[No
Vinny37. The basic mistake interpreting scripture is when sinners don’t understand who they’re dealing with. I mentioned this to someone earlier but haven’t had a response yet, so I’ll ask you.
When our king stood before Pilate the governor said, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” (ESV: Jn.19:10).
What do you think would have happened if Jesus had defended himself by law? By Mosaic law or any common decent law by which mankind is governed on earth (take your pick)?
My opinion is that if the messiah called sinners to justice instead of giving us a ton of space for repentance we wouldn’t be here.
I don’t mind answering the rest of your post, but I want an answer to the above.
Vinny37 said: [the raw data is better synthesised, fine-tuned. God does not sleep or slumber; Jesus slept and slumbered.
Heiser noted the various uses of the elohim/theos word. The NT emphasis on God/Theos is the father (the Logos was with God the father: Jhn.1:1). But with Athanasius we can see that the logos was theos in substance/ousia (Jhn.1:1). The logos is noncarnate, but the logos (a.k.a. God the son) began an incarnate mode, viz Jesus (Jhn.1:14). Jesus began about 6 BC, a human man and mission which was not complete in suffering (τελειω/τελειō: Heb.5:9) until his obedience even to death on the cross (Heb.12:2). Always sinless, he matured as a human being (Lk.2:52; Heb.5:8), operating not by his own deificity (NIV: Php.2:6) but by the deity of the spirit (Mt.12:28).]
No. John’s point is the Word from the beginning never stopped being the Word in a flesh body. The king of the universe only appeared weak because he showed everyone weaker than him mercy.
His suffering isn’t complete until the last believer is martyred. In a crazy way it’s comical how the devil wants us to see Christ’s church as vulnerable...weak. The way the world views strength...Whoever has the biggest bomb…army…kills the most…blah blah blah. What would happen if we were really dressed for a fight in the battle gear described in Eph.6? Who would win and what would that fight look like to an unbeliever?]
Please quote in context. [The basic mistake] I spoke of was in the context of understanding the ontology of Jesus—the Q you had posed. You throw in a different context, then upbraid my stupidity! Hardly fair, but let’s move on.
You ask me to opine outcomes had Jesus successfully defended himself before Pilate. A fascinating Q. Would the Second Adam have opened up his mouth in selfishness, thus the stream (God the son incarnate) rebelling against its source (God the son noncarnate), a civil war? From your context I suspect you are merely asking vis-à-vis humanity at least as represented by you & I, mulling with the ideas of justice & mercy (God is both just and merciful), perhaps even hoping for a Gotcha moment.
For Christ’s part, he knew he had in mercy to through injustice—asking neither for justice nor for mercy—defeat death if he was to help us in the best possible way. Unlike Pilate (in context), he neither calls us to justice nor to injustice, but in justice and mercy calls on us to repent of rejection and to enter life with him in mortal life, as members of his messianic community (Jhn.17:3). This eternal life is possible (as is everlasting life to come) because his father cried Crucify, crucify, handing his son over to the cross (Gen.50:20), opening up the global, perhaps universal, atonement. Had that atonement not been, Christian life would not have been, nor our ultimate life with God beyond the portending veil. However the logos-
incarnate had been matured—learned human obedience—through suffering and was ready for crucifixion: “…at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (NIV: Rm.5:6). BTW Jesus being human was weak: Apollinarius and the docetists were wrong.
PS, you might find
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/lacking-in-christs-afflictions/ interesting.