systematic theology

On Discipline, Part 4: Thought

August 1, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action | Part 3: Dependence

The next area of discipline in Paul’s list is likely the toughest one for many people.

 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Php 4.8).

Here Paul calls for mental discipline: controlling what you think about.

This is tough.

We’re not used to that in our culture, and in recent years it’s only getting more difficult. We naturally tend to think about whatever pops into our head. Most often those things pop in from our daily circumstances—conversations, assigned tasks, and so on. Many of those things we don’t control; they just show up, and we think about them.

But with the rise of social media, we’re being conditioned against mental discipline. Social media posts scroll by, and we think about them for 5 or 10 seconds, and we move on. We’re passive consumers of mental stimulation; it’s all up to the algorithms, and our thoughtful choices have nothing to do with what’s being poured into our brain bucket. There’s no discipline or self-control whatsoever; it’s just random dopamine hits.

Yikes.

But it gets worse. Neurological research indicates that the more we engage in this kind of media surfing, the less thinking we’re able to do; our brain rewires itself for “fast-twitch” thinking rather than long-form consideration of more complex ideas. If a paragraph consists of more than 9 or 10 lines, we’re not going to consume it thoughtfully; eventually we’ll just skip it altogether. (How many of the issues that we deal with in modern society can we think through in 5 or 10 seconds? We’re being conditioned against wisdom.)

For more information on this concept, I highly recommend Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. He brings serious research to the question.

In this pervasively “fast-twitch” environment, we’re going to find it harder than ever to follow Paul’s admonition. In a culture where many people have no mental discipline, directing your thought anywhere in particular, let alone to specific areas, is going to seem strange and foreign.

I’d suggest some practical things:

Read, regularly and repeatedly. Of course, believers should read their Bibles as their primary source of spiritual nutrition. But any long-form reading will strengthen your mental discipline. (And no, the closed captions on movies are not long-form reading.)

Memorize Scripture. Memorization requires repeated review (I have a system, and I hope you do too), which will enable you to bring to mind biblical content whenever you have some mental free time—while driving, walking, standing in line, and so on.

Approach casual conversations thoughtfully. Sure, small talk has its place; but if your conversations at church are all about football or politics, they could use some discipline. Direct conversations to substantial things. “How can I pray for you?” is one way to start.

Use “down time” thoughtfully. While you’re waiting to fall asleep at night, direct your thoughts.

Paul includes here a list of things to think about. I’m not sure detailed word studies on each term are what he’s after; the list could be more of a random collection of examples than a to-do list. I doubt that once you’ve thought about his list of 8 things, he’d say you’re done. Think about anything excellent; think about anything praiseworthy. Think on purpose.

Again, this is hard. We like to let our thoughts go wherever they take us. But they do take us places, and while “the power of positive thinking” isn’t a magical formula for personal success—“if you can believe it, you can achieve it!”—the way we think does make a difference in the progress and outcome of our living. It certainly makes a difference in our spiritual success, our sanctification.

Think on these things.

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On Discipline, Part 3: Dependence

July 29, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action

Paul now turns to a third area where we need discipline:

⁶Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Php 4.6-7).

People come in all varieties. Some are pretty self-confident; they think they can deal with whatever comes down the pike. Don’t need any help, thanks. I got this.

But if the truth be known, even those people worry. They think about how they’re going to deal with this issue or that, and even though they don’t want to ask anybody else for help, they still spend time on the mental merry-go-round, trying to figure out the next step.

And for others, it’s even more difficult. Worry becomes anxiety, and fear dominates their thinking.

This is the human condition.

And if we humans are merely the peak of evolutionary development, with no one higher to look to, then we’re doomed to a lifetime of anxiety.

But we’re not, and we’re not.

There is a higher throne. And Paul points us there.

Don’t worry about anything, he says.

What? Don’t worry about where the rent’s coming from? About progressive degenerative disease? About broken relationships? About societal ills? About nuclear holocaust?

That’s just crazy.

No, my friend. It’s crazy only if we’re all there is.

But there is a God, and he is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And further, he loves us, and he invites us to bring our anxieties to him and leave them there.

