Did Jesus Have Siblings?

Question: Did Jesus have siblings?
ANSWER:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all record that Jesus had siblings.  Obviously because of the virgin birth, they would be half siblings, fathered by Joseph and not a special act of the Holy Spirit.  But all the gospels speak of Jesus having siblings:

 Mk 3:31-32 Jesus' mother and brothers arrived at the house where he was teaching. They stood outside and sent word for him to come out and talk with them. There was a crowd around Jesus, and someone said, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you." NLT 

See also Matt 12:46-47; Lk 8:19-20; Jn 2:12.

I shouldn’t give too simple an answer here, however, because there has been much controversy over this very question.  Some have wondered if these siblings mentioned are “half” or “step”.  The Catholic church has maintained for some time that Mary had no other children besides Jesus - that in fact she was a "perpetual virgin" and therefore, never had sexual intercourse ever, not before or after Jesus' birth.

If Jesus was the Son of God, without sin, the church came to ask, how could he have been born of a sinful woman?  So the church gradually (over many years) starting to think that Mary never sinned - that in fact she was born without a sin nature as a special act of grace.  This is called the "immaculate conception" - contrary to popular Protestant misunderstanding, it refers to Mary's conception, not Jesus'.

Then what do Catholics make of the clear passages cited above that tell us Jesus had siblings?  They usually call these his step-siblings by Joseph's marriage prior to Mary.  However, there is no biblical evidence of such a marriage or that these were step-siblings.  Also arguing in the opposite direction is the fact that each time they are mentioned they are always hanging around with Mary and she seems to be in agreement with them to rein in Jesus early in his ministry (Mark 3:21).  This lends to the more natural assumption that they were HER children and not Joseph's by a prior marriage.

The problems if we accept Mary’s perpetual virginity are manifold:  

• One, it doesn't reflect the biblical text which never mentions Joseph's alleged first marriage but does explicitly mention Jesus brothers and sisters.
• Two, the idea has served historically to denigrate human sexuality.  IE, why does Mary's specialness (or sinless nature, if true) require that she never had sex?  Is married sex sinful?  
• Three, it’s a needless theological contrivance since the logical problem of how a sinful woman could give birth to a sinless Son was already solved in the Virgin Birth - that was the TRUE immaculate conception!   We have loads of biblical support for that miracle, but no historical support whatsoever for the Immaculate Conception so called.

So that's a longer answer revealing the long controversy that lies behind your question which you may or may not be aware of.  However, at the end of the day your question does have a simple answer - the Biblical data says repeatedly, yes!

Are the Images in Revelation Literal or Symbolic?

QUESTION: In the book of Revelations it describes the throne of God and in detail about the 4 beasts and all that other stuff. Is that a literal vision of the throne or is it possible that it's different and that that was just an example of authority that God has over creation?

RESPONSE:  In apocalyptic literature (such as Daniel, Zechariah, Revelation) the message is explicitly being communicated through dreams and visions, which are by nature highly symbolic.  So the short answer to your question is yes they are symbolic.  This is obviously so, for in many cases the prophet himself knows that he is seeing only symbols of coming realities, not the realities themselves and he is perplexed by them.  Daniel for example doesn’t understand the ACTUAL meaning of his vision about 4 beasts in Dan 7:15-18.

"I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. 16 I approached one of those standing there and asked him the true meaning of all this.  "So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: 17 'The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth.’ 

So here we have it… the beasts are not ACTUALLY, literal beasts.  They are symbols of nations/kingdoms that are to come.  Therefore, when John sees similar beasts in his Apocalypse, of course we are to understand that God is not predicting the coming of ACTUAL beasts to terrify the earth.

The LaHaye “Left Behind” books leaned toward a literal understanding of almost every vision in Revelation which to me based on verses in Daniel alone is very misguided.  For example, when rendering Revelation 9:17-19 which talks about mysterious horses which have lion’s heads and emit smoke and sulfur… LaHaye imagines actual, demonic horses roaming the earth killing people.  Why would these beasts be literal, and the beasts of Daniel and earlier in Revelation be symbolic?  That doesn't make sense.

One more example.

Rev 17:9-11 "This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king.

So again, here the author who is bringing the prophetic vision explicitly tells us that he is talking in SYMBOLS.  Sometimes, the symbols may mean more than one thing and he tells us what they are – the beast is a King.  The seven heads are kings.  They are also seven hills – which is certainly a symbolic reference to Rome, known to John's audience and world history as "the city built on seven hills".  The woman then, is some kind of false religion or system that calls for the allegiance of the nations and she sits in Rome.

This is not to make the interpretation of Revelation to sound like an easy thing.  It’s not.  But your basic instinct is dead on:  these are symbols and codes – non-literal representations of historical realities that are present or coming.

The visions of the heavenly court are likewise probably symbolic descriptions of real things.  There are really angels that worship God day and night.  The description of these beings in the heavenly court are meant to capture some aspect of them, like their power, submission, transcendence, sight, truth, love, wonder, spiritual nature etc.  

