Is Jesus God?

[I's2C]

Holy Scripture doesn't specifically support reincarnation or subsequent incarnation of most human beings, God evidently created each of us at unique times.

Dont have any idea how you got reincarnation out of what I said there is no reincarnation of any kind. CHRIST was before, HE was always for HE is GOD omnipresent.

 

[oikonomia]

Yep.

I believe Christ laid aside a certain expression identified with essence and nature of God's Person.
Hebrews 1:3 says [the Son] Who, being the effulgence of His glory and the impress of His substance . . .

I think a divine splendor of unapproachable radiant light He laid aside.
And He came in the fashion of a man, a slave who could even die.
So in His eternal preexistence He had a form of God He laid aside in incarnation.

Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a treasure to be grasped,

He did not consider it a treasure He didn't have but one He did have.
And He was miraculously willing to lay this aside.
Although the Lord was equal with God, He did not consider this equlity a trease to be grasped and retained.
Somehow there was no coveting in Him.

He laid aside the form of God, not the nature of God. And He took up the form of a man.

He lived a perfect human life for thirty three and a half years, died and rose.
Now in resurrection He wore back to the eternal throne of God the human nature.

So He was the only begotten who rose with additional status - the Firstborn Son of God.
He brought God into man in incarnation. He brought man into God in resurrection.
He did not merely bring ONE man into God. He brought man [all the saved] into God to follow Him.
He mingled divinity with humanity is resurrection as the Firstborn Son begotten on the day of His resurrection.

So He is the beginning of a new humanity - man mingled with God.
You probably know to mingle two or more things is to combine them in such
a way that the parts are distinguishable in the combination.

In the One who is forever on the eternal throne of God is God-man.
He is "the beginning" of a new humanity.

And He is the Head of the Body, the church; He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that He Himself might have the first place in all things; (Col. 1:18)

These things says the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God: (Rev. 3:14b)

I tend to be verbose. So I stop here leaving much unsaid and much some might object to.
What do you think so far?

 

[Ceallaigh]

I believe Christ laid aside a certain expression identified with essence and nature of God's Person.
Hebrews 1:3 says [the Son] Who, being the effulgence of His glory and the impress of His substance . . .

I think a divine splendor of unapproachable radiant light He laid aside.
And He came in the fashion of a man, a slave who could who could even die.
So in His eternal preexistence He had a form of God He laid aside in incarnation.

Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a treasure to be grasped,

He did not consider it a treasure He didn't have but one He did have.
And He was miraculously willing to laid this aside.
Although the Lord was equal with God, He did not consider this equlity a trease to be grasped and retained.
Somehow there was no coveting in Him.

He laid aside the form of God, not the nature of God. And He took up the form of a man.

He lived a perfect human life for thirty three and a half years, died and rose.
Now in resurrection He wore back to the eternal throne of God the human nature.

So He was the only begotten who rose with additional status - the Firstborn Son of God.
He brought God into man in incarnation. He brought man into God in resurrection.
He did not merely bring ONE man into God. He brought man [all the saved] into God to follow Him.
He mingled divinity with humanity is resurrection as the Firstborn Son begotten on the day of His resurrection.

So He is the beginning of a new humanity - man mingled with God.
You probably know to mingle two or more things is to combine them in such
a way that they are the parts are distinguishable in the combination.

In the One who is forever on the eternal throne of God is God-man.
He is "the beginning" of a new humanity.

And He is the Head of the Body, the church; He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that He Himself might have the first place in all things; (Col. 1:18)

These things says the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God: (Rev. 3:14b)

I tend to be verbose. So I stop here leaving much unsaid and much some might object to.
What do you think so far?

I agree.

 

[The Liturgist]

The Word of God is begotten of the Father before all ages. This means that the Son does not have aseity (Independence). Also, the Word took flesh, so He does not have immutability. And the flesh is not simple in composition. Sure, He has omnipotence, but He seems to lack omniscience as He does not know the Hour. What am I missing?

The error is that you are engaging in actual monophysitism as opposed to the Miaphysite Christology of Oriental Orthodoxy. The formula of Christological Orthodoxy shared by the Chalcedonians and the Oriental Orthodox and indeed the modern day Assyrian Church of the East is that in the incarnation Christ took on our humanity without change, confusion, separation or division towards His divinity.

In general, the Muslim apologists you are dealing with are being dishonest, in that they are using a strawman argument by claiming things about Christ that no denomination has believed since the Monophysite followers of Eutyches degenerated into Tritheism in the Sixth Century under John Philoponus.

My advice to you as a friend is to avoid dialogue with Muslim apologists as the Islamic religion actually justifies the use of dissimulation (taqiya) and other deceptive tactics, and Muslim apologists have been repeatedly caught lying in debates with Christians.

Isn't the idea that Jesus laid aside (put on hold so to speak) certain godly attributes he had before the Incarnation, and then took them up again when he returned to heaven?

No, this is a form of Monophysitism, since it implies that Christ was changed in the Incarnation. Monophysitism, or Eutychianism is universally regarded as a heresy, not only by Chalcedonians but also by the Oriental Orthodox Christians such as my dear friend @dzheremi who are often falsely accused of it. This is in contrast to Nestorianism which is unfortunately enjoying something of a renaissance. The correct Christology is a Chalcedonian or Miaphysite Christology which rejects the idea of change in the incarnation, as well as confusion of properties, and the separation or division of the divine and human natures hypostatically united in the person of Christ.

 

[oikonomia]

I agree.

What a wonderful God and Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ - inexhaustable, rich, sweet, all-inclusive and
able to meet our every need. He is able to meet fully every need of God as well.

