Does that include or exclude the ability to know what others are thinking? Or to be able to speak with absolute authority on scriptural issues even never having had a teacher, heal the blind, the deaf, the mute, the paralyzed, cast out demons, order demons, turn water into wine, calm the storm, walk on water, predict the future, make fish appear where it seemed there were none, forgive sins, accept worship and finally rise from the dead?
Which part of those abilities are human and which are not?
The issue of Fully God and Fully Man has engaged the thoughts of theologians since at least the 4th century. Books have been written on the subject, enough books to fill several bookshelves in Greek, Latin and many modern languages. So any discussion of this mystery in this format will be incomplete.
Of Jesus activities which you mention
absolute authority on scriptural issues and predicting the future : In this He joins the prophets from Moses to Malachi in kind but to a greater degree
Healing 2 Kings 5 speaks of Elisha curing Naaman of leprosy Elisha also raised a boy from the dead and miraculously fed his hostess during a famine. Again healing and feeding were done but not to the scale or confidence that Jesus did it. Do not forget the disciples healings
Walk on water: the closest thing we get to this is crossing the Re(e)d Sea under Moses or the Jordan under Joshua both of which are clearly attributed to the specific will of God.
Forgive sins for which He was not the victim of the sin: unique to Jesus the priests only mediated between God and the penitent; This one is in the role of God
Rise from the dead there is the example of Eutychus, Lazarus and Elisha. Here did Jesus rise from the dead by His own power or was Jesus raised from the dead by God the Father? I think the latter.
So for much, Jesus can be considered to be in the form of the human prophets who had gone before albeit in such a quantity, in such a short time and such confidence to mark Him special.
Please consider John 5:19 and following Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son,23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
So the Godly abilities Jesus had while on Earth were done in connection with the Father. All such abilities seen in the prophets and disciples were also done only in (a more tenuous) connection with God
Sometimes these discussions are addictive and they help me think.
Male and female are mentioned explicitly only on the sixth day. However plants, fish and animals all have sexual specialization so unless one asserts some change in plants, fish and animals later, sexual reproduction was already created. There is no scriptural warrant for a change from asexual to sexual reproduction at some other time so that idea cannot be taught.
This pushes me to the idea that an explicit mention of male and female for mankind was done to a) prevent a potential misunderstanding of Genesis 2 or b) emphasize that both men and women were created good and neither were an afterthought. It would make this the first teaching on how human to human interactions are to be conducted.
As to evolution of sexual organs. It is known that bacteria exchange genes and earthworms have both male and female organs which could be a step on the way to separate male and female organisms. Evolutionary history could be more complex than any of us may want to comprehend. That bacteria exchange genes is part of the reason that we have antibiotic resistant bacteria.
I feel as though Jesus, as the human form of God, would naturally have human characteristics, such as a certain degree of fallibility. Jesus, admitted, as has previously been mentioned, that he did not know when the world would end, indicating a lack of omniscience.
It would follow that humans are created as both male and female. It would not follow that they are the first males and females, since presumably the birds and fish and other creatures from prior days of creation also existed in male and female forms.
I don’t believe you are actually interested in the answer to this question, but in case you are, here you go. This is not something that stumps the theory in anyway, just people who are very confused about how evolution actually works.
Prode, I don’t know if you realise it, but you’re taking that verse right out of context and applying a whole lot of pedantry to it to make a point that is nothing to do with what the passage is about. In other words, you’re quote mining Jesus to make Him appear to be insisting on a position that is demonstrably wrong, when in reality He is talking about something completely different altogether.
Prode, I’ve said it several times to you before, the age of the earth does not come from “atheistic religion” but from measuring things.
This has nothing to do with how the age of the earth was determined.
Scientific theories are not falsified by unanswered questions, but by contradictory data. Unanswered questions are where PhDs come from.
The fact that something evolved does NOT mean that it was all a result of random chance.
In any case, you can get an answer to this one simply by searching Google. Anyone to whom you are witnessing will do so on their smartphone, as you speak.
Prode, I realise that you just want to see the Bible upheld and Jesus honoured. So do I. And yes, there are subjects such as the age of the earth and evolution that science throws up that we may need to get to grips with along the way. But we need to do so in an honest and informed manner. You don’t achieve anything by rushing headlong into debates about subjects that you quite clearly do not understand with all guns blazing and a sarcastic, dogmatic, judgmental attitude only to prove that you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about and that you have no desire to learn either. You seem to do that every time you appear on this forum, and it’s a very bad witness that only undermines your message rather than upholding it.
In context, it’s fairly clear that when Jesus said, “From the beginning,” he meant, “from when humans were created.”
This much is clear because, as you admit, YEC folks don’t think that “from the beginning” means “from Day 1 of creation.”
After all, if Jesus really meant, “from the very beginning of creation,” then YEC suffers from the same problem as BioLogos… because beginning means beginning, and Day 6 is not the beginning beginning.
But if you understand it the way Jesus clearly meant it, which is, “since the creation of humanity,” then both YEC and the evolutionary creation position make sense. YEC and EC agree: Humans have never been unisex. We were created male and female from the beginning of our creation, whether that was on Day 6 or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
First off, if we wiped the theory of evolution from everyone’s minds and burned every book ever written on evolution we would still conclude that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The age of the Earth is determined by geology and physics, and it has nothing to do with evolution.