He can provide the rent money, and grace to face the physical ravages of time, and relational healing, and societal peace. And he can prevent nuclear holocaust, in his good will.

Bring your requests.

I note that Paul returns to his earlier theme of thanksgiving, or rejoicing. How can we be thankful even as we recount our troubles at the throne?

Because God hears, and he responds, and always in a way that is good and wise, wiser even than the “solutions” we can suggest to him. Beyond all that we can ask or think.

Paul follows his imperative with a promise. If we’ll do what he says, then God will bring peace to our troubled hearts—peace, he says, that surpasses all understanding.

I used to think that that meant that it’s so wonderful that we can’t understand it. But I don’t think that’s it. It surpasses understanding; when our understanding has taken us as far as it can, and it runs out of gas, the peace of God takes over and keeps us going, as far as we need to go. We find that we don’t need to know it all, to understand everything that God is doing. We know him, we trust him, and we just keep going.

Paul adds one last thought. This peace he says, is not passive; it’s active. And the verb he chooses is instructive: it guards our hearts and minds. You know, that place where the anxiety comes from? The wellspring of all our fears? The peace of God stands as a sentinel at the door, muscular and armed, and it denies entry to the dangerous stuff.

So we have a choice.

We can give in to the anxiety, trying to work things out for ourselves, despite the fact that there are all kinds of things that we don’t know and can’t do.

Or we can trust the sentinel standing outside the door of our hearts, as we work diligently and wisely during the day and sleep well at night.

That shouldn’t be a difficult decision.

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On Discipline, Part 2: Action

July 25, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Perspective

Here in Philippians 4, we’re surveying a list of areas that we ought to discipline as we live out our faith in Christ. In the previous post, we noted that we should discipline our perspective to be joyful, rejoicing in whatever comes our way (Php 4.4). We turn now to the second Item in Paul’s list.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand (Php 4.5).

You may know that the KJV renders the key word “moderation.” There’s great breadth in the various reliable versions: “gentle spirit” (NASB), “graciousness” (CSB), “gentleness” (NIV). The standard Greek lexicon (BDAG) suggests “yielding, gentle, kind, courteous, tolerant.” I think we get the idea. There seems to be general idea of others-centeredness, of unselfishness, of lesser concern with one’s own rights than for the rights or needs—or even desires—of others.

Paul says this characteristic of ours should “be known to everyone.” How does that happen? Well, practically speaking, it can happen only when this is our default—whatever we do, in whatever circumstances, with whatever kinds of people, we’re gentle, kind, courteous, tolerant. This is just the way we always act.

That’s a tough order. It’s easy for most of us to be kind and cordial with people we like, or those who are first kind to us. But the situation is very different when someone is rude, or hostile, or childish, or self-centered. It is not my inclination, or yours, to be kind or courteous in those situations.

How often do we see that kind of spirit in operation in our culture? How often, rather, do we see some people mocking those they disagree with—“libtards” or “snowflakes” or “RINOs” or “MAGAs”? How often do we ourselves engage in that kind of mocking and ridicule?

Oh, but in my case it’s justified, you see, because that idiot deserved it, because he was rude to me first, or he’s a tool of the deep state, or he’s a threat to democracy. Or he’s just stupid.

Oh, no, my friend. Let your gentle default mode of action be known to everyone. There are no riders or qualifiers there.

Let me suggest that our current polarized culture presents us with a rare opportunity to have our calm, gentle, kindness stand out from the angry, pugilistic, chaotic background of polarization and rage. When everyone is running to and fro, the one who’s sitting calmly amidst the chaos reading a book stands out; he’s impossible to miss. And in our culture the simplest act of kindness, the slightest evidence of care and attention, screams louder than all the surrounding noise.

What a way to make a difference. What a way to be an ambassador.

Paul’s seals the importance of this discipline with a terse observation: “The Lord is near.”

To what is he referring here?

The word near here is a common word, one that can refer to either time or space.

Is he saying that the Lord is spatially near, as in omnipresent? “O be careful little mouth what you say”?

Or that he is temporally near: coming back soon? “O, can we say we are ready, brother”?

