Well Clete, according to John 5:19:
"...the Son cannot do any thing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doth, these the Son also doth in like manner."
Very simple, the Son cannot descend into Hell until he sees the Father doing it so that he does it as well.
No Evoken. A figure of speech used by Christ not withstanding, it was God the Son who went to Hell not God the Father. If this logic were valid then before Jesus descended from Heaven to become a man God the Father must also have done it. But no, on the contrary, God the Son was SENT (John 8:42) from and by His Father to Earth to die and to descend into Abraham's bosom.
The Son descended into Hell to preach, to release the dead by loosing the sorrows of Hell (Acts 2:24, 1 Peter 3:19), in short to do things, which as the verses above show he cannot do unless the Father does them. The Father and the Son are one in the most intimate way. This verse is also very important for it shows that while God is a Trinity of Persons, he has only one will, not three and thus the three persons act in unity (see also Genesis 1:26, John 1:3).
There is a sense, just like with every other aspect of the Trinity, that God has but one will but there is also a sense in which there is more than one.
Luke 22:41 And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”
God is One in Three and Three in One! That is the doctrine of the Trinity. There are THREE persons within the Trinity Evoken. You seem to want to cling tightly to the unified aspects of the Trinity and ignore the plural aspects. This will not do! Within God, the concepts unity and diversity are EQUALLY ultimate.
If you're interested, read
THIS for an explanation as to why this equality between unity and diversity MUST be presupposed in order to maintain a rational worldview. It's written by a Calvinist but the section linked too explains the problem and its solution well even though they mix much of their error in with it. It's as though they get the answer right in spite of themselves.
I am not sure why you mention St. Augustine. Do you think he made up the idea of the three persons acting in unity or of them being one in essence and thus inseparable? You think that he "corrupted" the gospel with "greek philosophy"? Hopefully that is not what you think because going long before he was even born we find that this is precisely what the earliest Christians believed. Here are some examples:
I know for a fact that Augustine corrupted church doctrine with Greek philosophy because of what Austine himself stated about what he believed and why he believed it. The fact that other may have made his same errors before he did doesn't mean that he through his vast influence on Christian doctrine did not bring those Classical beliefs into the church. You one of only a very few people I've ever come across who even hints at denying it. Its just too patently obvious to be denied.
And I brought up Augustine because it is Augustinian theology which you are defending.
The earliest heresies such as the one of Sabellius mentioned in the last quote, who was excommunicated in A.D. 220 as well as the Gnostic sects as lead by the likes of Marcion who proposed a separation in the godhead or some other form of distinction besides the persons were opposed on all fronts in the early Church as being contrary to sound doctrine. St. Augustine didn't make anything up nor did he corrupt anything, he simply followed and like all his predecessors before him, gave fuller expression to the teaching of The Church, not by inventing some new doctrine but by making it more explicit and clearer. Something that became necessary as more heresies emerged.
You've never read Augustine's work have you? You don't have any idea why he became a Christian nor what he based his theology on. I'd quote his own words for you but I'm not going to because I don't want to debate Augustine with you. I don't frankly care about Augustine nor do I care about what some person I've never heard of before thinks is heresy. Your position is unbiblical and while you may find the opinions of men authoritative in matters of doctrine, I do not.
Yes, he died a human death in the fullest sense. The divine nature did not nor could it have died.
Then what died? Exactly.
The Gospel of Clete, perhaps, but not the one we find in Scripture.
I've done very little else but quote Scripture to support my position Evoken, that and repeat myself. It is the Bible that teaches us that God sent His only begotten Son to die for th sins of the world, not me! I mean, I teach that but not because I made it up, I'm simply quoting you the Scripture.
Scripture and reason exclude absolutely the notion of the Son being in any way separated from the Father.
So says you!
Do you really believe that simply making this claim somehow proves your position? Because you've done nothing at all to substantiate it.
In addition to what has been said above, also consider: "Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption." (Acts 2:27). Why do you think that is if not because he is united with the Father and because he is the same God as Fathers?
