# R.C. Sproul: "God can't die"



## Mr. Bultitude (Feb 23, 2015)

I just read an article by Sproul that troubles me a little.



> We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross. The atonement was made by the human nature of Christ. Somehow people tend to think that this lessens the dignity or the value of the substitutionary act, as if we were somehow implicitly denying the deity of Christ. God forbid. It’s the God-man Who dies, but death is something that is experienced only by the human nature, because the divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death.



Obviously I believe that God, according to the divine nature, cannot die. But God, the Logos, became a man and suffered and died. It was the human nature that _enabled_ that to happen, but is it really proper to say that only the human nature "experienced" death? I thought only a person experiences things. Jesus, the person, experienced death. Jesus is God. Therefore, God died. That's what makes sense to me. But what does it mean that God died? It means that his human soul separated from his human body until they were raised together imperishable. It doesn't mean that God ceased to exist. (Heck, it doesn't mean his human body or human soul ceased to exist either.)

When I die, my human nature will not perish. Natures don't perish. People do. Right?

I don't want to split hairs or anything, but Sproul sounds dangerously close to Nestorianism here. Is he? Or am I non-reformed in my Christology? That would be even more alarming to me. Can someone set me straight?


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Feb 23, 2015)

Fun subject, dangerous implications, but important. Couple of things.

Historically, the Reformed community did not think God died in Christ. Your syllogism needs a whole bunch of qualifications before you get to "God died..."

Easier first - human natures do not "perish." They transform from one aspect of existence into another. Living tissue...to worm bait. In the finality of all things, the human nature will be changed to endure eternity.

People do not perish. They also transform from one mode of existence into another. We are limited by space and the half dimension of time. When we die, that mode of existence will change.



Mr. Bultitude said:


> Jesus, the person, experienced death. Jesus is God. Therefore, God died.



No. God didn't die. The human nature died, and the person of the Godhead known as the Son, named Jesus in his earthly body, experienced the transformation of his human nature as alive, into his human nature as dead. God consciously was attached to a dead human nature.

There is no "Jesus the person" in the way you are dividing him up. Jesus the person is the Son, the second person of the immutable God who allowed a human nature to attach (the hypostatic union) to his divine movement. (Fun concepts to mind bend over.)

Think of it this way (its how I preached a sermon on this to a group of Peruvian Pastors who never had any seminary training).

Think of the Son of God (second person of the Trinity) as a hand. (Yes, all illustrations fail, but bear with me.) The hand has the ability to dial the telephone as something easy to do. (Try dialing the phone...) Then, take that same hand and place it inside a mitten. Now Peruvian Pastors know what a mitten is - they have those "giant" ones that keep your hands warm in -5 degree winters that are made out of alpaca wool. Very bulky. Good for carrying wood to the wood stove and that's about it. Try dialing the phone now. Very difficult. However, _the hand did not change._ It just assumed a mitten for a time.

If you think of Christ's human nature like that, there is no personality in a human nature. It is mitten, on the divine person, of the the Son, Jesus. 

To think about the cross, you need to think about the PERSON and the HUMAN NATURE in successively different aspects. The human nature (a human) had to die for Adam's depravity in us, and its subsequent aggravation by us in our wickedness. The atonement is accepted because the human nature is attached to the DIVINE SON who is considered by the Father as having offered an infinite sacrifice due to his person-hood as the Son, Jesus. His divinity allows the human sacrifice to have infinite value and worth. God didn't die. The human nature of Christ died.

Sproul is not Nestorian. Apples and oranges there. Different issues altogether.

Think "mitten".


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## Semper Fidelis (Feb 24, 2015)

Nothing that Dr. Sproul is saying is controversial. He notes that it is the Son of God incarnate Who dies because, in His deity, the Son of God shares a substance with the Father and the Spirit that cannot die or experience death. He preserves the integrity of the Person by noting it's the God-man who dies. Thus, it is proper to speak this way in the same way as it's proper to say that it was the Logos incarnate Who was born and so Mary can be call theotokas (God bearer) even though it is only the humanity of Christ which is of her substance yet because it is not two Persons but one then she can properly be called mother of the Person.


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## Mr. Bultitude (Feb 24, 2015)

I just found something Kevin DeYoung wrote.



> For example, you can say Christ took a nap in the boat. But you cannot say therefore the divine nature took a nap. You can say the world was created through Christ. But you cannot say the world was created through the human nature. What Christ did, he did as a single Person, the union of two natures. So what you can say about either nature you can say about the Person. But what you say about the Person you cannot automatically say about the two natures.
> 
> This gets a bit complicated, as you can imagine. You can say, for example, "God died" if you mean that God as a man in the person of Jesus Christ died. But you can‘t say "God died" if you mean God as God died.