In his epistles Paul uses the word in both senses (Ep 2.13; Ro 13.11). In Jesus’ teaching he tends to use the word temporally, mostly because he’s frequently teaching about the nearness of his Coming. But when he says, “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” is it possible that he means to imply both?

I don’t see a reason to restrict the word here to either sense; either or both can serve as motivation for us to do better at this.

The Lord is indeed near us, both as a deterrent to sin and as a source of power for victory. In ourselves we cannot live this way consistently, but our God is near to us.

The Lord is indeed coming soon, to deliver us from all the frustrations that so vex us now. That means that as vexing as these confrontations are, they are temporary; and knowing that can relieve us of much of the pressure to collapse.

Live out grace, kindness, courtesy. By default. To everybody—especially to the really challenging everybodies.

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On Discipline, Part 1: Perspective

July 22, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

No, I’m not referring to child-rearing, but to how we discipline ourselves. It’s a truism that if you aim at nothing, you’ll certainly hit it. Pretty much everybody understands that you have to set goals, and then persist in pursuing them, in order to accomplish anything worthwhile.

There’s a whole industry of advisors, people who are happy to coach you on making the best of life—whether on the secular side or on the spiritual. Reading these works discerningly and thoughtfully can be highly profitable.

More reliably, though, the Scripture addresses this topic extensively. A series of blog posts is not the place for a comprehensive survey of the biblical theology of personal discipline, but it’s reasonable to focus on a single passage that concentrates on the idea.

I find such a passage in Philippians 4. It’s a concise presentation, and a familiar one; many Christians have memorized the passage, or at least parts of it. In verses 4-9, I find a list of five aspects of our lifestyle—what the King James translators called “conversation”—that we ought to discipline in certain ways. Lord willing, I’ll devote a post to each of the five.

The section opens with Paul’s goal for his (and our) perspective:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Php 4.4).

Our view of things, he says, should be consistently joyful.

Several things to note about that.

First, this is Paul writing. He has not had an easy life; as he has already noted in this short epistle, he has sacrificed early professional success to follow Jesus (Php 3.4-11), and a few years earlier he has listed for the church in Corinth a litany of hardship (2Co 11.23-29). Even as he writes these words, he is under house arrest in Rome, waiting for a hearing before Caesar that threatens capital punishment. He is not speaking platitudes.

Second, he is writing to Philippi, a church founded out of a night in prison, an earthquake, and government opposition (Ac 16.13-40). He is about to say that this church has already given sacrificially to support his ministry from a distance (Php 4.16). There is nothing flippant or casual about what he is asking them to do.

Rejoice, he says. No, I really mean it, he repeats.

And furthermore, rejoice all the time.

Rejoice in the good times; rejoice in the bad. Rejoice in success; rejoice in failure.

Rejoice in house arrest. Rejoice in the inner prison.

Interestingly, Paul lives that out. He has already written here that his arrest has yielded good things (Php 1.12-14), and he will go on to say that there are now saints in Caesar’s household (Php 4.22)—though we don’t know whether they became saints as a direct result of his appeal to Caesar.

Now for the fifty-dollar question—how does he do it? How does Paul rejoice in the midst of suffering and injustice greater than you (probably) or I have ever experienced? And by extension, how are we to “rejoice … always”?

The ellipsis provides the answer: “rejoice in the Lord always.”

There’s a lot packed into that tiny prepositional phrase.

What does it mean to “rejoice in the Lord”?

At its purest, it means simply to rejoice in God himself—who he is, and what he does. Meditation on him brings great delight.

But God knows that we are dust, and he understands that we are consistently motivated by self-interest. He graciously works benefits to us, in which we can then rejoice. The blessings of salvation are profitable topics for meditation, as are answers to prayer. (Sidebar: if you don’t pray much, or at all, you’re depriving yourself of the joy that comes from seeing prayers answered.) The confidence that comes from following his will, even through valleys (Ps 23.4), is reason to rejoice. It’s a great gift to know that, really, everything’s going to be OK, and the hard times will eventuate in great good.

So our first step of discipline, according to this passage, is in our perspective: we discipline ourselves to see all things as causes for rejoicing.

This is life-changing.

More next time.

