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Author | Topic: Jesus - Wholly Man - Wholly God | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GDR Member Posts: 6220 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.5 |
It is my contention that as Christians we are so intent on telling people that Jesus is God that we ignore the fact that Jesus was a flesh and blood human being. I recently gave a 20 minute talk on the subject to a local men's breakfast. Is it appropriate to simply post a talk like that as a new topic?
If it is I would suggest either "Bible Study" or "Faith and Belief". Likely the latter.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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AdminPhat Inactive Member |
Thread copied here from the Jesus - Wholly Man - Wholly God thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9567 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 7.3
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Before you say anything, why do you think you have knowledge of what Jesus was or wasn't? Why should I listen to you?
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1640 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
GDR is simply giving the historical understanding of Jesus' nature, the understanding all Christians have who know anything about the history of these things. Wholly God and Wholly Man is the official understanding of the nature of Jesus, the union of the nature of God who begot Him, with the human nature of His mother. It was made official in councils for one thing, but it is derived from the Biblical descriptions of His nature. Here's Wikipedia on the technical term for it, Hypostatic Union
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9471 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 6.3 |
we ignore the fact that Jesus was a flesh and blood human being
Alas, this "fact" isn't based upon any historical evidence. The only support for this is the bible itself, of we have no idea who wrote or when.So no verifiable evidence for this "fact" at all. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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GDR Member Posts: 6220 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.5
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Tangle writes: Hi Tangle. We have corresponded enough for you to appreciate the wisdom I bring to the table. Before you say anything, why do you think you have knowledge of what Jesus was or wasn't? Why should I listen to you? One of my hobbies is studying theology and in particular trying to understand it from the perspective of what a first century Jew would have understood. I don't know that I am correct in what I say but it is what this is in the faith and belief section so it will be my faith and my belief. I have a hunch it won't be yours. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6220 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.5
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I’d like to start off with the disclaimer that what I say today are my understandings of the Christian faith and that, no matter how remote the possibility, it is possible that something I say may not be correct.
How often do we hear the phrase that Jesus was wholly man and wholly God? My experience for years was about understanding Jesus as wholly God but not thinking much about Jesus as also, wholly man. Jesus was a flesh and blood human being, like you and me. When we keep the idea of Jesus as wholly man in tension with the deity of Jesus, the Gospel narrative becomes clearer and more relevant. We are 21st century Canadians. If we were writing a book giving guidance to 21st century Canadians we would know that it would be understood within a 21st century context. We would understand the moral issues of the day; we would understand the political climate of our time, we would understand the various tensions in the world. We would understand the idioms that are in common usage. If in this hypothetical book we were to put in the phrase that it was raining cats and dogs, I wonder how that would be read 2000 years from now. Was it a cyclone that swept up our pets and then allowed them to fall back to earth? Jesus was a first century Jew who ministered to 1st century Jews and we should read the Gospels in that context Here’s a parable for you. A man calls up his buddy next door and tells him that he is moving a couch and that it is stuck in the doorway. His neighbour, says sure I’ll help. They push and pull on the couch without making any progress until finally the man says to his neighbour, I give up — we’ll never get this couch in. The neighbour looks at him in surprise and says in. Our understanding of Jesus is often like that. Sometimes we take a pre-conceived, 21st century picture of Jesus, and then push and pull the Gospel narrative in the direction we think it should go, often distorting the intended message. So, I am suggesting that if we really want to understand our Christian faith we need to understand Jesus within His time, His location and His culture. I know for myself that in reading about the historical Jesus, my Christian faith took on new life. Everything just seemed to fall into place. I found that by understanding Jesus as a 1st century Jewish man in a 1st century Jewish world, my faith made sense of my life and the world that I live in ways, that it never had before. I found it incredibly exciting, and that it very much enhanced my understanding of the message of Jesus, who He was in relation to the Father and most importantly how I could build relationship with Him. I know this won’t resonate with everyone and some will find it boring but all I can do is talk about my own journey. When the Gospels are read in their historical context I found it clear that Jesus was very political and was very much embroiled in the politics of His day. However, this was no democracy; the political powers were all lined up against Him. I’d like to talk about the primary political forces of Jesus’ world, how they relate to Jesus and Jesus’ position in all of it. Firstly, there was the dark force which dominated everything: the Roman Empire. The Romans exercised complete and brutal control either directly, or indirectly through local puppet leaders, which in this case was Herod and his minions. From the Roman point of view it was true that Jesus was making messianic claims, but on the other hand Jesus showed no signs of mounting an army so the Romans weren’t too bothered by Him. Just the same however, if the Jews saw Jesus as the messiah it would mean for them that Jesus was King and Caesar wasn’t. If you remember at the trial before Pilate, the chief priests called out that there is no king but Caesar in order to bring Pilate on side. Pilate insisted on the sign on the cross saying Jesus, King of the Jews. Sure, this was done to show the Jewish leaders that it was he, Pilate, who was the real authority, but it would also have been a warning that this is what would happen to those who didn’t recognize Caesar