At 16:55 13.02.99 GMT, you wrote:
>
>>By his human nature, i.e. his human body and soul, Christ was certainly
>>'like us, in all things except sin', and yet at the same time he was also,
>>very much unlike us, the 'perfection' of human nature.
>
>'Perfection' means 'completeness'. Christ has a human body, soul, spirit,
>and anything else which pertains to human nature. Cf. Article IV of the C
>of E, "Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with
>flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man's nature;
>wherewith he ascended into Heaven . . ." In this way he was (and is)
>exactly like us. The only sense in which we can said to lack the
>'perfection' of human nature is that, being fallen, our human nature is
>damaged, made imperfect.
>
>The term 'perfection' does not mean that Christ had faculties - e.g.
>foreknowledge - not available to other human beings. These would not
>pertain to the perfection of human nature, but would be something beyond
>human nature.
Dear Bill,
I fully agree with the logic of your argument. Conceding your point I
myself had argued that the source of the foreknowledge must be something
beyond human nature (i.e. divine knowledge pertaining to the divine
nature), whereas the human nature in its perfectness can only account for
the idea of a particular 'sharpness' of his imagination in 'apprehending
every detail of the forthcoming Passion'. After all, we cannot deny -- not
in the face of the scriptural evidence -- that Christ actually had
foreknowledge of his passion (nor can we say that foreknowledge is
something which is denied to all other human beings), all we can speculate
is the quality and extent of this foreknowledge, and it seems to me that
Angela da Foligni's speculation is still within the limits of what was
accepted theology of her time, except that she (in Franc,ois paraphrase of
her thought) attributes the sharpness of his imagination to his "divine
power" rather than to his perfect human nature.
Yours,
Otfried
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