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Sunday, August 28, 2011

The kenotic heresy redux


randal says:
Friday, August 26, 2011 at 1:22pm

Jesus had all sorts of false beliefs in the kenosis of the incarnation. Why couldn’t this be one of them?


i) What is Rauser’s basis for believing the Incarnation entailed a kenotic Christology? Is he alluding to Phil 2:7? If so, where does he exegete the notion that Jesus was fallible?

ii) What does the kenosis amount to, exactly? Did Jesus cease to be divine? Was he just a man?

Can the divine attributes be suspended? Can God be unjust? Can God commit suicide?

iii) If Jesus is often wrong, how can we follow him? If we can’t rely on what he says, how can we trust him? How can we live by his word?

iv) Let’s apply Rauser’s theory to a concrete example:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn 11:25-26).

This is a favorite funeral text. Especially apt at a graveside service. A source of immense comfort to the bereaved.

But is it true? After all, “Jesus had all sorts of false beliefs.” So is this a false promise? A broken promise?

Can Jesus keep his promise? Or did he mistakenly believe he could raise his followers from the dead? 

6 comments:

  1. I haven't put much thought into this but it seems plausible that Jesus qua human held some false beliefs. He might have been guarded from false beliefs regarding spiritual truths and in his ministry but what if, say, someone played a practical joke on him (he had brothers after all!)and they told him that Mary wanted to talk to him inside while they filled his wineskin with mud or something and he believed them.

    I realize this isn't the kind of thing that Ruaser was talking about but what do you think?

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  2. Yes, Jesus qua human may well have been fallible. Of course, even human prophets are infallible under inspiration.

    But in any case we're dealing with the public teaching of Christ. And, of course, the human side of Christ doesn't operate independently of the divine nature.

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  3. David, you're right. The passage Steve quoted is fully consistent with a Chalcedonian christology. I said nothing there about kenoticism.

    Luke 2 explicitly affirms that Jesus gained in wisdom and knowledge.

    Steve seems to have so much antagonism toward me that he's inventing things to disagree about.

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  4. I'd have thought that someone who studied the Bible would be aware that Luke 2:52 is a standard transitional phrase, used in biographies of the time to indicate a movement from one point in the narrative to another.

    As such, there is no reason to take it literally at all.

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  5. Not that I expect Rauser to care, since he is only selectively quoting the Bible to his own ends. It's not like he believes it anyway.

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  6. Randal, in all honesty, I skimmed Steve's post without taking a look at the link to your blog. Now that I have read your blog post and comments I can say that don't think they are in line with orthodox Christology or the doctrine of Word of God.

    It's true that Jesus did learn and probably held many false beliefs about inessentials but whatever he taught in his ministry and especially the teachings that God decided to preserve in Scripture are inerrant. If you would deny this then you must accept that God, the source of all truth, has decided to lie to us at this crucial point which, as I'm sure you know, he cannot do. (Heb 6:18) If the Godman, who came to reveal the Father, taught falsely concerning one of the Father’s most important works then how is the Bible useful in all the ways that it claims to be? (2 Tim 3:15, 16) What foundation do we have for saying anything about God if the one person who could show us what the Father is like gets things wrong? Even if we were to ignore that Jesus is God and focus on his being man (as you seem to be stressing) then what about 1 Peter 1:19, 20 which states that ‘no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God’? Again, stress his humanity and you might think you can avoid Jesus being a liar but, as the preceding verse shows, this doesn’t get the Holy Spirit off the hook. If Jesus and the apostles can make such huge mistakes at this crucial juncture then why study the Bible at all? Why trust them when they tell us how to be saved?

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