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On the Unforgiveable Sin, Part 2

July 15, 2024 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1

So if I believe that there is no sin that God won’t forgive, what do we do with those “proof texts”? I have no interest in “explaining away” what the Bible says; if the Bible says something, I need to believe it. My argument here is that the Bible does not in fact say what the “unforgiveable sin” teachers claim—because they have ignored a key element in biblical interpretation: context. In all three of these passages, a thoughtful consideration of the passage’s context makes the actual teaching pretty clear.

Matthew 12.31-32

Jesus’ words here are his response to something that has just happened. Jesus has cast a demon out of a blind and mute man (Mt 12.22), and the onlookers, amazed by what they have seen, recognize the significance of the miracle as Messianic: “Is not this the Son of David?” (Mt.12.23). They are familiar with the biblical promise of a descendant of David who would reign forever (2S 7.12-16), and they also recognize the healing of a blind man as a fulfillment of prophecy (Is 35.5), specifically of prophecy about the Servant of Yahweh (Is 42.7). Just one chapter earlier, Jesus had responded to John the Baptist’s question (“Are you the Coming One?”) by noting that “the blind receive their sight” (Mt 11.5).

The onlookers respond in faith.

But there is another group watching—not to see and believe, but to gather evidence against this miracle worker and to oppose his threat to their political and religious power. The Pharisees are not interested in truth or in righteousness, but in neutralizing the threat. So they accuse him of doing the miracle through Satan’s power (Mt 12.24).

Jesus responds to the charge first by demonstrating its illogic—would Satan cast out Satan? (Mt 12.25-26). And then he turns to their much deeper problem: they are determined not to believe. No matter what he does—even Messianic miracles—they will harden their hearts against them, until the day they die. And in that day, their sin of unbelief will not be forgiven.

Why not?

Because they refused to repent, which is the only means of forgiveness. Thus there’s nothing particularly unusual about their sin; as is true of everyone, they will not be forgiven for sins of which they refuse to repent.

What happens to a hard-hearted Pharisee who sees, believes, and repents? The Bible tells us about just such a man. His name was Saul, and he was forgiven.

1 John 5.16

With the “blasphemy of the Spirit” passage accurately read, John’s reference to “the sin unto death” becomes clear. “A sin which is not unto death” is simply one of which the sinner will repent. We pray faithfully for those engaged in sin, hoping that God will one day bring them to repentance; for nothing is impossible for him.

But as he presents that encouragement, John notes that not everyone will repent; that’s the way the world works. He has already noted that genuine believers do not live out a pattern of persistent sin (1J 3.6), but there are those who will not depart from a sinful lifestyle. The classic commentator Alfred Plummer observed, “It is possible to close the heart against the influences of God’s Spirit so obstinately and persistently that repentance becomes a moral impossibility. … The soul may go on refusing offers of grace until the very power to receive grace perishes. Such a condition is necessarily sin, and ‘sin unto death.’ ”

Matthew 25.31-46

Now to the Judgment of Sheep and Goats. Why do some come to the judgment confident, only to be shocked at their condemnation? They are condemned for the same reason anyone else is condemned: they have not repented. They trusted in their good works (Mt 25.44) but had no heart to follow Christ.

God is not the kind of person who sentences his well-meaning children to a life of uncertainty and fear. I have sat with more than one student who has been spiritually and emotional crippled by his fear that, without meaning to, he has committed some unforgiveable sin.

Nonsense.

Power. Love. A sound mind (2Ti 1.7).

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On the Unforgiveable Sin, Part 1

July 11, 2024 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Every so often we hear reference to “the unforgiveable sin.” This idea typically comes from Jesus’ mention of “the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”:

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. 32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come (Mt 12.31-32).

Some also note the mention of “a sin unto death” in 1 John 5.16:

If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.

And some note Matthew 25.31-46, where Jesus describes the Judgment of the Sheep and Goats. He notes that in that judgment both the sheep and the goats will be surprised by their outcomes; in particular, the goats will be surprised at their condemnation. “Lord, Lord!”

I’m going to put my premise right up front:

I think the idea of an “unforgiveable sin” is nonsense, first because it’s bad exegesis, and second because it’s bad theology.

First, the theology.

