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To: Forest Keeper; Cronos; Kolokotronis; annalex; jo kus; HarleyD
So, then the nature of a man and the divine nature are equal in your eyes?

Of course not! But God created man in His image and likeness so that he may be in perfect communion with God. By God's Design, man's nature is in perfect harmony with God's nature. By man's fall (from grace), it is no longer so.

Man is, therefore "fully" man when he is in perfect communion with God (his original created state). All other conditions affecting our nature lessen our humanity and are unnatural. As we lose the likeness of God through sin, we become less human.

Our Lord Jesus Christ personifies the seamless and perfect existence between the Divine and human. "Become, therefore, perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." As we achieve perfection (theosis), we partake ever more in God's perfection and reflect His image and likeness.

This is why Jesus Christ is a perfect God and a perfect Man in one Person, in perfect harmony, yet each fully distinct, and consequently two separate by harmonized wills.

That's why our Lord was able to resist evil and temptations of satan, even though His human nature was subject to such temptations.

2,486 posted on 02/10/2006 2:42:03 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50
FK: "So, then the nature of a man and the divine nature are equal in your eyes?"

Of course not! But God created man in His image and likeness so that he may be in perfect communion with God. By God's Design, man's nature is in perfect harmony with God's nature. By man's fall (from grace), it is no longer so.

I was responding to your statement:

Trumping His own will would be unthinkable in a perfect union of two natures in one Person of our Savior.

It just sounded to me like you were equating the natures. If I understand you, Adam's originally created nature was much less than Christ's? If so, that's why I said that, in Christ, the divine nature overrode the human nature that included the capacity to sin.

2,614 posted on 02/13/2006 11:31:16 PM PST by Forest Keeper
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