Second, the first geologists to come to the realization that the Earth was millions, perhaps billions of years old, were Christians. Atheism had nothing to do with it. In fact, the evidence for an old Earth was so overwhelming in the mid 1800’s that a guy named Philip Henry Gosse wrote a book called “Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot” in 1857, 2 years before Darwin published “Origin of Species”. In the book, Gosse argued that God implanted a fake geologic history into the Earth. The response wasn’t that great:
“Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this—that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes Deus quidam deceptor [‘God who is sometimes a deceiver’]. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in the one single case of your newly created scars on the pandanus trunk, your newly created Adam’s navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here … I cannot … believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.” --Reverend Charles Kingsley
As others have mentioned, you can continue to pretend as if geology is an atheist conspiracy going back more than 200 years, but people you witness to will see right through it. Why should they trust what you say about the Bible and God if you so willingly misrepresent known facts about geology?
And yet a whole new generation of Christians came to accept the truth of Geology’s findings… and made adjustments to how to interpret the Genesis account of creation - - so that there would no longer be this conflict between truth in nature, and what truths the Bible was bringing to humanity.
If Jesus was a YEC I’d either have to become a YEC or stop being a Christian. According to our Faith, Jesus was God and had the full knowledge of God. To deny Jesus’ omniscience is basically a defeater for Christianity.
Where do you get that? So anyone who accepts the kenotic approach in theology is not a Christian? Even people who don’t accept the kenotic approach acknowledge that Jesus’ access to divine omniscience was limited. Calvin said, “For we know that in Christ the two natures were united into one person in such a manner that each retained its own properties; and more especially the divine nature was in a state of repose, and did not at all exert itself, whenever it was necessary that the human nature should act separately, according to what was peculiar to itself, in discharging the office of mediator. There would be no impropriety, therefore in saying that Christ, who knew all things (John 21:17), was ignorant of something in respect of his perception as a man; for otherwise he could not have been liable to grief and anxiety, and could not have been like us (Hebrews 2:17).”
<<Where do you get that? So anyone who accepts the kenotic approach in theology is not a Christian? Even people who don’t accept the kenotic approach acknowledge that Jesus’ access to divine omniscience was limited.>>
The Council of Chalcedon said that Jesus had both the full nature of God and full nature of man while He was on earth. If that’s the case, I don’t know how He could be anything but omniscient. I don’t know of any Church Father who said that Jesus made mistakes or was ignorant. With all due respect, I think to deny Jesus’ omniscience would be at the very least contradicting 2,000 years of established Christian orthodoxy.
<<Calvin said, “For we know that in Christ the two natures were united into one person in such a manner that each retained its own properties; and more especially the divine nature was in a state of repose, and did not at all exert itself, whenever it was necessary that the human nature should act separately, according to what was peculiar to itself, in discharging the office of mediator. There would be no impropriety, therefore in saying that Christ, who knew all things (John 21:17), was ignorant of something in respect of his perception as a man; for otherwise he could not have been liable to grief and anxiety, and could not have been like us (Hebrews 2:17).”>>
I don’t think that Calvin would have said that Jesus made mistakes. It seems like all the Church Fathers agreed He never made mistakes. I would personally have a hard time remaining a Christian if I thought Jesus made mistakes. It would seem like such a grave concession.
It seems though that if somebody is fully God and God is omniscient, Jesus couldn’t make mistakes though. With all due respect, I don’t know how it would work. I’m not too educated on Christology, but it seems hard to see.
Yes, that would be more controversial. This conversation is from a while ago, but when I used “make mistakes” I meant it in the sense of “be momentarily mistaken because of limited knowledge or limited human perception” not “do something wrong.” I personally don’t see how someone who is fully human could live life and never call someone the wrong name, or count something wrong the first time and have to correct it, or do a double-take because they thought they saw something that was not actually there. Those are just the kind of things that happen when you have a human brain, which Jesus had. I don’t think it impinges on his divinity to acknowledge his full humanity and the limitations of being bound to a human body.
It seems that the type of mistake we’re talking about is a huge theological one. The age of the earth is a theologically important question, as is a historical Adam and Eve. If Jesus was wrong about that, it would be hugely problematic under any definition of Him having a divine nature.
I don’t know if it’s the case that error is inherent to being human. It seems like being human involves being physically vulnerable and capable of disease, but making errors does not seem to be in that category.
Why? The Bible never establishes the actual age of the earth.
I must have missed it. When did Jesus refer to Adam? Jesus only quoted from Genesis once and that was in reference to marriage not the existence of Adam and Eve.
Why? The Bible never establishes the actual age of the earth.
No, but it seems like if Jesus believed erroneously that there was no death before the Fall, that would kind of be a big problem.
I must have missed it. When did Jesus refer to Adam? Jesus only quoted from Genesis once and that was in reference to marriage not the existence of Adam and Eve.
Well right, He quoted about how God made humans male and female, which is a reference to Adam and Eve.
I think sin and mistakes are different. Your idea as I understand it would seemingly have Jesus scoring a perfect score on the SAT (including the English essay) if it were put before him.