podcast 277 – Was Christ tempted in every way?

Great post Dale! I wanted to expand on your point that Jesus’ human rationality is an indication of personhood. Conciliar Christology distinguishes the purported Concrete human nature of Christ into 3 components, Body, intellectual/rational soul, and Natural will (not a determinative will though, long story). They make these distinctions necessary based on the axiom introduced by the Cappadocians who claimed that what is not assumed [in the incarnation] is not healed. Hence Conciliar Christology attributed mental faculties and intellect to the human Christ since IF it did not contain them, human reasoning and determination could not be healed by the incarnation according to the Cappadocians.

Your point, that Jesus Christ has the identifying marks for being a human person, is really strong for thinking Christians, but unfortunately denied by Trinitarian theology because to accept the human Christ as a human person would, by Trinitarian assumptions, be claiming that Christ is 2 persons, one divine and one human and this is considered heretical (Nestorianism. Remember, the idea that Christ just is one human person instantiating human nature cannot be considered even for a moment by Trinitarians, even though some scholars dealing with this subject acknowledge that a human person is a rational instantiated human nature).

Thus to deny personhood to the human nature of Christ, the medieval philosophers Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham constructed rationals for denying human personhood to Jesus. Pawl, on pages 31-32 of his 1st book on conciliar Christology, goes into details of their arguments. Some of these arguments are framed from the standpoint of assuming as foundational what has yet to be proved, not from an objective standpoint without a-priori assumptions, which needs first to build a case for Jesus to have 2 natures. Hence these arguments do nothing for denying Jesus is just a human person. For some of their arguments, the problem is that if you applied the same negating arguments toward the individual members of the Trinity they also would not qualify as persons or they would be determined to be 3 separate beings, 3 Gods!

The following also apparently escaped the notice of those applying the Cappadocian’s axiom (the 2nd ecumenical council), If what is not assumed is not healed, Then HUMAN personhood is not healed by the incarnation since a human person was not assumed. Since personhood is contrasted and denied of the human nature of Christ, personhood does not appear automatically transferable to it from a trinitarian perspective, and the only type transferable would be divine personhood, not human, hence human personhood remains unhealed since it was not assumed (doctrinal collapse). Further according to Trinitarian theology, at least conciliar and evangelical notions, within the Trinity, each Divine person does NOT have their own individualized will, only a collective (WE are The BORG) will. It appears that human persons or angelic beings best qualify for PERSONHOOD since only they have individualized wills, but entities in the triunity, not so much; perhaps Divine modes of one person is a better description for these entities who share only 1 will. However, for Christ, the components of personhood as a human person can be accounted for.

Needless to say, all this fooling around with concepts that received numerous changes by the whim of popular philosophy left the “Christian” church with things to argue about up to our day.