Why do I think it is that the Father would not leave the Son in Hell?
Well lets see. Because He didn't need to. Because He loves the Son and has the ability to raise Him from the dead. Because it was His plan all along to raise Him from the dead. Because if Jesus had remained dead, we would all be without hope. Because, because, because! I could probably go on for hours if I sat and thought about it long enough. There's every reason in the world why the Father would not have left His Son in the grave. Gaining victory over DEATH and Hell was pretty much the entire point.
Notice though that none of that requires me to believe that the Father was in Hell! Nor does it require me to deny that Jesus is the same God as God the Father.
Again, at death he gave up his spirit to the Father, no separation occurs at any time.
Again, saying it doesn't make it so.
The only thing I am up against is your own arbitrary opinion which you equate (quite erroneously) with the real sense of Scripture.
In what way is my opinion arbitrary? I've directly quoted Scripture! How is that arbitrarily my opinion? You are the one who throws in "bodily" without any grammatical or contextual reason whatsoever. You are the one who meets my Biblical arguments with the opinions and traditions of mere men.
You are proud of quoting Luther, I wonder if you are aware that he would be dismayed by some of the things you are saying about God?
If Luther where around today, he would be a Calvinist and so I have no doubt that he would be more than dismayed.
I quote ONE single line of Luther - ONE. I quote it because he got it right, not because of who he was or what else he taught. Luther was a rabid anti-Semite who thought it a sin to even attempt to convert a Jew to Christianity and he was also staunchly Augustinian in his theology proper. In other words, Luther was wrong more than he was right and a great many issues and my quoting a single sentence of his should not be taken as an endorsement of his theology. His attitude toward the theological establishment, yes, his theology, certainly not.
If there is anyone who is up against anything here it is you and that is against almost 2,000 years of Christian history and tradition and also against the very Scriptures.
I have repeatedly quoted the Scriptures directly and I couldn't care less about the other.
For you to pompously claim that you don't care anything about the Nicene Creed, a creed that even the most liberal of Christians agree with only shows how drowned you are in delusions of grandeur.
Whatever. I never said I disagreed with it in principle. I merely was saying that I do not hold it to be authoritative in matters of theology or doctrine. If the Bible teaches me something contrary to what some creed states then the creed be damned! I will be persuaded by the Scripture and plain reason and nothing else - period. If the arch angel of God himself came and told me something other than what the Scripture teaches my response would be the same (Gal. 1:8).
I noticed that in other posts you were calling Pentecostals heretics, I am lead to ask, in what grounds do you call them heretics, when you have set yourself outside the bounds of even the most liberal forms of Christianity?
They are heretics because they ignore the gospel of grace, they place themselves under the Mosaic law and claim the promises made to Israel for themselves on that basis, they routinely lie about miracles, they blink old women out of their life's saving selling fake miracles and they lead very sick people to their graves by telling them they are healed when they know for a fact that they are not. They are liars, thieves and murderers and approve of others who do the same.
Clear enough?
I suggest you look yourself in the mirror first before condemning others.
Good advice! :thumb:
If there is something I don't care about it is the personal interpretation of the Scriptures of some random individual (there are over 40,000 personal interpretations and raising), specially when it goes against what has been believed and defended even to the death in the history of Christianity down to the earliest Christians.
I've interpreted nothing Evoken! That's pretty much the entire point! You've done plenty of interpreting but all I've done is quote the Bible and taken it for what if flatly comes right out and says as plain as day! In short all you've said here is that you trust what other people tell you that the Bible says more than your own ability to read.
How is it speculation? Either God is one in three persons or he is three separate gods. Scripture and Reason, remember?
Umm yeah! I remember! Do you?
You should read the portion of that article I linked too above. You are clearly giving way more weight to God's unity than you are His plurality. A mistake that you cannot afford if you want to have a rationally sound worldview that is consistent with Scripture. The two concepts are EQUALLY ultimate.
Your claim that the Son was separated from the Father is not in the Scriptures and is in fact precluded by what is clearly stated in them.
