I am sorry if I am butting in, but your exchange with George is public and I
want to point out something peripheral but very important.
You wrote,
> VJ > Yes, I certainly agree! But our faith in Christ must surely be
> grounded in an unwavering belief in his teachings - as they
> are recorded
> in the gospels - and an acceptance of the things that he and the
> apostles believed (for it is hardly logical to assume the
> Creator would
> be ignorant in any area!). Significant, then, that our Lord
> believed the
> holy writings that were available to him (which, of course,
> included the
> Book of Genesis). As evidence of this, consider the record of his
> temptation in the wilderness (Mt.4:1-11) where we read of the devil's
> assaults being consistently parried with the words 'It is
> written...'.
I welcome corrections from the theologians on the list, but it seems to me
that your assertion smacks of monophysitism, the assertion that there was no
true humanity in Christ. (Some Gnostic monophysites went so far as to assert
that Jesus only pretended to be human, and did not actually eat or excrete
or even die on the Cross.) The common assertion that "it is hardly logical
to assume the Creator would be ignorant in any area" hides within it the
idea that the Savior did not assume full human nature because He did not
participate in human limitations on knowledge.
This is of first importance because "what is not assumed is not redeemed."
Orthodox Christology asserts that, while Jesus the Christ was fully divine,
He was also fully human and so shared the common limitations of humanity --
including being limited to the knowledge base of the time in which He became
Incarnate.
Vernon, I am not making an accusation of heresy; but you should recognize
that orthodox Christology can logically contain the assertion that Jesus,
Incarnate Deity though He was, need not have held full omniscience in His
human nature. Insofar as He was God He knew what was necessary; insofar as
He was human He did not know what He did not have "need to know."
I am using "need to know" in the sense used in compartmentalized
intelligence work -- if you are not working in a particular area you don't
have a need to know anything in that area which is not in the public domain.
Jesus' mission was redemption, not science -- and would knowledge of the
actual history of the universe, as opposed to the knowledge which was at
that time in the public domain, have really been helpful in His mission? I
think not; it would have been irrelevant at best and harmful at worst. Think
how much less of a hearing He'd have gotten if He had asserted such
self-evidently crazy things as temporal relativity or an evolving universe!
He'd have been just another raving lunatic, not even worthy of execution.
Yours,
Dan Berger
bergerd@bluffton.edu
http://cs.bluffton.edu/~berger