ATHOL DICKSON

What Jesus Didn’t Know

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Actual Photo of Jesus' Feet (or some very like them)
Actual Photo of Jesus’ Feet (or some very like them)

Recently a friend mentioned a controversy in her life caused by a few people who claim Jesus was born with a perfect knowledge of the Scriptures. They probably believe this because syllogistic logic seems to demand it. Christianity teaches that Jesus is “fully God,” and God is omniscient (all-knowing), therefore Jesus must have been omniscient at birth. They also claim Jesus was never tempted to sin. Again, they apparently base this on the syllogism that Jesus is fully God, and God hates sin, therefore Jesus could not have been tempted to sin. My friend told me these people also claim their ideas are “critical theology.” By that, I assume they mean these notions are essential doctrines, or First Things, which everyone must believe or else we’ll go to hell.

I beg to differ.

It’s dangerous to insist that anything other than a childlike faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for a right relationship with God. But that’s a topic for another post. Here, I want to examine this idea that Jesus must have been omniscient, even as a baby, and could not have been tempted by sin. It’s easy to debunk these ideas from the Scriptures, as we will shortly see, but it’s also vitally important to understand why they can’t be true. Far from being necessary for salvation, they tend to obscure who Jesus is, why Jesus came to earth as the child of Joseph and Mary, and why he died on a Roman cross.

First, let’s do away with the alleged omniscience of Jesus with three simple verses…

The Bible says Jesus “learned obedience” (Hebrews 5:8) The word “learned” is manthanó, used 25 times in the NT to mean exactly what “learned” means in English. Because its meaning is so consistent everywhere else, it’s unlikely manthanó means anything different when applied to Jesus by the author of Hebrews. So the Bible teaches us that Jesus learned. Therefore he did not know everything.

Jesus’ limited knowledge is also revealed in his comments about the end times. See Matthew 24:36. Jesus didn’t even know “the day or hour” of his own second coming.

And in Philippians 2:6-7 it says, “Though he [Jesus] was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.” Would a “slave” know the Scriptures perfectly from birth? Would any “human being”?

Moving on to the other notion that Jesus wasn’t really tempted by sin, the Bible could not be more clear: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) So Jesus was definitely tempted exactly “in every way as we are.” There simply is no reasonable way to interpret this verse differently.

Because of scriptures like these, Christianity doesn’t stop at teaching that Jesus was “fully God.” We also know Jesus was “fully man.” This doctrine of “fully God, fully man” is one of the most difficult in the Bible. But paradoxes like this are exactly what we should expect in a book which attempts to teach us about the Creator of the Universe. It isn’t logical to assume that syllogistic logic would apply to the One who created logic in the first place. Such a One exists outside of His Creation; He is not constrained by anything within it.

It isn’t logical to assume that syllogistic logic would apply to the One who created logic in the first place.

Still, we want to understand who Jesus is, and the existence of the Bible proves God wants us to try. So let’s do that.

While it helps to remember that God, by definition, can never be fully understood, it also helps to think about the “fully God, fully man” paradox in terms of God’s fundamental nature, rather than in terms of more specific attributes of godliness or manhood. Jesus was fully God in his core way of being, his fundamental nature, but not in his attributes. That is the deeper meaning of the verses I quoted from Philippians, above. Put metaphorically: Jesus had God’s heart (God’s nature), but human hands and feet (human capabilities). This partial limitation may seem inconsistent with the Almighty Master and Creator of the Universe. but in fact, it’s how the Lord has always been.

Consider a couple of the many Biblical examples: In addition to being omniscient, God is eternal and omnipresent, but God is also capable of being in a specific time and place in a way which is different from other times and places. We see this when God descends to the most holy place in the tabernacle. We see it when God places Moses in the cleft and passes back and forth before him. At those particular times God was there, in those places, in a way that He was not elsewhere.

Jesus is a flesh and blood manifestation of that same thing: God constraining certain aspects of himself as He chooses. Jesus has always been that aspect of God which penetrates Creation, the “craftsman at God’s side” “through whom, by whom, and for whom all things were created.” Jesus has always been Jacob’s ladder, which attaches heaven and earth, that aspect of the Lord which connects with Creation. He’s the “man” who appears before Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre, who has feet that need washing, and a belly that needs filling, before continuing down to Sodom to decide if it should be destroyed. He’s the “man” who wrestles with Jacob until daylight by the river, of whom Jacob later says “I have seen God’s face and lived.” When the Bible says Adam was created in God’s likeness and image, it means the human race was originally created in the image of Jesus. So on one level, Jesus has always been “fully man” as well as “fully God.”