This idea necessitates that God is the kind of person who won’t forgive a certain sin—by implication, even if the sinner wants to repent—and who further doesn’t tell us clearly what that sin is specifically; the range of interpretations of the “blasphemy of the Spirit” passage is as wide as a Texas horizon. The result is that we never know if we’ve committed it; we arrive at the judgment thinking that we’re forgiven, but we’ve done something that we didn’t realize was unforgiveable, and down we go. Nothing personal, you understand; just following policy. Rules are rules.

This is blasphemous.

God is not that kind of person. He forgives all who come; he will turn no one away (Jn 6.37). He hasn’t identified a certain sin as one that he won’t forgive. If you come, bringing your sin with you in repentance, he will take it all, and he will cast it behind his back (Is 38.17), to the bottom of the sea (Mic 7.19), as far as the east is from the west (Ps 103.12), and he will receive you.

Come. Bring it all. This is the God who invites us, who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezk 33.11)), who leaves the 99 to go seek the 1 lost sheep (Lk 15.4), who rejoices with all heaven at the repentance of a single sinner (Lk 15.7).

Our understanding of God must be informed—bounded—by the character that he has revealed. We may be in his image, but he is not like us in our limitation and in our brokenness, and he does not behave toward us like our enemies—or even like our friends, in many respects.

He is perfectly great, and he is perfectly good.

Now, that raises a question. What do we do with the passages noted above? Is my thesis ignoring them? Denying them?

Not at all. I’d suggest that a great many readers of Scripture are misreading them. We’ll look into that in the next post.

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God and Man, Part 17: Unity 3

July 8, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

One more thing to think about in this blog’s longest-ever series.

The Bible notes, almost as an aside, that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2.52). That’s a remarkable statement, one that encourages us to synthesize all that we’ve been thinking about in this series.

Jesus, the God-Man, developed during his youth, apparently in the same way that all humans do. It’s easy to understand how he grew physically (“stature”), and perhaps with a little more difficulty, it’s possible to envision him growing socially (“favor with man”). But how did he develop in wisdom? And most especially, how did he develop in favor with God?

We’re beyond our limits of understanding, and as I noted in the previous post, we have no analogues to compare this unique person to. This passage tells us that the maturation occurred, and Hebrews 4.15 tells us that this maturation, like everything else in his life, occurred without sin.

But beyond that, it’s all speculation.

Did the baby Jesus walk the first time he tried? (Is it a sin to “fall down and go boom”? I don’t think so.) Was he younger than normal when he took his first steps? Was he athletically superior in his youth?

How old was he when he began to talk? Did he ever make grammatical errors? Did Mary ever have to say the Aramaic equivalent of “No, Jesus, it’s not ‘Can me and Johnny go out and play?’ but ‘May Johnny and I go out and play?’ ”? (Are grammatical errors sinful? Could the developing Jesus have made non-sinful mistakes? Was he unusually smart? Did he always get 100% on his math worksheets? Note that he said there were things he didn’t know [Mk 13.32] during the incarnation.)

Did Joseph ever say to him, “Now, Son, if you keeping holding the hammer that way, you’re going to hurt yourself”? Did he ever hurt himself?

Did his siblings know that there was something unusual about him? I find it fascinating that during his earthly ministry his brothers didn’t believe in him (Jn 7.5; cf Mt 12.46-49). Paul tells us that one of the first people Jesus met with after his resurrection was his brother James, who was apparently second oldest (Mt 13.55) and therefore the leader of the family after the (presumed) death of Joseph and the (temporary) death of Jesus (1Co 15.7). What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall at that conversation!

These thoughts deal just with his person. What about his work?

Paul tells us that the Son is the agent of providence: “by him all things hold together” (Co 1.17). Was he running the universe in the back of his mind during the Sermon on the Mount? How about as a boy of 12 in the Temple? As a toddler? As an infant? As a fetus?

I say this reverently: was there some sort of 25^th Amendment in the Godhead, whereby the Son transferred those duties to the Father or the Spirit, or did he fully engage them throughout the incarnation? And if the latter, how did that interact with his limitation of knowledge during that time?

