, Jews having a laughable reputation as a race destined for servitude among the pagans of the time, totally destroys human beings’ pretenses to any pride at all, and crushes any notions of vanity or superiority in people, allowing them to come to God.
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WesleyF
Guest
It is the same tree, but it has changed. Change implies that it is a being affected by time. God is timeless. Therefore God cannot change. If God changes, then he is affected by time.Tree is contingent ? How come it is always the SAME tree ?
So, God does not change, so what is the problem?
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WesleyF
Guest
Hmmm. This could possibly clear my confusion. I will think over it.As Trishie cited the Gospel of John, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
In our tradition it is said when the angels rebelled in the beginning, it was because they were shown the Incarnate Word. God’s substance never changed, but to participate in humanity God’s accidents changed.
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JDaniel
Guest
Wesley:The incarnation implies that one person in God now has a resurrected human body. A human body is contingent. God is not contingent. God cannot change. If God changes, then it means that God is contingent, but that’s a contradiction. But by taking on human nature, the second person in God has changed. He has become what he was not. How is this possible?
The Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon defined the hypostatic union, but, in so doing we are reminded that the dogma of the Incarnation "is not the fruit of human speculation upon the revealed word of God; it is not a theological conclusion; it is itself a divine revelation. Hence, the hypostatic union precisely as such can never be the subject of debate among Catholic theologians. Upon this all Catholics are and must be agreed: that the human nature of Christ, though real and complete, does not constitute a human person distinct from the Son of God; that the one person of Christ is the divine Person of the Word who, subsisting eternally in the divine nature, in the fullness of time took upon himself a human nature and thus is both truly God and truly man.
" The humanity of Christ was from the very first moment assumed, appropriated, by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, so that Christ is a divine Person, having two natures, a human nature and the divine." - The Teaching of the Catholic Church, Vol. I, Ch. XI, p. 374-375, 1962.
The Council of Chalcedon defined the words, “person” and “nature” as they were in normal usage, not as philosophical terms, with all of their pregnancies. Person was defined one individual, one subject of attribution, with his own distinct individuality incommunicable to others. In other words, one whom everyone would call, he. Then, they defined nature as that which makes a thing what it is. “*t is that composite unity of substance, qualities, and powers by means of which a person acts in a particular way, and in consequence of which he belongs to a particular category or class of being.” (Ibid.)
So, Christ is one person, with two natures, divine and human. And, since He was that for all eternity, the Triune God did not change when Christ was incarnated.
God bless,
jd*
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