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To: RobbyS
You say that Jesus is physically sitting at the right hand off the Father. But what do you mean by” physically? The Resurrected Christ is not bounded by the Laws of Physics. Yet he remains a real human being.” Sitting at the right Hand of the Father” is obviously a metaphor, imagining God as like a an earthly ruler with Jesus in the place of power to his “right”.. Calvin spoke of Jesus as “being in heaven,” But he conceded that we could experience his “Power” if we receive in Good Faith. If we receive it unworthily, then perhaps his “wrath.” What limits his power? If his “glory” could “reside”in the ark, and in the tent and in the Tabernacle, the why not in the bread and wine, That box is called the Tabernacle, by the way.

What does limit His power is His own decision as to how to use it, especially when that decision is recorded in Scripture.  I agree God can do as He wishes.  But that is not a blank check for me to imagine false solutions to false problems created by false handling of Scripture, then impose all that nonsense on others as if it were critical dogma.  

Having said that, I will agree that defining physicality is certainly an interesting part of the problem. However, as you indicated yourself, there are challenges here that are millenia old, and we should be respectful of what those before us found difficult, lest we fall into the trap of pride.  One of those areas is the careful preservation of the doctrines concerning the person of Christ, how best to describe His deity and humanity and their relationship to each other. Per Chalcedon, a key principle of this analysis is that there must not be confusion of the two natures, human and divine.  They exist together, in one undivided person, yet it is essential to preserve the distinction of attributes between the two.  What is at risk, among other things, is the doctrine of the atonement.  If we go assigning to Christ's human nature things that are only ascribable to His divine nature, we void his being like us in every way, as Scripture says, in which case we also void the atonement, because His humanity must be a true humanity, a true likeness to us, for Him to be offered as our substitute.

This is why attributes such as omnipresence cannot be safely assigned to His humanity, his flesh, His physical being.  And this reconciles well with Scripture.  While His in His resurrection body He did do some things we cannot now do, such as going around walls without passing through ordinary space, there is absolutely no indication He was then or is now physically omnipresent.  This notion would be at odds with Chalcedon itself, in that they rejected confusion of the natures, in which they meant ascribing to His deity attributes of His humanity, and vise versa.

This is why the Protestant/evangelical position has typically focused on Christ's omnipresence as a spiritual reality, rather than corporeal. This preserves the distinction of the natures.  God is spirit, and as such can be everywhere at once. Christ is divine in nature, and it seems reasonable and safe to see Him as being present everywhere spiritually by means of His nature as God.  This is how we can have an uncomplicated understanding of such passages as those below, without resort to misleading speculations such as transubstantiation:
Romans 8:9  But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
And ...
Matthew 18:20  For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
So in the celebration of Lord's Supper, we do not confuse the two natures.  He is there with us in spirit, which is no less real than His physical being.  His presence is real, but not corporeal.  Else His warning about not running off to find Him in "secret chambers" makes no sense.  He will be with us again, but not corporeally until He returns for us.  Until then, our mission is to wait patiently, and not following cunningly devised fables, such as transubstantiation.

Calvin's solution (though I am more Zwinglian) likewise avoids assigning omnipresence to the human nature of Christ.  In his view we come into his total presence, both human and divine natures, in a spiritual pilgrimage, taken by faith when we partake of the elements, which remain in both their appearance and their substance truly bread and wine.  So we are coming to Him, as He really is in Heaven, and have no grounds to think He is "in" or "behind" the mere appearance of bread and wine.  Thus idolatry is avoided.

And while I respect Calvin's view as a big improvement over transubstantiation, I would contend that both he and Luther were too much still under the influence of Rome, that Scripture still presents the best view, that we do this service, not to "refuel" on grace, but as He said, to remember what He has done for us.  I frankly do not understand the impulse to make it more complicated.  It is quite beautiful enough for me just as I find it in Scripture.

Peace,

SR
28 posted on 03/30/2015 6:10:22 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Springfield Reformer

What we know about Jesus is that after his Resurrection he appeared to his disciples in a “glorified” body, which I take to mean a physical body like our own, but not as it is in time-space. He could appear to them, interact with them as he had before, share with them a meal on the shores of the lake, walk and talk with him as he had “before.” We cannot explain this either in concrete terms as known by the apostles, nor theological terms as known to the Council fathers. nor in terms of the science of our own times. It is a mystery. And my problem with the doctrine of transubstantiation is that some take it to explain what it only describes. It describes truly but explains nothing. Much the same is true of what the Bible says. It compares with the Summa of St. Thomas as a mountain does to a plain, but it is not the last word. THAT will only come later. As Paul says about seeing things darkly as in a polished metal mirror.


29 posted on 03/30/2015 9:07:43 PM PDT by RobbyS (quotes)
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