Now, I am less certain that John's descriptions of the heavenly court are purely symbolic, because there he has been explicitly caught up to heaven, in another dimension of space and time entirely, whereas the other parts of Revelation deal with history, nations and life in our dimension.  Like with Ezekiel's wheels, John may be describing the scene as he actually saw it playing out literally in heaven, but his words are still filled with similes and metaphors because he's struggling to find words to describe the immense, unutterable glory of God.

What Do You Think of Rabbi Cahn's book "Harbinger"?

This book was recommended to me by two people from church in the last few years, so I did finally pick it up.  I admit I was skeptical, since the title page tells me upfront this will be:  “the ancient mystery that will hold the secret to America’s future.”  I get very twitchy about Christians nailing down a message for one specific country (in this case America) from Scriptural prophesy. 

Look, when people give warnings about America from biblical prophecy I think that’s fine as a generic application of God’s dealings with Israel for ANY culture/nation.  The Bible shows God’s good nature, his concern for law and justice and the prophetic parts show that he’s bringing world history to an epic conclusion.  Also, biblical prophecy overall shows how God uses all the nations to advance his will and that he cares about all the nations, even the ones that are not named Israel – yes even the ones that are in rebellion against him.

So, if Cahn would take these principles and apply them to America, to show how God judged and treated Nations that were like this or that nation in Scripture, in terms of their values and overall attitudes etc – then that’s a valid application, in my mind.  In that sense it might also be appropriate to say that as America carries on in the spirit of Ancient Israel (or Babylon, or Nineveh), not getting the gracious warning shots across our bow, we will suffer for our defiance and blindness in similar ways as they.

In Harbinger, Cahn has done some of this.  However, I think he takes it too far and misapplies Isaiah’s prophesy by making it far too specifically about this one country at this particular time.  Let me explain:

Cahn’s entire premise actually is borrowed (I’m not sure if he ever gives credit for this).  His book is essentially an expansion of a sermon I have in my files by David Wilkerson entitled “Towers Down, Message Missed.”  He preached this right after 911, and in his talk, Wilkerson gave a blistering critique of the American response to 911.  The whole message was build on Isaiah 9:10 which says:

Isa 9:9-10  All the people will know it — Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria — who say with pride and arrogance of heart,  10 "The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars."

He felt that that great tragedy was God’s stirring call for America to repent.  And in the aftermath, he noted that there was no real repentance from America’s increasing hostility to the Christian faith, to Christian values and to the gospel overall.  In fact, he said (accurately I believe) that the response was the opposite of such repentance (the temporary spike in church attendance not withstanding).  It was rather to retrench ourselves in our current path of excess and immorality, and to pridefully defy any rebuke that God might have intended with that terrible slaughter, and instead commit ourselves to rebuild, recover, and be even greater than we were before.  Wilkerson cited this same passage as his text.

To give context, Isaiah is speaking to nations who are facing the onslaught of the expanding Assyrian empire around 750 BC.  The northern kingdom was always more cosmopolitan and urbane and wealthy than their hill dwelling brothers in Judah, but their connections to surrounding culture brought the corruption of excess and immorality.   One prophet calls Israel’s upper crust the “fat cows of Bashan”.

When Assyria made incursions into the northern kingdom of Israel, they did not at first obliterate the country.  They took the northern regions but left Samaria (the capital) alone (2 Kings 15:29).  It is likely these events that prompted the response Isaiah notes in 9:10.  “The bricks have fallen” – meaning, many of our towns may have been decimated by Tiglath-Pileser, but no matter, we’ll come back from all this – and better than ever.  That’s the meaning of “dressed stone” and “cedars”… the replacement items are of much better quality than the original.  Isaiah is saying their refusal to see God’s hand of discipline in the invasion constitutes unbelievable arrogance.  And he specifically criticizes their unbounded, blind optimism to be undeterred in the face of their immanent doom.

Well, it’s not hard to see how well the American experience after 911 fits with Isaiah 9:10.  We too we hit hard by an invading army.  And we too responded with an upbeat message of rebuilding.  We too mostly ignored the setback as any kind of Divine discipline or warning.  And of course now the Twin Towers have been replaced by the even taller, 1776 foot Freedom Tower.

Now here’s where it gets controversial.  Many saw the attack, not as a reason to turn to God, but as a reason to turn away from God, saying if God were real such evil things wouldn’t happen.  Others saw it as some sort of vindication of American values – if evil people hated us this much, we must be pretty good indeed!  

Of course Christians did mostly adopt a simple view that there is evil in the world that resists good, and this resistance doesn’t always indicate divine discipline or God’s displeasure.  True.  Without a known prophet like Isaiah around to interpret such events, it’s hard to connect with any authority the evil actions of evil people with a good God.  But let us not forget that the prophets did in fact do this often.  God called the pagan and wicked king Nebuchadnezzar, “my servant” (Jeremiah 25:9).  Not because God wills evil, but because he allows it and USES it for good purposes.  So I have no problem in principle with associating the Isaiah passage with American responses to 911.  It could be just as applicable to Germany after WWII.

