'Pictures' of Jesus

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Mark,

Ubiquity is never predicated of indwelt humanity --Christ predicates ubiquity of His person.
 
If that last post seems irrelevant it's because I'm not in the 2nd Commandment discussion --I'm in the Nestorian/Eutychian discussion that's going on in the background of that one.
 
Ruben, explain to me how anything I said denies the two natures/one person doctrine.
 
Mark,

I didn't say you did deny it. You seemed to be objecting to the communicatio proprietarum in Acts 20:28. I was pointing out that this same idea is taught in other places, and that it is historic Christianity. The discussions I've read pretty much all list Acts 20:28 as evidence for the hypostatic union.
 
Originally posted by py3ak
Mark,

I didn't say you did deny it. You seemed to be objecting to the communicatio proprietarum in Acts 20:28. I was pointing out that this same idea is taught in other places, and that it is historic Christianity. The discussions I've read pretty much all list Acts 20:28 as evidence for the hypostatic union.
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I do not even know what that is ? Perhaps you mean communicatio idiomatum ?

And no, I am not rejecting that whatsoever. I am referring to physical blood being part of the human nature of Christ, used as metonym for His atoning work, in Acts 20:28 that God provided (dia tou haimatos tou idiou) as part of the exinanition, of the 2nd person of the Trinity, who existing in the form of God, thought this not a thing to be grasped and maintained.

Explain how I am in error.
 
It is the same thing. Cunningham uses proprietarum instead of idiomatum. Perhaps he dislikes using cognates, or has some more profound reason for using proprietarum for idiomatwn.

I would gladly explain how you are in error if you were. As far as I can tell you and I are on the same page with regard to our Christology --and on the same page as Westminster and Chalcedon. But I was pointing out that the Christian being indwelt is categorically different from the hypostatic union of Christ --and therefore you cannot say that making an image of the average Christian is equivalent to making an image of Christ. They are united to God; He is God.

I thought that this post:
Which is why logically, if you cannot have images of Jesus, you cannot have pictures of any human God indwells.
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was answering mine about the communicatio proprietarum.
 
Oh, my bad.

Jeff pointed out that it was a non-sequitur. I agree.

That does lead to an ontological problem. If I take a photograph of a Spirit indwelled Christian, and I say it has captured the divine nature in some aspect, then I have affirmed some form of theosis.
 
I hadn't thought of that --I guess you would be affirming almost a blending of the human and divine.

Which brings up an interesting point. Berkhof says that Nestorianism fails to blend the two natures of Christ into a unitary self-consciousness (I don't have the exact quote with me at the moment). Warfield says that the self-consciousness of Christ is distinctly duplex, and that He has dual centers of self-consciousness. I believe Warfield is correct.
 
Warfield actually responds to that very charge --The Two Natures and Recent Christological Speculation, I think is the name of the article. Some people tried to use what at that time was the new psychology to try to explain Christ. I side with Warfield over Berkhof because Christ does say things that reflect a distinctly duplex self-consciousness. Only He knows the Father; He had a glory with the Father before the world was; He and His Father are one; yet He is ignorant of the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man; He grows in wisdom; He walks over to a fig tree to find out if there is fruit; He can say that His Father is greater than He is (the first and last are probably the only ones that directly apply to self-consciousness, though the others have implications about it).
 
Originally posted by py3ak
Warfield actually responds to that very charge --The Two Natures and Recent Christological Speculation, I think is the name of the article. Some people tried to use what at that time was the new psychology to try to explain Christ. I side with Warfield over Berkhof because Christ does say things that reflect a distinctly duplex self-consciousness. Only He knows the Father; He had a glory with the Father before the world was; He and His Father are one; yet He is ignorant of the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man; He grows in wisdom; He walks over to a fig tree to find out if there is fruit; He can say that His Father is greater than He is (the first and last are probably the only ones that directly apply to self-consciousness, though the others have implications about it).
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Ruben,

I am not sure that you need to side. It appears that Berkhof is responding to Dual Personality, while Warfield is responding to Monothelitism.
 
Does anyone have any thoughts on the Larger Catechism's explication of the second commandment as prohibiting 'mental imaging'?

How is it possible to avoid mental imaging of a human being, or a dove, or a burning bush when you are hearing or reading the scripture? Its like telling somebody "don't think about a pink elelphant"

If that is what is required to keep the second commandment, it would seem impossible for even unfallen human beings to keep.
 
Ruben, Mark,

The work can be found here:

http://www.biblecentre.net/theology/books/war/Christ.html
 
Originally posted by py3ak
yet He is ignorant of the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man;
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Is it proper to attribute that ignorance to his humanity though? In context, Jesus has already ruled out any MAN, or ANGEL knowing and then adds that even the SON does not know. By already excluding all men and then exluding the son, he would not seem to be contemplating the son in his humanity.
 
Thanks, Fred. It's easier to cull quotations when all you have to do is copy and paste instead of laboriously typing....
 