 

[Ceallaigh]

No, this is a form of Monophysitism, since it implies that Christ was changed in the Incarnation. Monophysitism, or Eutychianism is universally regarded as a heresy, not only by Chalcedonians but also by the Oriental Orthodox Christians such as my dear friend @dzheremi who are often falsely accused of it. This is in contrast to Nestorianism which is unfortunately enjoying something of a renaissance. The correct Christology is a Chalcedonian or Miaphysite Christology which rejects the idea of change in the incarnation, as well as confusion of properties, and the separation or division of the divine and human natures hypostatically united in the person of Christ.

I said that the notion is Christ Himself put certain Godly attributes He had on hold. I think most Christians believe that Jesus could have obliterated His enemies any time he wanted to rather than choosing to go as a sheep to slaughter. That the only reason anyone had any kind of power over Him whatsoever is because He allowed it.

 

[Aussie Pete]

The incommunicable attributes of God are:

Aseity (Independence)

Infinity

Immutability (unchangeability)

Simplicity


Does Jesus Christ possess these attributes? And in what sense is he true God from true God as per the Nicene Creed?

There is no doubt that Jesus is God. He said so Himself on a number of occasions. The rest of the New Testament confirms it. The first chapter of John also confirms it. I don't know where you get your "attributes of God" from. I go by who the Bible says Jesus is, not by my own opinions as to His attributes.

 

[Aussie Pete]

I said that the notion is Christ Himself put certain Godly attributes He had on hold. I think most Christians believe that Jesus could have obliterated His enemies any time he wanted to rather than choosing to go as a sheep to slaughter. That the only reason anyone had any kind of power over Him whatsoever is because He allowed it.

Philippians says that Jesus emptied Himself of all that made Him God (2:7). That does not mean that He stopped being God.

 

[The Liturgist]

I said that the notion is Christ Himself put certain Godly attributes He had on hold. I think most Christians believe that Jesus could have obliterated His enemies any time he wanted to rather than choosing to go as a sheep to slaughter. That the only reason anyone had any kind of power over Him whatsoever is because He allowed it.

That would still constitute change in the Incarnation, and thus depart from the anti-Monophysite side of the formula of Christological Orthodoxy. Chalcedonian and Oriental Orthodox Christians agree that in the Incarnation Christ put on our humanity without change to His divine nature, as Eutyches suggested, and also contra-Eutyches without confusion between the human and divine natures, which to be clear, you did not suggest, but either change of the divine nature or confusion of the divine and human natures or a failure to take on our human nature as it was at His incarnation and to retain it and glorify it constitutes Monophysitism, rather than the Miaphysite Oriental Orthodox or the Duophysite Chalcedonian, or the revised Assyrian Christological formula adopted under Mar Dinkha IV in 1974 which took the Christology of Mar Babai the Great and removed the last traces of Nestorian influence (Nestorius, on the other hand, argued for separation between the humanity and divinity of Christ, which I believe could be implicit in what you are suggesting).

Your idea is furthermore inconsistent with the Patristic doctrines of Soteriologically, specifically the Athanasian principle outlined by St. Athanasius of Alexandria at the Council of Nicaea and in his book On The Incarnation, that Christ through His incarnation restored the divine image in us. The soteriological principle of Theosis, taught by the early church fathers and by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, is that as St. Athanasius put it, God became man so that we might become god, that is to say, that we might be recreated in the image of god that Adam and Eve were originally created in, and become through grace what Christ is by nature, which is not to say members of the Trinity, but rather, that in the resurrection we will gain the abilities we see in the risen Christ, which are the result of His glorification of our fallen human nature through His victorious sacrifice on the Cross. Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, as the Orthodox sing on Pascha (Easter Sunday).

If instead our Lord was weak like us merely because He set aside His divine abilities, it would suggest that after His resurrection, he simply picked them up again, without substantially changing what we will become in the Eschaton, which contradicts what St. Paul and the other Apostles taught, that we shall be changed, and raised incorruptible. Additionally, it also fails to explain why Christ our True God was able to perform miracles only God could perform, such as resurrecting Lazarus from the dead, Himself, personally, even after putting on our mortal human nature (we know those miracles were not performed by God the Father, because that would constitute people having seen the Father, and scripture makes it clear the Father is seen only in the person of Jesus Christ, and likewise we know that they were not performed by the Spirit, for the Spirit was sent to us as our paraclete by Christ on Pentecost, just as the Spirit sent Him into the world and ascended from Him at His baptism in the Jordan, which we celebrated yesterday (the 6th, the Feast of Theophany). The New Testament is careful to credit each person of the Trinity, which is revealed in the New Testament, with their acts, so that we can understand who they are more specifically (and then in retrospect we can see the three persons of the Trinity more clearly in the Old Testament). Now, these three persons are one God, but they are nonetheless distinct persons, who share a common essence from the Father (with Christ begotten of the Father before all ages, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father), and are coequal and coeternal, but who are hypostatically and personally distinct. Christ our God also has both a human will and a divine will (or some Oriental Orthodox might say a will that is fully human and fully divine without change, confusion, separation or division), in contrast to what the Monothelites taught, that Christ had only a divine will, or what the Apollinarians taught, that Christ was a human being with a divine soul.*