However, if the author treats America as a sort of “second Israel” and sees that we have a special tie to these prophecies because somehow America is uniquely “God’s country” as Israel was, then I think it’s off the tracks.  America is not God’s means of redemption, or his sole plan for getting the message of Christ out to the world, and America is not the special object of God’s affection.  The Church however, does fill all those roles – the Church stewards the hope of Christ, the hope of the world.  If America blows its moment on the world stage, that’s bad for America, people will suffer, but the Church lives on, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her.

Now, I would agree that America has its place in the history of nations, some more or less righteous than others, and like them, will receive from God her just desserts.  therefore, it’s good for America to broadly be friendly to godly values, and to have godly leaders etc.  But if she does not, this doesn’t defeat the Church or God’s End Times purposes.  No post-Christ nation has anywhere the role in God’s plan that pre-Christ Israel did.  That nation’s role was to show God to the nations and bring in the Christ.  Other nations sometimes helped God’s people (eg. the Persians under Cyrus), and sometimes persecuted them (eg. the Greeks under Antiochus Epiphanes).  Likewise America might be like Cyrus and that’s good for the Church.  But America itself is not the Church – like Persia it CONTAINS God’s people who live in her, in exile.

America will come and (if today’s events are an accurate harbinger) it will also someday, go.  If it repents, like Nineveh did, it might go a little longer.  If that’s the author’s point, I think it’s a good one.  If he’s suggesting America is the modern day Israel, I think he’s gone too far.

Does The Bible Predict Global Warming?

QUESTION:  Does the Bible say anything about global warming or should we be concerned?  Is a scenario like in the movie “Soylent Green” possible?

ANSWER:  This is an interesting question that has some speculative answers.  So first let me mention what is uncontroversial: the Bible is a creation friendly book that encourages good environmental stewardship.  The earth and creation in general are called “good” by God several times (Gen 1:12, 18, 21).  And our dual mandate is to rule and subdue the earth (Gen 1:28) and to tend and care for it (Gen 2:15).   God is a benevolent manager and being made in His image, that’s the pattern we’re to imitate with the environment he gives us to live in.

Then sin comes along and junks up this plan and the result is not only that we fall out of harmony and uninterrupted fellowship with God and each other, we fall out of harmony with the good earth God made (Gen 3:17-19).  Our sin has consequences for the natural order and now it’s in open revolt and we have often become users rather than managers of earth. 

That’s not controversial, biblically speaking (contrary to those who assume the Bible encourages environmental pillaging), and there are examples of our fall and behavior leading to environmental damages recorded in biblical history long before our time, and mourned by the prophets.  For example:

Hosea 4:3 Because of this [sin] the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying. NIV

So our current problem is really nothing new – the scale may be larger is all. 

Now your question has a prophetic element to it and this is where it gets speculative.  I gather that you wonder if the bible predicts environmental disaster for our future through global warming.  And if it’s not mentioned in biblical prophecy, then we needn’t concern ourselves with it, perhaps?

If that’s the force of the question I would warn that whether or not global warming plays into biblical scenarios of the future, we ought to be as zealous as ever about the creation mandate.  Any part of our use of God’s good (but broken) earth that is unsustainable is by definition, BAD management.  Christians who take scripture seriously should work for sustainable stewardship of the only home we’re probably ever going to live on.

Having said that, there are some bible scholars who think that Scripture does refer repeatedly to a future where environmental devastation is predicted by prophets to play a key role in our future.  Specifically there’s a reference to “fire” judgment, with the source of the problem being the sun, so it’s not a physical fire on earth:

Rev 16:8-9  The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire.  They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God…NIV

Whether this is global warming or our sun beginning to die or some other judgment that this is a metaphor for, is debated.  But there it is.  In fact, much of what the bible prophets write about the time of coming judgment looks like environmental devastation.  One example is the repeated reference to sun and moon.  Jesus himself said:

Matt 24:29 "Immediately after the distress of those days "'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.' NIV

Other similar references are Ezek 32:7-8, Joel 2:10-11, Joel 2:31, Isa 13:10, Matt 24:29, Luke 21:25, Rev 6:12, Rev 8:12.  These verses all predict a day of a darkened sun and a red moon and they were written by 6 different authors over a period of 700 years!  Speculating on what this means, we already know what sort of phenomena would cause celestial bodies to dim and the moon to appear red:  increased haze in the atmosphere.  Pollutants, green house gases, even water vapor through evaporating oceans.  The effect you see of a red moon rising on the horizon is a result of the light having to travel through more atmosphere and particulate matter to reach your eye, thus the dim, reddish glow. 

It may be possible that the Bible predicts a future when this effect is magnified and causes global devastation.   Is this simply divine judgment or human intervention?  It could be both.  It is entirely consistent with God’s methods of discipline that he would simply make us lie down on a bed of our own making.  It’s how God judges us now.  (Rom 1:28).  He “gives us over” to selfish ways and suffer the consequences for those decisions to not go God’s way.

If we continue to forget this, it would not be shocking to find ourselves someday reaping a terrible harvest for the seeds of earth mismanagement we’ve sown – and that this may play into final judgments that precede “the Day of the Lord”.

