The Omnipresence of Christ's Human Nature
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- čas přidán 17. 03. 2020
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In this video, I discuss the Lutheran view of Christ's human nature in relation to the Reformed.
Very important, Christology is indeed the most fundamental problem that basically affects all other differences
Thank you for sharing your vast knowledge with us Luthertubers. God's peace be with you.
Awesome video. Love Lutheran Christology. The best thing about the Lutheran tradition is the centrality of Jesus.
Taken from the Catholic church
@@biscuitcake5894Taken from the Orthodox
In St John Chrysostom liturgy the priest says, "In the tomb with the body, in hell with the soul as God, in paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, You fill all things, O boundless Christ."
Great content, I learned something today.
Unprompted thoughts from a PCA pastor (when do we ever need prompting?):
How does Christ say that he will be with his church until the end of the age (Matt. 28)? Through the Holy Spirit, "the Spirit of Christ," (Gal. 4:6) who comes upon the church in Acts 2.
Calvin took seriously the role of the Holy Spirit in making the means of grace effectual to the believer (prayer would be another example, see Romans 8:26ff.). I agree that the Reformed position is a middle way of sorts, though I'd see it as a brilliant reflection of Scriptural teaching...but of course I'm a PCA pastor so I'm as bias as you are :-)
I would point out that the infinite essence of God dwelling in the Person of Christ (personhood of Christ coming from the Divine Person - hence the doctrine of enhypostasis and anhypostasis) is not the same as saying that infinity was contained in the finite human nature of Christ (this would be a logical contradiction nowhere expressed in Scripture).
Also, Peter was clearly not speaking of partaking of the divine nature in the sense of partaking in incommunicable attributes of the divine essence in the divinizing way you are saying (see the clear ethical context of what Peter was saying in 2 Peter 1, notice "life and godliness" and "escaped corruption" and "for this reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue" --it's simply not a plausible way of reading the text in context).
This is usually where the word mystery is thrown out by Lutheran brethren in order to dismiss the above arguments. Reformed people are said to be hyper-theological and overly precise (I'm not overly offended by these accusations:-).
But here is the main issue for me and the Reformed fathers-- We simply don't see any positive Scriptural warrant to affirm the corporeal presence of Christ in the covenantal meal. As Petrus Van Mastricht said, "Scripture nowhere teaches that the infinity of the divine nature has been communicated to the human nature" (Vol 2, 189).
Mystery is an important part of human theology, but I need to make sure "mystery" isn't covering for a lack of biblical support and somehow becoming an excuse to embrace non-Scriptural doctrines, no matter who once held them in the past.
Enjoyed hearing a brief statement on the Lutheran view from a Lutheran, thanks for your work.
That's interesting, and unfortunately I'm not well studied, read or practised enough to say anything much more than, wow Calvin truly is of a different spirit to Luther and Athanasius. After reading both and hearing from others building on their traditions, it seems the whole of scripture points to humanity's union with God resulting in our glorification/Christification/theosis.
Excellent biblical foundation for what the fathers ultimately concluded leading to Chalcedon and the Hypostatic Union and great short explanation.
To start from that point, I would say: The Hypostatic Union is the teaching that the Divine Second Person (who existed from all eternity and is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient) always had a Divine Nature (i.e. fully “sharing” in the Trinitarian Divine Nature). In “time”, He “assumed” a human nature. That is the Incarnation. It is a Mystery. Exactly how does it “work”? That is a Mystery that human language and thought is incapable of perfectly understanding and articulating. But we believe that we can say a few reasonable things about the “outside” of the Mystery (through reason and inspiration). Hence the Fathers at the Council at Chalcedon set forth the further teaching as such: That upon the Divine Second person assuming a human nature, the human nature and the Divine Nature were mysteriously UNITED (without being “mixed or confused”) in the ONE Divine Person, (He is one Person from all eternity). The two natures are therefore also not “separated”.
So the response to our Reformed brethren is that if He is sacramentally present and always omnipresent in His Divine nature; and his Divine Nature is “united” to His Human Nature in His Divine Person, then both His Divine Person and His human nature are sacramentally present and are omnipresent “in” the Mystery of the Hypostatic Union. Or better - because His Divine Person is sacramentally present and omnipresent, therefore His human nature and Divine Nature are “there” sacramentally too - the human nature solely by virtue of the Hypostatic Union. Always in a Mysterious way ultimately beyond human reason, language, etc.
All consistent with what you said regarding the communication of idioms.
Amazon prime me that beard
From my knowledge of earlier holiness and some Pentecostal writings I think they were trying to make the same distinction between experience of the presence of Christ and that of the Holy Spirit in power or deeper work...but they didn't have the theological furness since they were still tied to a Reformed or Arminian tradition.
As a Byzantine Catholic who grew up in a Dutch Calvinist tradition, I find this video to nail the Luther/Calvin dispute to its core debate. Both Luther/Calvin profess that two natures are united to the one person and never separated. The difference is Calvin denied Christ's humanity which ascended and localized in heaven could be present in multiple places on earth. So Calvin introduced new idea that at the Chalice Christ is truly present because as a divine person He is omnipresent while His humanity remain localized in heaven and not present at the altar. Luther condemned this arguing that communication of attributes not only to the person but also between natures. The divinity suffer impassibly and the humanity deify energetically. This is why the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Second Constantinople in 553 addressed this debate exactly. The two natures are not only united to the one person but also communicating their natural attributes to one another. St Cyril's second letter to Nestorius addressed this communicatio idiommata dogma at Ephesus. God doesn't walk on water because He has no physicality and doesn't occupy space to transverse from point A to point B. His flesh walk on water. Human nature neither can born nor die but rather a divine person who is God was birthed in Bethlehem and crucified in Golgotha. Because God suffers impassibly and His flesh exalted, St Cyril argued that Christians worship the unbloody sacrifice of the Eucharist. In this sense Calvin's theology is sacramentally Nestorian.
