Here’s a little something to chew on that I am looking for feedback on…
What are the implications, effects, results, logistical/theological problems with the idea that Jesus was NOT God, but a man (Adam 2.0) partially conceived by God (thus the title ‘The Son of God’) that lived a perfect life, died on a cross and rose from the dead?
For the sake of the exercise, “Because the Bible doesn’t teach that, look at this chapter and verse…” is NOT what I’m going for. I am wanting to explore more of how it effects things systemically on a practical theological level. Is it that big a difference if Jesus was God or a perfect man? Either way, the perfect sacrifice was made for our redemption, right?
Let the games begin!
(No, my church doesn’t teach this and I’m not personally considering it as truth.)
Must… refrain… from… arguing… Jesus’s… deity….
It’s very hard to stay on-topic here, but I’ll do my best. I think a proper exploration of the nature of redemption is in order. Let’s see…
Scripture supports each of these points, but I have refrained from including references because of general laziness and the level of Biblical literacy that is already assumed in this discussion.
As Greg Kokul says, the doctrine of the Trinity solves problems rather than causing them. Just looking at this little piece of the issue, we see the necessity of Jesus being holy in order to escape wrath Himself and pay for any sins. I believe it’s a safe assumption that no man is holy, so Jesus cannot be a man.
On the other hand, God cannot bleed. It is the uncontested requirement from the days of Noah through the entire OT sacrificial system and all the way to the cross that blood must be shed for the forgiveness of sin. (Read Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews before you would contest this.) So in order to bleed for the remission of sin, the redeemer had to be human. From this we can deduce that Jesus cannot be God.
So we fall on the horns of a dilemma in our quest to define the substitutionary death of Jesus. To obtain substitution (payment for sin), we lose death. To obtain death, we lose substitution. Here we encounter the necessary doctrine of the hypostatic union. (Insert the word “just” after the times I said “Jesus cannot be…” above.) All of redemption falls apart if we lose one or the other (as I believe I’ve shown), but if Jesus were fully God (adequate substitution) and fully man (able to die) then it’s possible. In fact, I submit, in light of all we must understand as truth from the rest of Scripture and related philosophical and theological lines of knowledge, that apart from this doctrine, redemption is impossible.
David, I appreciate your frustration with prooftexting, but this whole discussion is based on God’s self-revelation. It’s undeniable. We couldn’t talk about original sin, atonement, or even a personal God except that God reveal it to us (first in the prophets, then in Christ-both passed to us through the Scriptures). For example, we wouldn’t even know that the payment for sin takes an eternity for a man to pay without the revelation we have about Hell from the Scriptures. So, even Hugh’s argument (the best one, I think) falls without referring to an authoritative claim.
Jeffrey says: “we see the necessity of Jesus being holy in order to escape wrath Himself and pay for any sins. I believe it’s a safe assumption that no man is holy, so Jesus cannot be a man.”
I agree with the first sentence. How one logically jumps from that to the “safe assumption” in the second sentence, is astounding. If you follow that line of reasoning that no m,an could be holy, therefore Jesus was not holy, therefore Jesus must be God, it follows that there was no reason for the devil to try and tempt Jesus – Jesus couldn’t sin.
How is there any value in the way Jesus faced and overcame temptation if he were God? (Heb2:18) If he was holy, without the possibility to sin, you are taking away what he wrought for us.
Was Adam holy before he sinned?
Maybe instead of “no man is holy, so Jesus cannot be a man” it would be more accurate to reason: no man with sin nature is holy, so Jesus had to be born without sin nature – the second Adam – born of incorruptible seed.
What is temptation? Isn’t it when a person not only experiences an external tempt-er, but is “enticed by his own desire” (James 1)? It seems you affirm that Jesus was born without the sin nature that would entice Him from within, so even you can’t say that Jesus’s temptation experiences were identical to ours from a holiness standpoint. The very same book you reference mentions that He was tempted in the same ways we are, except His experience lacked sin within Him (Hebrews 4). Note that it doesn’t say that His temptations were different because He didn’t sin (then it would say “yet without sinning”), but instead because He didn’t have sin within already (it says “yet without sin”). But you already accept that He didn’t have a sin nature. So what is the basis for saying that, rather than being God in the flesh, Jesus was just a man without a sin nature? I don’t get that from Scripture—in fact, I get the impression that no man is born without a sin nature.
Or maybe it’s just better to go back and rephrase every time I said “holy” in my original post to say “infinitely holy.” That’s really what we’re getting at here. After all, sin against an infinite God requires an infinite payment.
“I don’t get that from Scripture—in fact, I get the impression that no man is born without a sin nature.”
Jeffrey, wasn’t Adam 1.0 initally without a sin-nature yet he was enticed from within wasn’t he? (No “blaming Eve” jokes here please.)
………
Communication is tough isn’t it? I can’t seem to accurately communicate what I’m trying to do here.
Here’s the idea … other sects and religions that hold the view that Jesus was not God do acknowledge other sections of scripture and other “givens.” They do a good job at constructing a different systematic world-view so I’m trying to find contradictions that are created.
First, I think a huge implication would be God is not be just. Crimes deserve an appropriate punishment or justice is not served. If a good man died on the cross, and God accepted that sacrifice as atonement for the sins of the world, the punishment would not fit the crime. And, God would not be just. If God were not just, we would have no basis for morality, no sense of right and wrong.
Second, I think pdiddy (the rapper?) is right on. If a good man died on the cross for our sins, our sins would be trite. The doctrine of Hell would definitely not fit. I mean come on, forever? It is not a big deal. I think this is the problem all religion gets into, none of them realize the huge hole our sin digs for us. By implication, that would mean God is not righteous or is powerless. Having created all of creation to worship him only to have it go completely wrong in the beginning. Either he does not care that all of creation is in rebellion against him or can do nothing about it.
Third, and this may be reaching, I see God putting on flesh and becoming a man a powerful indicator of his being a personal God. If it were not God that put on flesh to save the elect of creation, he would probably be a god that would not walk in the cool of the day with his favored of creation. He would not go to Abram, Jacob, Gideon, Daniel, and others in the form of theophanies or Christophanies. God would be wholly other, unknowable and unapproachable. Because of this theology, our society would have stagnated like the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs and every other. Because they did not tie the knowledge of God to being a consistent knowable being and explore him through his creation.