In the meantime, even if our future contains such horrible destruction from pervasive disobedience to God’s creation mandate, it is for God to know those times and dates and it’s for us who wish to love God  to obey God’s creation mandate no matter what.  Sustainability is a very overused word, but it is the right word to define proper usage of resources from God’s good earth.  Any environmental management that cannot be sustained indefinitely, is by definition rapacious, gluttonous, and greedy because it steals from the future well-being of others so I can live better today.  (The federal budget has been managed by this exact same selfish outlook for many decades.)

“Soylent Green” is a movie that tackles overpopulation.  That scenario is not really addressed in Scripture.  There is actually massive depopulation predicted in the book of Revelation (Rev 9:18, Rev 14:20).  That may or may not assume an enormous starting population.  Problems with the food supply are discussed vaguely in Revelation, but those seem to relate to the policies of totalitarian regimes, not too many mouths to feed (Rev 13:17).

Ironically, the 1966 novel that the movie “Soylent Green” was built on predicted 40 million people crammed into NY City by the year 1999, which obviously hasn’t happened.  So grim predictions of apocalypse through overpopulation are still a ways off.  And in places like Germany, Spain, France, Japan and Russia, the governments wringing their hands and paying their citizens to have kids because they're in negative population growth situations (minus immigration).  And of course the true antagonist of the movie is really less about too many people as it is the horrifying acts of tyrannical, unaccountable governments - spoiler alert: "Soylent Green is people!!!"

So we can’t know for sure what role global warming plays in God’s future visions of judgment.  We CAN commit in the present to manage the earth well no matter where this is going.  While there’s debate about how much humans are causing global warming, it seems to me that reducing, reusing and recycling should be uncontroversial, good management principles that enhance sustainability of our earth – and enhance financial solvency which is something that cannot hurt our over-leveraged pocketbooks.

Would the Existence of Aliens Prove Fatal to Christianity?

QUESTION: Does the possibility of Extraterrestrial Life pose a threat to religion, Christianity or any of its fundamental beliefs about the natural world?

RESPONSE:  Thanks for articulating a very often-asked question.  To answer, we have to first discern what the fundamental principle in religion or Christianity is which excludes the very possibility of this universe containing other life forms.  In other words, what doctrine or Scriptural precedent precludes the existence of Alien life, such that the discovery of Aliens would be fatal to Christianity?

Before answering that, it's interesting to note that Christians have ALWAYS believed God created AT LEAST one other sentient, intelligent race in the universe.  Of course I am referring to angels.  So for Christians, the questions “do Aliens exist” and “are we alone in the Universe” have always been settled with a “yes” and a “no” respectively.

Aliens!

Angels, contrary to medieval art, are not deceased humans with harps on clouds, or fat babies with bows and arrows.  Angels are powerful beings of pure spirit. Most bible scholars would agree their creation predates both the earth and the appearance of humans on it.  The bible records angels sometimes appearing as humans – but in their nature they are nonhuman, non-corporeal, intelligent, morally free, sentient beings.

Despite this long-held belief in angels, the Alien question is thought to be fatal to Christianity for two reasons, one because it’s assumed to undermine the biblical narrative of human centrality and worth, and two because it’s assumed to undermine the biblical narrative about creation.  So let’s take these in turn:

Let’s call the first “the assumption of anthropocentrism” – the belief that the man-centered Bible must preclude other races on account of humanity’s unique relation to God.  If we accept this, and if Aliens were to be found, the Faith must collapse. 

But why should this be true?  It’s a false dichotomy.  Any parent with more than one child instantly sees it as such.  A parent can have more than one child, but the existence of another child does nothing to diminish the love, care and plans the parent makes for the first.

Even so, without denying the specialness of humanity to God, nor the eternal plans he made or the lengths he went to to save it, Christians can still affirm that God may have other races which are equally special to him, and for which he has equally wonderful and long term plans. (Lewis explored these possibilities in his science fiction books, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.)

What about Aliens and the uniqueness of the Incarnation?  Well, again if we believe God is dealing intimately with the “alien race” of angels without ever being incarnated as one of them, why couldn’t this be true of some other biological alien race?  Perhaps the redemption of the cross is universally applicable (literally!) and the discovery of Aliens would be further cause for mission.  This is speculative, but there’s nothing in the mere existence of those beings that is fatal to Christian theology about the cross.

Further, I’m not troubled that we get nothing about such Beings from the Bible.  Which is important to state, because inside this anthropocentric objection is another assumption: if Christianity really were true, it would give revelation of this fact to us.  And yet the Bible is silent on Aliens, ergo their discovery would be a Christianity defeater. 

But this objection fails for two reasons:  clearly, up to now, no Alien life has been found!  So it still may be that humans are God’s only going concern in the entire universe.  Two, even if Aliens were found, the Bible never claims to give us all knowledge of the universe, but only such knowledge as is necessary for our salvation.  Galileo’s famous dictum here applies, “God was interested in telling us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Yes, the Bible affirms that humans are special, alone on earth we are “made in the Image of God.”  And it’s also true that Angels are seen serving/helping us as if that were their purpose (Heb 1:14).  And it’s also true Jesus said we matter more than the “many sparrows”. 

