Friday, July 28, 2023

Some Excerpts from Impeccability and Temptation: Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will (2021)

 

The motivation for this project was the observation that very little research has been done on the consequences of a libertarian concept of free-will on Christology. Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ was fully human, yet was unable to sin. If, however, being human implies the power to choose between good and evil, it seems that Christ cannot be both fully human and impeccable.

 

. . . .

 

The apparent inconsistency resulting from attributing impeccability to Christ can be formulated as such::

 

1 If x is truly human, x must be (potentially) peccable.

 

2 If x is truly divine, x must be essentially impeccable.

 

3 A person cannot be both (potentially) peccable and essentially impeccable. (Johannes Grössl, “Introduction: Impeccability and Temptation,” in Impeccability and Temptation: Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will, ed. Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch [Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology; London: Routledge, 2021], 1-2)

 

 

 

The difficulty is clear. Why was Jesus driven out into the wilderness to face temptation and testing from Satan in the first place (Matthew 4:1-11) if there was no real possibility that he would fail, as humans do? Was it a pro forma even to put Jesus’ flesh, if not Spirit, to the test? Was Jesus a divine automaton going through the motions of a temptation story? And if so, why does he need the ministering of angels at the end of the ordeal, if an ordeal it was? More difficult still is the prospect that Jesus could have sinned. Does this suggest that human salvation in Christ rested on Jesus’ human obedience to the divine will? When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and asked for God to take the cup of suffering and death away, was this another temptation? Even to ask for the cup to be removed? Was the will of Jesus in tension here with the will of God? If God was in Jesus and Jesus could have sinned, does this mean that Jesus could have frustrated God’s salvific plans? What would it mean that God could potentially sin against Godself? (Jeffrey Siker, “The sinlessness of Christ and human perfection,” in Impeccability and Temptation: Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will, ed. Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch [Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology; London: Routledge, 2021], 21)

 

 

 

The Problem

 

The view that being tempted implies that the person tempted is able to sin is not a historical novelty, thought it may have more proponents in the recent past than it did in the remote past. . . .  One can present the argumentation of these thinkers as follows:

 

1 If a person is X, then that person is capable of sinning (i.e., peccable). (Assume)

 

2 Christ is X (From Conciliar Christology)

 

3 Thus, Christ is capable of sinning (From 1, 2)

 

4 If a person is capable of sinning (peccable), then that person is not impeccable. (Assume)

 

5 Thus, Christ is not impeccable. (From 3, 4)

 

The argument schema is valid. Thus, if the premises are true from some way of filing in for X, we have a sound argument for concluding that Christ was not impeccable. Furthermore, if that substituend for X is something which traditional Christology teaches for Christ, then we have a proof for the claim that traditional Christology is internally inconsistent. (Timothy Pawl, “Conciliar Christology, impeccability, and temptation,” in Impeccability and Temptation: Understanding Christ’s Divine and Human Will, ed. Johannes Grössl and Klaus von Stosch [Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology; London: Routledge, 2021], 95)