From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Problems with Paul's history of Jesus
Date: 13 Nov 92 09:55:47 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

RBNXHS@rohvm1.rohmhaas.com writes:

>Some comments on orthodox christian theology regarding the death of Jesus:
>Orthodox view maintains that though Jesus was composed of two essential
>parts - one human and the other divine, yet it is the human part which
>suffered and died and not the divine part (since that would be suicidal
>for the theology, as rightly questioned by Paul Harvey, and explained
>by Charles Hedrick). Some other christians, however, consider that both
>the divine and human part of Jesus died on the cross. 

I react badly to the description of Jesus being composed of two parts.
However I have to say that much of the discussion by orthodox writers
such as Athanasius does leave that impression, so it's sort of hard to
complain about your characterization.

What I said was that in Jesus there are two things going on, a normal
human life and the presence of God.  I didn't intend to say that these
are different parts.  Rather, a complete understanding of Jesus must
take into account two levels.  Every action of Jesus is both a human
action, motivated by Jesus' human understanding and his relationship
to God, and also an action of God.  Thus I would not partition Jesus
into two parts, so that some actions are human and some divine.
Rather I believe the point of the Incarnation is that it's precisely
in the human character and action that we come to see and understand
God.  

However I'm working in a very different conceptual world than the
majority of Christian writers of the 4th and 5th Cent.  While my views
can be mapped into the orthodox doctrines, I'm not entirely sure that
they are the same.  I have a feeling that the theologians who
formulated the Incarnation would not quite want to speak and divine
and human parts of Jesus, but I also think that for many of them it's
a pretty close approximation.  I'm thinking more in terms of a
functional identity between God and a man.

You go on to say that there are other Christian authors who believe
that both the human and divine parts died.  I'd be curious in knowing
what you have in mind.  As far as I know, every one of the different
groups in the classical period was trying to avoid saying that God
died, at least in a direct way.  Indeed the basic problem that the
classical writers were trying to deal with is that they wanted to say
that Jesus' death was an action of God, without saying that God died.
The various views, including Arian, orthodox, etc., can be seen as
varying attempts to deal with this paradox.  Thus you have writers
like Athanasius who say that God died in the sense that the human
flesh that was united to him died.  But to say that God died, in the
usual sense of the word, would mean that he ceased to exist for 3
days.  No Christian writers is prepared to say that the divine Logos
ceased to exist, no matter how temporarily.  So whatever their
approach, in one way or another they end up saying either that the
entity that died was less than God (the Arian approach), or that the
entity is fully God but died only by virtue of his union to humanity.