Somehow I missed this when it came out back in July. Our friend the Tentative Apologist Randal Rauser has a podcast (itunes) now, and he’s done a substantial, no-bs interview of leading Reformed analytic theologian Oliver Crisp, of Fuller Seminary.
Listen to it at Randal’s blog here.
Crisp does a good job presenting and giving a basic defense of the coherence of the traditional catholic Incarnation theory, as articulated by recent philosophers like Richard Swinburne. He avoids as much as possible technical lingo like “hypostatic union” and “suppositum.” He takes what is standardly call the “two minds” approach.
Rauser asks him some tough questions, including, wasn’t Jesus ignorant of some truths (so, he can’t be God, who knows all), and isn’t it wrong to say (as the catholic tradition requires) that Jesus was “man” but not a man, or in other words, that that Jesus is self, and human, but not a human self? And, shouldn’t we assume that Jesus, as a 1st c. Jewish boy, had quite a few false beliefs, like, ones that were assumed in that day?
Give it a listen, and comment on the blog post page there. Do you find Crisp’s answers compelling? Why or why not?
Rauser doesn’t tip his hand much (which is OK – he’s the interviewer) – but I would guess he would take a pretty strong mysterian line, perhaps even eschewing a lot of the traditional language.
I say Boo to mysterianism (sorry Randal), but Hooray to honest, clear, to the point theological conversation! Excellent job, gents.
Dale,
I found Crisp’s answers thoughtful and I think quite Orthodox.
I’d have to listen again to confirm, but an underlying issue that came up behind a question or two is the assumption that there is a Natural opposition between humanity and divinity. In St Maximos, John of Damascus and elsewhere like the 6th Council, this dialectic is confronted by proper Christology itself. Gethsemane reveals not two opposing wills in Christ, but two wills choosing distinct good things.
The interpenetration of Christ’s humanity by the divine energies deifies the humanity of Christ without change, and elevates it to what humanity was created to be. His humanity is employed freely by divine Person and follows without compulsion or coercion.
His answer about Christ’s dual knowlege is correct. Jesus has a human mind, soul and body. These are created and do not have unlimited capacity, even when deified. Because Christ is without sin, his humanity participates in his divine energies such that his flesh can shine brighter than the sun on the mount, he walks on water, he knows the thoughts of the Pharisees. But only the divine nature is uncircumscribed, his humanity has it’s natural capacities.
His comments on Nestorianism were good. Christ is only one agent, his divine Person. Natures don’t act, Persons do. Christ is one agent with two natures at his disposal at all times. One Person acting in two natures, doing the things appropriate to those natures. When he goes to relieve himself after supper, a divine Person is relieving himself in his human nature. When he sleeps, eats, is born of a mother, or dies, one divine Person is doing these things but only in his human nature. Meanwhile, at the very same time, the one Son in his divine nature may be attending to the most awesome solar flare and the birth of a child in Inner Mongolia.
There is no blending of natures in Christ. Each act of Christ is NOT accomplished in both natures. He acts in both natures but the one Son does different acts in each nature, as each nature has it’s own natural will and energies.
Jaco,
That was most useful.
Thanks
John
So we don’t know how to define to be “human”?
But we know for sure and have to rely on a specific technical definition of “person”?
Very odd.
We know for sure that to be human means to be created.
To be God means to be uncreated.
@John:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_(semiotics)
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe…”
All
After I read your post yesterday, I Genesis 1 v27 came to my attention.
“God created man in his image,
in the divine image he created him
male and female he created them”
What does the word ‘divine’ mean in this contex
Does it imply that humankind is ‘divine’ in the sensethat it is part of God’s creation?
I’m not suggesting for a moment that we are ‘God’ or even part of God – which seems to have been Adam’s sin.
Every Blessing
John
Excellent example of how theologians see the human Jesus as an ‘it’ and not a person. I found myself cringing at how he spoke as if Jesus was a man in appearance only, but the real person was veiled in fake flesh nature. What is up with him saying “we don’t know what it takes to be considered a real human being or person”? That seems to be special pleading for his ‘mystery’ that followed. I found that statement to be rather inconsistent with what we know it takes to be the seed of David among other things.
“If one wants to retain a somewhat partial human existence for Jesus, we must pose two mutually exclusive possibilites; either to assume that The Son exists independently and activates the impersonal body, or that a human soul activates the body, with the Divine Son in tow. The former leading to a sort of naive docetism and the latter of the two leading to a strange corporeal possession. Either the real Divine Spirit being is an autonomous caretaker of the shell of the man, or that the real human being has a passenger along for the ride. This is what it takes for one person to be both created and un-created, both God and man, both mortal and Immortal at the same time” J B Bruner
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