This is part 2 of our response series on The Incarnate Christ and His Critics.
Most of us understand of what deity means. Generally we think to be God is to be eternal, uncaused, and indestructible. This gets at the word aseity, which is a fancy philosophical term for a being that doesn’t depend on anyone or anything else for existence. To be a se (from the Latin a = from, and se = self) is to be uncaused and non-contingent. This cuts to the very essence of what it means to be God in the proper sense of the word. So, if Jesus is God in the same way in which the Father is God, then Jesus, too, must have aseity. Right? We’ll see about that in today’s episode.
But, here’s the thing. It’s actually even harder than establishing Jesus’s aseity. To claim Christ’s deity, entails claiming he has all the other divine attributes as well. Deity-of-Christ apologists like Bowman and Komoszewski know that this is a problem. In fact, in part two of their book, The Incarnate Christ and His Critics, they outline seven conflicting attributes between Jesus’s alleged divine and human natures. They say he is both eternal and born, immutable and able to grow, impeccable and tempted, omnipresent and able to walk, omniscient and not knowing something, omnipotent and capable of sleep, and lastly, immortal and mortal–all at the same time. Although they revel in such “paradoxes,” this list presents grave difficulties for the classic dual natures view from Chalcedon that we covered last week. In this episode we’ll consider several of these contradictions as part of our second episode on whether or not Jesus had the divine attributes.
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3 thoughts on “604. Did Jesus Really Have All the Divine Attributes? (Brandon Duke)”
Hi, concerning your chat about Colossians 1:15, I’ve read a paper recently where the author uses ” first born of every creature”, which indeed can be found in a few translations including KJV, do you have any thought on this translations?
Kindest regards
Andy
Hypothetically, if Jesus is fully God and fully man and the Father and Holy Spirit are not, then how can they be equal? Hypostatic union makes the son something greater than the Father. Maybe that’s the point…. Jesus worship?
You two are amazing to listen to. You lay the points out so clearly. It’s all so reasonable. Trinitarians choose to relinquish their reason in order to align with the teachings of the Catholic Church. They have traded the truth of God for the traditions of men. Brandon, you made me laugh with your closing remark about the book! “It’s scholarly; it’s well footnoted. It’s everything that you would want … except for the truth.” You nailed it!
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Hi, concerning your chat about Colossians 1:15, I’ve read a paper recently where the author uses ” first born of every creature”, which indeed can be found in a few translations including KJV, do you have any thought on this translations?
Kindest regards
Andy
Sean, Thank you for all the work on the podcasts.
Hypothetically, if Jesus is fully God and fully man and the Father and Holy Spirit are not, then how can they be equal? Hypostatic union makes the son something greater than the Father. Maybe that’s the point…. Jesus worship?
You two are amazing to listen to. You lay the points out so clearly. It’s all so reasonable. Trinitarians choose to relinquish their reason in order to align with the teachings of the Catholic Church. They have traded the truth of God for the traditions of men. Brandon, you made me laugh with your closing remark about the book! “It’s scholarly; it’s well footnoted. It’s everything that you would want … except for the truth.” You nailed it!