10 questions on the hypostatic union

For basic information on this doctrine see the Catholic Encyclopedia article. So I was over at Bridget's blog and she had an article asking about Jesus's chromosomes and how many came from Mary. Which brings up the big topic, of the hypostatic union in general. So I figured I'd open some discussion questions. I'd love it if you post your answers, pick the closest.

All questions prior to the resurrection if you believe his body changed when it was risen:

1) As a point of information (oversimplifying) humans get drunk because our insulin system cannot divert alcohols, in particular ethanol, away from our nerve cells (see blood sugar regulation if you want details). That is to say we have an imperfect endrocrine system. Jesus starts drinking wine. Can he start feeling the effects of intoxication?

a) No, he has no imperfections his endocrine system is perfect. Ethanol has no more effect on him than any other sugar.

b) Yes, he is human. He shares all human imperfections including not regulating that sugar properly.

2) An allegoric reaction is "hypersensitivity" a situation where the body over reacts to a toxin. Can Jesus have one?

a) No, he has an inerrant body it never makes a mistake.

b) Yes, he is human and shares all human imperfections. But his body was effectively perfect during his life so he never did have one.

c) Yes he can have one and like all humans had them during the course of his life.

3) Jesus eats bad eggs with lots of salmonella, everyone around him gets sick for a week and some people die from diarrhetic dehydration. He absorbed a level of toxins which would make him sick even without the diarreia weakening him further. What happens to Jesus?

a) He is fine he cannot be affected by toxins at all unless he wills it.

b) He is gets mildly ill but has a perfect immune system which handles the toxins from the bacteria perfectly, never over or under reacting.

c) He gets very sick: fever, vomiting and even diarrhea but his body makes no big mistakes so he is no danger of the diarrhea being lethal.

d) He is fully human and his body can over react to toxins like anyone else's and it could kill him.

4) Jesus is doing some carpentry. He has to figure out how much wood to use and has to multiply in his head. Can he get the problem wrong?

a) No, he is inerrant.

b) Yes, he could err in theory but not in practice since he is perfectly careful.

c) Yes, he could err both in theory and in practice but he never does during the course of his life.

d) He has missed some problems before and arrived at errant multiplications. That is not a matter of essentials and is part of being human.

5) While he is doing the carpentry it is a hot day and normal carpenter would be getting tired. His buddy working next to him is getting sloppy from exhaustion and heat. What's happening to Jesus?

a) He is a unaffected by heat or exhaustion.

b) He feels tired but he does perfect work.

c) He is fully human and gets tired too, creating some off center boards.

6) A piece of skin falls off his hand and hits the ground. In terms of DNA

a) 0 of the chromosomes are Mary's, he is fully human but not biologically descended from her.

b) 23 of the chromosomes are Mary's she is fully his mother. The other 23 don't correspond to any existing human.

c) All 46 are from Mary. God did not have sex with Mary and thus couldn't provide genetic material, she provided all of it.

7) Human DNA has thousands of replications errors. Jesus'

a) Is perfect, no bad strings all.

b) Has 23 perfect chromosomes and is a perfect copy of Mary's for the other 23 she has no genetic defects and thus he doesn't.

c) Has 23 perfect chromosomes and is at best a perfect copy of Mary's for the other 23; she has genetic defects and thus he does too.

d) Jesus is fully human and has genetic defects on all 46.

8) Jesus sits down to a game of Latrunculi (sort of like chess 2000 years ago in the Roman Empire). He is playing the best Latrunculi player in the Galilee. What happens?

a) Jesus instantly see the perfect move and makes it. He doesn't even think in error. (A perfect move would be the move that a supercomputer cluster might arrive at after several weeks of computation).

b) Jesus has to think to arrive at the perfect moves, though he makes no imperfect moves.

c) Jesus plays within human boundaries, but within those boundaries perfectly. So he plays as well as the best player ever and wins after a hard struggle.

d) Jesus plays OK, and OK is not nearly good enough against this guy and he loses badly.

