Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A theological inquiry: what do you believe were all of Christ’s personal motivations to be crucified, and what was the overriding motivation? We have, of course, brotherly love (John 15:13). But there’s also the motivation to live so as to exemplify the glory of God (17:4); to receive glory for himself from God (17:5) (5:44); consequently, there is the interest to always do God’s will (5:30) and work (4:34). There is also the intriguing verse that His motivation was for his own heavenly joy (Heb 12:2), as “for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross”, which I think is the only verse which directly links personal motivation to the cross. This joy is not necessarily mutually exclusive to God’s glory, because glory itself is a supreme joy.
Regarding the overriding motivation, I am partial to Heb 12:2, that Christ was motivated by the glorious “joy set before him”, because the whole passage reads almost like a doxological summation of the faith (“let us look to the founder and perfecter of our faith”). It ties in neatly with a different underrated verse: “Those who, through patience in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, God will give eternal life” (Romans 2:7), while the “self-seeking” face wrath (2:8). This is somewhat tricky because we no longer talk about glory as an emotion today. But if you understand that glory is a feeling that always emanates from a person’s assessment, then seeking God’s glory is not self-seeking, because all of the “social valuation” exists within another person. Seeking one’s own glory would mean something like “wanting to believe oneself to be glorious”, which is different and to be condemned. “Seeking that God give us glory” is equivalent to just “wanting to do our best so that God gives a ‘well done’”.
What’s the general consensus among your kind of Christian on Jesus’ theory of mind on this? Since he knew he was divine, the Son, part of the trinity, was he not simply fulfilling his destiny, living out an inevitability of which he was fully and consciously aware the entire time, an actor in a play whose audience were mankind - for the benefit of their own salvation?
My own thoughts on this question are far from the mainstream, exactly because of the things you mention, which I don’t believe were the original intention. Mainstream theology makes Jesus out as inhuman, and no amount of saying “he is 100% human as well as 100% God” can change that visceral feeling. So in my view, his theory of mind was just that of the most realistically perfect righteous person, and in some mysterious way he learned over time that he was the destined messiah. Per Luke 2:52, as a child “Jesus increased in wisdom and in favor with God”, which precludes the possibility that he always knew his destiny. There is a manuscript variant of the baptism in Luke where God’s voice says, “you are my son, today I have begotten you”, and as this is the oldest variant quoted by the Church Fathers, it could indicate that the full understanding of his divine role occurred at the moment of baptism (occurring sometime in adulthood).
How did his purely human theory of mind sense with certainty that he was the Messiah? I think a combination of things: the testimony of John, whom everyone believed was sent by God; the voice of God heard aloud at the baptism; his ability to heal various impossible physical conditions, and to restore life to Lazarus (this would kind of be a dead giveaway); his biographical details fitting the Messish. Lastly I believe there were events of anamnesis which occurred during his periods of solitary prayer. This would have occurred like your typical fantasy “recollecting past memories after amnesia” plotline, which sounds so contrived, but it’s actually the best way to make sense of Christ’s certainty and doubt coexisting, and his mortality coexisting with “God dwelling in Him” (as an understanding and a love in his bosom only). Because a real human often changes from a sense of perfect certainty to a sense of doubt, and this would occur even in the most realistically perfect person. This isn’t because we have “two natures” or any other spurious theological mindfuck that theologians love to apply.
All of this is to say that his theory of mind was exactly like ours, if we were perfect and given intimations of a cosmic destiny. This means he is infinitely relatable, infinitely human, infinitely engaging. Rather than being more God than us, he is more human than us, and that’s actually more important for the religion to have an effect. He was human because
And as a consequence of this full humanity,
That Jesus was fully divine while on earth and had a perfectly divine prediction of what will happen is disproven by a careful study of Hebrews 5:7
Reverence = fear; and the word supplications here is ἱκετηρία, which is only used in contexts where a person pleas with utter submission (eg a surrendering enemy). Jesus would not have loudly cried and pleaded for salvation from death while on earth if he was certain he would be saved; and the passage indicates that he saved because of this plea.
Not that the Catholic Church cares much about doctrinal integrity these days, but there are at least two major heresies in this interpretation, the heresy of monothelitism and the heresy of adoptionism.
More options
Context Copy link
Thank you, that was interesting. One thing:
Even if he knew he was going to be saved / go to heaven, he might still have loudly cried and pleaded for salvation. Firstly, because it drew attention to him, and his mission was ultimately the salvation of mankind through following him, and secondly because we plead for relief from pain even when we know it is good for us (life-saving surgery in the time before anaesthetic, for example).
Is your contention that Jesus, in mortal life, understood he was special but not that he was, in a way, God?
That theory could work re: pleading, but there are some problems. The passage seems to indicate that the object of the plea (or entreaty) was salvation from death (or the realm of the dead), not from the psychological torment associated with the event. This is reaffirmed in the content of the prayer: let this cup pass from me. And the only case of such a prayer occurring is during the Agony in the Garden; he is only around the disciples, who pay such little attention to him that they fall asleep. There is a sense of authenticity to this in Luke: “being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, his sweat as large drops of blood”.
The whole passage in Hebrews surrounding this is interesting too. It continues:
which is insightful and funny. He needed to learn obedience, and evidently the relationship between his humanity and divine purpose was difficult even for an apostle to articulate. Really, I think the mystery and variety is actually the point. The more mysterious Christ is, in a human way, the more you are drawn into the story, and drawn into imbuing your own situation onto the story. The greatest stories don’t often provide one concrete answer. But the story shouldn’t be mysterious in a logical or philosophical way. There’s nothing to gain from drawing people into thousands of hours of philosophical speculation that have no bearing on behavior, but there’s a lot to be gained when a community is drawn into the same story, identifying with and loving the same figure.
Yes, essentially. The Epistles clarify that Jesus is maximally Godly (“the fullness of deity dwells in him”, “the radiance of God’s glory”), but stops short of ever actually declaring that he is God. (Unless we want to abuse the Greek, which they do.) He is described in such a way that “in everything he might be preeminent”, and he has cosmic import and existed before the creation of the world (an existence which I do not think he fully understood while on earth). But the omission of any indisputable assertion or dogma that Jesus is God is really glaring. This would have been the thing that every early follower would be confused about, if it was taught, because of how strictly monotheistic Judaism was, and how there’s no Old Testament evidence of the Messiah being God. It would have been in the oldest Roman creed, but it’s not; in the Didache, but it’s not; and if would preached by Peter in Acts, but instead he calls Jesus a man. So yeah, I think this dogma was added a couple hundred years later, and for the worse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Simplistic, but my atheistic interpretation was always just this as well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link