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Exploring Christianity
Did Jesus Have Free Will?
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<blockquote data-quote="hedrick" data-source="post: 68694743" data-attributes="member: 239032"><p>There are two perspectives you can look at: Biblical and traditional theology.</p><p></p><p>From a Biblical perspective things are pretty clear. Jesus is a man. He’s the word made flesh, but a real man. The Gospels show him praying, and being scared of his coming crucifixion. We need to adjust our idea of what it means for the word becoming flesh to match Jesus as we see him. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that Jesus is simply God appearing to be human. John 1 and a couple of places in the letters talk about Christ existing before creation in some sense, although if you look carefully it’s clear that it wasn’t the human that preexisted, and in all of these passages there’s wording to distinguish between the preexistent Christ and his human existence. At any rate, the dominant picture is a human being.</p><p></p><p>Now, classical theology. Yes, one could get the impression from reading some early authors that the Logos took on a body, but that there wasn’t a real human there. But as the Church thought carefully about it over a few centuries, they moved to correct that impression. One of the later ecumenical councils dealt with exactly this issue of will. And they decided that Christ had a human will and acted as a human, although that human was the same Person as the logos. My sense is that the translation as “Person” can be misleading, since the things that we think of today as constituting a person are actually associated with the humanity, and thus are distinct from the divine nature.</p><p></p><p>The early church had a vision that God used Christ to bring us together with God. But that only worked because Christ is human. As our brother, we have something in common with him, and he is able to unite us with God. If he’s not human, nothing has changed from the Old Testament or any other religion. </p><p></p><p>To answer the original question, I think you have to say that all of Christ’s actions were both the actions of a human being and also the actions of God. Although there’s a separate human will, it decides in accordance with God’s will. Does that make it not free? That depends upon what you mean by free, and this is likely to depend upon whether you’re a Calvinist or not. But it’s just like any of us who submit to God, except that he did it all the time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hedrick, post: 68694743, member: 239032"] There are two perspectives you can look at: Biblical and traditional theology. From a Biblical perspective things are pretty clear. Jesus is a man. He’s the word made flesh, but a real man. The Gospels show him praying, and being scared of his coming crucifixion. We need to adjust our idea of what it means for the word becoming flesh to match Jesus as we see him. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that Jesus is simply God appearing to be human. John 1 and a couple of places in the letters talk about Christ existing before creation in some sense, although if you look carefully it’s clear that it wasn’t the human that preexisted, and in all of these passages there’s wording to distinguish between the preexistent Christ and his human existence. At any rate, the dominant picture is a human being. Now, classical theology. Yes, one could get the impression from reading some early authors that the Logos took on a body, but that there wasn’t a real human there. But as the Church thought carefully about it over a few centuries, they moved to correct that impression. One of the later ecumenical councils dealt with exactly this issue of will. And they decided that Christ had a human will and acted as a human, although that human was the same Person as the logos. My sense is that the translation as “Person” can be misleading, since the things that we think of today as constituting a person are actually associated with the humanity, and thus are distinct from the divine nature. The early church had a vision that God used Christ to bring us together with God. But that only worked because Christ is human. As our brother, we have something in common with him, and he is able to unite us with God. If he’s not human, nothing has changed from the Old Testament or any other religion. To answer the original question, I think you have to say that all of Christ’s actions were both the actions of a human being and also the actions of God. Although there’s a separate human will, it decides in accordance with God’s will. Does that make it not free? That depends upon what you mean by free, and this is likely to depend upon whether you’re a Calvinist or not. But it’s just like any of us who submit to God, except that he did it all the time. [/QUOTE]
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