You and I know this person, to the extent that we can by our study of the Scriptures, the illuminating work of the Spirit, and the means of grace. But there is more to him than we can possibly know during our lifetimes, and perhaps even in eternity.

Revel in the wonder.

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God and Man, Part 16: Unity 2

July 1, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In the previous post we noted that at a point in history, the Son added to his eternal divine nature a human nature—a set of human characteristics—so that while he was still God in every respect, he also became human in every respect. But it’s important to note that his “Godness” does not become human, and his “humanness” does not become God. Why is that?

It helps if we think a bit about the difference between a person and his nature, or qualities. You and I are persons, but we’re different persons, with different characteristics. I have a list of adjectives that describe me: a nature. I’m short, bald, slim, verbal, and older than I used to be. You have a different set of adjectives—though you are of course, like me, older than you used to be as well. Our natures are distinct from our persons.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s reminded us that African-Americans are lots of things besides their ethnicity; more recently, the “Me Too” movement reminded us that women are lots of things besides their physical characteristics. I’m more than just a short person, and you’re more than just someone who’s older than you used to be.

In a similar way, Jesus’ human nature, or characteristics, remain distinct from his divine nature; they’re separate lists of adjectives. Natures aren’t persons, they’re just adjectives. So we can’t say that God the Son, the person, was mortal; his mortality was a human characteristic. Perhaps you’ve heard someone say that God died on the cross, but that is not accurate.

Now here’s where it gets beyond us. God the Son, the person, has the characteristic of immortality in his divine nature, and mortality in his human nature. And those are not contradictions; they are distinct adjectives.

But how can they both be true in the same person?

There, my friend, is the rub.

No one but the Son has ever had two natures, one human and one divine. In that respect he is unlike anyone else, God, man, or angel.

We have trouble understanding unique things, because we learn by comparing the new thing with something we already know about. “Artificial Intelligence is kinda like a really big, really fast brain.” It’s not a brain, of course, but the comparison helps us understand it.

Now, since Jesus is unique, there’s nothing to compare him to; his dual nature is not “kinda like” anyone or anything else.

So we’re stumped; we have great difficulty making any sense of it.

And we should expect that, shouldn’t we? Should finite minds easily grasp an infinite person?

Isn’t there a place for awe, for wonder, for delight as we meditate on such things?

Now, those early church fathers I mentioned in the previous post, after four centuries of exhausting speculation and occasionally violent confrontation, formulated a statement that laid out their understanding of what happened at the incarnation without any attempt to explain how it worked. That statement is called the Creed of Chalcedon, named for the city where they met to formulate it in 1451. (It’s close to Istanbul, Turkey, which at the time was called Constantinople.)

You can find that relatively brief statement here.

Now, there’s one more element in this that we ought to consider: how did the God-man, Jesus, develop from infant to adult?

We don’t know much about that, but we’ll examine what we do know, and allow ourselves to speculate a little bit, in the final post in our unusually long series.

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Part 17: Unity 3

God and Man, Part 15: Unity 1

June 27, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Now we get to the hard part. It’s not difficult for us to think of Jesus as human; he walked among us. It’s a little more difficult, but not impossible, to think of him as God, given the Trinity, the miracles, the ascension. But what’s really difficult is to think of him as both, at the same time. How does God exist in a human body? How does that even work?

Some of the greatest minds in history wrestled with that question over a span of four centuries, and at the end of a complex and tumultuous process, they said, “Well, here’s what we think happened, but we’re not even going to try to explain how.”

You see, the whole idea seems fraught with contradiction. God is omnipotent; Jesus was beaten by evil men. God is omniscient; Jesus said he didn’t know when he would come back (Mk 13.32). God is omnipresent; Jesus traveled from place to place, even speaking of his need to go someplace else (Lk 4.43; Jn 14.1-2). God is eternal and immortal; Jesus died.

What?!

And again I say, how does that even work?

Let’s start with some basics.

As both God and man, Jesus must have had a divine nature, one that existed from all eternity past. He has always had all the attributes of God. I’ve mentioned the four standard non-communicable attributes above, but he also has all the communicable attributes as well—grace, mercy, peace, love, justice, and so on.