But after the Fall, when corruption entered Creation, Jesus came to Israel not as the Craftsman in whose perfect image Adam was created, but instead as Adam was in his post fallen, corruptible body. It was necessary for Jesus to come that way to balance the scales of justice, as the “second Adam” (see 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5) who was the life for Adam’s life, the eye for Adam’s eye, the tooth for Adam’s tooth. Deuteronomy 19:21 gives us that “life for life” definition of justice–God’s definition–and nothing in the Bible retracts it, therefore if justice was to be restored, it had to be that way.

Had Jesus’s mind and body been something more perfect than yours or mine, his sacrifice would not have been truly just. He would have been too much; his sacrifice would have carried too much weight; it would have tipped the scales too far, and that would have added yet more injustice to the universe instead of reestablishing the cosmic balance our world so desperately needs.

 

Nature And/Or Nurture

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How is gender preference determined?Recently I read about the latest Christian to have his First Amendment rights trampled by the government in the relentless march to normalize homosexuality. Among the usual christophobics (a word I just made up!) who were commenting on the story was a woman who called the man an “idiot” because “He actually thinks people choose their sexuality.”

Do you follow the logic?  She was saying if sexual orientation is caused by genetics, then we have no choice about our sexual desires, so acting on those desires is no sin. This is supposed to be an irrefutable argument against the traditional Christian prohibition of homosexual acts, and by proxy, an irrefutable argument against Christianity.

It’s common for Christians to counter this argument by insisting that homosexuality is rooted in learned behavior, not genetics. Returning to the comment thread at the link above, notice “Mary” who responds by writing “He’s no idiot! Sexuality IS a CHOICE!”

Whether true or not (and the latest science seems to indicate the truth is somewhere in-between) it’s a poor response for two reasons: first, it’s theologically incomplete, and second, it misses an opportunity to get people thinking about what Jesus really did for us all on the cross, and why it had to be done.

Of course Christianity teaches the common sense fact that we’re morally responsible for our choices. Pretty much every religion teaches that. What most other religions don’t answer is the question:  Why is sin is so tempting? Why are we more tempted by one particular sin than by another? Why do we choose to do things even when we know they’ll harm us or those we love?

Christianity has a core doctrine which answers all of these questions, a bombshell of an idea that makes Christianity different, which is this: we’re compelled to make bad choices; it’s in our DNA.

We’re compelled to make bad choices; it’s in our DNA.

This is called the doctrine of “original sin.” The name comes from the original sin, the first sin, which according to Christian theology, caused a fundamental shift in human nature.  Although most analogies fall short, in this case there’s a nearly perfect parallel. Think of sin as a harmful and addictive drug which alters the chemistry (or genetics) of the mind, causing an irrational compulsion to take more of the harmful drug. And just as addicted mothers often give birth to addicted babies, Christianity explains that the compulsion to sin was passed down from the first sinner to the next generation, and so on and on throughout the generations, right down to you and me.

Does this mean we can’t help sinning? Yes, absolutely. The proof of this is in everyone you know, because of course nobody, not one single solitary person, is or ever has been perfect.

Does it mean it’s unfair or unjust to punish sin because it’s “only natural”? Of course not. Clearly, there must be deterrents to keep us from stepping outside the limits of acceptable behavior, whether we’re born with a desire to go beyond those limits or not. In fact, the more deep seated a sinful desire may be, the greater the argument for limits on that desire. Think of any of the Ten Commandments (or at least the last five if you’re an atheist) and then imagine a society without such limitations, and you’ll quickly see my point.

For a Christian then, the “nature or nurture” debate is a false dichotomy. Every time we sin, we freely choose to do it even though we know it damages ourselves and others.  We need to own that. Unfortunately, we can’t always make amends, which is a serious problem if one believes in justice. And it’s an equally serious problem that every choice to sin is motivated by something deep within us, something which makes us want to sin, some warped and twisted thing that we can’t change because it’s in our spiritual DNA, and maybe in our genes.

So it’s not about nature or nurture. It’s about nature and nurture. And this returns us to the second reason why it’s best not to insist that “homosexuality is a choice.” That response ignores half of what Jesus did for us on the cross, and half of why it had to be done. In the name of justice, Jesus sacrificed himself to make amends (atone) for the damage we’ve freely chosen to do that we cannot undo. He also died to heal (save) us from the warped and twisted sinful inclinations we can’t overcome. That’s why you see Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross explained in both ways in the Bible. In some places, it says Jesus atoned for our sins. In other places, it says he saved us. Like nature and nurture, it’s two different things. Two different reasons Jesus took our place on the cross. And two different reasons to be grateful.