Mr. Bultitude
Puritan Board Freshman
I just read an article by Sproul that troubles me a little.
Obviously I believe that God, according to the divine nature, cannot die. But God, the Logos, became a man and suffered and died. It was the human nature that enabled that to happen, but is it really proper to say that only the human nature "experienced" death? I thought only a person experiences things. Jesus, the person, experienced death. Jesus is God. Therefore, God died. That's what makes sense to me. But what does it mean that God died? It means that his human soul separated from his human body until they were raised together imperishable. It doesn't mean that God ceased to exist. (Heck, it doesn't mean his human body or human soul ceased to exist either.)
When I die, my human nature will not perish. Natures don't perish. People do. Right?
I don't want to split hairs or anything, but Sproul sounds dangerously close to Nestorianism here. Is he? Or am I non-reformed in my Christology? That would be even more alarming to me. Can someone set me straight?
We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross. The atonement was made by the human nature of Christ. Somehow people tend to think that this lessens the dignity or the value of the substitutionary act, as if we were somehow implicitly denying the deity of Christ. God forbid. It’s the God-man Who dies, but death is something that is experienced only by the human nature, because the divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death.
Obviously I believe that God, according to the divine nature, cannot die. But God, the Logos, became a man and suffered and died. It was the human nature that enabled that to happen, but is it really proper to say that only the human nature "experienced" death? I thought only a person experiences things. Jesus, the person, experienced death. Jesus is God. Therefore, God died. That's what makes sense to me. But what does it mean that God died? It means that his human soul separated from his human body until they were raised together imperishable. It doesn't mean that God ceased to exist. (Heck, it doesn't mean his human body or human soul ceased to exist either.)
When I die, my human nature will not perish. Natures don't perish. People do. Right?
I don't want to split hairs or anything, but Sproul sounds dangerously close to Nestorianism here. Is he? Or am I non-reformed in my Christology? That would be even more alarming to me. Can someone set me straight?
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