But should we assume by this that no other life forms are special to God?  Or that God has no workings with them and purposes which have nothing to do with us?  Far from it.  Over and over the Bible says the animals have great value to God, as he extols all the ways (some of which unknown to us) that they reflect his character and qualities.  (Job chp. 38-40).  And when God tells Jonah that he has pity on the city of Ninevah, laboring under sin, he mentions it’s cattle as part of the city he cares for!  In addition, Angels at times seem to be God’s primary concern, when even our redemption is painted as God’s act of warfare and glory directed at that race of exalted, powerful creatures (Eph 3:9,10; Col 2:8).

So with other intelligent, sentient life, and with other non-image bearing biological life – in both cases Christian scripture already tells us such life merely existing and having value to God is not mutually exclusive of humans having great worth, even preeminent worth on this world.

The irony is this:  the person who raises this objection usually means to take a stab at what they think is the inherent anthropocentrism of Christianity, not realizing that the Bible beat them to it:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,    which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?  You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.  Ps 8:3-5

But now the second assumption in this question is that Aliens would undermine Christian teaching about creation.  This objection really is just an offshoot of the creation/evolution objection.  Specifically this person assumes that the discovery of the size/age of the universe, combined with the theory of how life evolved on earth by mutation/natural selection means, A) the universe is teeming with life, and B) the Bible’s creation account has been falsified.

Regarding the truth of the Bible’s creation account, John Lennox gives a compelling Christian view of creation in 7 Days That Divide The World.  There he notes that the same way Christians eventually saw how Scripture accommodates a heliocentric solar system, we should also see the Bible’s creation account can accommodate long ages and the vast size of the universe.

So the only real problem is not aliens but unguided evolution which supposedly is making aliens all over the galaxy. 

But this objection is starting to backfire.  Even the most ardent Darwinian scientist will tell you that the theory is weakest at the point of the creation of the first self-reproducing cell.  There is currently no working materialist model of how life first arose on earth.  Why?  Assuming mutation/selection really works to create new structures and life forms (an unsubstantiated assumption as science is discovering), before there were ANY life forms, what does mutation/selection work on?  If life evolves by saved copying errors in DNA, what about before there was DNA?  Life from non-life is a massive mystery and we’re rapidly moving past the era when science naively thought time and the chance shuffling of chemicals could do the trick.

So ironically it’s at the point where the theory of life’s origin is WEAKEST that the proponent of Alien life has to be the most confident in it.  Exactly where we have no laboratory confirmation of how it happened on earth, we have to believe that life came from non-life literally millions of times “out there”.  Where does this confidence come from?  Not from the science, but from people's hopes or assumptions.

So while the discovery of other life in the universe wouldn’t be fatal to Christianity, the LACK OF DISCOVERY of other life in the universe may be fatal to materialism!  For the materialist, evolution should be “easy”.  It should be something that just happens, by chance random processes wherever the conditions are right.  And so the universe ought to be teeming with life.

S.E.T.I. Antenna Array

And that is what the early Alien Seekers assumed.  The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was a gov’t funded group of such seekers that spent millions of dollars looking for the radio signals of life forms which they assumed had to exist in the thousands if not millions.

But more discoveries put a damper on the Alien euphoria, not just the increasing failure of chemical theories of pre-biotic evolution, but also the multiplying factors necessary to support life.  Carl Sagan in the 1970’s presumed only 2 were needed so that if a planet had the right star and was the right distance from that star – wham-o – you’d have life spring up out of non-living chemicals eventually and inevitably.

Today, the factors have jumped from 2 to 200 and counting – making earth a very special place indeed.  This doesn’t even begin to touch the finely tuned nature of the universe as a whole.

So while the assumption is that the existence of Aliens is fatal to Christianity’s narrative about creation, it appears that if they do exist, they will only exist by the same intelligent design as designed us, and inside the same finely tuned universe we inhabit.  Needless to say, the discovery of an intelligently designed co-inhabitant of this finely tuned universe would not disturb my Christian faith in the least.

HOW CAN JESUS BE BOTH FULLY GOD AND FULLY HUMAN AT THE SAME TIME?

This is a great question!  In fact it’s the second major question about Jesus that preoccupied the best minds in the church in the early centuries of Christendom. 

The first major question about Jesus was how he could be God and address God as Father at the same time.  What did these biblical statements infer about the nature of God?  The Church eventually settled on a Trinitarian formula – that God was one in being, three in person, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It is sometimes asserted that because this first question wasn’t fully settled until the 4th century that this means the Church essentially picked this view of a fully deified Son out of thin air, and foisted this late developing view onto history.  “Da Vinci Code” anyone?  

But history shows that Christ’s divinity was never in doubt by the Church because, despite its disparate views on Christ, all sides were deriving their view fundamentally from the 4 gospels and the letters of Paul – all first century documents.  The 2nd century Gnostics were not really serious players in the debate, but even they never doubted that Jesus was divine.

The questions were about exactly HOW the Father shared his divinity with the Son – was the Son a mode of God, or the highest created thing in which God’s nature was fully reflected, or fully God?  This unanimity on the main point is due to the fact that the debates were anchored, not in the whims of church leaders, but the New Testament documents themselves.