By the way, to be absolutely clear, I am not accusing you or anyone else of heresy, or characterizing your views as heretical, rather, I am attempting to convey the imperative of adhering to the doctrinal formula for Christological Orthodoxy shared by the Chalcedonian majority of Christians with the Oriental Orthodox, and since 1974 at least, and I would argue since the sixth century, with the Assyrians** which is predicated on the need to avoid the two extremes of Nestorianism and Monophysitsm***, for this facilitates the soteriological model taught by the Early Church and consistently taught since, and indeed, Theosis might sound strange if you have not heard of it before, but in the West it has been taught by John Wesley, for example, who called it “Entire Sanctification”, and versions of it were also taught by Martin Luther and even John Calvin (our friend @hedrick mentioned this fact to me some time back) and also by the Roman Catholics and numerous other Western Christian denominations; indeed the entirety of traditional liturgical churches whether Protestant, Orthodox, Assyrian, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Catholics in communion with Rome, teach some variation on Theosis, whether that is the very straightforward Entire Sanctification that was taught by John Wesley, which is basically a direct translation, or the somewhat different perspective of the Beatific Vision stressed in the mystical theology of Roman Rite Catholicism, which is nonetheless quite lovely.

Christology is a complicated subject and unfortunately a great many non-liturgical churches such as non-denominational megachurches, some of the Calvinist Baptist churches and independent Calvinist ministers, for instance, Rev. John MacArthur, have in recent years inadvertently revitalized old Christological errors such as Nestorianism, often for very misguided reasons, for example, out of a desire to avoid the veneration of St. Mary as the Theotokos, or birth giver of God (even though Nestorius himself actually accepted the term Theotokos, but he did introduce the Nestorian heresy as a means of reducing the veneration of St. Mary and he did promote the term Christotokos. The fundamental error of Nestorianism is of course the denial that St. Mary, the Theotokos, gave birth to God in the Incarnation, which is extremely problematic for the doctrine of the Incarnation because it requires a divison be imposed between the man Jesus and the divine Logos, and it also breaks the Patristic soteriological model. Additionally, Trinitarian theology is not being taught as clearly as it once was; many Christians become so accustomed to hearing to Jesus Christ referred to only as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit referred to only as the Holy Spirit, due to some pastors failing to use the Trinitarian phrase “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, One God, Amen”, for example, that when Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit is referred to as God or made the subject of prayer, they become confused, despite confessing a belief in the Trinity.

Christianity at its core is unique among the religions of the world because, aside from being the only true religion, it is also both incarnational and Trinitarian. God is love because the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons, exist for all eternity united in perfect love, and we are created in their image and our vocation is to form an icon of God in our relationships with our families, our neighbors, our spouses, our fellow Christians, and humanity as a whole. And we are saved because God became man and died in order to show us what it means to be human, as Fr. John Behr of Oxford University taught when he was dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York for many years (before succeeding in the position of teaching Eastern Christian studies at Oxford after the health of the emeritus professor Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, began to fade prior to his repose shortly before the repose of Queen Elizabeth II, memory eternal.

*The Apollinarians were also Chiliasts; the clause of the Nicene Creed in the current recension adopted at the Council of Constantinople at 381 AD that asserts, based on Scripture, that the Kingdom of Christ shall be without end was intended specifically to refute Apollinarian Chiliasm, interestingly enough, and it is for this reason that I regard the premillenial dispensationalism first taught by John Nelson Darby as being inconsistent with the Nicene Creed in its present form, although it would be compatible with the form adopted in 325 AD at Nicaea, but that form of the Creed proved inadequete, as semi-Arians, Macedonianists (also known as Pneumatomacchians, who denied the deity of God the Holy Spirit) and Apollinarians were able to confess it, which is the main reason why it was revised at the Council of Constantinople convened by St. Gregory the Theologian after the death of the last Arian emperor Valens and the coming to power of Emperor Theodosius I, who ended the persecution of Christians by Arians which had plagued the early Church since the death of St. Constantine, for even though Emperor Constantine convened Nicaea and supported it, he fell under the influence of the crypto-Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who baptized him on his deathbed, and thus won over the loyalty of his son, the future emperor Constantius, who became a devoted Arian, and every Emperor from Constantius through Valens, except for Julian the Apostate (who ironically reduced the persecution of Christians, because in his mind Christianity was Arianism, and the Orthodox Christian faith was a heresy, and sought to exact revenge on behalf of Neo-Platonist Paganism and distress the ruling Arian hierarchy by reducing the persecution of the actual Christians, and also of the Jews, who he authorized to attempt to rebuild their temple (this did not get anywhere; he was in power for only a year or so).

**Some erroneously call the Assyrian Church of the East Nestorian Church, but this is not technically accurate; the Church of the East did briefly embrace Nestorian Christology, before replacing it with what amounted to a translation of Chalcedon by Mar Babai the Great in the early sixth century; rather, the Church of the East was a church initially subordinate to the ancient Patriarchate of Antioch, which was responsible for those Christian dioceses outside the Asian borders of the Roman Empire, such as the Christians in Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia Felix (now known as Yemen) and the Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala in India (who were evangelized by St. Thomas from members of both the Kochin Jews who had been in Kerala since the time of Alexander the Great, such as the famous Sassoon family, whose scions include Vidal Sassoon, but who mostly emigrated to Israel after the end of the British Raj, although their Paradesi synagogue is still intact) and the gentiles, the latter action resulting in his martyrdom by an enraged Hindu prince wielding a javelin. Alas this would not be the last instance of violent persecution of Christians by the Hindus, which has been increasing in India in recent years with the increased popularity of Hindu nationalism.

*** Monophysitism itself is often called Eutychianism, particularly by those who incorrectly accuse the Oriental Orthodox of being Monophysites.

 

[The Liturgist]

Philippians says that Jesus emptied Himself of all that made Him God (2:7). That does not mean that He stopped being God.