as king. Another influential group were the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the fundamentalists of the day, and believed that if the people would follow the myriad of Jewish laws that God would favour them, presumably by returning to His people and liberating them. Jesus comes along and says things like, He desires mercy not sacrifice, and repudiates many of the Jewish laws. The Pharisees, although with some exceptions, would have seen Jesus as being an impediment to the return of Yahweh, but as Jesus said they missed Yahweh’s time of visitation. The problem was that Yahweh’s return to them in the person of Jesus didn’t look anything like what they had expected. There were also the Sadducees that were essentially a wealthy priestly group that managed the Temple amongst other things, which kept them wealthy. They were obviously not well disposed to the message of Jesus. Of course there was Herod Antipas and His followers who were benefiting by having the Romans there. Interestingly enough, Herod was making his own messianic claim by rebuilding the Temple. Herod ruled by appeasing the Romans and was a brutal man without conscience as his father Herod the Great had been. Herod would not tolerate, as was the case with John the Baptist, anyone who threatened his position in any way, as Jesus was doing. There was in all of this the underclass or the peasant class. These were the people who related to Jesus’ message. These were the people who found themselves in that story. Look at who Jesus’ followers were. There were the hated tax collectors who collected taxes for the Romans, there were prostitutes, fisherman etc. They were the marginalized in the society. As an aside, it seems that so often it is the marginalized in our societies that God chooses to work through. Just look at the ancient Jews who were enslaved by one nation after another and yet these were the people that God revealed Himself through, and the nation into which Jesus was born. Jesus Himself, was born into a lower class family. From the Jewish point of view they were back in the Holy Land, but still under the thumb of some other nation. They were still in exile. As a result there was a strong revolutionary sense in the country. They hoped that the messiah of God, God’s anointed one, would lead them in battle and defeat the Romans. There were numerous messianic movements in that period, ranging from the time of the defeat of the Maccabees in 37 BC, to the last movement 200 years later which led disastrously to the rebellion that ended in 135AD. These revolts inevitably resulted in the leaders being put to death by the Romans and hundreds of thousands of Jews killed. There was a major Jewish revolt that Jesus would have experienced as a child in 4AD led by Judas the Galilean. In the great war of 66 to 70AD Josephus reports the death of over 1 million Jews and in 70AD the Temple was completely destroyed and never rebuilt. At the end of each of these messianic and revolutionary movements the leaders and hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of their followers were put to death by the Romans. These movements all came to an abrupt halt and the search would begin again for another messiah. This would have been the case after the crucifixion of Jesus if God had not resurrected Jesus, thereby vindicating and confirming Him. We can see in the Gospels that after the crucifixion, the disciples assumed that Jesus was another failed messiah, and so they went into hiding not wanting to suffer the same fate as Jesus. It took the bodily resurrection of Jesus to show them otherwise. Without the resurrection Jesus wouldn’t even be a footnote in history. The bodily crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus was the turning point in human history. But there were also the revolutionaries and zealots that wanted to rid the area of the Romans by revolutionary means. Jesus continually preached His very political message that if they went that route that it would once more be disastrous. He tells them that the revolutionary route would lead to death and sorrow for the Jewish nation, and He predicted the destruction of the Temple. After all, that is how the Romans dealt with revolts. This was not a message that the revolutionaries would want spread around. Jesus was endorsing a strong anti revolutionary message. Jesus was not at all what they thought a messiah should be and they would have seen Him as drawing Jews away from their revolutionary agenda. Jesus’ core message was that the Romans weren’t the real enemy. The real enemy was evil itself; the evil behind Roman rule. The weapon for combating evil is simply love. Jesus said that the Jews were to love their enemy, turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. It was about changing hearts — changing hatred to love. Jesus’ message was not an easy sell, and may very well be the basis for the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. This is the world in which Jesus lived, taught and died. It was a harsh, brutal, unforgiving and unjust world. His followers were the marginalized and his enemies consisted of virtually everyone who had wealth, influence or power. To best understand Jesus as wholly man we can turn to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus knew that He was walking into a hornet’s nest by going into Jerusalem in the manner in which He did. He would ride in on a donkey making a messianic statement as per the book of Jeremiah. There would be palm branches signifying the cleansing of the Temple drawn from the Maccabean revolt. He would do this knowing that all the powers of darkness stood against Him. There was essentially no doubt that He would be painfully executed on a cross, a death reserved for societal outcasts and others who the Romans wanted to make an example of. As a point of interest a Roman citizen could not be crucified. Crucifixion involved not only as excruciating a death as we can imagine, but one as humiliating as we can imagine. It involved death by being roped or nailed to a cross, stark naked with people throwing taunts and stones at the victim. It was a death that was designed by the Romans to essentially dehumanize the victim as much as possible as an example to others. So in Gethsemane, with this understanding of what was going to happen to Him, he prayed to the father that He wouldn’t have to go through with it. He sweated blood out of pure human fear. Yet, at the end of the day the man Jesus, through prayer and through His total knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, rode the donkey into Jerusalem, overturned the tables of those He denounced as having turned the Temple into a den of thieves, and then suffered through a sacrificial death as a result. He did this with the faith, built on prayer and His understanding of the Scriptures, that this was His vocation, and that God would vindicate His actions. It was the greatest act of faith in human history. So again, we can only really understand Jesus as wholly man by understanding Him in the context of His own era and culture. Having