Why did Jesus have to experience God's wrath when our sin were placed on Him

[Theophan]

I'm so confused if Jesus was also human how could he defeat death

Jesus, in His divine nature, is omnipotent. Since Jesus Christ is fully God, and God is not subject to death or any change whatsoever, He easily destroyed death with His infinite divine power, which He manifested when He resurrected Himself, that is, when He overthrew the gates of Hades (the realm of the dead) and resurrected His human body, making it incorruptible and perfect.

To summarize: Jesus Christ, the Word of God and indeed God Himself, died only in His humanity but not in His divinity. He then resurrected Himself only by His divinity but not by His humanity. His divine nature was not subjected to death, but His human nature was. His human nature did not conquer death, but His divine nature did.

 

[Arsenios]

Jesus, in His divine nature, is omnipotent. Since Jesus Christ is fully God, and God is not subject to death or any change whatsoever, He easily destroyed death with His infinite divine power, which He manifested when He resurrected Himself, that is, when He overthrew the gates of Hades (the realm of the dead) and resurrected His human body, making it incorruptible and perfect.

To summarize: Jesus Christ, the Word of God and indeed God Himself, died only in His humanity but not in His divinity. He then resurrected Himself only by His divinity but not by His humanity. His divine nature was not subjected to death, but His human nature was. His human nature did not conquer death, but His divine nature did.

I would like to see the Patristic support for this view...
Adam did not have a Divine Nature, and he sinned, and he died...
Christ took up where Adam fell, as the Son of Man, being in His Hypostasis [eg in His Person] the Son of Man AND the Son of God... Yet in this action, He emptied Himself as Son of Man of His Divine Nature, that He should address the issues of fallen humanity as a Person with a fallen (eg death inheriting) human nature... And as Son of Man He lived a human life sinlessly, without mixture or confusion with His Divine Nature, keeping obedience to God the Father...
So in this human nature, he relinquished His human spirit on the Cross separating it from his flesh (which is what death is), and descended into Hades and there overcame its "iron bars"... His body was placed in the Tomb and was sealed, and His Hypostasis, His Person, descended into Hades...

So what I am questioning here is this: Which nature of Christ descended? Did either his human or His Divine Nature descend? For it is HE Who descended, is it not? And does not this mean His Hypostasis, the Person of Christ, Which HAS the two natures, is the Who that descended in the camoflage of being but a created and shamed and altogether sinful human-only hypostasis/person?

You raised an utterly interesting issue, Theophan! It is one I had never considered prior to your post... What are the properties/powers of the human soul after death? Has it any power at all as a human soul? Was it the Divinity of the Person of Christ that overcame Death in Hades? Or was it His uncreated Divine Energies? Was it the Power of His Divine Essence? And if any of these, in what way? Interesting issues... The essential fact is that HE, Christ, overcame the Power of Death in Himself and Resurrected in His human body and Ascended to the Most High, and then appeared to many for 40 days, and Ascended into Heaven and will come again to judge the living and the dead...


Arsenios

 

[Theophan]

I would like to see Patristic support for this view...
Adam did not have a Divine Nature, and he sinned, and he died...
Christ took up where Adam fell, as the Son of Man, being in His Hypostasis [eg in His Person] the Son of Man AND the Son of God... Yet in this action, He emptied Himself as Son of Man of His Divine Nature, that He should address the issues of fallen humanity as a Person with a fallen (eg death inheriting) human nature... And as Son of Man He lived a human life sinlessly, without mixture or confusion with His Divine Nature, keeping obedience to God the Father...
So in this human nature, he relinquished His human spirit on the Cross separating it from his flesh (which is what death is), and descended into Hades and there overcame its "iron bars"... His body was placed in the Tomb and was sealed, and His Hypostasis, His Person, descended into Hades...

So what I am questioning here is this: Which nature of Christ descended? Did either his human or His Divine Nature descend? For it is HE Who descended, is it not? And does not this mean His Hypostasis, the Person of Christ, Which HAS the two natures, is Who descended in the camoflage of being but a created and shamed and altogether sinful human-only hypostasis/person?

You raised an utterly interesting issue, Theophan! It is one I had never considered prior to your post...

Arsenios

I would like to see Patristic support for this view...
Adam did not have a Divine Nature, and he sinned, and he died...
Christ took up where Adam fell, as the Son of Man, being in His Hypostasis [eg in His Person] the Son of Man AND the Son of God... Yet in this action, He emptied Himself as Son of Man of His Divine Nature, that He should address the issues of fallen humanity as a Person with a fallen (eg death inheriting) human nature... And as Son of Man He lived a human life sinlessly, without mixture or confusion with His Divine Nature, keeping obedience to God the Father...
So in this human nature, he relinquished His human spirit on the Cross separating it from his flesh (which is what death is), and descended into Hades and there overcame its "iron bars"... His body was placed in the Tomb and was sealed, and His Hypostasis, His Person, descended into Hades...