This sounds in line with what I previously thought. Is it consistent with what Sproul said? It doesn't sound like it to me, but if it is, then I have no problem with Sproul's article.


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## Semper Fidelis (Feb 24, 2015)

David,

I don't want to turn what is a very complex subject into something simple. I think that we can have a very basic grasp of the hypostatic union but it is an extremely complex subject.

Giving Dr. Sproul the benefit of the doubt, there is no reason to assume he's treating natures as persons. What makes the issue difficult is trying to wrestle with something that is higher than our understanding. We confess (with Chalcedon) that a single Personhas two natures - human and divine. Touching His divinity, Christ is one in substance with the Father and the Spirit. Touching His humanity, He is of the substance of Mary, is fully human and has a reasonable soul. That means that His humanity had a mind that could experience and learn things that was distinct from the Divine mind. Thus the human mind/body of the Logos could experience things but it was not a separate Person but the one Logos Who experienced what His human mind and body experienced. There is no mixture or confusion of the natures in the one Person so you can't say that, because Christ hungered, that the Godhead hungered but you can say that the Son of God hungered. You can't "tease out" the human nature in such a way to say that the human nature experiences something that the Person does not but you can properly say that the Logos experienced something that only the human nature experienced.


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## senjui19 (Feb 24, 2015)

In connection with this topic, I ve got a question that has been on my mind for some time now. I hope I'm not hijacking the thread by this  when Jesus was deprived of the comfort of God's presence on the cross, crying out in tge end:My God, My God,...- it was His human nature, or, rather, as some have argued here, the human nature to which the Second Person of the Trinity was attached, that experienced that,right?we can't say that God the Son AS GOD was severed for a time from the Father's presence and love,for that is absolutely impossible. Could someone correct me please if I am wrong and sorry again for leaping in with this additional question.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Feb 24, 2015)

David,

It helps to have an understanding of what we were taught from the Chalcedonian Definition.

Our Lord was fully God and fully man in an indissoluble union whereby the second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature that cannot be separated, divided, mixed, or confused.

The hypostatic union of the divine and human natures is not:

1. a denial that our Lord was truly God (*Ebionites, Elkasites, Arians*);
2. a dissimilar or different substance (_anomoios_) with the Father (*semi-Arianism*);
3. a denial that our Lord had a genuine human soul (*Apollinarians*);
4. a denial of a distinct person in the Trinity (*Dynamic Monarchianism*);
5. God acting merely in the forms of the Son and Spirit (*Modalistic Monarchianism/Sabellianism/United Pentecostal Church*);
6. a mixture or change when the two natures were united (*Eutychianism/Monophysitism*);
7. two distinct persons (*Nestorianism*);
8. a denial of the true humanity of Christ (*docetism*);
9. a view that God the Son laid aside all or some of His divine attributes (*kenoticism*);
10. a view that there was a communication of the attributes between the divine and human natures (*Lutheranism, with respect to the Lord's Supper*); and
11. a view that our Lord existed independently as a human before God entered His body (*Adoptionism*).


The Chalcedonian Definition is one of the few statements that all of orthodox Christendom recognizes as the most faithful summary of the teachings of the Scriptures on the matter of the Incarnation. The Chalcedonian Definition was the answer to the many heterodoxies identified above during the third century.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Feb 24, 2015)

senjui19 said:


> In connection with this topic, I've got a question that has been on my mind for some time now. I hope I'm not hijacking the thread by this  when Jesus was deprived of the comfort of God's presence on the cross, crying out in tge end:My God, My God,...- it was His human nature, or, rather, as some have argued here, the human nature to which the Second Person of the Trinity was attached, that experienced that,right?we can't say that God the Son AS GOD was severed for a time from the Father's presence and love,for that is absolutely impossible. Could someone correct me please if I am wrong and sorry again for leaping in with this additional question.


Indeed, there can be no disturbance, disruption, etc. of the onotological Trinity. 

Our Lord quotes from Psalm 22 as He, our sin-bearer, underwent the full wrath of God the Father burning against us because of our sins, all the while our Lord was expiating the guilt of our sins and propitiating the the wrath of God the Father. The "forsaking" here is the displeasure God the Father expressed towards He who did so much for us. Thanks be to our Lord for his active and passive obedience!


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## Alan D. Strange (Feb 24, 2015)

Mr. Bultitude said:


> You can say the world was created through Christ. But you cannot say the world was created through the human nature.



This shows how easy it is to slip up here. The Second Person of the Blessed, Holy, Undivided Trinity did not have a human nature when He created the world. Humanity was added to His deity at the time of His Incarnation. I know that KDY knows that; it just show how easy it is to misspeak with respect to the profound mysteries attending the person of Christ. 

Peace,
Alan


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## senjui19 (Feb 25, 2015)

Thanks for the reply, Patrick!


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