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From: JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu (Jenni Sheehey)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Jesus as a human
Message-ID: <Jul.24.04.08.48.1990.17139@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 90 08:08:51 GMT
Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu
Organization: Penn State University
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Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

In article <Jul.20.03.34.59.1990.17658@athos.rutgers.edu>, vm0t+@andrew.cmu.edu
(Vincent Paul Mulhern) says:

>   About Jesus being human.  I said in a post on 7/17 that Jesus isn't
>human anymore.  I still affirm that statement.  What "Christian
>doctrine" says He is still human?  I fully recognize that, while on
>earth, He was indeed human and God.  But I do not think He still
>posesses any characteristics which make Him human.  He is not still
>living on earth.  He is not still experiencing the temptations He
>experienced as a human.

I think it is pointless for us (as mere humans) to discuss matters
involving God and time.  Do we imagine God to be held bound by the
same restrictions (i.e. time continuity) as the rest of us?  I think
C.S. Lewis said it well in _Beyond_Personality_:

      This human life in God is from our point of view a particular point
      in the history of the world (from the year A.D one till the
      crucifixion ).  We therefore imagfine it is also a period in the
      history of God's own existance.  But God has no history.  He is
      too completely and utterly real to have one.  For, of course,
      to have a history means losing a part of your reality (because
      it has already slipped into the past) and not yet having another
      part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing
      but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak
      of it.

Of course, C. S. Lewis (and myself  (=  ) is only human as well, and could
therefore also be wrong about this, but when I think about it, It seems
that this "makes more sense" than the other idea, although the idea that
God is "in time" is easier to understand (since none of us have ever
experienced being apart from time).  I guess the real point is that God
is *unchangable* and therefore could not have "once been" anything He is
not still.
                                                   --Jenni
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