9) Jesus sees a really hot girl. Can he experience lust?

a) No, the sexiest human is no more tempting than the sexiest termite.

b) No, his mind is perfectly holy. By training, grace and discipline his body has the same level of reaction as a dead body would.

c) Yes, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second. He can be tempted but he doesn't give into the temptation and instantly moves his mind on to another thought.

d) Yes, he had to fully experience temptation. He experiences his mind going back over and over again but he never gives in.

10) Short answer question. Would any of these answers be different before the baptism by John and if so which ones?

See also:

• blogogetics article on the hypostatic union.

Tim Bayly on homosexuality vs. feminism

A little background. The PCUSA is a liberal presbyterian church. The PCA is a conservative church that broke off in the 1970s (actually its a merger of others, but close enough for our purposes). Tim Bayly makes a call for church discipline to be applied to feminists within the PCA and explicitly makes the analogy with the debate on homosexuality within the PCUSA. What's unusual is that he aggressively makes the argument against friendly debate. Pastors who disagree with his view of god/scripture are simply criminals and should be excommunicated not people of different opinions.

I'm curious as to whether this attitude applies to membership and I intend to ask.

7/3/07 As a follow up I did ask. Bayly indicated (see bottom of the comments on link post) that yes the membership can be disciplined for holding this opinion. This is actually one of the most aggressive doctrines of heresy I've encountered. In general if something is disputed you would generally need a church council to rule against it before it became a heresy. Otherwise you would have people excommunicating one another during disputes about things being actively disputed. A process that would throw church discipline into disrepute.

Obligation to assume

Challies tries to directly address the issue of how to determine if an orthodox evangelical should treat someone as a Christian, "a brother in Christ". Essentially he cites an interesting criteria,

1) He used Belgic confession to define a true church as "The marks by with the true Church is known are these: If the pure doctrine of the gospel is preaching therein; if she maintains the pure administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline is exercised in punishing of sin; in short, if all things are managed according to the pure Word of God, all things contrary thereto rejected, and Jesus Christ acknowledged as the only Head of the Church."

2) He defines a profession of faith as going through the entire process, "How we define a credible profession of faith may vary slightly from church to church, but it should definitely contain an affirmation that the person is saved by grace through faith, should affirm many of the doctrines concerning the nature of God and the person should have been identified with the church through baptism or other forms of membership. If a person has professed faith, been baptized and been received into membership his claim to be a believer has a certain level of credibility. Conversely, if he has refused to be baptized and to be received into membership we would have a good reason to be concerned about his profession."

A person then is not assumed to be a Christian then if any of the following:

1. They have not professed faith
2. Their profession has been incomplete
   
3. They have professed faith within a true church and would be expelled from a true church if they had (see #1)
   

The Obligation To Assume
Obligation To Assume: Church Discipline .
an earlier piece where he disagrees with the harder fundamentalist line (a single error):
The Ultimate Human Judgment.


While I think Charllies provides a good right wing evangelical definition I'm a bit
concerned. There is an expression in driving, everyone who drives faster than me is a maniac and everyone who drives slower than me is a asshole. I suspect Charllies is falling into the same trap: everyone to the right of me is too strict and everyone too0 the left not strict enough. On the other hand I give him a great deal of credit for laying out objective criteria. Few other writers have been willing to do that. All, told well done!

An evengelical definition of heresy

Albert Mohler (head of the SBC) has an interesting 3 tier position on heresy:

1) The first tier for him are those truths which are essential, for example the divinity of Jesus. That is orthodoxy.
2) The second tier for him are those truths which are not essentially but are divisive in practice that is they require denominations. For examople (infant vs adult baptism)
3) The third tier for him are those truths that while they may be important don't require different churches. For example differing views on eschatology

He defines theological liberalism as treating groups 1 and 2 as if they were in the 3rd group and fundamentalism as treating the 3rd group as if it were the first. I think that's an excellent description. Well done Albert!

BTW I rephrased slightly in response to Heretic (first poster below). Thanks for the comment!

Heresy defense

This blog will not attempt to assist ministers or pastors charged with heresy. Those cases are too complicated and too specific to the particular church/leadership structure.

Heresy charges are often added to the original charges. There will be two main defenses that might work, assuming the definition is something like that of Aquinas.