Paul,

I have questioned that statement in the Larger Catechism myself. As you say, it does seem impossible to require this of humans because of the law of our constitution, not just because of our corruption of nature. I wonder, though, if they have in mind something like the advice Loyola gave to his disciples for meditation --to imagine a whole scene from the gospels, a compositio I believe he called it. If something like that is what they have in mind then it would be the deliberate formulation of a specific image as a resting place for mind and heart that they are condemning. Of course, even that does raise questions. What about when a preacher says, "I want you to picture the scene" and goes on to try to make us imagine the feeding of the 5,000 or something like that.

As far as attributing ignorance to God the Son I don't see any way to do that --God is omniscient.
 
I have had two people tell me, when this subject has come up over the years, that they do not think graphically (i.e. pictorially). I think in our TV age that may be the minority now. One is my pastor (and he cannot even draw a stick figure so I suspect there is some relationship to this fact). But I doubt very much that the Westminster divines had in view when they wrote, any theories on the manner people think, whether in pictures or not. The point is that in order for an idolater to make his idol he imagines it in his mind first. Our minds are to be restrained by the law of God, whether we are reading of Bathsheba on the rooftop, or Jesus Christ on the cross.
 
Chris,

So then imaginations would have to have an idolatrous (or lascivious) intent in order to come under the condemnation of the Larger Catechism?
 
No.
Originally posted by py3ak
Chris,

So then imaginations would have to have an idolatrous (or lascivious) intent in order to come under the condemnation of the Larger Catechism?
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I gather that it's prohibiting the first beginnings of idolatry --I guess the question is, what constitutes the beginning of idolatry?
 
Originally posted by trevorjohnson
Doesn't the Decalogue say don't make a "pesher" or idol...not merely an image.

It seems like, from the logic of many, then I cannot paint or photograph any person with a soul (after all, I can only portray haf of him - the material half).



It says do not make an idol or bow down to it. An image made but not worshipped is not an idol.



What about all those little angels knick-knacks that I know some of your wives probably collect???
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If the second commandment is concerned only with forbidding "bowing down" to worship images, then what is the difference between the first and second commandments?
 
Originally posted by trevorjohnson
Why put angels on the Arkof the Covenant? We are forbidden to make idols, not merely images.
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But would not the making and worshipping of idols already be forbidden by the first commandment?
 
Attributing the name of God to a picture is making an idol. Essentially, there is no difference between making a 3-d representation of God, or a 2-d image. Neither of these differentiate in substance from making a golden calf and calling it YHWH.
 
Edward Fisher on Wherein the First and Second Commandments Differ

Thomas Ridgeley on the Difference between the First and Second Commandment:

Before we proceed to consider the matter of this commandment, we shall premise something, in general, concerning the difference between it and the first commandment. The first commandment respects the object of worship; the second, the manner in which it is to be performed. Accordingly, the former forbids not owning God to be such an one as he has revealed himself to be in his word, and also the substituting of any creature in his room, or acknowledging it, either directly or by consequence, to be our chief good and happiness; the latter obliges us to worship God, in such a way as he has prescribed, in opposition to that which takes its rise from our own invention. These two commandments, therefore, being so distinct, we cannot but think that the Papists to be chargeable with a very great absurdity, in making the second to be only an appendix to the first, or an explanation of it. The design of their doing so seems to be, that they may exculpate themselves from the charge of idolatry, in setting up image-worship, which they think to be no crime; because they are not so stupid as to style the image a god, or make it a supreme object of worship. This commandment, however, in forbidding false worship, is directly contrary to their practice of worshipping God by images.
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Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot
Edward Fisher on Wherein the First and Second Commandments Differ

Thomas Ridgeley on the Difference between the First and Second Commandment:

Before we proceed to consider the matter of this commandment, we shall premise something, in general, concerning the difference between it and the first commandment. The first commandment respects the object of worship; the second, the manner in which it is to be performed. Accordingly, the former forbids not owning God to be such an one as he has revealed himself to be in his word, and also the substituting of any creature in his room, or acknowledging it, either directly or by consequence, to be our chief good and happiness; the latter obliges us to worship God, in such a way as he has prescribed, in opposition to that which takes its rise from our own invention. These two commandments, therefore, being so distinct, we cannot but think that the Papists to be chargeable with a very great absurdity, in making the second to be only an appendix to the first, or an explanation of it. The design of their doing so seems to be, that they may exculpate themselves from the charge of idolatry, in setting up image-worship, which they think to be no crime; because they are not so stupid as to style the image a god, or make it a supreme object of worship. This commandment, however, in forbidding false worship, is directly contrary to their practice of worshipping God by images.
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:up:
 
Fred,

I'm sorry I didn't see your post about not needing to choose between Berkhof and Warfield until today. I understand that they are in different contexts --but doesn't it seem that the language (distinctly duplex for Warfield and blended for Berkhof) rules out that avenue of agreement?
 
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