On the contrary, I've directly quoted the Scripture repeatedly. Now you seem to just be pretending like I didn't. What's going on here, Evoken?
How was the Son separated from the Father for three days anyway? Did God become two for a while and then became one again? This makes no sense.
It is not necessary for me to be able to explain the precise nature of the separation nor how it took place. This is what I know. God the Father forsook God the Son. God the Son went to the place of the righteous dead and was raised from the Dead three days later. How all that happened and what it all means I don't know. But my inability to understand the details of how it was done is not an argument against the fact that it was done. Jesus Himself says that He is the One was alive, who was dead and is alive forever more. Jesus said that, not me! I simply quoted Him!
Again, if the Son is separated (keep apart or divide; remove or sever from association) from the Father, then it simply cannot be maintained that there are not three gods but one.
This is just not so! On what basis do you make this assertion? Show me the logic that demands that such a conclusion is necessary? The fact is that this is your doctine and that somehow you think that simply spouting your doctrine with some amount of emotion amount to a sound argument but it does not. Jesus while separated from the Father was still totally God in every sense! Just as God the Father remained fully God while separated from the Son.
Some things may not be explicitly taught in Scripture but they are there implicitly, that is, the facts from which we can draw the conclusion are clearly there. In such a way is that the doctrine of the Trinity (among others) is found in the Scriptures.
I agree with this point completely! So instead of just making unsupported claims show me the argument which is based on clear Scriptural premises that leads one to inexorably conclude that "if the Son is separated (keep apart or divide; remove or sever from association) from the Father, then it simply cannot be maintained that there are not three gods but one."
I guarantee you that if you even try to do that you will only run into the same problems that those who actually argue against the Trinity run into. Try it and see if you don't end up
sounding like you are arguing against the doctrine of the Trinity.
God being omnipotent could have redeemed man in any way.
This is typical Catholic/Calvinist (Augustinian) nonsense. God is just Evoken. He could not just magically make sin go away had He decided He wanted to do that. God redeemed man in the ONLY way it was possible to do so.
The incarnation while the most appropriate means for the redemption of man, was not absolutely necessary as a means to redeem man.
So says you. Care to try to prove this one?
Otherwise the redemption would lose it's gratuitousness, mercifulness and lovingness as it would be simply something God was cohered to do.
WHAT?????!!!!
This amounts to your attempt to establish the lunatic position that God could have arbitrarily picked any old way of redeeming mankind but it results in blasphemy.
Guess what Evoken! God did NOT have to do anything to save you. He could have let you burn in Hell forever. Jesus could have called upon God the Father and He would have sent 10,000 legions of angels to rescue Him from the cross and you then you still be in your sin and without hope. Just because God could not have redeemed man any other way does not imply that God was required to redeem man in the first place. God chose to redeem man a great expense to Himself and was not coerced nor compelled to do so in any way other than that of His great love for us.
Now since God, who is infinite demanded full atonement for the offense committed to him, then a sacrifice of infinite value was needed, which only a divine person can provide.
Which is the very foundation of my entire position that it is the divine that had died at Calvary.
This is the reason for the union of Christ's human nature with the divine nature in the person of the Son.
Christ did not have two natures Evoken. He was human but a divine one; His nature was and is and always has been and always will be divine.
It makes Lord Jesus not only fully human and fully God but gives his human nature the infinite value needed for the full atonement by virtue of it's union with the divine nature.
This would sound good if it were at all Biblical and not merely the doctrine of men. Nothing in the Bible suggests that Jesus was anything other than God Himself become flesh.
Who said that human nature is incompatible with the divine?
You did!
"So, the divine nature could not be fused with the human nature, because then the nature Christ assumed was not truly human but something else. (From
post 4417)
I believe that we receive grace and become partakers of the divine nature through the Sacraments and also that we become Holy by it. So of course our nature is compatible with the divine!
Then why did you suggest that Jesus would "something else" of God was a divine human being?
That doesn't means however that the incarnation took place either by a transformation of the human nature into the divine nature, an absorption of the human nature into the divine or a fusion between the two natures resulting on a third nature.
