Can you clearly tell us in more detail what is the difference between your definition of God's Spirit and your definition of God's Soul? I thank you in advance.
The Hypostatic Union- the 2 Natures in Christ
- Thread starter civic
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Dizerner
Well-known member
Like I said earlier, whether you say soul, humanity or man, it is the same essence from upon which our humanity is based and you did give that post a thumbs up so I'm a bit confused as to what you are now disagreeing with.
Some things you say sound normal and okay.
Other things sounds really weird.
You, yourself, point out that the soul is part of personhood and personal identity, including feelings and self-awareness.
We must know that God is three persons in one essence—God is three inter-relating persons in the Scripture.
Therefore to take a part of the definition of person and split it up among the Trinity is weird, by calling the Son the soul of the Father.
The Father and the Son and the Spirit are all Divine Persons.
Persons, by definition, have a soul and a spirit, a will, center of awareness, feelings and thought.
This means, that by definition, God is 3 souls, 3 spirits, 3 wills.
That is why Jesus said "Not my will, but yours be done," showing 2 of the wills of God.
And elsewhere we have "As the Spirit wills," showing the 3rd.
God is three persons, not three parts of one person.
Dizerner
Well-known member
I would not see the physical body as part of the imago dei.
Consider these verses:
For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. (1 Sam. 16:7 NKJ)
Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. (2 Cor. 5:16 NKJ)
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1 Jn. 3:2 NKJ)
I do not. I have explained. Your inability to comprehend what I say is your problem.
Yes Divine Persons, not human persons. Soul is the essence of humanity, not Deity. The Son is the union of Deity and humanity. The Father is Deity only. God (Deity) is Spirit. It seems to me you are assuming only soul can be conscious etc.
Deity alone cannot be defined by human language. It's like trying to describe the wind. We can only speak of its effects. This is why "in the beginning was the Word", Deity and humanity combined in the Son so he can express God to our limited minds. He is God in human language so to speak.
Not just personhood but human personhood.
Human persons by definition have a soul etc. .... God (Deity) does not need a soul to be God. He is a Trinity for our sakes and I suspect for the sake of the angels.
Yes, but He is not three human persons, He is three Divine persons.
That is showing the one will of God and the human will of Christ.
God the Father, Son and Spirit are in perfect Oneness, One will, One mind, One God.
Complete
Well-known member
'Wherefore when He cometh into the world,
He saith, "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not,
but a body hast thou prepared me: ... '
(Heb 10:5 - Ref. Psa. 40:6-7)
Hello @dizerner,
Praise God! God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.
What grace!! Even while we were yet sinners Christ died for us!!
'But God commendeth His love toward us,
in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.'
(Rom 5:8)
In Christ Jesus
Chris
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civic
Well-known member
Utter nonsense and totally unbiblical and unorthodox, untrinitarian. Whatever can be said of the Father and Holy Spirits nature/essence can be said of the Son. They share the same attributes/nature as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You have a Son who is different than the Father and Holy Spirit with a soul and not the Father and Holy Spirit whom are without "souls" .
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The Bible does not say that Adam & Eve were made in the image of God except for their bodies. That is Gnosticism. Everything that God did to make Adam & Eve was all part of them being images of God.
civic
Well-known member
it does lean gnostic with a greek philosophical element to it.
civic
Well-known member
it rings somewhat modalistic with the soul idea. then it rings unitarian except for substituting the Son with the Father. Weird indeed.
You don't understand. To be human means you were born/created at some point in time. Instead, you said the Word of God was always human (uncreated) meaning that there is no born/created point, thus making him an created uncreated person. See the contradiction? That darn law of noncontradiction.
Besides, you still have to answer for your throwing out of the basic definition of being a human: the fact that to be human you must have been born with a body.
Also, I sense Gnosticism in the fact that you do not include Adam and Eve's bodies as part of them being made in the image of God.
civic
Well-known member
so your jesus was human before he became a man at the Incarnation- unbiblical,unorthodox, untrinitarian and unbelievable.
I'm willing to bet you are incapable of finding a single Trinitarian Theologian/Scholar who agrees with you about the soul of Jesus and the Trinity.
I will go on record before everyone here and say its nowhere to be found. And if you do then I will eat crow in front of everyone on this forum.
hope this helps !!!
civic
Well-known member
Bingo !!!
civic
Well-known member
Are the bodiless saints in heaven now not humans who await the resurrection ?
next....................
hope this helps !!!
He's all over the map, injecting in his own skewed definitions wherever it's necessary for him, not realizing those patches cause problems with everything else.
Dizerner
Well-known member
I'm willing to bet you are incapable of finding a single Trinitarian Theologian/Scholar who agrees with you about the soul of Jesus and the Trinity.
I will go on record before everyone here and say its nowhere to be found. And if you do then I will eat crow in front of everyone on this forum.
I personally wouldn't put so much stock in appeal to the majority/authority, there's no guarantee that's right.
Let's stick with the Word.
civic
Well-known member
error always compounds error, error begets error. its like I always say when you get God wrong -His nature/attributes it all flows downhill from their into aberrant doctrines.
civic
Well-known member
Agreed. But my point is there are no Trinitarian scholars that hold to any such idea regarding the Son at the exclusion of the Father and Holy Spirit.
Dizerner
Well-known member
No, this is not correct.
Animals and angels also have souls.
