“As for the temptation, the traditional locus for that is also in Maximus in his discussion of 2nd Cor 5:21 where he indicates that Christ takes up our corrupted human nature in the incarnation, experiencing our passions and temptations even though he personally performs no sinful acts. Christ is impeccable even though he truely experiences our temptations.”
http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2009/04/incarn-compat.html#comment-104802
Perry’s brief comment raises a number of potential implications. I wonder in which directions he’d develop his statement.
1.If the Logos assumes our corrupted human nature, then doesn’t this mean that Jesus experienced corrupt passions?
In other words, does Jesus, on Perry’s view, experience sinful feelings, but refuses to act on those feelings? And if that is not what Perry means, then how can he avoid that consequence given his presuppositions?
A feeling can be a sinful feeling, even if you decline to act on it.
2.Don’t we need to draw a basic distinction between licit and illicit temptations?
For example, the temptation to overeat is not sinful. Food is a natural good. The desire for food is a natural good.
On the other hand, the temptation to molest a child is sinful. Likewise, what about the temptation to murder somebody? Even if I resist the temptation, it was a sinful impulse, was it not? An inclination to do evil. An inclination to do wrong.
Certain temptations are only tempting to a sinner. To someone already infected (as it were).
3.Likewise, temptations may be person-variable. If I’m a recovering junkie, then I’m tempted by drugs in the way that someone who was never hooked on drugs is not. Certain temptations involve an acquired taste.
So I’m curious about the range of passions and temptations which Perry’s Christology ascribes to Jesus.
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ReplyDeleteChrist was the passover. he was made a curse. He was spotless Lamb of God. He drank His Father's cup perfectly.
ReplyDeleteThe Father forsook His Son, and yet the Triune God was still the Triune God. The Earth was dark for three hours. Jesus cried out in excruciating pain, more searing than all pain could know, and said, "E'-li, E'-li, la'-ma sa-bach'-tha-ni?"
And Jesus when He had cried again with a loud voice, "It is finished! Father, onto Your hands I commend My spirit, and he bowed His precious head, and gave up the ghost>"
Thanks for the deep thoghtful post which got meto pondering the first Good Friday and the truth of Christ's most remembered thing He did, His death.
"Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die."
"1.If the Logos assumes our corrupted human nature, then doesn’t this mean that Jesus experienced corrupt passions?"
ReplyDeleteNo. Because what makes a passion corrupt is in the particular mode of willing (gnome). This is to person. When we say that Christ inherited a nature that was corrupt, it is a nature that is suffering dissolution and death.
Our first parent's tore there being asunder, by putting person and nature in dialectical opposition. Nature wills the good, but person has the ability to go beyond nature. They tried to instantiate some-thing that can never have being (evil) in transgressing the commandment and thus, started the opposition in them, which is why they died. Death is seperation and dialectical opposition. Person no longer wills the telos of their nature, and the nature falls apart seperating soul and body.
Even the Reformers recognize to will God and keep His commandments in the garden was NATURAL to man and not something supernatural as the Romanists imagine. It is not something beyond nature.
A 'sin nature' or 'sin of nature,' though expresses a certain truth is muddled terminology, because the "sin nature" is not in the nature itself unless we are glossing sin wider than act and inclusive of corruption (i.e. death and dissolution), but rather in the opposition between my person and nature. Christ brings those things back into harmony and repairs this, so that I can will the good. This is conneted to the doctrine of Recapitulation.
Think carefully here my friend.
"On the other hand, the temptation to molest a child is sinful. Likewise, what about the temptation to murder somebody? Even if I resist the temptation, it was a sinful impulse, was it not? An inclination to do evil. An inclination to do wrong.
"Certain temptations are only tempting to a sinner. To someone already infected (as it were)."
You pretty much answered yourself here fairly well. These certain temptations presuppose a certain amount of habituation, which pertains to a person's particular mode of willing. But in Christ there is no such ignorance, doubt, deliberation, or OPPOSITION like this between what His nature(s) and what He wills.
For details and the Gethsemane text on deliberation, see my paper on my blog 'Synergy in Christ.'
Photios
"..a person's particular mode of willing. But in Christ there is no such ignorance, doubt, deliberation, or OPPOSITION like this between what His nature(s) and what He wills."
ReplyDeleteJesus prayed sweating blood, "Father if there is any other way, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Your will be done."
Donsands,
ReplyDeleteWilling otherwise doesn't imply willing contrary to. God also wills the preservation of human life.
"Willing otherwise doesn't imply willing contrary to. God also wills the preservation of human life."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you mean.
What i believe is that jesus was so baptized in His suffering, and seeing that His cup was God's full wrath against the sin of the world, He asked His father if there might be another way, and yet Christ knew this is what He was to do.
So, in His humanity, He cried to his loving Father for perhaps another way which was not so dreadful.
Surely when Jesus said, "But not My will, Your's be done. He manifested the heart of His pure heart.
In every Christian tradition I've (finitely) so far encountered, they have taken Heb. 4:15 to refer to temptation (at least), if not also testing.
ReplyDeleteMost of us know that the word for "tempt"(whether in Hebrew in the OT, or the Greek in the NT) can be translated as either to
i) "test/try/put to the proof"
OR
ii) to "solicit to evil"
How do we know that it was NOT the case that the writer of the book of Hebrews *only* meant the first definition rather than the second or both? I've wondered about this for a while. If the writer only meant the first definition, then this whole age-old controversy would be irrelevant and moot, right?
So what in the context suggests (implicitly or explicitly) that the writer, at the very least, included the meaning of solicitation to evil?
I don't deny that Satan solicited Jesus to evil in the wilderness. I just wonder whether we're interpreting Heb. 4:15 in such a way that we're asking and answering unnecessary questions.
Especially since the traditional doctrine of the Impeccability of Christ also seems to make the issue moot. If the doctrine of impeccability is true (namely, that Christ not only was able not to sin, but also not able to sin (being a divine person)), then Christ's example cannot perfectly correspond to ours.
I don't see why it needs to especially since, as fallen creatures we need God's redemptive grace to overcome sin. Something which Christ (never having fallen) didn't need, right?
I'd especially like to read Steve's and energeticprocession's response.
energeticprocession: btw, if you're who I think you are, it's me "Be`Strong" from #apologetics from the Undernet network in IRC. 8)
Donsands,
ReplyDeleteI deal with that problem in my paper of whether or not there is opposition in Gethsemane between Father and Son:
http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2005/05/04/synergy-in-christ/
It is a Neoplatonic thesis that 'Distinction is opposition,' and Monotheletism borrows that idea to erect their doctrine that there is either one will that is hypostatic or that the divine will trumps the human will because the divine will fixes the 'object of the will.'