So what I am questioning here is this: Which nature of Christ descended? Did either his human or His Divine Nature descend? For it is HE Who descended, is it not? And does not this mean His Hypostasis, the Person of Christ, Which HAS the two natures, is Who descended in the camoflage of being but a created and shamed and altogether sinful human-only hypostasis/person?

You raised an utterly interesting issue, Theophan! It is one I had never considered prior to your post...

Arsenios

Read St John of Damascus. Just trust Him on the dogmas.

I never said that Christ is divided. He is one person of the Trinity with two nature's, divine and human. I simply outlined the characteristics of each nature and explained what they accomplished in One person, Christ our God. Of course He descended as both man and God, but He did not die as God. But you also need to consider than His divine essence is shared with the other persons of the Trinity, and one of their shared traits is omnipresence. In a sense, Christ in His divine essence was always filling all things and reigning in heaven, all while living as Jesus of Nazareth on earth and in hades. I don't know, Arsenios.. Why do you ask me? Did God tell you that I'm a theologian? Don't listen to me.

Just read St John. He does a way better job of explaining this than I do. I'm a fool who shouldn't even be talking about this.

 

[Arsenios]

Read St John of Damascus. Just trust Him on the dogmas.

I never said that Christ is divided. He is one person of the Trinity with two nature's, divine and human. I simply outlined the characteristics of each nature and explained what they accomplished in One person, Christ our God. Of course He descended as both man and God, but He did not die as God. But you also need to consider than His divine essence is shared with the other persons of the Trinity, and one of their shared traits is omnipresence. In a sense, Christ in His divine essence was always filling all things and reigning in heaven, all while living as Jesus of Nazareth on earth and in hades. I don't know, Arsenios.. Why do you ask me? Did God tell you that I'm a theologian? Don't listen to me.

Just read St John. He does a way better job of explaining this than I do. I'm a fool who shouldn't even be talking about this.

Forgive me - I re-edited my post about 6 times - Please re-read it... I think I crisped up the querie at least a little...

A.

 

[Arsenios]

I never said that Christ is divided. He is one person of the Trinity with two nature's, divine and human.

A huge Mystery...
Distinct natures with neither division nor confusion...
So was the deception designed to fool Hades into voluntarily and willfully siezing the Divine Nature in the guise of the human?
I like that understanding a lot!

Arsenios

 

[Theophan]

Forgive me - I re-edited my post about 6 times - Please re-read it... I think I crisped up the querie at least a little...

A.

I am not aware of the teaching that states that Christ had a fallen human nature. If He sanctified the waters if baptism, and by His grace is our fallen nature sanctified and perfected, then when He assumed human nature, He likewise instantaneously sanctified it and made it pure, no longer fallen but already redeemed. That He resurrected had more to do with the corruptibility of the flesh, but not its nature.

As a person, Christ as both man and God, the Theanthropos, descended and ascended. Yes. I was not speaking if that.

Your question is, Did His divine essence or divine energies effect the resurrection? In my opinion, it was His energies of course. His energies are a manifestation of His essence. I have the faculty of reason; I reason; this is a manifested energy of my human essence. My essence does not effect anything. Rather, it produces an energy which then accomplishes the desired end of my essence's desire. This is merely my hypothesis,not the teaching of the Church. I haven't confirmed my thoughts yet.

 

[Theophan]

A huge Mystery...
Distinct natures with neither division nor confusion...
So was the deception designed to fool Hades into voluntarily and willfully siezing the Divine Nature in the guise of the human?
I like that understanding a lot!

Arsenios

Yes, quite a mystery indeed. Who knows how Hades operated? Certainly, not us. How did the demons know that Jesus was the Son of God, very God of very God? And are we to suppose that Hades was out of the loop? I don't know.. Seems far fetched to me. I have heard that saying before, the one about fooling hades, but I don't think God needed to be so deceptive and cunning to accomplish His will. This sort of thing is in the gray area of the dogmas of the Church, as far as I'm concerned. I don't need the answer in this life.

 

[Arsenios]

I am not aware of the teaching that states that Christ had a fallen human nature.

