Sorry to say that I do not quite understand what you are
trying to convey. Jesus did not advise us to look at history. He
did not tell us about going to resources. He told us the Holy Spirit
would lead us into all truth. The Holy Spirit tells me (backed up by
scripture) that Jesus was and is God. Always has been, always will
be. Two things everyone should know about God. One, He does not change,
and two, He cannot sin. That He took my sins on Himself and paid for
them with His blood is scriptural. He did that during His last moments
on the cross. At that moment you may classify Him as sinful if you wish,
but I see Him as sacrifice, not sinner. Had he ever sinned prior to the
cross, He would not have been an acceptable sacrifice.
If I have misunderstood you, feel free to
clarify.
Respectfully,
Terry
A great resource for this discussion is T. F.
Torrance. In his great little book The Mediation of
Christ, he introduces his handling of the Incarnation with these
words: "Perhaps the most fundamental truth we need to learn in the
Christian Church, or rather relearn since we have suppressed it, is that the
Incarnation was the coming of God to save us in the heart of our
fallen and depraved humanity, where humanity is at its
wickedest in its enmity and violence against the reconciling love of God.
That is to say, the Incarnation is to be understood as the coming of God to
take upon himself our fallen human nature,
After establishing the historicity of these
beliefs and attaching their origin to the writings of the Apostles, he then
goes on to state, "before long in the fourth century there began a revolt
against the idea that Christ took our fallen humanity including our depraved
mind upon himself in order to redeem it from within. Thus there developed
especially in Latin theology from the fifth century a steadily growing
rejection of the fact that it was our alienated, fallen, and sinful humanity
that the Holy Son of God assumed, and there was taught instead the idea that
it was humanity in its perfect original state that Jesus took over from the
Virgin Mary, which of course forced Roman Catholic theology into the strange
notion of immaculate conception, . . .
It seems to me that Christians should be able
and willing to ask the question, What has happened to influence my
thinking in this area? Why did early Christians accept this teaching, when I
am unable even to consider it? What stands in the gap between the beliefs of
these early Christians and those that I hold? If nothing else, David, if
Christians will take seriously the early history of the Church, when
they say No to you, they will know that you have been relegated to some
pretty good company.