You miss the most obvious option, that being that God simply became a human being.
All three of these ideas were advanced by proponents of Monophysitism, a heresy that was condemned very early, and for good reason, for their teaching ended up destroying the integrity of Christ's human nature in such a way that he could not be said to be fully human, but something else.
Something else like God become flesh, you mean?
It also lead to another problem in that if the divine nature became flesh, then not only the Son but also the Father and the Holy Ghost became flesh as there is but one divine nature which all three of them share. Unless, of course, one would like to propose three separate natures, one for each person, which would again lead into Tritheism.
:yawn:
Trinity: One God: THREE distinct persons!
Make up your mind, First you deny that Lord Jesus has two natures and say he is God become man and then below you say that "Jesus was fully human and fully God.". So which one is it?
False dichotomy fallacy.
God was God become flesh. He was not two things simultaniously, He was one thing, the God man, Jesus Christ. He was one person, God the Son and He has one divine nature.
Where did I said that there was a contradiction? It is you who is denying that Lord Jesus has two natures, yet you affirm he has two natures (how else do you understand fully human and fully God, since both things refer to natures?) and argue with me as if I were denying it.
This assumes that God could not become a human being and remain God! God did not take on a second nature he simply took on flesh and remained the exact same person with the exact same character and nature that He had before the incarnation. Jesus Christ is God become flesh. He was, and remains to this day, a divine human being. 'Divine' being that which describes His nature, 'human' being that which describes His flesh.
Well if Clete says it, that makes it so, no?
You know full well that I've never said otherwise. Any point that I make that you want substantiated with Scripture and sound reason, if it hasn't already been, will be upon request.
Did you have a particular point in mind or did you just want to throw this statement in for emotional effect?
In the every Scriptures things are more complicated than that. Simply saying that God the Son became man explains nothing, the very statement raises a plethora of questions that scream for answers.
So now we have to explain what the Bible plainly states in some detail before we accept it as truth? Is that what you are suggesting?
No! I don't have to explain to you how God accomplished the incarnation, nor do I have to explain to you the precise nature of it. All I have to do is quote you the passages of Scripture which state plainly that God became flesh, none of which you deny and then sit back and wait for you to quote all the non-existent passages that say that God had two natures.
It is true that sometimes people tend to make things more complicated than they need to be and thus are lead to erroneous conclusions. But it also true that some people ignore the complexities of a given subject and adopt a naive approach to it that leads to equally erroneous conclusions.
RIGHT! With this point I completely concur! Thus Luther's standard (and mine) "Scripture AND plain reason".
Of course, the body is not what makes a person but the soul/spirit, hence there is another reason why the divine and human natures did not need to be fused together. That the soul/spirit is what makes a person is precisely why it is said that the person of the Son incarnated. It is why it is said that the union took place not in the nature but in the person. and yes, as you say, you (the person) survive your physical death with your memories and personality intact, so too did the person of the Son when the human nature died at the cross, ergo the divine nature did not die.
Now you are arguing my side of the debate! Take the above one sentence at a time...
I do not say that there were two natures fused together.
You and I agree that it is the soul/spirit that makes a person who they are and that it was the person of the Son that incarnated and not the person of the Father. (Sentences 2 &3)
I have never suggested that Jesus did not survive His physical death with His personality and memories intact. In fact I have repeatedly stated the reverse that God the Son remained God the Son even though He was in Hell apart from God the Father. And thus I have repeated stated that God the Son did not die in the sense that He stopped existing as God the Son!
This whole paragraph was written as though our whole conversation never took place!
Why do you do that Evoken? It's extremely irritating and so very very unproductive! Why even waste the time it takes to type all that stuff up?
Resting in Him,
Clete
P.S. I know this was a long post and if you actually ready it all I thank you for that. Please DO NOT feel like you need to respond to it all. Just because I take this much time to respond to each and every point made doesn't mean that I expect you or anyone else to do the same. If you want to respond at all, just pick out whatever you think is most important and we'll focus on that.
