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To: dsc
I believe there had to be a reason for Jesus to become fully man. If there weren't, He wouldn't have done it. Based on prayer and my feeble cognitive powers, I believe that at least part of His purpose was to experience not only the Passion and Crucifixion, but almost every significant joy and grief to which man is subject.

I (and the great majority of other Protestants) affirm the Declaration of Chalcedon in its totality:

Following, then, the holy fathers, we unite in teaching all men to confess the one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This selfsame one is perfect both in deity and in humanness; this selfsame one is also actually God and actually man, with a rational soul and a body. He is of the same reality as God as far as his deity is concerned and of the same reality as we ourselves as far as his humanness is concerned; thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted. Before time began he was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity, and now in these "last days," for us and behalf of our salvation, this selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer in respect of his humanness.

We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten - in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without contrasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the "properties" of each nature are conserved and both natures concur in one "person" and in one reality . They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only and only-begotten Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus have the prophets of old testified; thus the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us; thus the Symbol of Fathers has handed down to us.

65 posted on 04/22/2005 9:35:01 AM PDT by jboot (Faith is not a work)
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To: jboot

"this selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer in respect of his humanness.

How does "God-bearer" differ from "Mother of God?"


66 posted on 04/22/2005 6:32:53 PM PDT by dsc
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