Was It Possible for Jesus to Sin?
If the moral properties are perfectly preserved in Jesus,
however, then the question arises whether Jesus was morally free to sin in any
significant respect. If Jesus possessed the property of perfect goodness in the
same respect that God is perfectly good, then it seems inconsistent to say that
Jesus truly could sin, for it seems incompatible with the divine nature to
permit sin in any sense. However, the notion of moral perfection underlying
this objection assumes the doctrine of essential predication pursuant to which
God is understood to possess any property which he possesses necessarily. If
Jesus is necessarily morally good, then it is logically impossible for Jesus to
actually sin. Ut if it is logically impossible for Jesus to sin, then it seems impossible
for Jesus to be tempted in any meaningful sense, as Hebrews says he was. It
seems that a person can be truly tempted only if it is possible for him to
actually give in to the temptation and sin. If it is impossible for a person to
give in to temptation, then the temptation is not a real possibility—in other
words, is not really tempting at all. (24) If Jesus was free in the libertarian sense
which respect to whether he sinned, then actually sinning must have been an actual
possibility for him even if on every occasion where he might sin he freely
chose not to do go. If Jesus cannot possibly sin, even if he were totally ignorant
of his inability to sin given his divine nature, then he is not responsible for
having chosen not to sin because it is not up to him whether he sins. Jesus
cannot be morally praiseworthy if he cannot possibly sin. (25) We thus seem to have
deducted a logical incompatibility in assuming that Jesus’ identity preserved
essential moral goodness of the divine nature.
The proper response to the problem of divine goodness is to
deny the doctrine of essential predication with respect to the divine status of
the individual divine persons. In other words, Jesus refrained form sinning not
because it was logically impossible for him to do so, but because he freely
decided not to sin even though he was free in the libertarian sense to do so.
(26) But such a response may seem to make trust in divine goodness precarious.
Though God has not done any evil thing yet, it is still logically possible that
he will do so. Nevertheless, I think that trust in God is possibly only because
we recognize that God is truly free and could sin, but we trust that he will
not do so. We have a relationship is possible with logical necessities. We have
faith and trust in God because of the excellence of his personality and
character, not because it is impossible for him to do wrong. For example, it is
logically possible that Mother Teresa will suddenly leave her calling to serve
the poor and join a brothel, but it is not something that anyone could reasonably
sit up nights worrying about. Her established character is just too inconsistent
with such acts. Our faith and trust in God’s goodness arise from our experience
of God’s love and commitment to our well-being. His love for us is analogous to
the trust a husband must have in the faithfulness of his wife if there is to be
any true relationship of intimacy at all. How much less do we need to worry,
then , that God will suddenly depart from his righteous ways?
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes
of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2001), 479-80
Notes for the above (ibid., 487-88):
(24) The argument which shows that Jesus is not responsible
runs as follows (assuming that any act which a person is tempted to do must be
a sin):
(1) For any agent S and action A,
if A is not logically possible for Si to do, then it is not up to S
whether Si does A.
(2) What is not up to S is not
something S can be responsible for.
(3) What is not logically possible for S
to do is not something S can be responsible for (from 1 and 2).
(4) It was not logically possible for
Jesus to act other than righteously as r (assumption essential goodness).
(5) For any action A which Jesus
was tempted to do, it was not logically possible that Jesus do A (from
4).
(6) Therefore, Jesus was not responsible
for acting righteously at t when he was tempted to do A (from 3,
4, and 5)
(25) Wes Morriston, “What Is So Good about Moral Freedom?” Philosophical
Quarterly 50, no. 200 (July 2000): 334-58