Like scientists who disagreed about which theory captures the data best but agree on the data itself, the early church mostly agreed that those earliest documents were their trusted data field.  So in the end, each view they rejected lost out because there was scriptural data it could not fully incorporate.  The view that “won” – the Trinity – was the view that captured ALL the data.

So once the Church articulated the Trinitarian nature of God, they then turned to your question:  Since the Bible is clear that Jesus is fully God, and equally clear that he lived as a normal human man, how do you fuse those two natures?  After they answered how God could be three and one, they asked, how can a person be both truly a human being and truly God?

For starters, it was taken for granted that the reason for the Incarnation was that God had to assume human nature in order to save it.  He could not put right what was wrong in us, if he did not take on a complete human nature to redeem it.

So the first way that Christians put these two natures together was to say Jesus was like us, with a body, a mind and a spirit, but that the Second Person of the Trinity displaced the human spirit of Jesus the man.  But the Church  soon realized that if Jesus did not have a human spirit, then he wasn’t TRULY a human.  That meant God could not redeem and save the human spirit.  So this view was eventually rejected.

Another view, Nestorianism, came to the fore.  This agreed there had to be a full human and divine nature in Christ, but saw them as two persons fused in Jesus.  But this too was condemned because it imagined two actual persons within Jesus nature. Scripture did not show a Christ who had two personalities, talking to each other, one possessing the other etc.  Jesus is clearly one person.

So after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the Church established two bumpers to define a biblical position.  They developed a motto, “Never confusing the natures, never dividing the person.”  They formed a Creed as follows:

We confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man … one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the difference of the natures being by no means taken away because of the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person …not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ.

4th Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon
451 A.D.

So, condemning the view of God displacing a human nature, the Church also condemned the 2-persons-in-one view.  That left their Creed, two complete natures, one person.  

Now, they left it open as to the HOW, yet the basic idea was clear.  If you cut through all the debate, the overly-careful redundancy of the Creed, the fancy words, like “consubstantial” and “subsistence” etc., the Church finally landed in a very simple place:

They acknowledged the biblical minimums without committing to confusing speculation.  Those minimums boil down to this:  A man came who was really and wholly a human man and yet he claimed to be God, having all the prerogatives and qualities of God.  Yet this man never showed signs of being possessed, internally conflicted or schizophrenic – a cohesive, complete, undivided, singular person.

 

So he was two and yet he was one.

Now, as to the “how” question, more modern debate has centered on Philippians 2 for help on that.  Paul there states:

Phil 2:7: Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men.

The key Greek word is “kenosis” – to empty.  This suggests that in order for a full divine nature to fuse with a human nature in one person, the Son was emptied of some divine privileges in the Incarnation.  And this perhaps comes as close as we can get to answering the “HOW” question regarding the seeming impossibility of an infinite God merging with finite humanity.

However, even here we must be very careful how much we lean on that one word “emptying” – since if Jesus was emptied of any core aspect of deity or any essential divine attributes, he ceased to be God.  God cannot be less than God and still be God.

So we should say that by becoming human, the Son emptied himself of some divine privileges, yet he did this willfully and only temporarily WITHOUT losing divine attributes.  To go back to what was established at Chalcedon, we can say that what is true of one nature was not always true of the other, yet whatever was true of one nature had to be true for Jesus, the one Person.

And that best makes sense of everything Jesus said and did.  For example, when Jesus claimed the Father was greater than he (John 14:28), that was certainly true of his human nature, but it was not true of his divine nature.  Yet the one Person Jesus experienced the Father’s greatness and lived in submission to it.  This is part of the Kenosis.

Another example: when Jesus claimed that he didn’t know the hour of his return (Matt 24:36), that was true in his human nature.  But his divine nature was omniscient (John 21:17).  So he was emptied and therefore didn't consciously have access to all knowledge during his life on earth.  Also when Jesus died, he could die because he had a human nature, but his divine nature could not die.  So the “emptying” of Phil 2 gives us the reason that some aspects of His divine nature were ‘hidden’ to him or left “unconscious”.

And yet – and here is the beautiful mystery – because Jesus is one Person his divine nature which cannot die, tasted death, so that he experienced through his human nature everything we as humans do.  Why?  For this purpose:

Heb 2:14-15: Because God's children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. 15 Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.

Doesn't Predestination Mean We Have No Free Will?

QUESTION:  There are many verses that indicate there is no free will, however I was raised to believe in free will. Now I am at a loss to explain why I believe. The doctrine of predestination seems so contrary to free will.

RESPONSE:  First of all, I don’t think it would be fair to characterize the doctrine of predestination as contrary to free will –  not even for those who hold to Reformed Theology.  Even for very strict Calvinists, the idea that God predestines some to heaven and others to hell is not mutually exclusive of the idea that people choose to go to heaven or to hell freely.  They would hold that somehow, people are choosing exactly what they really want, while at the same time, God has predestined and chosen that fate for them from before the creation of the world.

So also no person who believes in free will denies the doctrine of predestination.  As you said, many verses talk about this concept, to deny it would seem obviously heretical.  So all Christians hold two ideas in tension, free will and predestination… and a perennial debate for centuries has been, how to put them together without violating Scripture, logic or both. 