It was His inheritance from the Blessed Virgin, because He inherited the death of Adam from Her, yet unlike the rest of us, He did not sin because of that death in fallen human flesh and in a fallen world... He wanted to inherit this death, because it was His enemy which had afflicted all mankind, on account of which all have sinned. [ Rom 5:12 ]

Yet He had two very distinct natures, united in His One Person... And one of the very interesting features of this is that one must discern which nature is operating in each of His actions, oral or physical... It is an art that I, for one, do not possess... Yet the Fathers speak of this issue and show the ones where it is fairly clear, and for those not so clear, there are pious opinions (theologoumenoi)...

The Sanctification of the Waters of Baptism when John Baptized Him was by His Divinity... Yet the descent of the Dove was on His humanity... So the knife of discernment is not one I know how to even pick up, let alone wield...

Arsenios

 

[Theophan]

It was His inheritance from the Blessed Virgin, because He inherited the death of Adam from Her, yet unlike the rest of us, He did not sin because of that death in fallen human flesh and in a fallen world... He wanted to inherit this death, because it was His enemy which had afflicted all mankind, on account of which all have sinned. [ Rom 5:12 ]

Yet He had two very distinct natures, united in His One Person... And one of the very interesting features of this is that one must discern which nature is operating in each of His actions, oral or physical... It is an art that I, for one, do not possess... Yet the Fathers speak of this issue and show the ones where it is fairly clear, and for those not so clear, there are pious opinions (theologoumenoi)...

The Sanctification of the Waters of Baptism when John Baptized Him was by His Divinity... Yet the descent of the Dove was on His humanity... So the knife of discernment is not one I know how to even pick up, let alone wield...

Arsenios

I am not saying that He did not assume the name nature as the Theotokos and all humanity..

I said that He instantly sanctified it upon assuming it. In the same way that chaff is instantly devoured by lava, the fallenness of our nature was irradiated by His holiness.

The descent of the dove was nothing but a sign, not something that signified any actual change. Christ changed the waters of baptism. The descent of the dove did not mark any change whatsoever. And if you say that the Dove's descent was on His humanity, then you also must say that the Father calling Him His beloved son was addressed only to His humanity, but we all know that to be untrue.

Anyway, Arsenios, you and I are no seminarians nor theologians.

 

[Arsenios]

I am not saying that He did not assume the same nature as the Theotokos and all humanity...

OK...

I said that He instantly sanctified it upon assuming it. In the same way that chaff is instantly devoured by lava, the fallenness of our nature was irradiated by His Holiness.

Then if His human nature was instantly and completely sanctified from its conception in the womb of the Holy Virgin, then how could He be tempted by anything earthly?

The descent of the dove was nothing but a sign, not something that signified any actual change. Christ changed the waters of baptism. The descent of the dove did not mark any change whatsoever.

In a somewhat parallel manner to Christ's changing of the water into Wine blessed Marriage in the Faith of Christ, so similarly did the descent of the Holy Spirit and its abiding on Christ as He emerged from the newly sanctified Waters of Regeneration sanctioned the Service of Holy Unction immediately following Baptism into Christ, which confers the Gift of the Holy Spirit, which is its abidance in us as a new part of our human nature which is thereby now a New Creation...

And if you say that the Dove's descent was on His humanity,

Indeed so, because it happens to our humanity who follow Christ and are Baptized into Christ...

then you also must say that the Father calling Him His beloved son was addressed only to His humanity, but we all know that to be untrue.

That was addressed to both natures, but specifically to the Person of Christ, the Hypostasis that IS the Person Who is the Logos now incarnate...

Anyway, Arsenios, you and I are no seminarians nor theologians.

You have that right!

But chewing this kind of stuff around is a constant reminder to me of the utter necessity for precision in discussing such matters... Have your read much of Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos yet?


Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

Yes, quite a mystery indeed.
Who knows how Hades operated?...
Are we to suppose that Hades was out of the loop?
I don't know.. Seems far fetched to me...
The one about fooling hades...
I don't think God needed to be so deceptive and cunning to accomplish His will.
This sort of thing is in the gray area of the dogmas of the Church...
I don't need the answer in this life.

I must say that the question of HOW Christ burst the bonds of Hades had never occurred to me... And I don't know if it merits even an enquiry... So I have a Priest friend who has a knack for and interest in dogma and catechesis, and I dropped him a text, to see if he might be interested in a 'small theological' discussion... I did not tell him what it was about... So I am awaiting his reply...

Meanwhile, some facts that need be kept in view:

Christ did not destroy hell...
Except within Himself...
And He released those who were His from its captivity...
And He did so AFTER He died as a man...
It is only as a man that He descended...
And it is only as a man that He Arose...
As God, He is always in all places at all times...

