From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Consciousness of Christ
Date: 6 Oct 92 04:28:32 GMT
Organization: FNAL

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but had forgotten about it.  It is
a paper that I wrote during my freshman year at Moody, so please be gracious of
its lack of clarity and smoothness of thought.  I've always wanted to rewrite
it, but....  Anyway, clh's question on Christology called it to minds.  I hope
it adds clarification from a Biblical view point rather than to cloud the
issue.  I've never seen anything writen on this subject, but if you know of
someone who has, please let me know.  I always wanted to make it my thesis in
graduate school.  So here goes:


      Consciousness of Christ 
          by Loren Senders
             MBI 1975 

     Before we begin to probe this topic of the consciousness of our Lord, we
must first establish a format from which to work.  It is not the purpose of
this paper to debate the incarnation of our Lord, the doctrine of the Trinity,
nor the fact of Jesus being the Messiah of the Old Testament.  This study shall
be constructed under the premise that these topics are accepted fact.  Jesus
Christ is the very visible image of the invisible God, better to be understood
from the vantage point of LOGOS.  Jesus was the very Word and Truth, the
self-expression of God.  He is the Word of God come to flesh, from the very
depth of the bosom of the Father as ascribed by John l.  He came on His own
accord, voluntarily in sympathy and love, the key note of the Incarnation 

"I proceeded forth and came from God." - John 8-42

     Until we study this inner life of Christ deeper, all the outward life of
Christ will be a plague to our intellect.  We shall always be coming upon that
which we can not explain, upon those things that seem to confront the
understanding and defy the intelligence of men, if we cannot come to grasp the
basic thoughts of the inner Man.  If we can get into a sympathetic line of
thought with the inward spiritual life of Christ, then we shall begin to do as
John was able, explaining the outward acts through the understanding of the
inward thoughts.
      If we continually come to the outward things only, we will always have
controversy, difficulty, and intellectual annoyance.  If we can only begin at
the unnatural side of thought, that being the inward, we will see His purposes,
see somewhat of the scope and the outlook of His mental nature, and then take
up the miracles and teachings of Christ as a little thing.  Christ's teachings
were not limited to the outward act or sign, but He meant for us to see the God
behind it.  This could possibly be an explanation of how the apostle John was
able to see the spirituality of the miracles, rather than the outward acts. 
John, the beloved disciple, knew as well as any man on earth the consciousness
of our Lord, and it is on this point that we will draw the bulk of our
conclusions out of the fourth gospel.
     Questions arise as we begin to think about LOGOS and what His inner
consciousness was composed of. We need to clarify the two natures of Christ
briefly.  The divine nature, which has existed eternally, did not undertake any
essential changes during the incarnation which would cause a conflict with the
attributes of God, the foremost of these being His immutability.  This would
mean that it remained impassable, that is, incapable of suffering and death,
free from ignorance and insusceptible to weakness and temptation.  In the realm
of the divine nature it is better to say that the Son of God became that which
was not absolute-and in Himself.  The result of the incarnation was that the
divine LOGOS could be ignorant and weak, could be tempted and suffer and die,
not in His divine nature, but by the derivation of His possession of a human
nature.
     This would mean that both the properties of the divine nature and the
human nature are properties of the person, and therefore ascribed to the
person. By this reason we can say that the person can be omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent, yet at the same time be also a man of limited
power, knowledge, a man of sorrows, subject to human wants and miseries.  There
is, however, no penetration of one nature into the other.  Deity can no more
share the imperfections of humanity than humanity can share in the essential
perfection of the Godhead.
     We are not to assume that there is a double personality due to the
possession of the double natures.  Christ's human nature is impersonal, in that
it attains self-consciousness and self-determination in the personality of the
God-man.  We must now differentiate between the person and the nature of the
Man. Nature is defined:

"the distinguishing qualities or properties of something; the fundamental
character, disposition or temperament of a living being, innate and
unchangeable."

