Jonathan said: It is important that you understand this.
Secondly, and more important, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that “The humanity of Christ is a creature, it is not God” (ibid., 922). Christ’s full and complete humanity was a necessity, but a humanity that was without sin.
DD REPLIED: You are stating here, that there is a part of Jesus that is not God.
The humanity of Christ is and always will be God.
First of all, it is the Catholic and Protestant churches who claim this; it is a direct quote from the Encyclopedia, and I didn't come up with this idea. Are you claiming that they are wrong? Do you deny the hypostatic union? You obviously are from your statement. If by your statement "The humanity of Christ is and always will be God" you mean that the church is wrong when it writes “The humanity of Christ is a creature, it is not God,” then whatever version of the Trinity you ascribe to is not one recognized by the vast majority of Christendom. If you are saying that the churches are wrong and that the humanity of Christ is not a creature, and is God Almighty, then there is no need for the hypostatic union, no need for it to refer to God-man. There would be no God-man, but even the Chalcedonean confession concedes the hypostatic union. Your theory plays right into the JWs' hands.
Now, the manner in which the God-man union occurs is a matter of faith. We don't know how that somehow happens, but faith is a good thing, not a bad thing. We don't know how our spirits and flesh join together or are merged, but they do we still exist and take it on faith. Once again, Jesus was a divine person who assumed a human nature as explained on my website. I'll post some of it again for you and others.
The Hypostatic Union: Jesus is fully God and fully man. This God-man is both divine and human, a divine Person who assumed a human nature.
The dual nature of Christ, that he was, and is, God and man, illustrates the Jehovah's Witnesses’ confusion with respect to Christ’s temptation by the devil. The Jehovah's Witnesses incorrectly teach that Trinitarians believe that Jesus was not human and did not have his own human will, stating:
The temptation of Jesus would make sense only if he was, not God, but a separate individual who had his own free will, one who could have been disloyal had he chosen to be, such as an angel or a human. (Should You Believe, Chapter 6)
This is completely false and misleading. First, by virtue of the hypostatic union, Jesus is a divine person with a human nature, God and man, and the man, Jesus, did have his own free will:
Just as there are two complete and perfect natures in Christ, one divine, the other human, there are two wills in Christ, one divine, the other human. (Catholic Encyclopedia, 947)
Trinitarianism teaches that Jesus was not only true God, but true man. “[I]n his body Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity.”
The Son of God … worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he was truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin. (Catechism of the Catholic Church [New York, Image-Doubleday, 1994], 132) (Catholic Catechism)
Though not infinite, and therefore not omnipotent, because His humanity is finite, [His theandric power] extends to effects that are beyond purely human or created causality. (Catholic Encyclopedia, 943)
It is important that you understand this.
Secondly, and more important, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that “The humanity of Christ is a creature, it is not God” (ibid., 922). Christ’s full and complete humanity was a necessity, but a humanity that was without sin.
Third, “In Jesus humanity does not exist in itself, but it is the Son who exists as man through his human nature. Jesus gives back his whole divine self to the Father on the cross in and through his humanity (Fundamentals of Christology, 320).
With this in mind, the weaknesses in the Jehovah's Witnesses’ arguments become clear. They falsely teach, implicitly and explicitly, that Trinitarians believe that the humanity of Christ the creature is God the Almighty, the Godhead. But nothing could be further from the truth. When they claim that Trinitarians believe that “Jesus is God” they don’t disclose despite centuries of evidence, that “Jesus” in this Trinitarian context refers to the divine Person who assumed a human nature, not the created humanity of Jesus that is not God.
This particular distortion, and scant reference or explanation of the hypostatic union of Christ the God-man, has enabled the Jehovah's Witnesses to compose pages of unwarranted attacks on the Trinity by taking advantage of the readers’ lack of understanding with regard to what the Trinity doctrine really means.
Fourth, Trinitarians are fully aware that the created humanity of Jesus was inferior to God, that He was not equal to God in every way. The created humanity of Jesus knew that the Father was his superior.
Existence and Nature of Human Will. Moreover, works of honor are attributed to Christ, such as prayer, obedience, merit, which cannot proceed from the divine will, since they are manifested to a superior. They can proceed only from a created will. In His Incarnation the son of God assumed a perfect human nature, at the same time retaining His perfect divine nature. (Catholic Encyclopedia, 948)
Thus, when the created humanity of Jesus prayed to his Father, he was not praying to himself as the Jehovah's Witnesses mistakenly claim. He was praying to the infinitely superior God, His Father.
The Holy Spirit is not considered inferior to the Father and the Son in the way in which the Son, because of the human nature which he has assumed, testifies that he is inferior to the Father and the Holy Spirit (Denz 527)…. (Catholic Encyclopedia, 96)
When you think of it, Christ’s dual nature is not so far fetched; after all, a human is a material being endowed with a spirit, a union of the material and spiritual, yet considered one.
Fifth, with the above in mind, and considering the many proofs that follow, John 1:14 was not meant to be read literally. It states, “And the Word became flesh,” but this does not mean that the Word made a complete transformation from a spirit angel to only flesh, which is a type of heretical modalism condemned by the church in the first centuries. Rather, the divine Person of Christ assumed a human nature. Jesus was a divine Person with a human nature. That is the only acceptable interpretation of John 1:14 because the divinity of Christ - that he was and is God - in an undeniable Biblical truth, and without His divinity redemption is not possible. It was necessary for Jesus to be a God-man for the sake of mankind’s salvation. Therefore He could not be “mere flesh” under any circumstances.
Besides, since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 NWT) He cannot have been a preexistent angel who changed completely into mere flesh, and then reverted back to heaven as an angel. There is no such radical change in the Trinitarian Christian world where the Word was God the Son, remained God the Son during His sojourn, and continued as God the Son after His resurrection and ascension.
Sixth, the practical implications of the union is that “Jesus sometimes spoke as man, sometimes as God; sometimes as Godman” (M. O’Carroll, Trinitas: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity [Wilmington, Delaware, Michael Glazier, Inc., 1987], 186) (Trinitas).
I continue with more on the hypostatic union here:
http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index.html#6