This is correct, insofar as putting on humanity while remaining God would have caused Him, in His humanity, to become part of creation, in an act of extreme humility. However, the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum means that all of the properties from His divine and human natures are communicated to the other nature, which is why St. Mary is the Theotokos, which is why we can say God became a man, and which is why we can assert that God died to save us from death, for death could not consume that which cannot be circumscribed, and was itself swallowed up in victory. Communicatio idiomatum is an integral part of Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and much Reformed/Calvinist theology. And indeed, the reason why the early church rejected Nestorianism, more than anything else, was because of its incompatibility with Communicatio idiomatum through its artificial division of Christ into divinity and humanity existing in parallel but not united hypostatically or substantially.

 

[The Liturgist]

There is no doubt that Jesus is God. He said so Himself on a number of occasions. The rest of the New Testament confirms it. The first chapter of John also confirms it. I don't know where you get your "attributes of God" from. I go by who the Bible says Jesus is, not by my own opinions as to His attributes.

Indeed, the specific idea that each person of the Trinity must have Aseity is actually Tritheist, and is incompatible with Trinitarian theology. It is worth noting that the Monophysite sect founded by Eutyches had, within the span of a hundred years, degenerated into Tritheism, by the time it was led by the Egyptian philosopher John Philoponus in the sixth century.

Thus ironically Mormons, who think they believe in the Trinity but who are Tritheists, are the only known variant of Christianity whose beliefs ascribe aseity to each Person of the Holy Trinity. In Orthodoxy we make a point of referring to the Trinity as the Holy and Undivided Trinity because we believe in one God and the Aseity of God is not divided between the three persons of the Trinity but is shared betwixt them in the unity of the divine essence of God the Father, from whom the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds, but that does not mean that the Father, although unoriginate, exists with an Aseity lacking in the Son and in the Holy Spirit; to argue this would be to engage in a crypto-Arianiasm and a crypto-Pneumatomacchianism.

Also, regarding the fundamental dishonesty of Muslim apologists, it is worth noting that a great many Muslims believe in the doctrine of tawhid (earlier I inadvertantly said Tawhid when I meant Taqiya, which they also believe in, Taqiya referring to dissimulation, that is to say, misrepresenting their faith when it is advantageous to do so, which we as Christians should never do, because Christ has promised us that when we confess Him before men, He shall confess us before the Father), and tawhid, meaning oneness, includes a rejection in the idea that God even has attributes.

So debating whether or not Christ had certain divine attributes with Muslims who very possibly subscribe to the interpretation of Tawhid that rejects that the Muslim deity has any attributes whatsoever is fundamentally pointless, and is a losing proposition, because the Muslim apologists have essentially cornered you @Andrewn , and I say this with love and affection as a friend, into a situation where you are defending not only a strawman argument, but actually, the Christological constructs of a heterodox or heretical offshoot of Christianity such as the Eutychian Tritheism or the Mormon religion.

By the way, it is worth noting why the Monophysites became Tritheists. They believed that when Christ became incarnate, His humanity, which, like in Chalcedonian or Oriental Orthodox Christology, is assumed through being born of the Virgin Mary, was dissolved into His divinity like a drop of water in the ocean, and thus his humanity and divinity are changed and confused. This has the effect of causing our Lord to no longer be, in the Monophysite Christology, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, just as it also has the effect of causing Him to no longer be consubstantial with us, in contradiction to the Nicene Creed. If we assert that Christ is no longer consubstantial, or of one essence, with God the Father, as is confessed in the Nicene Creed with the Greek phrase homoousios, yet quixotically want to avoid Arianism, the only option available is to say that the Son and the Holy Spirit are themselves Gods that have aseity and do not share the essence of the Father but rather are merely His offspring, as it were, whhich is also what Mormonism believes.

So in a sense, by making the conversation be about supposed attributes of God, which most Muslims deny that God even has on the basis of the doctrine of tawhid, or oneness, they engaged in a supreme act of taqiya, or dissimulation, tricking you into questioning the deity of Christ, which was their objective, by suggesting that Christ, to be fully God, ought to have an attribute individually that is not shared with the Father or the Holy Spirit despite His consubstantiality with them. To me, the experiences you had @Andrewn are experiences I would find very upsetting, because I have encountered many Christians who sought to engage in a fair debate with Muslim apologists and experienced intentional dishonesty of the form commonly referred to as gaslighting, and the effect is often extremely confusing and demoralizing, and this is by design on the part of Muslim apologists. They are trying to undermine your faith, using dishonest techniques, because the Islamic religion sanctions dishonesty in religious dialogue on the basis of dissimulation, and this is because Islam, as a religion, is a cult, not unlike Scientology, but with a greater prediliiction towards violence and genocide (although I suspect if there were many more scientologists and if the leaders of scientology cared more about amassing personal power rather than amassing private fortunes, Scientologists would engage in jihads against Christians with the same ferocity we have come to expect from Islamic fundamentalism.

