Question re. Incarnation

[lynnie]

https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/definition-of-person-as-it-relates-to-the-trinity.85593/

I found this thread from almost 3 years ago looking up the word "person", ie, what is a person when we talk about God in three persons. It has some posts that overlap with this subject, in case anybody is interested.

 

[Dachaser]

David,

Short answer, yes, the human nature assumed by Our Lord was as pure and as spotless as was Adam's before the fall.

Let's review a few vital points.

Sin is not essential to the human nature qua nature (qua - in the capacity of, as being). Sin is not some ontological entity, existing by itself. Sin relates to a law that has not been obeyed. Sin therefore is a moral act. The corruption of a Person is not a material corruption, it is a moral corruption.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was not two somethings existing side-by-side in one person. Jesus Christ was a divine person, a person Who assumed a human nature. That human nature so taken up was consecrated (kept pure and spotless) and specifically created by the miracle and agency of God the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). That human nature was an impersonal human nature.

Calvin is instructive here (emphasis mine):
"Christ was not free of all taint, merely because he was born of a woman unconnected with a man, but because he was sanctified by the Spirit, so that the generation was pure and spotless, such as it would have been before Adam’s fall." (Inst. 2.13.4).

If you wrongly try to abstract the human nature of Jesus away from God incarnate you ignore the plain fact that persons sin, not natures.

The human nature of Jesus Christ only existed in union with the divine Person, the Second Person of the Trinity. Given this union, there is no possibility that the Person, Jesus Christ, could sin. Why? His divine nature—not some donum superadditum (super added gift of grace)—made the possibility of sin impossible.

What I am understanding here is that before the incarnation, there was God the Son period, and when he assumed on humanity and became a man as Jesus of Nazareth. and from that time forward, one person who is forever now both fully God and fully man?

 

[Dachaser]

Hey David-

I think you ask good questions. And the replies here are tremendous. The quote from Lloyd-Jones was comforting.

Good luck with Berkhof. I pulled it out few nights ago with the goal of really understanding the incarnation. I was especially wondering about the human soul of Jesus. By the time I was done with the chapter on the Unipersonality of Christ I was ready to throw the book across the room and give up on theology altogether. I didn't even look at this thread the last couple days.

I was ranting to my husband, who normally engages with me on anything theological, and dives into Greek or Hebrew or commentaries as needed. All he did was start crooning some old song about how we will understand it better bye and bye, with a grin on his face. I was really annoyed until I remembered that he knew a guy in Seminary who had a temporary nervous breakdown starting with trying to figure out the trinity, so I'll cut him some slack.

Berkhof does say this in this chapter:

The doctrine of the two natures in one person transcends human reason. It is the expression of a supersensible reality, and of an incomprehensible mystery, which has no analogy on the life of man as we know it, and finds no support in human reason, and therefore can only be accepted by faith on the authority of the Word of God. For that reason it is doubly necessary to pay close attention to the teachings of scripture on this point.

This is to me a really mystifying concept to be able to fully grasp. Glad to know not alone in this.

 

[RamistThomist]

What I am understanding here is that before the incarnation, there was God the Son period, and when he assumed on humanity and became a man as Jesus of Nazareth. and from that time forward, one person who is forever now both fully God and fully man?

You're getting there. The most precise way to say it is that the Person of God the Son assumed a human nature alongside his divine nature. Thus the catechism, "who was and continueth to be, both God and man, in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

What I am understanding here is that before the incarnation, there was God the Son period, and when he assumed on humanity and became a man as Jesus of Nazareth. and from that time forward, one person who is forever now both fully God and fully man?

Yes, that Person, Jesus Christ, "continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, for ever." WLC #7

 

[timfost]

David,

I love the way Heidelberg (indirectly) counters ubiquitarianism while comforting us with the implications of Christ's two natures:

"47. But is not Christ with us even unto the end of the world, as He has promised?1

Christ is true man and true God. According to His human nature He is now not on earth,2 but according to His Godhead, majesty, grace, and Spirit, He is at no time absent from us.3

[1] Matt. 28:20. [2] Matt. 26:11; Jn. 16:28; 17:11. [3] Jn. 14:17–18; 16:13; Eph. 4:8; Matt. 18:20; *Heb. 8:4.

48. But are not, in this way, the two natures in Christ separated from one another, if the manhood is not wherever the Godhead is?

Not at all, for since the Godhead is incomprehensible and everywhere present,1 it must follow that the same is not limited with the human nature He assumed, and yet remains personally united to it.2

[1] Acts 7:49; Jer. 23:24. [2] Col. 2:9; Jn. 3:13; 11:15; Matt. 28:6; *Jn. 1:48."