In his ramblings and ravings against orthodoxy over at God's Hammer, Sean Gerety was heard to say:
Persons" in the Trinity represent three "centers of consciousness" not essences or natures. Person in the Incarnation is one center of consciousness with two "essences" or natures. Yet, Dr. Crampton says, and I think rightly, that to deny two centers of consciousness in the God-man is "foolishness." But why is it foolisheness? Simply because a set of attributes or even a definition does not grow in knowledge. A definition does not pray "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." Similarly, God did not forsake a "set of attributes" or a definition. God foresook a real man; a real person. And if according to Cheung persons in the Trinity represent three "centers of consciousness," then ipso facto two centers of consciousness in Jesus Christ represent two persons. Admittedly, Cheung doesn't have two centers of consciousness in the Incarnation, or even two souls like Charlie Ray does, he has one mind with two sets of contradictory attributes; one that evidently learns, sleeps, thirsts, and is tempted (things I always thought minds did), and the other set of attributes that, by definition, cannot do any of these things. From: Crampton.
Wow, Gerety loves to use the straw man fallacy. I have nowhere said that Jesus has two souls. That would be Sean Gerety's view. Jesus Christ has only one soul and it is a human soul which has been hypostatically united with the Logos in one person. We know that person as Jesus Christ. But since Sean does not believe that Jesus Christ and the Logos are one and the same person, then it logically follows that he is a neo-Nestorian who divides Christ into two persons. That is still heresy no matter now you spin it.
The fact is Sean does not understand that God is three persons because he seems to think that the Son of God cannot suffer on the cross without the other two persons suffering on the cross as well. Futhermore, it is not "ipso facto" that "two persons" are in Christ. That is just another way of saying that it is ipso facto that Nestorianism is the only way of explaining the incarnation and that is obviously a non sequitur.
Also, one Person can have two wills and two centers of consciousness without dividing that one Person into two "separate" persons. The fact of the matter is, Sean seems to think that repeating that the orthodox position does not make sense enough times will somehow make his own position look more rational. But that only means that Sean gets to avoid explaining the problem with his view. While Nestorianism "seems" to solve one "apparent" logical contradiction, it raises an even greater problem and contradiction. How can we worship a mere man who is not God in and of Himself. Nestorianism is ipso facto a denial that the man Jesus Christ is truly God, very God of very God. How Gerety can conveniently avoid this major problem with his neo-Nestorian view is beyond me. It would also present a problem with the atonement since anyone who is less than divine could not redeem the elect of the entire race from the eternal punishment due them.
This is the problem with modern re-inventions of ancient heresis. They wind up repeating the ancient errors over and over again and those who stubbornly rehearse the same error do not make the error any less false or heretical by their mantra. Really, the best Gerety can do is to create false views based on what he "thinks" the orthodox position implies or entails and then to use those straw man arguments to demolish something the orthodox position does not entail or even positively state. I truly hope the misguided modern followers of Clark can do better than this.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.
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Sean further said: And, as Dr. Crampton rightly asks, “if Jesus Christ is, as taught in Hebrews 2:17, and asserted by the Chalcedonian creedal statement, ‘in all things like unto us,’ how is He not a human person?” Well, Doc, that’s a darn good question that no one seems able to answer.
That's because Crampton's question is a rhetorical question. He is not saying that Jesus is not a human person; he is stating that Jesus IS a human person. In fact, that IS the orthodox position. Clearly Gerety cannot grasp orthodox truth because he refuses to do so. His agenda is that he thinks the orthodox position ipso facto entails that Jesus is not human, which is basically a straw man argument.
What Nestorianism inherently entails, however, is that Jesus Christ is merely a man who is somehow divided from the divine but yet united with the divine in some mysterious thing Clark called "Sonship." But no one seems willing to explain to us what this "Sonship" is???
How does "Sonship" offer a better explanation for the union of the divine and human in Jesus Christ than does the hypostatic union in one Person?
It suddenly occurred to me that Gerety wants to put words in my mouth by asking me to define "soul." When I then define the human soul, Gerety then takes my definition and applies it to God and tries to say that God has a soul.
This is the most dishonest way of arguing for Nestorianism since it attempts to set up one's opponent by asking misleading questions. It's really just another form of the straw man fallacy.
First of all, the orthodox position is that the Logos assumes a human soul into a hypostatic union with Himself. So the Logos does not in and of Himself have a "soul" but He assumes a human soul into the divine essence by way of a hypostatic union. This union is a hypostasis or spiritual substance, the word hypostasis being taken from Hebrews 1:3. Hypostatis is translated in Hebrews 1:3 as "nature." So the hypostatic union is the "exact imprint" of God's nature or substance. But this imprint in Jesus is a union of the divine nature and the human nature and is not equal to the ousios or divine nature of the trinity but is rather an "exact imprint" of it.
Charlie
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