     Nature is then, in essence, the substance possessed in common, in as such
the Trinity have one nature.  There is also a common nature of mankind. 
Personality, on the other hand, is the separate subsistence of nature, with the
power of consciousness and will.  It is for this reason that the human nature
of Christ has not, nor ever had, a separate subsistence, that it is impersonal.
 LOGOS, the God-man, represents the principle of personality.  It is equally
important to see that self-consciousness and self-determination do not, as
such, belong to the nature.  It is for this reason that we can justifiably say
that Jesus did not have two consciousness or two wills, but rather one.  It is
theanthropic, an activity of the one personality which unites in itself the
human and the divine natures, being that neither the consciousness nor the will
are simply human or simply divine.
     It is imperative that Christ be completely sympathetic to man.  There
would of been irrelevant if Christ had come down from the Father to bring
redemption to man and yet remain truly unsympathetic.  He must not abandon His
higher standing ground if He is to benefit the man of His compassion, yet it
remains that He must have an outlook common to man.  He must learn of our
sphere as man has.  In Luke 2:39-52 we are given basic facts of His child life,
seeing that He was exceptionally wise, yet not so overly brilliant as to be
inconsistent with the normal growth of a child.
     In John, we are given the idea that LOGOS did not actively possess all the
attributes of God by comparing 6:37 to 6:39.  Though He had every right to
them, and exercised that right as was seen in His pre-incarnate state, by
becoming sympathetic to man, He voluntarily laid them aside.  This laying aside
is seen as only temporary in 6:39, in that He will again actively claim His
Godly powers after His ascension.
     John's emphasis of the growth in wisdom is different from that of Luke's
in that he tells us how Christ grew. John quotes Christ as saying, "I do
nothing on my own initiative, but speak these things as the Father taught Me." 
LOGOS incarnate, was not actively omniscient.  It is one thing to say that He
was an infallible teacher, no less a sinless teacher, but it is quite another
to say that He was omniscient.  Never had a man spoken with such authority,
such absolute authority, as did Christ.  He is never to be seen debating an
issue, or at times compelled to explain the knowledge that had been advanced. 
He simply announced what He beheld of the Father.  Such authority was not
allotted to the disciples as they often debated and justified themselves, even
after the Holy Spirit had descended upon them.  The word's of LOGOS were so
perfect that they will outlast the very existence of the heavens and the earth.
(Mt 24:35)  His words were so powerful that they had dominion over all powers,
natural and supernatural.  Though all this is said of His words and His
teachings, it still grants us no right to justifiably claim that Christ's
active consciousness was omniscient.  Infallibility is not omniscience.  LOGOS
as the God-man, probably had the highest intellectual quotient that ever
"evolved" from humanity, using the total facility of the brain.  Being sinless
and having no enmity between Himself and God, pure knowledge resulted.  Though
purely speculative, it is not inconceivable that He possessed a photographic
memory, giving an account for why a boy of twelve years of age could be so
learned of the scriptures if He had no formal rabbinical training.
     To explain how Christ, in many instances but not all, was able to foretell
future truths, it may be said that He, as a man, possessed in the purest form
the gift of prophecy. He is described in scripture as the Prophet.  Christ
often displayed His "gift" in John such as the cases of Nathaniel (Jn 1:48), of
the Samaritan woman (4:17,18), of the betrayal of Judas (6:24), and the denial
of Peter (13:38).  Christ had no need of total conscious omniscience in that He
was totally conscious of the will of the Father (8:55 -oida; 10:15 -ginosko)  
He was the supreme example of the perfect Man by being constantly in prayer to
the Father for guidance and assurance of His perfect plan.
     In chapter 8 of John, we are given the illustration of the adulterating
woman were we see Christ apparently unaware of what was taking place about Him.
 Merrill Tenney explains that "The event itself was a shock to Jesus."  If we
except this passage as authentic, and accept Tenney's explanation of Christ's
shock, then we are left with the question, "How can Christ not be omniscient?"
     It could be argued that Christ was omniscient and merely acted surprised
or figuratively asked questions, (11:34) but this would mean that Jesus was not
the God-man in that God cannot act a lie.  It is common course for men to ask
questions in order to draw out feelings of others without any implication of
ignorance on their part.  This is true of Jesus but it is also true that He
asked in a natural need of information.  Jesus lived in constant prayer,
characteristic of human faith and trust, seeking the Father's will.
     As anxieties and terrors of the passion enfold about Christ, we can better
observe this reality of a human faith.  In understanding the nature of His own
death, He shows us the real man, burdened heavily with the dread of the agony
and unfathomable awareness of His eminent death.  It was a voluntary burden,
yet accepted in all its human reality.  Only because the future was unsure to
