Gordon H. Clark: Quote of the Day: Jesus Christ Did Not Lay Aside Any Divine Attributes

. . . Christ upholds all things by the word of his power.  If he ceased doing so, the world would have collapsed the day of his birth. -- Gordon H. Clark

Some pages back person was defined as a complex of propositions.  A man is what he thinks, for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  This definition also allowed the Trinity to consist of three different persons, although far more closely related than any three human persons, yet quite distinct, contrary to the heresy of Patripassianism.  With this settled, the question becomes, Was Jesus a human or a divine person, or perhaps both?  When the Second Person became man, did he retain his divine mind and activities, or did he become a different person by laying aside some of his prerogatives?  I shall not waste time on the extremes of the Kenosis theory; but some of the more orthodox theologians hold that Christ laid aside a number of his trinitarian activities.  If this were the case, we would have difficulty in thinking he was the same person.  But worse than that, there would be cosmic repercussions.  Not only does John say that Christ created the universe, but Hebrews 1:3 declares that Christ upholds all things by the word of his power.  If he ceased doing so, the world would have collapsed the day of his birth.  Would he have recreated it thirty years later?  On this schedule he could not have met the Samaritan woman at the well.  In fact there would have been no wood for a cross on which to crucify him.  Colossians 1:17 enforces this point:  "by him all things hold together," the solar system and even the Roman Empire.  One or more theologians try to avoid these conclusions by the peculiar phrase that Christ on earth laid aside the "independent use" of his divine attributes.  But this ruins the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity because, quite aside from the previous impossibilities, there never were any independent uses of his divine attributes.  Christ as the Second Person, before his Incarnation, never did anything independently of his Father.  John 1:1-3 states that Christ created all things without exception.  But so did the Father.  Creation is ascribed to both. . . . [1 Corinthians 8:6; Ephesians 3:9; Revelation 4:8, 11; 10:6]

Gordon H. Clark, The Incarnation, (Jefferson:  Trinity Foundation, 1988), pp. 64-65.