So my preliminary thoughts are that there is something very human-connected that is involved in His defeating Death in Hades and effecting His Resurrection...

At the beginning of His Ministry, when He was Baptized, He then went into the wilderness and fasted for 40 days and nights, and overcame the temptation to which Adam fell in His 3 responses to the devil... So right there He took up Adam's failed life, and lived it to the Cross in an effort to gather the dispersed who were lost - God's People - And He ended the earthly walk on the Cross - tetelestai - And then went to Hades to retrieve His Own -

Death will be fully destroyed only in the Age to Come...
Now we live in struggle against it...
Lest we fall in sin...

Seems like a decent topic to me...

Got a text reply - Maybe this afternoon my friend can make a little time... I think this will be a good question with which to stir his theological pot!

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

Well, I got ahold of the Priest, and explained the issue to him - The issue of how Christ overcame Death in Hades and rescued His Own from its darkness to Light... eg Was it His human nature, His Divine Nature, or His Divine Hypostasis? And he very much understood the question, and had never addressed it previously... So we looked at the matter, because it had to be His human nature that was central, since the Divine Nature is "everywhere present and fillest all things..."

So He separated His spirit from His body on the cross, which means He died... And then looked at what nature [or Nature] descended into Hades, and lo and behold, we concluded that some nature did NOT descend into Hades, but the human SOUL of Christ the Logos-God Whose Soul it IS... Which helped to open the matter considerably...

As a throw-away comment, he did mention that Hades had no choice but to receive Him... And like you, he doubted that Hades was deceived as to exactly Who it was that was coming into their domain... And this even thouugh he said that Chrysostom did use the language of deception in his homily on the Resurrection, yet even so, he felt it was the language of hyperbole, and not the language of theology and dogma.

For myself, I still find that account attractive theologically, because is uses the method of the Serpent against the Serpent... His sin returns to him... So it does have that eloquence and poetry... And MY opinion and $5 will get you no change back from Starbucks! (youknewthat!)

So with the Hypostasis of the Divine Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, coming into Hades in a sinless human soul, Hades shrank back in fear, because their whole basis of control is our mortality and its sin... And Christ's Soul had neither mortality nor sin... He had free-reign in Hades, doing whatever He wished to do... He had entered a prison that had no means to imprison Him...

So it is not a matter of which nature was operating in Him in Hades, but the fact that He entered Hades with a human soul that was His Human Soul that was Life-Creating with neither death nor sin... eg He did not NEED the Power of Divinity, because His Soul by its very Life already had this Power...

And we looked at the matter of Christ's Soul - It is a Divinized Soul by Nature - By His Divine Nature - regardless of the mortality built into his flesh... Whereas we who are mortal by nature, being created in mortality, must become by Grace that which Christ had become by Nature, and this by our entry INTO the Body of Christ, for we are Baptized into Christ, and have thereby put on Christ...

Nor can we even say that the Logos HAS a Soul...

So that the weakness of the human soul, which Christ acquired when He BECAME a man in the Pure Womb of the Holy Virgin, was brought up in obedience to God the Father, under the Aegis, the Authority, of the Divine Hypostasis of the Logos-God called Jesus Christ in the world... So that the Soul of Christ entered into Hades laden with the Full Power of the Holy Spirit...

The more you think about it, the better it gets...

Arsenios

 

[Sam91]

I always assumed that Jesus being God could not die. So that on the cross the God part (I and my Father are one) left/became inert briefly in order that He could die. That the Father had to no longer be connected and turn away from Him while He had sin of the world on Him. However, once that connection was re-established He Ressurected because God is immortal.

It looks like I am the only person who thinks that.

EDIT I can't see Jesus, who is sinless, only saying a phrase just to fulfill scripture. He is TRUTH. So He had to have meant it.

 

[Arsenios]

I always assumed that Jesus being God could not die. So that on the cross the God part (I and my Father are one) left/became inert briefly in order that He could die. That the Father had to no longer be connected and turn away from Him while He had sin of the world on Him. However, once that connection was re-established He Ressurected because God is immortal.

It looks like I am the only person who thinks that.

EDIT I can't see Jesus, who is sinless, only saying a phrase just to fulfill scripture. He is TRUTH. So He had to have meant it.

Because Adam died the day he turned away from God and blamed "that woman", he was expelled from Paradise and all his Children down to you and me were born in that death... Christ said: "Let the dead bury their dead... You follow me..."

So Adam died twice, and the second death was from the first... So we are dead and we die... It is not for nothing that Paul calls the Faith of Christ a Mystery held by a pure conscience...