Him, could He cry out, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from
me."  
Only because He had really entered into the experience of the trial of the soul
from which God had hid His face, from the trial of a righteous man, forsaken in
the eyes of His own conscious, could He have cried out in all the true meaning,
"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 
     There is no mistake that this man is the eternal Son of God incarnate. The
simple statement of Christ, "I and the Father are one," shows us the essential
unity of the Son and the Father.  Acknowledgment of their continual abiding in
one another is insisted upon throughout the gospel of John.  Their relationship
to one another, however, is now restrained because of the incarnation, He has
"come down" from heaven where He "was before" with the Father, He has been
"sanctified and sent into the world," He has "come out from God," He has "left
the glory."  It is then that He "speaks the words of God" veritably infallible,
but as John explains by his own knowledge of Christ's consciousness, it was
because God "giveth not the Spirit by measure."  He is completely sympathetic
by His complete endowment of His manhood.  Even Christ's teachings of Himself
say that He does "what the Father taught Him".  He can only do "what He sees
the Father doing"  that the Father makes to Him a progressive revelation,
"greater works the Father will show Me,"  that the Father "has given Him" life
in Himself, that is, a positive revelation of Himself, to communicate to the
apostles, that He has made known to them "all things that He heard of the
Father."  Though He had continually received the message in part, it was a
message of definite content of which was conceded over to our Lord to advance
to man.  As we remain fully conscious of Christ's eternal unity to the Godhead,
it still remains from the expressed quotations, that He was receiving and
speaking under the limitations of a true human state.
     As we try to perceive this, the last thing we can hope to
accomplish is to image or conceive the infinitely fathomless consciousness of
LOGOS, "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the
man, which is in Him. even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the
Spirit of God." It is in humble truth that we are obligated to confess the
incomprehensibility of the infinite, but, is it conceivable or does there exist
a line of thought that leads to a direction of making it conceivable? Is it
conceivable that we are unable to know what is in another sphere, that He, the
eternal LOGOS of God, should not know in this sphere that which is in another
and that His own proper sphere which He essentially knows? It is along the path
of sympathy that we can best possibly hope to understand it.
    To sympathize is to put oneself into anothers place. The redemptive
sympathy of Christ is a greater act, putting Himself at the point of view of
His own creation. The problem of comprehension arises when we acknowledge that
He cannot abandon His own higher sphere if He is to benefit the object of His
compassion, namely humanity. Remaining essentially ,what He was, He must also
find Himself in the place of His "lower" creation. He must learn over again
from our view point. It is the grown one learning to speak as a child: it is
the Creator putting Himself at the view point of His creation. 
     We must stop in trying to conceive this mystery when we set ourselves to
think how utterly different the divine consciousness must be from the human. It
would do us well to ponder for a little while the infinite gulf which lies
between the knowledge of God and that of mere man, His creation.  We shall see,
in doing so, how mutually exclusive the divine and the human modes of thinking
must be. (Isa 55:8,9)  The more we meditate on this the more it seems to me we
can realize how that "birth" by which God became man to enter into man's
experience, for the sake of man's redemption, must have involved within the
sphere of humanity something that human language can merely explain as a "sleep
and a forgetting."  So strangely exclusive is the human mode of consciousness
of the divine.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face: now I know in part,
but then I shall know fullyjust as I also have been fully known. (I Cor. 13:12)

[An interesting approach.  I'm going to summarize how I read it, just
so you can make sure I haven't misinterpreted you.  As I see it, the
basic Christology here is similar to Athanasius': you also see the
human nature as impersonal, so that the only real person is the person
of the Logos.  You then deal with issues like omniscience by the
concept of sympathy (which seems like about the best you can do given
the basic approach).

A technical comment: you see consciousness and will as part of
"person".  The problem is that hypostatis has a somewhat more abstract
meaning than the English person.  While I get the clear impression
that Athanasius would agree with you, later Christological thought
seemed to assign to the nature some of what you are assigning to the
person.  In particular, the position that there is only one will in
Christ, which you seem to hold, was ruled to be a heresy (the
monothelite heresy).  I think in the process of reaching an
accomodation with the Antiochenes, the Alexandrians came to fill out
the reality of Jesus' humanity a bit more.  I don't know that anyone
during the classical period dealt with consciousness as we think of it
now, but I've always felt that it would likely have been dealt with
the same way as the question of will.

--clh]