The only Muslims who I have anything positive to say about are some of the Sufis, and they themselves engage in Taqiya of neccessity, because several Sufi sects are syncretic hybrids of Christian and Islamic theological concepts, and if their theology were disclosed to the Sunni or Shi’a mainstream, they would be hunted down and killed, in the manner in which the Yazidi men in Sinjar, Iraq were hunted down and killed by ISIS in 2015, their women and children sold into slavery and being made the victims of human trafficking and rape. And these Sufis generally do not engage in polemical disputations with Christians because it would expose the connections between their religion, our religion, and also certain other religions such as Zoroastrianism and Kurdish Paganism, which they dare not expose for if they were to do so, the other Muslims would kill them. However, not all Sufi sects represent this kind of religious syncretism, for there are some Sufi sects connected with extreme violence towards, and persecution of, Christians and even other Muslims, for example, the Ansari of Sudan, who followed Muhammed Ahmed al Mahdi, who I regard as the first modern Islamic terrorist, who killed every non-Sudanese person and every non-Muslim in Khartoum and every Sudanese Muslim who rejected his claims to be the Mahdi (who is sort of like the Islamic messiah, although Muslims also believe Jesus Christ will return, and they believe that among other things, the Mahdi and our Lord will, like the stars of a 1980s action movie, go around and exact vengeance on all of the infidels, which is to say, those of us who profess actual faith in Jesus Christ.

 

[The Liturgist]

True. But the question is whether Jesus' divine nature has _all_ the attributes of God the Father.

So to recapitulate my prior post, you were I fear misled into a confusion about what the Nicene Creed teaches, by your Muslim correspondants.

Jesus Christ does not have a divine nature distinct from that of the Father. Rather, his divine essence is the divine essence of the Father. This is why the Creed has said, since its 325 initial edition, that Jesus Christ is of the same essence (homoousios) with the Father. And the Spirit likewise proceeds from the Father and also shares in His essence.

We believe in one God, and all three persons of the Godhead share in the qualities and perfections of the divine essence, but the divine essence is not itself a person of the Trinity but rather is the essence of the unoriginate Father which He shares with the uncreated Son and the uncreated Holy Spirit. I recently had a conversation with @ArmyMatt , who alas cannot join us here as he does not post outside of The Ancient Way forum, on this point in order to have something of what airline pilots call a checkride on my understanding of Christology and Trinitarian theology, and I believe I am expressing things correctly (@prodromos can certainly verify if I am correct on this point), but I would encourage you to talk to @ArmyMatt via PM or using the St. Basil’s Hall part of the Ancient Way Subforum, as he is the most knowledgeable of those members of Christianforums who have formal theological training with regards to incarnational Theology, Christology, and Triadology, and I believe he can clarify any lingering confusion or distress that may have occurred.

I want to also say that I appreciate your attempt to witness the Christian faith before Muslim apologists; the problem is they do not fight fair, but will intentionally gaslight honest Christians like yourself and many other friends of mine who have tried to debate them, and it requires quite a bit of careful study into the Islamic religion to take them on, and what they will do if you then actually make progress, in many cases, is to stop debating you, or they will accuse you falsely of Islamophobia. For example, if anyone dares mention the immoral and disgusting marriage of Muhammed to Aisha, who was six at the time of their wedding, which was consummated when she was only nine, they will resort to that tactic, and it is extremely distressing.

If you are interested in engaging in apologetics with Muslims, I would also be willing to assist you personally, as witnessing to them is important, but it does require a very thick skin and it can also be dangerous. The most effective evangelism I have seen towards Muslims has been when Christians have engaged in acts of supreme mercy towards them. For example, in Sinai, St. Catharine’s Monastery owes its continued existence largely to the fact that the Bedouin tribes in the area where it exists contain some Christian members, and many others who revere the monks, for the monks have consistently provided them with medical care. One of the best Christian missionaries working with Muslims I am aware of is a Roman Catholic hermit, Brother Dismas Mary, who is a medical doctor who moved to the Gambia and provides free medical care to the very poor Muslim people in the area around his hermitage, where he is the only doctor and also the only Christian cleric covering a fairly large area: Blue Hermit

Thus he is making progress in the tradition of those saints venerated as Unmercenary Healers, like Saints Cosimas and Damian.

 

[The Liturgist]

If I'm understanding you correctly, we don't want to say that the Son only is YHWH. According to the Bible, YHWH is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God: YHWH. But YHWH is only made manifest through the Son, in the Old Testament Theophanies and finally in the person of Jesus Christ.

And yes, all Christian churches, including the one I belong to, confess the Trinity and both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus.

The name Jesus is a Hellenization of the Hebrew name Joshua, which also exists in Judean Aramaic as Yeshua and in West Syriac Aramaic as Isho, which literally means “YHWH saves,” so it is quite apt. And YHWH literally means “I am that I am.” So when Jesus Christ declared “Before Abraham was, I AM,” he was expressly declaring His status as the incarnation of God.

 

[Ceallaigh]

That would still constitute change in the Incarnation, and thus depart from the anti-Monophysite side of the formula of Christological Orthodoxy. Chalcedonian and Oriental Orthodox Christians agree that in the Incarnation Christ put on our humanity without change to His divine nature, as Eutyches suggested, and also contra-Eutyches without confusion between the human and divine natures, which to be clear, you did not suggest, but either change of the divine nature or confusion of the divine and human natures or a failure to take on our human nature as it was at His incarnation and to retain it and glorify it constitutes Monophysitism, rather than the Miaphysite Oriental Orthodox or the Duophysite Chalcedonian, or the revised Assyrian Christological formula adopted under Mar Dinkha IV in 1974 which took the Christology of Mar Babai the Great and removed the last traces of Nestorian influence (Nestorius, on the other hand, argued for separation between the humanity and divinity of Christ, which I believe could be implicit in what you are suggesting).

