Jesus = God = Omniscient....right?

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Gottle of Geer - YOU USED THE WORD VELLEITY!! I LOVE YOU!!

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Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far:

Jesus had the same problem we have: “what I want now” verses “what’s good for the people I love.” He was praying for love, because we, as humans, do not have the same capacity for love that God has (making pure altruism impossible for us). He was praying that his love for us would win over his “i really do not want to be crucified.”

How could Jesus set aside his full divinity? When he walked around was he 100% man and 50% God?

Percentages are for tangible, measurable things - natures, being metaphysical and incorporeal things, can’t be measured in this way.​

If he set aside his divinity he could not have performed any miracles, etc. Unless, like Peter, he was just the medium God used to perform the miracles. Which would explain why he kept calling himself the son of man.

Ohh, this is all my fault. I was talking with my friend, and I used C. S. Lewis’s liar/lunatic/Lord argument, as explained by Peter Kreeft in the book Socrates Meets Jesus. I made the point that if Jesus was God, he probably had a pretty good idea, since God is omniscient.

But, if Jesus was 100% Man and 0% God as he got tired and opened doors, the liar/lunatic/Lord theory fails.

How about a “Gandalf theory” ? IOW - maybe having a human nature, before His glorification, for the purpose that He did, while He was in what is traditionally called the “state of humiliation”, “veiled” or “slowed down” the way in which the Divine Nature “functioned”.​

Not because His Godhead was affected - but because a finite nature, which all human natures are, would presumably, because limited, be incapable of accepting into itself the totality of what is nothing but God; so, could not act in exactly the same way as a nature which is nothing but God.

I’m not suggesting a sort of Divine-human “mismatch of parts”, the Divine component working smoothly, and the human component not: the Intellect of the God-man is not made up of wheels, cog, & pulleys - only that a created intellect, because it is created and finite, can’t contain the fullness of understanding and knowledge that the purely Divine intellect can.

I think one of the problems for us is to find the least misleading mental pictures of what is involved - for instance:

• Are we to think of the two natures as being related to each other like the stages in a four-colour process film development ?
• Does one contain the other ?
• If so, in what way ?
• Or did the Divine Nature shed the “white light” of the Divine Knowledge on to the human intellect of Christ, with that intellect “splitting” this Light, like that of a prism; so that what was clear to the Divine Nature was hidden from the human nature ?
• Is some other metaphor preferable ? Or all, or several of them ?

The Church says that Christ enjoyed the Beatific Vision on earth. As He was God, this does make sense - hard as it may be to square His having it, with the reality of His perfect humanity in its state of humiliation.

The “Gandalf theory” might help to explain why certain moments of His Life before the Resurrection - such as the Transfiguration - showed more clearly Who He is than others did. I’m inclined to go for the “prism theory” - so far, anyway. Jesus did have a human soul and intellect - and so it must have operated like ours: discursively, and by using a multiplicity of concepts. Unlike the intellect of God, which is supremely simple.

(I sometimes wonder at the certainty with which we make confident & detailed assertions about things we have never seen.)

C. S. Lewis had a remarkable gift for profound and memorable “mental pictures” - especially in the Narnia books. There is so much theology in them ##

 

[Angainor]

Gottle of Geer:

C. S. Lewis had a remarkable gift for profound and memorable “mental pictures” - especially in the Narnia books. There is so much theology in them ##

Speaking of C. S. Lewis and mental pictures, here is one from “Surprised by Joy” chapter 14:
Shakespeare could, in principle, make himself appear as Author within the play, and write a dialogue between Hamlet and himself. The “Shakespeare” within the play would of course be at once Shakespeare and one of Shakespeare’s creatures. It would bear some analogy to Incarnation.
This is literally a footnote in the book. It is not a completely formed analogy–it almost seems as if Lewis is thinking out loud–but I think there is the beginnings of profound insight in this incomplete thought.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Angainor:

Speaking of C. S. Lewis and mental pictures, here is one from “Surprised by Joy” chapter 14:Shakespeare could, in principle, make himself appear as Author within the play, and write a dialogue between Hamlet and himself. The “Shakespeare” within the play would of course be at once Shakespeare and one of Shakespeare’s creatures. It would bear some analogy to Incarnation.

This is literally a footnote in the book. It is not a completely formed analogy–it almost seems as if Lewis is thinking out loud–but I think there is the beginnings of profound insight in this incomplete thought.

My favourite occurs in “The Last Battle”, when Lucy says (to Tirian, I think), that there was Something in a stable in our world which was greater than all that was outside it (to paraphrase a bit).​

This is a wonderful illustration of Divine Transcendence - Christ “contained” all creation, yet was contained by it. It’s quite dizzying, actually - especially when taken with the mental picture you quote

I think Lewis appears as a character in his “space trilogy” - which means that “writer-Lewis” and “book-Lewis” have the same mind, in some sense; yet the other characters in the book also reflect “writer-Lewis”.