Gerhard's On Christ is $64.99 for the kindle edition on Amazon. That's outrageous.
The paywall is one of most frustrating things about my beloved Lutheranism. It seems like we are intentionally sticking our light under a bushel, but I promise it's banal economics, not malice. The way I get Lutheran books is by being buddies with some Lutheran pastors and borrowing from them regularly. Get you a local Lutheran pastor buddy.
Thanks for the video. Can someone tell me which verses say Jesus was in more than one place at once?
From Dr. Jordan Cooper's Patheos blog:
"“But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says:
“When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men.” (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill all things.)”
The text seems clear. Christ descended, ascended, and now fills the whole universe. This cannot be according to His divine nature because it describes a point in time wherein He began to fill all things. His divine nature always filled all things. Ephesians 1:23 also states that He “fills everything in every way.” These verses have been interpreted by the Reformed to mean either one of 2 things.
[...]
Is it really taking scripture seriously to say that the “fullness of deity” (Colossians 2:9) dwelt in bodily form if indeed the deity of Christ is mostly separate from the human nature? If the incarnation really means that the second person of the trinity is both God and man, we must say more than that He is only man in one specific location.
To be Biblically consistent and to affirm that the fullness of Christ’s deity was and is incarnate, one must confess to communication of omnipresence."
@@Mygoalwogel Uhhh, that's helpful for me seeing where you guys are coming from, but I'm not sure I'm convinced that "filling all things" necessarily means omnipresence of His physical body. Is that a critical part of the passages' meaning? I looked at the Ephesians 4 passage and it seems to me that descension and ascension are terms that indicate something is finite. Is it the/a Lutheran view that Christ became omnipresent after His ascension?
Any other verses would be helpful.
@@NnannaO
It says he descended to earth. That means his human nature.
It says he ascended. We see in the Gospels that this was also in his human nature.
So when it says he fills all things, Paul does not suddenly become Nestorian. The same human Jesus who came to earth, the same human Jesus who ascended into heaven now fills all things.
@@Mygoalwogel I read the article in it's entirety. It's more compelling when read in full. Thanks for your comments and the article reference. I'll ponder this a bit more
@Mygoalwogel are you saying that Jesus had already taken on humanity before he came to earth?
One wonders how John Calvin explained Christ walking on the water.
Since I don't believe in theosis - that explanation of the 'how' of the Real Presence is not persuasive.
No mingling or mixing
It is right to say God died literally with out qualification?
Im teaching soon on the communion of attributes, and the answer to your question is "there is a qualification."
The bible sometimes identifies Christ's divinity, but describes His humanity since He is one person.
So, yes, you can say, "God died for our sins." An example is found in Acts 3:15 "you killed the author of life."
@@SalamanderPlaysGames Really?Why our Early Church Father's and Saints specially St.Thomas Aquinas always use a qualification .He use Jesus died in the flesh or even the Cathechism of St.Pius X clearly said..Jesus Christ suffred as man alone;as God he could neither suffer nor die or even our Fundamental of Catholic Dogma finally teach us...It was the Divine Logos who suffred and died in the flesh .
If we notice our Early Church Father's and Saints always use a qualification like as man or his human nature.Our Church carefull to explain this two words God died printed in our Cathechism of Council of Trent..
Reformers not believing Christ can perform miracles is wild
Christ after His resurrection was clearly not bound by physical laws. He is the Creator and Lord of all. But Luther's view was not transubstantiation anyway.
God could become Man because Man was created in the image of God to be the image of God in creation. God could not truly become bread. Even with transubstantiation, the "substance" is not and cannot be bread.
As always we should look to Scripture for the truth and avoid arguments based in ignorance and the world's philosophy.
"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion [koinonia] of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" (1Co 10:16 NKJ)
"knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin." (Rom 6:6 NKJ)
"...For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us" (1Co 5:7 NKJ)
Are not the Scriptures sufficient?
These arguments are foolish and sinful.
Yep. The bread is literally a co-union of the body of Christ.
@@Mygoalwogel So Jesus is flour? How? God can become Man because Man was made in the image of God. God cannot become bread without ceasing to be God. The flesh profits nothing, "it is the Spirit which gives life." "In, with and under" is still not the bread. Even transubstantiation does not say Christ becomes bread, for the substance is not bread. How strained and absurd an interpretation of "is". Jesus took up the bread of the Passover and said "this is my body." He is the fulfillment of the types and shadows of the Passover. He is not claiming that He is the bread in a woodenly, childish sense.
"But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
(1Co 2:14 NKJ)
Spiritual things must be spiritually understood. There is NO biblical reason to believe that Jesus meant He is literally the bread rather than He was about to fulfill the Passover as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
@@ThinkingBiblically the bread and wine cease to exist. Christ is entirely present: body, blood, soul, and divinity. A very simple concept.
Interesting discussion. Thank you. But know the Hypostatic union is not really biblical. Why? It paints a picture of our Lord as having 2 natures, without confusion, yet joined inseparable. But Jesus made it clear that he did not do miracles by his own power, but the Father dwelling in him, by the Holy Spirit. He actually gave up his miraculous attributes when he became a man. All he said and did was by the Father. This is why, as a man, he did not know the day or hour of his return. And we can't just say he only didn't know in his human nature, that is Nestorian. Rather, he became a man, yet he kept his identity as the Logos, the Logos Spirit also transformed into a man's spirit. Then he was given the Holy Spirit without measure. As such he was worthy of worship, even as a man.
Not going to lie, the thumbnail made me think this was a Gregory B Sadler video haha😊