Your idea is furthermore inconsistent with the Patristic doctrines of Soteriologically, specifically the Athanasian principle outlined by St. Athanasius of Alexandria at the Council of Nicaea and in his book On The Incarnation, that Christ through His incarnation restored the divine image in us. The soteriological principle of Theosis, taught by the early church fathers and by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, is that as St. Athanasius put it, God became man so that we might become god, that is to say, that we might be recreated in the image of god that Adam and Eve were originally created in, and become through grace what Christ is by nature, which is not to say members of the Trinity, but rather, that in the resurrection we will gain the abilities we see in the risen Christ, which are the result of His glorification of our fallen human nature through His victorious sacrifice on the Cross. Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, as the Orthodox sing on Pascha (Easter Sunday).

If instead our Lord was weak like us merely because He set aside His divine abilities, it would suggest that after His resurrection, he simply picked them up again, without substantially changing what we will become in the Eschaton, which contradicts what St. Paul and the other Apostles taught, that we shall be changed, and raised incorruptible. Additionally, it also fails to explain why Christ our True God was able to perform miracles only God could perform, such as resurrecting Lazarus from the dead, Himself, personally, even after putting on our mortal human nature (we know those miracles were not performed by God the Father, because that would constitute people having seen the Father, and scripture makes it clear the Father is seen only in the person of Jesus Christ, and likewise we know that they were not performed by the Spirit, for the Spirit was sent to us as our paraclete by Christ on Pentecost, just as the Spirit sent Him into the world and ascended from Him at His baptism in the Jordan, which we celebrated yesterday (the 6th, the Feast of Theophany). The New Testament is careful to credit each person of the Trinity, which is revealed in the New Testament, with their acts, so that we can understand who they are more specifically (and then in retrospect we can see the three persons of the Trinity more clearly in the Old Testament). Now, these three persons are one God, but they are nonetheless distinct persons, who share a common essence from the Father (with Christ begotten of the Father before all ages, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father), and are coequal and coeternal, but who are hypostatically and personally distinct. Christ our God also has both a human will and a divine will (or some Oriental Orthodox might say a will that is fully human and fully divine without change, confusion, separation or division), in contrast to what the Monothelites taught, that Christ had only a divine will, or what the Apollinarians taught, that Christ was a human being with a divine soul.*

By the way, to be absolutely clear, I am not accusing you or anyone else of heresy, or characterizing your views as heretical, rather, I am attempting to convey the imperative of adhering to the doctrinal formula for Christological Orthodoxy shared by the Chalcedonian majority of Christians with the Oriental Orthodox, and since 1974 at least, and I would argue since the sixth century, with the Assyrians** which is predicated on the need to avoid the two extremes of Nestorianism and Monophysitsm***, for this facilitates the soteriological model taught by the Early Church and consistently taught since, and indeed, Theosis might sound strange if you have not heard of it before, but in the West it has been taught by John Wesley, for example, who called it “Entire Sanctification”, and versions of it were also taught by Martin Luther and even John Calvin (our friend @hedrick mentioned this fact to me some time back) and also by the Roman Catholics and numerous other Western Christian denominations; indeed the entirety of traditional liturgical churches whether Protestant, Orthodox, Assyrian, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Catholics in communion with Rome, teach some variation on Theosis, whether that is the very straightforward Entire Sanctification that was taught by John Wesley, which is basically a direct translation, or the somewhat different perspective of the Beatific Vision stressed in the mystical theology of Roman Rite Catholicism, which is nonetheless quite lovely.

Christology is a complicated subject and unfortunately a great many non-liturgical churches such as non-denominational megachurches, some of the Calvinist Baptist churches and independent Calvinist ministers, for instance, Rev. John MacArthur, have in recent years inadvertently revitalized old Christological errors such as Nestorianism, often for very misguided reasons, for example, out of a desire to avoid the veneration of St. Mary as the Theotokos, or birth giver of God (even though Nestorius himself actually accepted the term Theotokos, but he did introduce the Nestorian heresy as a means of reducing the veneration of St. Mary and he did promote the term Christotokos. The fundamental error of Nestorianism is of course the denial that St. Mary, the Theotokos, gave birth to God in the Incarnation, which is extremely problematic for the doctrine of the Incarnation because it requires a divison be imposed between the man Jesus and the divine Logos, and it also breaks the Patristic soteriological model. Additionally, Trinitarian theology is not being taught as clearly as it once was; many Christians become so accustomed to hearing to Jesus Christ referred to only as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit referred to only as the Holy Spirit, due to some pastors failing to use the Trinitarian phrase “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, One God, Amen”, for example, that when Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit is referred to as God or made the subject of prayer, they become confused, despite confessing a belief in the Trinity.

Christianity at its core is unique among the religions of the world because, aside from being the only true religion, it is also both incarnational and Trinitarian. God is love because the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons, exist for all eternity united in perfect love, and we are created in their image and our vocation is to form an icon of God in our relationships with our families, our neighbors, our spouses, our fellow Christians, and humanity as a whole. And we are saved because God became man and died in order to show us what it means to be human, as Fr. John Behr of Oxford University taught when he was dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York for many years (before succeeding in the position of teaching Eastern Christian studies at Oxford after the health of the emeritus professor Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, began to fade prior to his repose shortly before the repose of Queen Elizabeth II, memory eternal.