Christ incarnated in order to give us Life - His Life - The remission of sin He effected by His Passion on the Cross for us is the means of our receiving His Life... As fallen anthropoi in a fallen world, we have to die to this life that is death, and live unto Christ, eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, being Baptized into His Risen Body, which means being baptized into His Death for us...

Death is the reason for (eg the cause of) sin after Adam... We are born in the shadow of Death, and walk in it in this life... Our bodies and minds are weakened and corrupted in the death of Adam into which we are born...

Christ came to save us from this death...

He did not fail...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

I always assumed that Jesus being God could not die.

Death can happen only to creation, and God in the Person of the Christ became a created man... And created man in Adam is dead already... So Christ died to the death of Adam, and being God, He revived Adam and brought him back to life...

Adam started man out and failed... Christ took man up where Adam failed, and brought him into the second phase... The first phase was Adam not yet mature - That maturity only comes when man is joined to God... Union with God IS Salvation in this life... And the joining of man to God is a God enterprise done by God for man. God does this through the flesh of His Servants who are members of His Body... His Body is the Ekklesia, which is the People of God...

The Person of God the Logos incarnated as Jesus Christ into the flesh of fallen Adam for the sake of healing the disease of death and corruption of falen man in Himself, in His Own Body...
That Divine Person walked the earth in a manner that we are to follow by becoming a member of His Body, the Church/Ekklesia... Wherein we willfully deny our own self-will, take up our cross, and follow Him...

No small matter...

Arsenios

 

[Sam91]

Death can happen only to creation, and God in the Person of the Christ became a created man... And created man in Adam is dead already... So Christ died to the death of Adam, and being God, He revived Adam and brought him back to life...

Adam started man out and failed... Christ took man up where Adam failed, and brought him into the second phase... The first phase was Adam not yet mature - That maturity only comes when man is joined to God... Union with God IS Salvation in this life... And the joining of man to God is a God enterprise done by God for man. God does this through the flesh of His Servants who are members of His Body... His Body is the Ekklesia, which is the People of God...

The Person of God the Logos incarnated as Jesus Christ into the flesh of fallen Adam for the sake of healing the disease of death and corruption of falen man in Himself, in His Own Body...
That Divine Person walked the earth in a manner that we are to follow by becoming a member of His Body, the Church/Ekklesia... Wherein we willfully deny our own self-will, take up our cross, and follow Him...

No small matter...

Arsenios

Yes, I'm not sure how this relates to my post. Christ lived, dies and rose again. I did not deny this. Sorry if I'm misding something.

My post was directed at the verse when Jesus called out 'why have you forsaken me'. At that precise moment in time.

I understand the reasons for Him laying down His life for us.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Does this mean God is angry at us when we sin and can not look at us?

Just noticed "God angry".........

In Scripture it is written who God is angry at and why......
Read in context in the BIBLE to avoid man's various distractions,
praying for the Father in heaven to GIVE HIS UNDERSTANDING (which is ALWAYS TRUTH and obviously BEST) .

 

[Arsenios]

Yes, I'm not sure how this relates to my post

You had asked if Jesus is God, then how can He die? eg You said: "I always thought as God He could not die..." And the short answer is that He cannot die as God, but as man, he could separate His Body from His Soul, which is death... And He did so on the Cross...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

The quintessential issue in our understanding Christ is the fact of His two natures, and in each action the determining of which nature is operating...
"Who do they say that I am?
Who do you say I am?"

When, for instance, He said to the Wise Thief on the Cross:
"Verily I say unto thee,
Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise..."
He was not speaking as the Son of Man, but as the Son of God... He is both, you see... Hades never had a chance... Nor does Death itself have a chance... Hence our death bearing fleshy lives are to be lived in the scorn of the pleasures and concerns of the flesh... This is the meaning of the narrow and straited Way of God... A life of suffering and self denial, for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven...

"For from John the Baptist until now,
the Kingdom of Heaven is suffering violence,
and the violent are siezing it by force..."
eg The forceful denial of self in the discipling of the Apostolic Ekiklesia of God...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

I understand the reasons for Him laying down His life for us.

He laid down His life for us who sin, yes?
He did not lay it down for us who sin not... (Fine me one of those guys!)

An Orthodox discussion of this matter then might (and has) take up this question:
"IF
Adam had not sinned,
THEN
Would Christ have died on the cross for us who are in Adam?"

And of course, the answer is No...

So then, the next question becomes:

IF Adam had not sinned,
THEN
Would Christ have incarnated at all?

And our answer to this is, Yes...

What is YOUR answer?
And why?

Why would Christ incarnate if mankind were living without sin?

Arsenios