Friday, May 26, 2006

Christians believe that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. Three main conceptual problems challenge the logical possibility that Jesus is God incarnate (God and man): 1...Jesus could not be created (human) and, at the same time, NOT created (God). 2...He could not be omnicsient (God) yet have limited knowledge (human). 3...Even if it is possible that Jesus is omniscient, Jesus does not appear to be omniscient. The issue of Christ as God-man is mentioned in Philippians 2:5-11. Paul says that before the incarnation Jesus existed "en morphe theou" (in the form of God). He also says that Jesus emptied himself "en homoiomati anthropon genomenos" (by being made in the likenss of men). this means Christ was human, and didnt just appear to be human. Paul says Christ "emptied himself" which some might interpret as him giving up his divine nature, but this probably means he gave up the privilege of exercising his divine powers WITHOUT giving up his position as God.Thomas T. Morris wrote The Logic of God Incarnate to defend the doctrine's coherence. in it he makes three basic distinctions of th mind and will of Christ. One distinction is between the individual essence ("the whole set of properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for being numerically identical with that individual") and kind-essence ("a shareable set of properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for membership in that kind"). No one can have more than on individual essence (God and man for example), butthe can have more than one kind-essence. Jesus Christ is a combination of a fully divine kind-essence and a fully human kind essence. Another important idea when dealing with Christ as a God-man is that of common and essential properties. Common human properties are properties that most humans have, while essential human properties are properties that one MUST have to be human. Christ as all the essential properties, but not all of the common properties.While the idea of Jesus being omniscient but with limited knowledge seems like a contradiction. Morris attempts to explain this using his theory of two minds. He says Christ had a divine mind and a human mind. The divine mind was omnicient and the non-omniscient human mind was only allowed to tap into the divine mind when the divine mind granted it access. Psychologists today say the human mind is not always consciously aware of what it knows. So it was with Christ's human mind. All these above mentioned arguments present a case that says it is POSSIBLE that Christ was in fact God and man, which is the first step to proving it is PROBABLE.

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