Some verses (ones I’m guessing you are referring to) seem to affirm a kind of predestination that violates free will.  But do they really?  Read in context we begin to understand what predestination means – specifically what it does NOT mean:  predestination in Scripture is not a default affirmation of DETERMINISM, which DOES undermine freewill.   That is, Determinism is essentially the same as Fate, the idea that all things play out according to a pre-written script and real freedom is illusory.

Let's deal with 3 of the texts that deal with predestination and I think you'll see we have reasons to doubt that these passages really do "indicate there is no free will" as you fear.  Let's begin with:

Ephesians 1:4, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”  

Here it looks like God chooses everything ahead of time.  But some have read this verse with deterministic lenses for so long that they miss what exactly it is that God has chosen ahead of time.   Paul doesn’t say, “God chose who will be in Christ.”   Rather he says, “God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight.”  The thing God has predetermined from before all time, is the end state for all the elect who are in Christ.  That thing which he has predetermined is that we be perfect and set apart.

To help understand this, imagine if I give a sermon and showed a movie clip to illustrate my point.  You could say I predestined that people who came to church that day would see the clip.  Let’s say 4 months ago I planned and chose the clip.  But the showing up in the building, was a matter of someone else’s choice, not mine.  Or maybe it was a joint effort.  Let's say I asked people to come, advertised the event, and influenced them to be there.  But they decided to agree with that call, or not.  But once here, it is MY choice and unalterable purpose that all who are in the building, will experience that clip.

Now it should be pointed out that a few verses later (11) Paul seems to come back to freedom-denying predestination when he says the elect are chosen by God ahead of time, "We were also chosen to belong to him. God decided to choose us long ago in keeping with his plan...".  Does he mean some are chosen and by implication, others are "unchosen"?  Well, all over Scripture the "Elect" refers to God's chosen people.  But at some of the places where it sounds like God chooses these Elect, it also sounds as though the Elect are those who choose God. (2 Thessalonians 2:13).

And twice when the Bible mentions God's choosing us, it also mentions his "foreknowing us" - giving us indication that the choosing is in concert with His omniscience - his seeing us in advance (1 Peter 1:2; Rom 8:29).  This suggests some kind of concert between our choosing and God's choosing.  And again, in Romans 8:29, we see the foreknowing and the choosing in advance are towards a purpose or end state (conformity into the image of Christ), not a choosing of some and an "un-choosing" of others, without regard for their faith.

When talking about what it means to be chosen, Jesus himself gives a parable to understand how God's choosing  works.  In Matt 22 Jesus says the Gospel banquet invitation goes out to everyone.  Not just to the expected or worthy, but to the outsiders and the unworthy too.  Everyone.  And in the parable, it's the response to the invitation that determines if one becomes one of the chosen or one of those cast out.  Jesus’ own conclusion is this: 

"many are invited, few are chosen." (Matt 22:14).

This is in keeping with the overwhelming theme in Scripture that God in some sense "chooses" everyone.  That is, He calls and woos all, and His love is universal, his love is impartial, and his love desires all to be saved (e.g. I Jn 4:8; Duet 10:17-19; 2 Chron 19:7; Ezek 18:25; Mk 12:14; Jn 3:16; Acts 10:34; Acts 17: 27; Rom. 2:10-11; Eph 6:9; I Tim 2:4; I Pet 1:17; 2 Pet. 3:9).  To take Eph 1 texts about God's choosing us to imply that God predestines some to salvation others for damnation without regard for their faith forces you to radically bend these other texts or ignore them altogether.

Another key text used by Determinists is John 6:44

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,"

It is of course, obvious biblically to say that for a person to choose Christ, God must be involved in their broken will, to enlighten and to draw.  But this doesn’t violate their free will, nor does it affirm a Fatalistic universe.  Nor does it assume that if a person DOESN’T come to Christ that the Father never loved them or drew them.  It simply means that God is among the free wills operating in the world, and one of the things he freely does is draw people and gift them with the ability to respond to his offer, and without his help, none would respond.

But does this verse mean (as Determinists would argue) that God will never "draw" or woo or call people to reach out for him, who do not ultimately choose grace?  In fact, we're told Jesus has “mercy” on the rich young ruler and calls him specifically to discipleship and salvation.  But that man turned away.  Jesus also looks at Jerusalem in a stirring lament and says, 

“how I longed to gather you… but you were not willing.”  (Matt 23:37)

In the Determinist world, God never really drew the rich young ruler nor all the lost in Jerusalem and they were destined for hell from before all time.   Well, this doesn’t jive with the text.  Jesus is clearly drawing Jerusalem – but they are freely rejecting the gift of God’s offer.  If this rejection was not just seen, but PLANNED by Jesus from before all time, why is He crying over their damnation?  In the Determinist view, it is Jesus after all, who MADE them to reject him!  This again doesn’t fit the facts of the text.