Then, at a point in time, he became human, and at that moment he added all the attributes that make someone human—most importantly mortality, but also corporality (being limited to a body). As I’ve noted in an earlier post, he did not add the attribute of sinfulness, but that is not a necessary human attribute, since Adam and Eve were not initially sinful.

Now, the problem comes in that some of these attributes appear to be contradictory, most obviously immortality and mortality, but also corporality and omnipresence. And as we noted above, Jesus appears to demonstrate lack of knowledge, which seems to contradict omniscience.

The standard way of dealing with this is with the following carefully worded proposition: When he became incarnate, Jesus added to his eternal divine nature a human nature, thereby voluntarily (and temporarily) setting aside the independent exercise of his divine attributes and placing himself in dependence upon the Father.

Note that he did not set aside the divine attributes—say, his omnipotence—for then he would no longer be God. He set aside the exercise of those attributes.

Now, that helps us a little, but it still doesn’t solve our conundrum. I can understand how he might choose not to use his infinite strength, for example, but how does he set aside the exercise of his omniscience? How do you not know something that you know?

Have you ever been stumped doing a crossword puzzle and looked up a single answer in the back? And when you did that, you accidentally saw another answer that you hadn’t gotten to yet? And then you went back to the puzzle and tried to disremember what you saw?

Didn’t work, did it?

It’s fine to say that Jesus knew certain things—say, what people were thinking (Jn 2.25)—because the Father revealed that to him; but how can we say he’s omniscient at the same time?

We’ll continue this puzzlement in the next post.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Part 16: Unity 2 | Part 17: Unity 3

God and Man, Part 14: Humanity 4 

June 24, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Why did God the Son become human, just like us? I think there are several reasons.

First, the Scripture had prophesied the incarnation, and God’s Word must be fulfilled. Now, obviously, this is not the primary reason; God would not have prophesied the incarnation for the sole or even foundational purpose of fulfilling an otherwise random prophecy. But it serves as a reminder that God is true, faithful, and reliable, and he does keep his promises. This teaches us, therefore, about his character, and it also assures us that he will keep his other promises as well.

Second, by becoming man, the Son positions himself as the Second Adam, the un-Adam, so to speak, who does perfectly what Adam failed to do—or undoes what Adam did, if you will. As Adam had an agreement with God to obey him, an agreement that he did not keep, so Christ enters the same arrangement of obedience, and as a man, keeps it. The incarnation is in many ways a new beginning, a second chance, and a successful one at that.

A key passage that addresses this idea is Romans 5.12-21, and especially verses 12 and 19:

¹²Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. … ¹⁸Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. ¹⁹For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Third, the Son became man in order to substitute himself for us. The best substitute for anyone or anything is something that is from the same class of things, and so Jesus becomes human in order to stand in the humans’ place (He 2.16-17).

By far the most important element in this substitution is the paying of the death penalty for sin. As God, the Son cannot die; it is not part of his nature to die. But as man, he can (Php 2.8; He 2.9). And so, though under no compulsion to do so, God the Son became man—eternally—to rescue us from our own failure.

There is a fourth reason, and this one is by far the most difficult to understand. The Bible says that one of the results of the incarnation is that he now sympathizes with us:

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted (He 2.18).

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (He 4.15).

Of course, if we know that someone has also experienced our pain, then we find it easier to believe that he will sympathize with our pain. We see that principle worked out in human experience all the time.

But here’s why I say that this is hard to understand. Does God have to experience something in order to understand it? Does the Father, who has never experienced being human, sympathize less well with us than the Son?

We can’t say that; the Father and the Son are One, and the Father is perfect just as the Son is.

Well, then, is this sympathy that the Son has for us just an exercise in accommodation? Does God know that we’ll more strongly believe that he sympathizes because the Son has been (and continues to be) human? In this just a little trick to help us believe?

We can’t say that, either. God does not pretend just so we’ll believe.

In some way, far beyond our understanding, God the Son sympathizes with us because he is one of us. That’s what the text says, and that’s what we must believe, even if we don’t understand.

That sort of thing happens all the time in theology.

Next time, we’ll start into the really puzzling stuff.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Part 15: Unity 1 | Part 16: Unity 2 | Part 17: Unity 3