done that we can gain a clearer picture of how Jesus fits into the entire Biblical narrative. We don’t just see Jesus as wholly man but also as wholly God. I want to conclude by connecting the dots between Jesus as man and Jesus as God. The Jews believed that Yahweh’s dwelling place on Earth was in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. The Gospel of John Chap 1, tells us that that the Word of God that existed beyond time had become flesh. Jesus embodied that Word, the Logos or the wisdom of God. Jesus says that you who have seen Me have seen the Father. Jesus was the place where God’s heavenly dimension and our earthly dimensions overlapped. Jesus was the true Temple of God. Jesus is where they could go to meet Yahweh and seek forgiveness. This still holds true for us today. Also, first century Jews were very much influenced by the book of Daniel. There was much debate of what Daniel’s message was for them. When Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man He clearly saw Himself as being the fulfillment of the prophesy in Daniel 7. In Daniel 7 we are told that one like a Son of Man would be brought to the Ancient of Days. Then Daniel says this: 14 He, the Son of Man, was given authority, glory and sovereign power - all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (end of quote) On the 1st Easter an enthroned, vindicated, and resurrected Jesus returned to His followers, as the Son of Man, having been presented to the Ancient of Days and having been given dominion over the kingdom, for then, now, and into eternity. So yes, we worship the man Jesus as the Son of God but we can really only understand His message and His life if we understand the world He lived in, and the very human challenges He faced. For me this is Jesus, wholly man and wholly God, given dominion over all nations, and the first born of the everlasting Kingdom. This is Jesus, who I worship and serve as the second person of the Trinity. Thank youHe has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 6220 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.5 |
Theodoric writes: Fair enough, but we do have historical evidence that many people at the time believed it and that belief has spread. The talk was given in a Christian group of men from the local Anglican churches, so I went with fact. Alas, this "fact" isn't based upon any historical evidence. The only support for this is the bible itself, of we have no idea who wrote or when.So no verifiable evidence for this "fact" at all. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8631 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 8.1 |
OK, so it's all poppycock but, GDR, you write good.
Simple, well structured. Good job.Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.
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GDR Member Posts: 6220 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.5 |
AZPaul3 writes: Thanks - I think. OK, so it's all poppycock but, GDR, you write good.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Tangle Member Posts: 9567 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 7.3
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Faith writes: GDR is simply giving the historical understanding of Jesus' nature, the understanding all Christians have who know anything about the history of these things. GDR is no more a historian of 1st century Christianity than my dog is. And I don't have a dog. He's following a long tradition of talking authoritatively on things he has very little actual learning and mixing it up with personal belief.
Wholly God and Wholly Man is the official understanding of the nature of Jesus, the union of the nature of God who begot Him, with the human nature of His mother. 'Official' my arse'. Just people in power making stuff up.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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ringo Member (Idle past 607 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
Is a bumper sticker.
Wholly God and Wholly Man... Faith writes:
Understanding isn't official. Dogma is official.
... the official understanding of the nature of Jesus... Faith writes:
That would be 50-50, not 100-100. ... the union of the nature of God who begot Him, with the human nature of His mother.Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing. -- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1640 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You did a nice job of that though I might quibble with a point or two, but it seems to me that in your determination to restore what you think is the slighted understanding of Jesus as Son of Man you give the impression that there was no real reason for God Himself to have become incarnate in the person of Jesus at all.
Couldn't all that have happened without the incarnation? God could have guided Him, could have raised Him from the dead, seated Him at His right hand as firstborn of the Kingdom of God, just as Son of Man, as I read what you wrote. I was going to go on and give my view but I think I'll wait and see what you say about it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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GDR Member Posts: 6220 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.5 |
Tangle writes: Fair enough. I haven't trained in either theology or first century history. I have though read books by people like NT Wright who is a 1st century historian. I have read Josephus who was actually there, and I have shelves of books that I have read that provide numerous theological perspectives. I recently read a book called Patient Ferment on the early rise of Christianity. GDR is no more a historian of 1st century Christianity than my dog is. And I don't have a dog. He's following a long tradition of talking authoritatively on things he has very little actual learning and mixing it up with personal belief. However, again these are my current beliefs for you to critique any way you like.He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Tangle Member Posts: 9567 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 7.3 |
GDR writes: Fair enough. I haven't trained in either theology or first century history. And, I'm guessing, you haven't trained in how to critically analyse historical information either?
I have though read books by people like NT Wright who is a 1st century historian. He's a bloody Anglican bishop!
I have read Josephus who was actually there, and I have shelves of books that I have read that provide numerous theological perspectives. I recently read a book called Patient Ferment on the early rise of Christianity. You're a motivated reader; you have a self-confessed bias. Your reading is not to critically assess the information it's to confirm your existing beliefs.
However, again these are my current beliefs for you to critique any way you like. My criticism is that you are merely researching to preach. You are not reading objectively.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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