*The Apollinarians were also Chiliasts; the clause of the Nicene Creed in the current recension adopted at the Council of Constantinople at 381 AD that asserts, based on Scripture, that the Kingdom of Christ shall be without end was intended specifically to refute Apollinarian Chiliasm, interestingly enough, and it is for this reason that I regard the premillenial dispensationalism first taught by John Nelson Darby as being inconsistent with the Nicene Creed in its present form, although it would be compatible with the form adopted in 325 AD at Nicaea, but that form of the Creed proved inadequete, as semi-Arians, Macedonianists (also known as Pneumatomacchians, who denied the deity of God the Holy Spirit) and Apollinarians were able to confess it, which is the main reason why it was revised at the Council of Constantinople convened by St. Gregory the Theologian after the death of the last Arian emperor Valens and the coming to power of Emperor Theodosius I, who ended the persecution of Christians by Arians which had plagued the early Church since the death of St. Constantine, for even though Emperor Constantine convened Nicaea and supported it, he fell under the influence of the crypto-Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who baptized him on his deathbed, and thus won over the loyalty of his son, the future emperor Constantius, who became a devoted Arian, and every Emperor from Constantius through Valens, except for Julian the Apostate (who ironically reduced the persecution of Christians, because in his mind Christianity was Arianism, and the Orthodox Christian faith was a heresy, and sought to exact revenge on behalf of Neo-Platonist Paganism and distress the ruling Arian hierarchy by reducing the persecution of the actual Christians, and also of the Jews, who he authorized to attempt to rebuild their temple (this did not get anywhere; he was in power for only a year or so).

**Some erroneously call the Assyrian Church of the East Nestorian Church, but this is not technically accurate; the Church of the East did briefly embrace Nestorian Christology, before replacing it with what amounted to a translation of Chalcedon by Mar Babai the Great in the early sixth century; rather, the Church of the East was a church initially subordinate to the ancient Patriarchate of Antioch, which was responsible for those Christian dioceses outside the Asian borders of the Roman Empire, such as the Christians in Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia Felix (now known as Yemen) and the Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala in India (who were evangelized by St. Thomas from members of both the Kochin Jews who had been in Kerala since the time of Alexander the Great, such as the famous Sassoon family, whose scions include Vidal Sassoon, but who mostly emigrated to Israel after the end of the British Raj, although their Paradesi synagogue is still intact) and the gentiles, the latter action resulting in his martyrdom by an enraged Hindu prince wielding a javelin. Alas this would not be the last instance of violent persecution of Christians by the Hindus, which has been increasing in India in recent years with the increased popularity of Hindu nationalism.

*** Monophysitism itself is often called Eutychianism, particularly by those who incorrectly accuse the Oriental Orthodox of being Monophysites

You must think I'm a walking encyclopedia with an IQ of 200 to follow that. Although I do take note that you're not appealing to scripture at all.

 

[The Liturgist]

But what about the incommunicable attributes specific to God? Does Jesus have all of them?

These attributes are specific to the Divine Nature which all three persons of the Holy Trinity partake of, which comes from the unoriginate Father.

Again, remember that Muslims often do not believe that God has attributes; under Tawhid, they regard him as beyond attribution and as being entirely transcenddant. Whereas in Christianity, God is both transcendant and immanent: He is transcendant according to His divine nature, and immanent according to the humanity assumed by Jesus Christ without change, confusion, separation or division; likewise, He is transcendant according to His divine essence which is incomprehensible to us, but in His uncreated energies, such as the grace of the Holy Spirit, or His love, or His uncreated Light, the Light of Tabor, he can be perceived and is immanent.

 

[The Liturgist]

You must think I'm a walking encyclopedia with an IQ of 200 to follow that. Although I do take note that you're not appealing to scripture at all.

On the contrary, everything I wrote is derived directly from scripture. I would be exceedingly happy to send you a copy of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, which on the subject of Christology states everything I have just said, with scriptural references, and also to supply you with an Orthodox Study Bible; these are both available via Scribd also, in addition to the print copies I have, and then of course there is the Fount of Knowledge of St. John of Damascus, which is particularly good as a criticism of both Monophysitism and of Nestorianism, and also of Islam, by the way, and which also includes his work The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, which is regarded by many as having inspired the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, but I regard, and I think most Eastern Christians regard St. John of Damascus as being more concise and more direct in his citation of Scripture and his use of direct Scriptural argument.

Now, when discussing Patristics casually, in the context of this forum, it would be superfluous and redundant to quote Scripture, since the Fathers of the early Church quoted it, for example, in their discussions of Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus, where Nestorianism was rejected as a Christological error and Nestorius himself was deposed. And the Fathers were very thorough in quoting Scripture. Thus, when one quotes the Fathers, unless one is composing a work of dogmatic theology, whether a term paper in divinity school or an enyclopedic work such as the aforementioned Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, or the Orthodox Study Bible or another Study Bible that makes references to Patristic figures, it is of course important to provide scriptural citations. However, when discussing these matters casually on a forum, it would be redundant; I would have had to supply fifty footnotes to the post I just wrote, and since the Fathers in question at the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon and of the Chalcedonian churches and of the Oriental Orthodox church quote scripture with extreme abundance, the solution is to simply read those documents correctly, or read an actual formal summary of them.

But if you desire a scriptural citation for the arguments I presented above, rather than the more useful works I just offered to supply you with at my own expense, I would refer you, on the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ and of the status of St. Mary as the Theotokos or birth giver of God to Matthew ch. 1-2, Luke ch. 1-2, and John 1:1-18. On the subject of the consubstantiality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I would refer you to 1 John, and to the Gospel of John ch. 10, entire, and also to the post-resurrection narratives in the Gospels of John and Luke, and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which directly follows from the ending of those Gospels, and also to Matthew 28:19.

And finally concerning how Christ saved us through His incarnation, I would refer you to the Epistles of St. Paul to the Hebrews, and to the Romans, and his first epistle to the Corinthians, and also once more to 1 John, and also to Isaiah, entire, although in particular the lections from Isaiah read at Christmas are rather relevant.

