The Holy Spirit is a FULL Member and person of the Godhead. Not some
enabling POWER!
Okay, Judy, I'll turn my other
cheek.
You say, "Why is it so difficult to believe
that God is able to create a holy child in the womb of Mary?"
I say, it is not difficult for me to believe
this. In fact, it is just what I do believe. What I don't accept is
a definition of "holy" that does not allow God to be God, and notice
that I did not say that it does not allow God to be man. In the way you are
using this word, it is doing its damage long before it reaches the
Incarnation.
Any definition of any attribute of God that,
if correct, would force God to be dependent upon creation in order to
fulfill that attribute, has to be a faulty definition -- end
of discussion. Because God, by
definition, is self-sufficient. But if you insist on using "holy"
in the sense of some sort of set-apartedness on God's behalf, then this is
just what you are saying: that God had to create in order to be what he is:
i.e., holy.
Let me explain: You seem to be working on
a definition of holy that has at its root the idea of set apart, set away
from, or something very close to this. But this is Aristotle! Furthermore,
right above that root is a second-story meaning of moral perfection. In
other words, God is set apart from his creation, firstly. And, secondly, he
is set apart morally, because his creation is immoral. Said another way, God
is holy and creation is unholy. But this definition of holy will not
work (I'll get back to the reason why in a minute).
What I hear you saying throughout this
discussion, is this: that since God is holy and humanity is unholy, and
since the Bible says Jesus was holy from the womb, this means that Jesus
could not have had a fallen nature, because that would make him unholy.
Therefore, God had to have created a new kind of humanity, different from
fallen humanity, for Jesus to inhabit, in order for him to be holy. Am I on
the mark?
Well guess what, that will not work. It makes
God dependent upon his creation in order to be holy. Why? because if "holy"
means set apart, then God was not holy until he created; because
until he created there was nothing to be set apart from. It's
impossible, even for God, to be set apart from something that does not
exist. And when there was nothing there but God, there was nothing there to
exist, nothing there from which to be set apart.
Moreover, by your definition, he was still not
holy even after he created. Why? because of your faulty secondary idea
of moral fortitude. You seem to be saying that if humanity had not
fallen it would have been morally perfect de facto. Well guess
what, that doesn't work either. Why? because it makes God's holiness
dependent upon humanity's fall. Because until his creation fell apart
morally, there was no distinction, no set-apartedness, between God's
holiness and humanity's.
(By the way, perfection can also be what takes
place after a state of becoming. Adam and Eve did not have to be perfect to
be "very good." They only had to be growing in relationship with God to
meet these requirements; they were becoming, in other words, and then they
fell. In the same way, we have a context for understanding Hebrews, the
"having been perfected" language for Christ, throughout his suffering, he
was becoming)
So, what do I think the Bible is speaking to
when it speaks of God's holiness? and why is it that I can affirm, even
celebrate, Jesus' holiness, when at the same time insist that his human
nature was like our own? I will tell you -- but I am going to have to speak
about that terrible Trinity word when I do it.
The first rule in any discipline, whether we
are talking about doing science or reading the Bible, is to allow the
object of the study to determine the means by which it is known. Let me
make myself clearer. If you are studying Scripture, then the object of your
study is God. We have to let God define himself. When the Bible speaks of
holiness, it is speaking about the unity, the beauty, the harmony, the
fellowship, the relatedness, the other-centeredness, the uprightedness, the
moral perfectedness, ad infintum; in short, THE LOVE, which
exists between the Persons of the Trinity -- the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit. "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts." Get
it?
(By the way, this is the strongest argument we
have for the Trinity, i.e., the eternality and divinity of the Son and the
Holy Spirit; for if the Son and Holy Spirit were not eternally divine within
the Godhead, then, again, God could not be holy, because he could not be
these things, because every one of these terms are relational: their
existence demands an object other than themselves. The Trinity has
this: the Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. Their fellowship
is in the Holy Spirit, etc. etc.)
How is it that Jesus can be holy and at the
same time embody fallen flesh? At no time in his life did he ever deny or
refuse to participate in the aspects of holiness as they are defined by the
Father/Son relationship. Jesus kept the unity. He kept the harmony. He kept
the other-centeredness. He kept the beauty, the fellowship, the
uprightedness, the moral perfectedness, and on and on, of his eternal
love relationship with his Father through the Holy Spirit.
Yes Jesus was born with Adam's blood
running through his veins. BUT HE WAS ALSO GOD! The relationship between the
two natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ was asymetrical. And this is
important to know: God was going to win. This is why Jesus could
touch the leper and not catch the disease: HE WAS ALSO GOD. It's not
that his humanity could not be diseased; it's that he was not
only human. When he touched the leper, he healed the disease, BECAUSE
HE WAS ALSO GOD. In the same way he healed sinful flesh and was not
corrupted by it, because he was also God.
By this biblical definition, then, what
does it mean to be unholy? Do I really need to go any farther.
Bill
