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> He is both things in the same way at the same time Not quite. He has a divine nature and a human nature. There is only one person, two natures, analogous to

> He is both things in the same way at the same time Not quite. He has a divine nature and a human nature. There is only one person, two natures, analogous to one person two job titles. He has both natures, fully. > Did he die or didn't he? Having two natures, he can experience things that people without two natures cannot experience. Like the experience of death in His human nature that in no way affected His divine nature (analogous to "experiencing censure as a judge, but still being able to practice medicine"). Fortunately, death isn't a cessation of human nature, merely an interrupting of part of its actuality (that is, an evil). You and I will still possess a human nature after we die. Just as we both would possess a human nature if we lost part of our bodies, we still possess a human nature after we lose our bodies completely in death.

fluoridation 1y ago
>Not quite. [...] He has both natures, fully. You're contradicting yourself. >analogous to "experiencing censure as a judge, but still being able to practice medicine" That's only possible because, as I said, being a judge is not the totality of a person. If you strip a judge of his title the parts of him that are a person still remain. If you strip a person of their humanity then there's nothing left, because there's nothing of a person that's not human. A normal person according to Christianity is closer to having two natures in the way you describe, because their body is mortal while their soul isn't. But Jesus' body should be equally as divine as his soul. So then how can it die? If he was just an immortal soul in a mortal body then he was just a regular human.
- kulahan 1y ago
  > So then how can it die? If he was just an immortal soul in a mortal body then he was just a regular human. He could die in the same way the bush could burn in front of Moses without becoming a burnt object. Divinity is not corrupting or corruptible.
  - krapp 1y ago
    But to be entirely human is to be corrupted by original sin, doomed to judgement and eternal separation from God. To be entirely divine is to be equal to God, untouched by sin and incorruptible. These two states cannot coexist within the doctrine itself. Jesus cannot be entirely human and entirely divine any more than matter can be antimatter. >He could die in the same way the bush could burn in front of Moses without becoming a burnt object. But that makes it not entirely a bush, or else not entirely a fire. Something other than "a burning bush" is going on there. It looks like that, but it cannot be that. If Jesus' soul wasn't corrupted by sin like any other mortal human then he wasn't entirely human. If Jesus was entirely human, he cannot also be divine, since God cannot coexist with sin. If Jesus can be both, then original sin is not an immutable transgression and the persistent state of evil and God's eternal judgement are simply arbitrary, and God can make exceptions whenever He likes. Which is the actual answer because there are instances in the Bible of humans who just ascend to Heaven because God liked them, despite that supposedly being existentially impossible. God simply sometimes bends the rules, He just won't do so for you or I. Assuming one wants to take all of this seriously and assume the Bible has univocality and try to interpret mythology with logic, which to me always seems like a bad idea.
    - svieira 1y ago
      > But to be entirely human is to be corrupted by original sin, doomed to judgement and eternal separation from God. This is false, fortunately. "Human" and "sin" are not necessary to each other. Sin is not natural to man. The gift of original justice could not be passed on from Adam to his children because he threw it away. This lack of a gift is what is called "original sin" and its effects include all of the disordered expressions we find ourselves inclined to from birth. But this lack of a gift is not necessary to being human. Which allows God to take on human nature without being in the state of sin ("like us in all things but sin"), but accepting the punishment for sin (death) to redeem us and offer a new gift of mercy that restores the original gift of justice for those who accept it. Since God is outside of time, He can even give the fruits of that gift "before" that gift is realized in time (Elijah, Mary).
  - fluoridation 1y ago
- svieira 1y ago
  > A normal person according to Christianity is closer to having two natures in the way you describe, because their body is mortal while their soul isn't. AH, THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM! Cartesian dualism isn't the best lens to view human nature through and it makes talking about Christ's nature harder than it needs to be. The human person is a being whose nature is body+soul. The separation of the soul and the body at death is an evil brought about by sin. Put another way, death is injurious to human beings, not natural to them. (See https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3164.htm#article1 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3164.htm#article1). Jesus is fully man. His human nature is body+soul. His human soul is immortal, as all human souls are. Unlike other human beings (other than Adam and Eve before they sinned) He was not subject to death as a punishment for sin, but He accepted it on our behalf. When He died, he really died. His soul and His body were separated and for three days He could be spoken of as "not a man". See https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4050.htm#article4 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4050.htm#article4 for the details. Follow that up with https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm#article4 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm#article4 for how that relates to us. One particularly striking quote - "[c]onsequently, to say that Christ was a man during the three days of His death simply and without qualification, is erroneous. Yet it can be said that He was "a dead man" during those three days." Jesus is also fully God. His divine nature is perfect and unchanging. His divine nature is immutable (not merely immortal) and was not subject to death. Thus Jesus was subject to death in His human nature not in His divine nature.
  - fluoridation 1y ago
    I'm not going to respond to any arguments that rest on the veracity of mythology (such as the garden of Eden). I'm only interested in the internal consistency of Christian doctrine. >Jesus is also fully God. His divine nature is perfect and unchanging. His divine nature is immutable (not merely immortal) and was not subject to death. Thus Jesus was subject to death in His human nature not in His divine nature. This is maddening. Okay, so these are the logical relationships between the terms, * Jesus is fully God. * God is immutable. * Something immutable is also immortal (and by contraposition, something mortal is not immutable). * Jesus is fully man. * Jesus is mortal and died. Correct? None of this is in dispute, I assume, since it's what you said. Alright. To this I answer: if Jesus is mortal then he is not immutable, and if he's not immutable then he's not fully God. If you insist he is God then that's a contradiction by the terms you yourself laid out. The supposed two natures don't matter if they lead to this conclusion. To give a simple analogy, you can make a sword that's sharp only halfway along its length and is blunt the rest of the way. The statements "the sword is sharp" and "the sword is blunt" are both simultaneously true. What you can't do is make a sword that's both sharp and blunt all throughout its length. You can say, "well, God can do the logically impossible". Fine. But then you're telling me that I'm right, that Christian theology does contain contradictions.