Accordingly, certain doctors seem to have differed either in matters the holding of which in this or that way is of no consequence, so far as faith is concerned, or even in matters of faith, which were not as yet defined by the Church; although if anyone were obstinately to deny them after they had been defined by the authority of the universal Church, he would be deemed a heretic.

1) The teaching isn't yet a declared heresy. This requires that the following four steps be followed:

1. Doctrine challenges an established teaching with a controversial teaching
2. Doctrine is circulated among the believers
3. Church leadership meets to deal with the new teaching
4. Leadership corporately rejects the new teaching

If you can establish that those steps haven't been followed, then you've shown that you have merely subscribed to an incorrect position. You have not committed heresy. Disagreeing with leadership does not make you a heretic, and it has an obligation to have met specifically on that issue and come to agreement.

2) If those four steps have been followed, then your defense needs to be that, as a believer, you haven't yet engaged in pertinacity. That is, you have not yet been provided with the church's counterargument--the reason the heresy was formally rejected. You cannot be guilty of heresy in ignorance.

Do not attempt or agree to argue the correctness of your belief as part of your trial. You are trying to win on a technicality. If you argue the belief, you will be excommunicated and the trial is "just for the record" (see minister trials if you want to go down that road). The problem there is that agreeing with you is essentially a declaration that the belief is not heretical. To win, you need only prove that it's not heretical for you yet. Don't let them raise the bar.

Make it clear that you agree that once the belief were declared a heresy, or once you were made aware of why it's a heresy, you would be obligated to immediately examine your conscience and either (a) come into compliance, or (b) if because of "intellectual delinquencies in myself that were involuntary and imputable", you were unable to come into compliance, you would need to ask for a letter of transfer. That makes it absolutely clear that you are agreeing to be bound by leadership without actually agreeing to agree with them in advance. If they don't find that sufficient, they are the ones on shaky ground.

For example Helena is sexual experimenting and is trying lesbian sex. She tells her best friend, Marissa that the bible doesn't condemn consensual homosexuality only prostitution. Then her friend feels comfortable fooling around. The two girls get caught and Marissa confesses everything but blames Helena. Everyone wants to excommunicate Helena and so Helena gets charged with heresy in addition to sexual immorality. She defends herself against the heresy by arguing that it was religious books make this case that "qadesh" is a temple prostitute and "to’ebah" is a specific practice. She has never claimed to be hebrew scholar herself and the church has never provided her with hebrew training. Nor had she received instruction in proper translation. Nor had she been told that the NIV's translation was authorative. It had never been explained to her why the NIV translators used "abomination". At the time she told Marissa her opinion it therefore could not have been heresy (even though it might very well have been incorrect).
The one thing Helena must do is make this case about her state of knowledge at the time she made those statements, she cannot attempt to defend that they are true or its over. She should refuse to address those issues and ask for further instruction on them.


Good references:

• wikipedia
• catholic encyclopedia

Minister trials

By minister trials we mean trials for preaching. Not trials for stuff like stealing that happen to involve a minister. Minister trials are the easiest to find notes of on the web. The ministers being tried are frequently very public spokesmen for unpopular positions and the organization is generally very happy to have the beheading be public. They are unfortunately not representative of general disciplinary issues. Everybody involved knows there are larger issues at stake and they may be quoted a 100 years from now. The minister is willing to lose the battle to win the war.


Lee Irons:
This is the trial of a minister in the OPC (hardest right organization in NAPARC) that took a slightly liberal position on moral law. The debate is very technical but you got to love his final note:

I am not prepared to say that the OPC has fallen into irreparable apostasy, but something is terribly amiss with a denomination that is willing to indefinitely suspend me from the ministry for holding a position that is part of "a significant and vital stream of Reformed, Presbyterian, and confessional thought," and then turns right around the very next day and fails to censure a man who teaches a doctrine of justification that has never been part of any stream within the orthodox Reformed tradition, indeed, that denies the very reason for the Reformation itself. The implication is staggering: Murray's recasting of covenant theology is now an essential test of orthodoxy in the OPC, but the historic Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is not.