It’s even more complicated, because God is in some sense the author of all existing things - therefore, this includes characters in stories; there could not be stories with credibly human characters, if God were not every bit as much the Author as the human author. And God, is therefore present in the author, the story, and the characters in the story: it is the abundant Life of God that makes characters in stories “come alive”; including the characters He has “made up” in the story of creation.

I wonder whether a purely human Shakespeare could could “show forth” the fullness of who and what Shakespeare was, in the life and work of a Shakespeare in a story. I don’t think that would be possible, because the Shakespeare composing the story would still be finite. If he were infinite in being, and the Shakespeare in the story also was, then it would be possible. Then of course there would be the question of how a finite world could contain a being of infinitely abundant life. There is also the question of how fully any created being “shows forth”, “realises”, what God intended that creature to be. But that takes us from the theology of the Incarnation, to that of the Creation. ##

 

[Angainor]

## Or for that, be omniscient if He was true man

Yes, exactly.
Gottle of Geer:

So it’s easier to say what the problems in discussing the knowing of Christ are, than it is to come up with decent answers.

We’ve only had 1970 years to think about these things - maybe our remote descendants will understand them more deeply and fully ##

I can tell you my understanding. There might already be an established heresy for my veiw, as far as I know. Perhaps someone on this forum can tell me what my heresy is if it has a name.

In the language of Catholic apologetics: I believe Jesus was a divine person with a human nature.

I think of what I call “me” (this is my person). I imagine this thing I call “me” is removed and the thing called “Jesus” is put in its place. Jesus, while on earth, has a human nature, and therefore none of the omni-attributes of God.

So what about miracles?
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cred out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and cought him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” Matthew 14:29-31
Peter walked on water because he had faith he could. He began to sink when his faith faltered.
Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment.
Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:18-21
Jesus is telling us how he performs miracles. How many of us really truely believe they can walk on water or move a mountian? Well… none of us. What about Jesus who possessed perfect faith? No problem.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Angainor:

Yes, exactly. I can tell you my understanding. There might already be an established heresy for my veiw, as far as I know. Perhaps someone on this forum can tell me what my heresy is if it has a name.

In the language of Catholic apologetics: I believe Jesus was a divine person with a human nature.

I think of what I call “me” (this is my person). I imagine this thing I call “me” is removed and the thing called “Jesus” is put in its place. Jesus, while on earth, has a human nature, and therefore none of the omni-attributes of God.

So what about miracles?Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cred out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and cought him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” Matthew 14:29-31

Peter walked on water because he had faith he could. He began to sink when his faith faltered.Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment.

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:18-21

Jesus is telling us how he performs miracles. How many of us really truely believe they can walk on water or move a mountian? Well… none of us. What about Jesus who possessed perfect faith? No problem.

Catholic theologians have been reluctant to speak of Jesus as having faith, because the NT does not attribute faith to Him, and because doing so would seem to imply that He did not enjoy the Beatific Vision on earth. And if He was not more privileged in this respect than we are, that would imply He cannot really be the Head of a new redeemed race, since He cannot mediate to His members the entirety of something He Himself enjoys only in an incomplete manner.​

Obviously this presupposes a lot. I don’t know whether this trio of objections is unanswerable. If His having faith could be seen to be compatible with the NT evidence, & with His being God, the objections might lapse.

As to the “omni”- attributes - He laid something aside, to judge from Philippians 2. IMO, not His Godhead, but its external glory; so that it remained, but was veiled, except for moments such as the Transfiguration.

Theologians speak of “theandric” works of Christ (theos & aner = “god” & “man”) - that is, works done by the Word in virtue of His being man, and works of the man by virtue of His being God.

Over to you lot (This is a really good thread) ##

 

[Angainor]

## Catholic theologians have been reluctant to speak of Jesus as having faith, because the NT does not attribute faith to Him, and because doing so would seem to imply that He did not enjoy the Beatific Vision on earth.

I don’t know how else to respond except to witness as to how I developed my view of Jesus. Here goes…

At one point in my life my Christian faith slipped back into a type of Deism. This was for various reasons, but one of the obstacles to my returning to Christianity was that the Crucifixion just didn’t make much sense to me. For one thing, it just didn’t seem like that big of deal. This is because I assumed Jesus knew the following for absolute certain:

1. This was the Father’s plan for man’s salvation.
2. It would work.
3. When it was over, Jesus would return to heaven to live with the Father.
   My thought process went: If a human being knew all three of these things for absolute certain, it is not unreasonable to imagine that that human being would be able to willingly submit themselves to the torture Jesus went through. Maybe I would not be strong enough, but it is possible someone with enough virtue would be able to.