fluoridation 1y ago

>Not quite. [...] He has both natures, fully. You're contradicting yourself. >analogous to "experiencing censure as a judge, but still being able to practice medicine" That's only possible because, as I said, being a judge is not the totality of a person. If you strip a judge of his title the parts of him that are a person still remain. If you strip a person of their humanity then there's nothing left, because there's nothing of a person that's not human. A normal person according to Christianity is closer to having two natures in the way you describe, because their body is mortal while their soul isn't. But Jesus' body should be equally as divine as his soul. So then how can it die? If he was just an immortal soul in a mortal body then he was just a regular human.

kulahan 1y ago
> So then how can it die? If he was just an immortal soul in a mortal body then he was just a regular human. He could die in the same way the bush could burn in front of Moses without becoming a burnt object. Divinity is not corrupting or corruptible.
- krapp 1y ago
  But to be entirely human is to be corrupted by original sin, doomed to judgement and eternal separation from God. To be entirely divine is to be equal to God, untouched by sin and incorruptible. These two states cannot coexist within the doctrine itself. Jesus cannot be entirely human and entirely divine any more than matter can be antimatter. >He could die in the same way the bush could burn in front of Moses without becoming a burnt object. But that makes it not entirely a bush, or else not entirely a fire. Something other than "a burning bush" is going on there. It looks like that, but it cannot be that. If Jesus' soul wasn't corrupted by sin like any other mortal human then he wasn't entirely human. If Jesus was entirely human, he cannot also be divine, since God cannot coexist with sin. If Jesus can be both, then original sin is not an immutable transgression and the persistent state of evil and God's eternal judgement are simply arbitrary, and God can make exceptions whenever He likes. Which is the actual answer because there are instances in the Bible of humans who just ascend to Heaven because God liked them, despite that supposedly being existentially impossible. God simply sometimes bends the rules, He just won't do so for you or I. Assuming one wants to take all of this seriously and assume the Bible has univocality and try to interpret mythology with logic, which to me always seems like a bad idea.
  - svieira 1y ago
    > But to be entirely human is to be corrupted by original sin, doomed to judgement and eternal separation from God. This is false, fortunately. "Human" and "sin" are not necessary to each other. Sin is not natural to man. The gift of original justice could not be passed on from Adam to his children because he threw it away. This lack of a gift is what is called "original sin" and its effects include all of the disordered expressions we find ourselves inclined to from birth. But this lack of a gift is not necessary to being human. Which allows God to take on human nature without being in the state of sin ("like us in all things but sin"), but accepting the punishment for sin (death) to redeem us and offer a new gift of mercy that restores the original gift of justice for those who accept it. Since God is outside of time, He can even give the fruits of that gift "before" that gift is realized in time (Elijah, Mary).
- fluoridation 1y ago
svieira 1y ago
> A normal person according to Christianity is closer to having two natures in the way you describe, because their body is mortal while their soul isn't. AH, THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM! Cartesian dualism isn't the best lens to view human nature through and it makes talking about Christ's nature harder than it needs to be. The human person is a being whose nature is body+soul. The separation of the soul and the body at death is an evil brought about by sin. Put another way, death is injurious to human beings, not natural to them. (See https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3164.htm#article1 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3164.htm#article1). Jesus is fully man. His human nature is body+soul. His human soul is immortal, as all human souls are. Unlike other human beings (other than Adam and Eve before they sinned) He was not subject to death as a punishment for sin, but He accepted it on our behalf. When He died, he really died. His soul and His body were separated and for three days He could be spoken of as "not a man". See https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4050.htm#article4 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4050.htm#article4 for the details. Follow that up with https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm#article4 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm#article4 for how that relates to us. One particularly striking quote - "[c]onsequently, to say that Christ was a man during the three days of His death simply and without qualification, is erroneous. Yet it can be said that He was "a dead man" during those three days." Jesus is also fully God. His divine nature is perfect and unchanging. His divine nature is immutable (not merely immortal) and was not subject to death. Thus Jesus was subject to death in His human nature not in His divine nature.
- fluoridation 1y ago
  I'm not going to respond to any arguments that rest on the veracity of mythology (such as the garden of Eden). I'm only interested in the internal consistency of Christian doctrine. >Jesus is also fully God. His divine nature is perfect and unchanging. His divine nature is immutable (not merely immortal) and was not subject to death. Thus Jesus was subject to death in His human nature not in His divine nature. This is maddening. Okay, so these are the logical relationships between the terms, * Jesus is fully God. * God is immutable. * Something immutable is also immortal (and by contraposition, something mortal is not immutable). * Jesus is fully man. * Jesus is mortal and died. Correct? None of this is in dispute, I assume, since it's what you said. Alright. To this I answer: if Jesus is mortal then he is not immutable, and if he's not immutable then he's not fully God. If you insist he is God then that's a contradiction by the terms you yourself laid out. The supposed two natures don't matter if they lead to this conclusion. To give a simple analogy, you can make a sword that's sharp only halfway along its length and is blunt the rest of the way. The statements "the sword is sharp" and "the sword is blunt" are both simultaneously true. What you can't do is make a sword that's both sharp and blunt all throughout its length. You can say, "well, God can do the logically impossible". Fine. But then you're telling me that I'm right, that Christian theology does contain contradictions.