mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (09/11/86)
The original question: >>>>What's the big deal about "dying" to prove your love when you know you can >>>>come back from the grave at will? M. Terribile writes: >> [R]emember that Jesus was fully God but also fully human, with all the >> doubts, fears, anxieties and other blessings of our human nature. Mike Huybensz writes: >All I see here is another repetition of a bald assertion that it was bad for >JC. Big deal. You're not dealing with the fundamental problem of what it >really would meant to be "fully God and fully human", which strikes me as an >oxymoron. There are some widely accepted principles for dealing with these sorts of questions. One system grants a dual set of natures for God and Man in Jesus, and then treats them as identical as appropriate. Now of course this appears paradoxical. It appears paradoxical because we don't have any good way of treating the reality of "God in Man made manifest". Nor is there any expectation that things will ever be much better. THe best compromise anyone has come up with that allows any sort of reasoning involves this paradox where one simply cancels out whichever part is troublesome at the moment. This has obvious drawbacks and is obviously a way to talk indirectly about reality rather than a true attempt at representing it. Frankly, this whole argument is rather silly. THe only source we have is the gospel accounts. They are unequivocable in their assertion that Jesus did indeed suffer. If you are willing to disbelieve them then all you can do is speculate. If you do believe them, what else is there to be said? The language breaks down very quickly when you try to talk about the LORD God dying and what it would be like for Him-- after all, what claim can yyou make about understanding His living? C. Wingate