It was during a Good Friday sermon (I still went to church) that I opened my mind to the possibility that Jesus did not know those three things for certain. Imagining Jesus on the cross with no more assurances than his faith had a profound affect on me. Surely there is no human being that would ever willingly submit themselves to that on their faith alone, much less remain up there if they had the power to take themselves down. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” What person’s faith would not utterly collapse under the weight of such feelings of isolation?

As to the NT not attributing faith to Jesus, it may not use the word “faith”, but I think it absolutely attributes faith to Jesus:

1. For Satan’s second temptation of Jesus, Satan took Jesus to the highest point of the temple and tempted him to jump so God’s angels would catch him. Matthew 4: 7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

No matter how strong your faith may be, how tempting would it be to have that faith verified. Have you ever asked “Send a miracle so I know it is true”?

1. Jesus prayer in Gethsemane: Matthew 26:39 “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

 

[Angainor]

."
Gottle of Geer:

And if He was not more privileged in this respect than we are, that would imply He cannot really be the Head of a new redeemed race, since He cannot mediate to His members the entirety of something He Himself enjoys only in an incomplete manner.

“And he has given him authority to judge, because he is the Son of Man.” John 5:27

I think it was the fact that he was not more privileged in this respect that made him qualified to be mediator.

This is an idea I have been tossing around, I’m not quite sure about it yet: I think of Jesus as a one man jury-of-our-peers. God is not bound by justice, but rather he is just. God could dole out punishment and rewards perfectly justly, but to human beings, there might remain an appearance of injustice. To humans, a God sitting on high handing out judgement seems unjust. Sending his Son to live as a human then giving him authority to judge might defuse some of those perceptions.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Angainor:

."“And he has given him authority to judge, because he is the Son of Man.” John 5:27

I think it was the fact that he was not more privileged in this respect that made him qualified to be mediator.

This is an idea I have been tossing around, I’m not quite sure about it yet: I think of Jesus as a one man jury-of-our-peers. God is not bound by justice, but rather he is just. God could dole out punishment and rewards perfectly justly, but to human beings, there might remain an appearance of injustice. To humans, a God sitting on high handing out judgement seems unjust. Sending his Son to live as a human then giving him authority to judge might defuse some of those perceptions.

I have difficulty thinking of God as just; because to me, that is too much how man acts. I think far more of God as gracious - ISTM that grace is far more thorough-going than justice, because justice deals with others according to their deserts. Which God, AFAICS, does not do - if God acted as a man acts, He would be acting as no more than one of us; as mere man, with other mere men. But He is God - not man. If God dealt with us as we deserve, we would be utterly destroyed.​

So He is gracious, not just. Justice has to do with equity and what is due - grace goes beyond both, and allows freer play to love than justice does, so, more adequately reveals God. IMO, anyway.

I think C.S. Lewis was indicating this, in “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe”: grace seems to = the “deeper magic” that Aslan speaks of to Susan and Lucy, after he has returned from death. The White Witch, by contrast, knows only of justice; so she thinks she has done for Aslan by killing him, and that she can now rule Narnia in perpetuity. She has, of course, done no such thing - so when he kills her, she dies looking astonished.

Grace, being more thoroughgoing, does not abolish the need for holy living - it confirms it, but on a different basis from law. Just as Jesus does not relax the Law: He tightens it - to a point at which it is impossible to fulfil it. The only fulfilment of it, is that of His own total self-giving to the Father. By doing so, He provides an entirely new foundation for moral life, without “lowering the bar” in any way at all.

The choice of Abram owed nothing to the Law - and everything to the grace of God. The Law was instituted,only after many gracious acts of God had made Israel a worshipping community. And it was God Who entered into a pact with Abram, then Israel, making one into Abraham, & the other into the Chosen People.

So grace unifies more elements in God’s dealings with men, and is responsible for more manifestations of God’s activity. ISTM

Sorry for rambling ##

 

[Angainor]

Gottle of Geer:

If God dealt with us as we deserve, we would be utterly destroyed.

I do agree. Your descriptions of Grace are very good also.

Nevertheless, there is a hell, and some people will face judgement. Even the most evil, IMHO, might claim injustice if God judged them from on high. Our jury system seems appropriate because it conforms to natural law, the law the White Which knows.

Jesus’ bigger role is no doubt the fulfillment of Aslan’s deeper magic, but I think he plays his John 5:27 judge role as well.

Like I said, this is just a feeling I have as to how it works. Understanding this part is probably not important. I would do well to just look to God’s Grace and [post=978874]Christ’s sacrifice[/post].

 

[cardenio]

I read the Chronicles of Narnia with my dad when I was little. I’ve been wanting to get back to them, but now I’m 16, and it’s not the same…

But this summer I read Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. I started That Hideous Strength but I didn’t like it so much.

Either way…

I declare myself thoroughly confused.