If these references seem long, that is because they are; the doctrine of salvation is arrived at not through the “cherry-picking” or eisegesis of individual verses out of context but rather through the careful reading of the entirety of the Gospels and the rest of the canonical New Testament, and certain books of the Old Testament (which according to Christ, at the end of the Gospel of St. Luke, is entirely Christological prophecy), according to the exegesis of the Fathers of the Early Church who preserved the Apostolic faith, and on whom the faith of the traditional Protestant and Orthodox Christian churches is based, and also the faith of traditional Roman Catholics.

 

[The Liturgist]

You must think I'm a walking encyclopedia with an IQ of 200 to follow that. Although I do take note that you're not appealing to scripture at all.

Also as an aside I don’t see how i could possibly think you were a walking encyclopedia with an IQ of 200 since to my knowledge no one has ever tested that high, and past a certain point (probably around 160) I don’t believe any of the instruments used to assess IQ could produce rational or meaningful information. Furthermore, since Christ commands us to be perfect even as the Father is perfect, and this applies to intellectual ability as well as to all other virtues and perfections, we must never arbitrarily limit ourselves in terms of presuming that we are incapable, in principle, of an intellectual task, but rather we must keep challenging ourselves. So although there has never been any meaningful IQ test result of 200, I would challenge people to try to act as if that were no boundary, but rather to honor God by using the gifts he has given us with regards to our intellectual ability, the abilities saints such as King Solomon prayed for, and received, to accomplish ever more audacious feats of human thought, seeking the direct aid of the Holy Spirit to assist us where our own meagre brains fail, because God is infinitely intelligent, and he also answers our prayers, and I believe He will assist us in any worthy intellectual pursuit conducted out of love for Him that He may be glorified through us.

 

[Ceallaigh]

On the contrary, everything I wrote is derived directly from scripture. I would be exceedingly happy to send you a copy of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, which on the subject of Christology states everything I have just said, with scriptural references, and also to supply you with an Orthodox Study Bible; these are both available via Scribd also, in addition to the print copies I have, and then of course there is the Fount of Knowledge of St. John of Damascus, which is particularly good as a criticism of both Monophysitism and of Nestorianism, and also of Islam, by the way, and which also includes his work The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, which is regarded by many as having inspired the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, but I regard, and I think most Eastern Christians regard St. John of Damascus as being more concise and more direct in his citation of Scripture and his use of direct Scriptural argument.

Now, when discussing Patristics casually, in the context of this forum, it would be superfluous and redundant to quote Scripture, since the Fathers of the early Church quoted it, for example, in their discussions of Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus, where Nestorianism was rejected as a Christological error and Nestorius himself was deposed. And the Fathers were very thorough in quoting Scripture. Thus, when one quotes the Fathers, unless one is composing a work of dogmatic theology, whether a term paper in divinity school or an enyclopedic work such as the aforementioned Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, or the Orthodox Study Bible or another Study Bible that makes references to Patristic figures, it is of course important to provide scriptural citations. However, when discussing these matters casually on a forum, it would be redundant; I would have had to supply fifty footnotes to the post I just wrote, and since the Fathers in question at the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon and of the Chalcedonian churches and of the Oriental Orthodox church quote scripture with extreme abundance, the solution is to simply read those documents correctly, or read an actual formal summary of them.

But if you desire a scriptural citation for the arguments I presented above, rather than the more useful works I just offered to supply you with at my own expense, I would refer you, on the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ and of the status of St. Mary as the Theotokos or birth giver of God to Matthew ch. 1-2, Luke ch. 1-2, and John 1:1-18. On the subject of the consubstantiality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I would refer you to 1 John, and to the Gospel of John ch. 10, entire, and also to the post-resurrection narratives in the Gospels of John and Luke, and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which directly follows from the ending of those Gospels, and also to Matthew 28:19.

The average person, like myself, isn't familiar with most of the references you've been citing. Rather than sending me a copy of of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky etc etc etc... I think you should try coming down to the average person's level, rather than expecting them to come up to your hugely impressive level.

 

[Ceallaigh]

Also as an aside I don’t see how i could possibly think you were a walking encyclopedia with an IQ of 200 since to my knowledge no one has ever tested that high, and past a certain point (probably around 160) I don’t believe any of the instruments used to assess IQ could produce rational or meaningful information. Furthermore, since Christ commands us to be perfect even as the Father is perfect, and this applies to intellectual ability as well as to all other virtues and perfections, we must never arbitrarily limit ourselves in terms of presuming that we are incapable, in principle, of an intellectual task, but rather we must keep challenging ourselves. So although there has never been any meaningful IQ test result of 200, I would challenge people to try to act as if that were no boundary, but rather to honor God by using the gifts he has given us with regards to our intellectual ability, the abilities saints such as King Solomon prayed for, and received, to accomplish ever more audacious feats of human thought, seeking the direct aid of the Holy Spirit to assist us where our own meagre brains fail, because God is infinitely intelligent, and he also answers our prayers, and I believe He will assist us in any worthy intellectual pursuit conducted out of love for Him that He may be glorified through us.

I was using hyperbole to make a point.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

Dont have any idea how you got reincarnation out of what I said there is no reincarnation of any kind. CHRIST was before, HE was always for HE is GOD omnipresent.

Unless I've linked to the wrong post the poster said that we were pre-existing this life which is why I grouped it with any other form of pre-incarnation also. That there is no reincarnation doesn't mean we weren't created at the time of our conception. Of course God pre-knew about us, we are not afterthoughts in the usual sense. We are talking about God's knowledge and also about our existence.