Notice here:
7 But, in very deed, ask, I pray thee, the beasts, and they will teach thee, and the bird of the heavens, and it will tell thee;
8 Or address the earth, and it will teach thee, and the fishes of the sea, will recount it to thee:
9 Who knoweth not, among all these, that, the hand of Yahweh, hath done this?
10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the spirit of all the flesh of men. (Job 12:7-10 ROT)
Notice here in this passage that every living thing has a soul.
But only humans are described as having "spirit."
Johann
Well-known member
Heresies About the Incarnation
Justin Johnson
Heresy is a doctrinal error that affects a fundamental of Christianity. Since Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christianity, getting the teaching of Christ wrong can quickly devolve into heresy.
The good news is that getting Christ right is not hard. The bad news is that there are many ways to get him wrong.
This is evident when people talk about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Incarnation refers to Christ putting on flesh and refers to the time of his birth and after. Was he a real man? Was he truly God? How was the Word, which was in the beginning before all things, made flesh (John 1:14)?
The Biblical teaching of the person of Christ is clear and simple:
1) Jesus is a man (1 Tim 2:5).
2) Jesus is God (Titus 2:13).
3) Since his incarnation, Jesus is always both at the same time (Col 2:9; 1 Tim 3:16).
There are many heresies, but they can all be summarized by a denial of one of the above statements. Changing these statements changes who Christ is and fundamentally alters the foundation of Christianity.
Denying Christ is Man
Heresies that deny Christ’s humanity are not popular today, though you can still see them float around if you wait long enough. For example, Jehovah Witnesses’ teach that Jesus’ resurrection was not in a real body which would be a denial of his full humanity.
An ancient heresy called Docetism said that Jesus was God, but that he only appeared to be a man. Apollinarian heresy said that he had a human body, but a divine soul. Since a man is made of both body and soul, not having the soul of a man makes him an incomplete man.
Errors in this area most often arise from the tendency to protect his deity, or a misunderstanding of what it means to be a man (e.g. thinking being a man requires sin). All of these heresies teach a different Christ than what is found when all scripture is considered.
Jesus was fully and completely man in order to die for humanity, and to quicken any man to his image in salvation after death. He was in all ways like we are, human, yet without sin (Heb 4:15).
Denying Christ is God
A more popular and still prevalent heresy is denying the deity of Christ.
Unitarians, Jehovah Witnesses (modern day Arian heresy), Christadelphians, and other groups teach that Jesus was not God in the ultimate sense, but was a created being.
They vary in the degree to which Christ is magnified, but all deny Jesus as God. Many scholars of religion, Jews, and secularists fall into this category acknowledging the full humanity of Jesus, but denying he was God (modern day Ebionite heresy).
Adoptionism says that Jesus was a man and put on divinity at his baptism or his resurrection. The problem here is clear when we consider God’s attributes of eternality and necessity. If Jesus was not God for a single moment, he could not be God at any time, because God is forever.
The logic of scripture demands either that he was always God or never God.
If Jesus was not God, the Bible is wrong and Christianity is false. If Christ was not God then he could not atone for our sins, forgive a single sin, God would not be the Saviour, our faith would be in vain, and eternal life would be a wish not a promise.
Denying He is Both at the Same Time
One of the most subtle heresies and prevalent in otherwise sound Christian groups is the heresy regarding the union of the two natures of Christ (i.e. hypostatic union).
The true teaching is that Jesus is one eternal person who, after the incarnation, is described by two complete, unaltered, and unmixed natures: God and man. (Before the incarnation he was only God).
These kind of heresies are created when people allow one of the natures of Christ to change/affect/alter/limit/diminish the other nature.
Eutychianism and monophysitism are ancient heresies that taught that Jesus existed in only one nature: a mixture of man and God. A sort of superman – half-man half-God. If this were true, then, like Superman, he was not a true human, but a mutant human, and he was not truly God, but a new form of God.
Nestorianism on the other heretical hand says that there were two persons of Jesus: Jesus the God and Jesus the Man. This provides for two natures, but creates disunity in the person of Jesus who has always been one.
Kenoticism is a prevalent liberal heresy that is making inroads into more conservative Christian groups, and even in grace circles today. It teaches that in order to become a man, Jesus had to limit/diminish/empty/lay aside/subtract or in some way change his deity attributes.
If the two natures do not remain complete, full, inseparable, and without mixture, then either the Godhead must change, or Christ is not adequate to be the Saviour and mediator of men. Neither option is acceptable to Biblical Christianity, but that is why it is called heresy.
Conclusion
When the eternal divine Word was made flesh, he did not stop being God. He started also being human at the same time. From that point forward he was fully God with every attribute of deity, and he was fully man with every attribute of humanity. Jesus Christ is both man and God in one person.
Heresies are like poison and when ingested begin to disrupt the inner workings of the body. When taught and believed they affect how you think about God and salvation. If not now, then later when the crack in the foundation has had time to do its work.
Unlike other teachings which may be trivial or inconsequential to your salvation, getting the doctrine of Christ wrong throws into question whether you are a true Christian or not. If we teach another Jesus, then it is not the true Jesus Christ who is God and Saviour, Head of the Body, and in whom we are complete.
It is important to know the true teaching of Christ, and beware of the heresies throughout history that have often deceived men by fine words against the truth. Truth about Christ is necessary to be a true Christian.
Shalom
J.
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