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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

On the Human Knowledge of Christ, Part 4

The question of Jesus' human knowledge is important in much of modern Christology, especially in that centered on Phillipians 2:5-11, the "kenosis" passage.
Thomasius (1655-1728) declared "he emptied himself" (εκενωσεν) to mean that Jesus emptied himself of the "relative attributes" of divinity (omniscience, omnipotence, etc) and retained only his "essential attributes" (holiness, love, justice, etc). The assumption is that, upon his ascension, Jesus resumed his divine attributes. If pushed to far, this could imply that Jesus was God, became man, and then ceased to be man in order to once again become God.
In response to Thomasius, H. Brash Bonsall, who defines an attribute as an essential characteristic, says that if Jesus gave up any of the divine attributes, he ceased to be God. Bonsall feels that the incarnation involved the temporary laying aside of the divine attributes and prerogatives but not the abnegation of the possession of them (John 17:5; Philippians 2:6-8; Hebrews 2:5-10.) This idea is based on the orthodox christology od The Council of Chalcedon (Jesus has two has two distinct and unmingled impersonal natures in one person with a communion of the attributes of the two. The twoo natures could not be mixed without changing the nature of each. Therefore, if Jesus as a man did not have limited knowledge then he was not truly a man. If, as God, he did not have full divine knowledge, he was not God.
Before discussing two general categories of Bible verses implying either limited knowledge or superhuman knowledge on the part of Jesus, it would be good to zero in especially on two "problem areas."

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