Sinlessness of Christ (Research Paper Sample)

Sinlessness of Christ"
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Christ is God prior to the manifestation, and God can not sin, subsequently Christ cannot sin whilst he is persuaded as a man. While a man would have a variable will with burden to sin and God cannot be capricious or sin, thus Christ the man may well not furthermore be God. Theologians establish merely that since Christ was the divine Lord, it was rationally impossible for Christ to sin.1
Jacques Dupuis, Who Do You Say I Am? An Introduction to Christology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 129: ‚
Tertullian (ca. 155-220) claims that the normally sinful humankind was emptied of sin when taken by Christ so that his sinless transformed human race. That explains Christ initial status of sinlessness as a man. Tertullian in a different set affirms the idea that Christ’s sinlessness is supported by his deity, enlightening that just as God only is without sin, therefore as well Christ is the barely the man without sin.2 For Tertullian, Christ’s sinlessness is an entailment of his goddess, and no other clarification than this is known for how Jesus prolong sinless.
Tertullian. ‚De Anima.‛ Edited by J. H. Waszink. Amsterdam: J. M. Meulenhoff, 1947.
`Augustine (354-430) signifies in his model with a comprehensible declaration inhis discourse on the temptations that Jesus undergoes: ‚That Christ was the vanquisher there, why must we be shocked? Christ was almighty God.‛3 Augustine in addition insist that the sinlessness of Christ as a man was basis of his extraordinary constitution, since Christ ‚is in His character not a man only, but as well God, in whom humankind could prove such rightness of nature to have subsisted.‛4 yet again, the plain logic of the sculpt shows in the association between the immaculateness of God the Son and the sinless human deed of Jesus Christ as a straight consequence.
Augustine. ‚2 Enarr.‛ Psalmo 32. In Enarrationes in Psalmos I–L. Edited by E. Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 38:247-73. Turnhout: Brepols, 1956.
The holiness in Christ overlooks his humanity, strengthening and deifying it by natural individual weaknesses. Temptations by no means threaten Christ, just as a piece of heated iron cannot declare cold because of its union to the fire. The universal principle of essential sinlessness is clear as the praise of Jesus’ humanity by changing in union to his religion, making deiform compassion. Cyril of Alexandria (378-444) present many illustration of the deification sculpt due of his stereological anxiety for the divinization of a entire humanity in Christ, comparable to the Cappadocia’s and Athanasius. Cyril explains about the necessitate for worship of Christ’s humanity in connection to sin: ‚As God aspiration to create that flesh which was seized in the grip of death and sin evidently superior to death and sin.‛ This illustration fits the sculpt closely by establishing that the divine character of the Logos increase his hidden humanity to formulate it impeccable by life. Cyril maintain that Jesus’ impeccability as a man who is not obligated to sin as others are, and that his persuasion were given by God’s love for the sake of other humans who are tempted and need to know how to resist these dangers.5 Cyril states that the union of the heavenly nature with the human nature in Christ was a transformation that he likens to dyeing cloth: the Logos effectively immersed his human soul in divine immutability as wool that is set in a bath of dye.6 The purpose of this deification was to make the humanity of Christ more powerful than sin by means of the divine immutability. In light of this view of Christ’s humanity as enhanced by his deity to be impeccable, Cyril was shocked to hear that some people thought sin was a possibility for Jesus, since it was so obvious from his sinlessness that no danger existed for him in being tempted to sin.8 Instead of peccability, Cyril’s view was that salvation required that Christ be impeccable, and he explained it in terms of what we have summarized as the model, sinless by deification.
Cyril of Alexandria. ‚Adversus Anthropomorphitas.‛ Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia. Edited by J. Auberti and rev. J.- P. Migne. Patrologia Graeca 76:1065-132. Paris: J.-P. Migne,
The divine hegemony model explains Christ’s impeccability and temptation as the predominance of his deity over his humanity. The earliest theologian to suggest this model is Irenaeus of Lyons (130-200). He insists on the divine use of the assumed humanity in an instrumental way, which fits his view of Jesus’ whole life as a redemptive recapitulation as the second Adam.7 Irenaeus opposes the Gnostics’ docetic conceptions of Christ to argue instead for the likeness of ‚the Lord’s flesh‛ with ‚our flesh.‛8 This claim of the essential likeness suggests that Irenaeus also opposes the idea that Christ’s humanity was deiform. Irenaeus affirms Jesus’ sinlessness without setting that moral achievement as a marker of his natural difference from the rest of sinful humanity. In his view, the Logos aided Christ’s assumed humanity to conquer his temptations to sin. Irenaeus writes, ‚The Logos continued quiescent throughout the process of death, crucifixion and temptation, but aided the human nature when it subjugated, and endured, and performed actions of kindness, and ascended again from the dead, and was accepted up into heaven.‛9 The model shows in Irenaeus’s insistence on Christ’s human victory that reverses the human defeat of Adam. Jesus obeys the law as a man, and answers Satan’s temptations in the wilderness through nothing else but by quoting Scripture, thus demonstrating the example for others to follow.
Irenaeus. ‚Adversus haereses.‛ Contra haereses libri quinque Edited by J.-P. Migne. Patrologia Graeca 7:433-1221. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1857.
Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 352-428) agrees with most others that Christ was impeccable and immutable as a man, but he uniquely holds that Christ did not become so until after the resurrection when the Logos predominated over his humanity. Before the resurrection, Christ needed the empowering grace from the Holy Spirit to resist temptations and struggle for moral virtue; as Theodore says, ‚Christ had need of the Spirit in order to defeat the devil, to perform miracles and to receive (divine) instruction as to the activities he should undertake.‛10 Theodore continues to assert that if Christ did not need this help of divine grace , then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was superfluous for him. In keeping with Acts 2:22 and 10:38, Theodore sees a necessary role for the Holy Spirit in Christ; he explains that other theologians have overlooked this role because an acknowledgment seemed to imply that the Holy Spirit was greater than the Logos. Theodore affirms that by grace the Logos always kept the assumed man from sin, but this enrichment of impeccability is in the background and not an active factor in Christ’s achievement of sinlessness until the resurrection. Accordingly, 11Theodore emphasizes that in the wilderness temptations Jesus had to struggle as a man, not as God, and is therefore an example for others:
Theodore of Mopsuestia. ‚De Incarnatione.‛ Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Patrologia Graeca 66:969-90. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1859.
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