A final key verse used to under-gird Determinism is Romans 9:14-15

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

 The entire chapter of Romans 9 is seen by many as a blueprint for understanding God’s Sovereignty in salvation.  God chooses unilaterally who is saved and who is not.  And if you happen to raise the issue of logic (“how can God rightly condemn a person whom he predestines from all eternity past to be hardened?”) then you are simply told God has mercy on whomever he wants.  If you press the matter further and say, “but that’s not fair”, you are slapped on the hand and told, “who are you talk back to God?” (vs. 19).

At first this all seems to be persuasive for a Deterministic view.  But then we step back and see Paul’s overarching argument from Romans 9 thru 11, and that argument is not about individual salvation, but about God’s faithfulness to the nation of Israel, and their role in salvation history.  The question being answered in Romans is, why have the Jews by and large rejected their Messiah?  This is a disturbing question that caused many Jewish Christians to wonder if God’s Promises to Israel had failed.

Paul's argument then is to establish that the Jewish rejection of Messiah, and God's subsequent picking of a covenant people from among the Gentiles is not unfair or a failure or out of pattern.  Paul is reminding his Jewish audience in Romans 9 that God has always chosen nations for service based on his own choice and not on inherent goodness in them or their pedigree.

He proves this by reminding them that God did not choose ALL Abraham's descendants as his covenant people, but only those of "the promise"; sons of Isaac.  And then afterwards, God chooses Jacob and not Esau.  But this is not referring to individuals for salvation, but nations for service.  The quote from Malachi "Jacob I love and Esau I hated" is specifically about the nation of Edom, not one man, Esau.  So Paul is arguing that God has a right to pick any people he wants for such service.  In both Isaac and Jacob, God picks them unexpectedly, out of birth order, and both are rascals, which shows God's mercy and lack of concern for human works or family background.

What he's saying is simply that the Jews should not be shocked that God is now including Gentiles into his covenant people.  Why not?  He delights in showing mercy to whomever he wants, and this is his established pattern of upside-down grace.  But this is about broad people groups, not individuals.  If it were about individuals, we have to imagine that God is saying here that every Edomite and every Moabite and Ishmaelite was eternally condemned because God didn't choose them when he chose Isaac and Jacob.  No, it simply means that they were not chosen or preferred for service as Israel was.

The strong reprimand then, "who are you talk back to God..." is reserved for those who question God's right to pick Gentiles based on their faith (he makes that clear in a second), and who are upset that God is not (as he never was) impressed with Israel's works or her genetics.

What should cement this case is simply that Paul concludes his own complex reasoning with a simple thought.  So we should let him speak for himself and not impose Determinism on his thinking, when he is very clear that that's not what's driving this argument.  He wraps by saying,

"What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal..."

This is incredibly important.  If the Deterministic view was right, here we should expect Paul to summarize by saying, "so then we see that God sovereignly chooses who is saved and who is damned randomly and mysteriously and don't question him."  Instead, Paul says God's picking and granting righteousness is not arbitrary or condition-less at all.  It is based on the condition of faith which God has always been looking for, and not on a genetic pedigree from Abraham, or even meticulous law observance.   In other words, in the end, Paul appeals to free will, not Determinism.

The charge of God being arbitrary or unfair is in fact the root of Romans 9-11 - but not unfair because he picks who is saved and no one can talk back to him.  Ironically, the Jews would probably like that line of thinking, assuming God has always picked them and anyone who questions that favoritism should be corrected!  

However, Paul clearly doesn't want to play into that hand.  Rather the charge he's dealing with from a Jewish faction is that God is unfair because he allows the Gentiles into the Kingdom and he at the same time has hardened (some of) the Jews.  See, the Jews would see God's hardening of them, the law keepers, and the granting of mercy to the Gentiles, the sinners, as very arbitrary.  Paul is arguing the point in Romans 9 that this is perfectly consistent with what God has always done.  This is why Pharaoh is brought into the argument.  Now, you Jews, Paul is saying, have taken Pharaoh's role.  God hardened him BECAUSE OF HIS UNBELIEF (Ex 8:15).  He hardens those who harden themselves.

So just as Paul concludes that the picking of the Gentiles was NOT arbitrary, so the hardening of the Jews was also not arbitrary.  They pursued righteous by works instead of by faith (9:32).  So this hardening was perfectly consistent with the criteria of faith which God has always worked with. He gives mercy in response to faith and he hardens in response to unbelief.  It’s not the other way around.  People don’t have faith as a result of God having mercy on them, and people don’t have unbelief as a result of God hardening them.

We we doubt this is Paul's point, we just have to note his Isaiah quote, 

"see, I have placed in Zion ... a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him [not the one whom I predetermine prior to their belief] will never be put to shame."

And later we’ll find out that even God’s hardening in response to unbelief is not determinative because all they have to do is stop their unbelief, and God will change his plans for them (11:32).

So predestination is agreed to by all Christians, but what does that idea mean?  We’ve seen that it doesn’t have to mean that God has fatalistically planned all things out and removed free will in the process.  It’s more likely that it means God sees us in advance, and sees those who would believe in him, and since God calls all to reach out for him (Acts 17:27), and desires all to be saved (2 Peter 3:9), we can say that those who respond in faith, complete his salvation offer and BECOME the chosen.  

God has predestined, and planned for this Chosen People to be holy and like Christ, and nothing will stop that plan from being executed.