When Jesus prayed in the Garden ....

1. Part of the mystery of the Incarnation is how Jesus could be fully God and still "increase in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2.52). Your "absolute knowledge" answer applies to the deity of Christ but evidently does not apply to his humanity (he grew in wisdom, i.e, he learned). Again one cannot diminish his humanity for the sake of his deity. Don't get me wrong. I believe Jesus knew what lay ahead of him. But such knowledge continued to unfold before him b/c part of his humbling himself was confining himself to time/space limitations. Notice in the verse you quote, Jesus bases his knowledge upon the certainty of God's Word being fulfilled. His knowledge, as a human, seems to have been based primarily upon his confidence in the veracity of OT prophecies (thus we have the "it is written" formula through much of his ministry).

2. Proposition #1: confidence of future pain & Proposition #2: confidence of his resurrection do not equal your conclusion: thus no fear. The 3 Hebrews were confident that God was in control of their situation (and could raise them from the dead), but that does not mean they experienced no fear during Neb's threat of tossing into the furnace. Again their fear was simply overcome by their dependence upon God. Fear drove them to dependence and not to faithlessness.

3. "Perilupos" can be translated severly grieved or sorrowful. If you look back in v. 37, we discover Jesus experienced "ademomoneo", which carries the meaning to be depressed or overwhelmed with burden or sorrow. You could argue from word choice or silence that fear is not present here, but your basis for doing so is illegitimate. I can argue that deep sorrow or being overwhelming depressed about an upcoming event shows as much "uncertainty" or "dread" (which in your reasoning equals a sinful lack of faith) as fear. If we are following your thought, any human emotion outside of complete confidence is a lack of faith.

4. Ultimately the emotion he experienced in the Garden was overcome by his obedience. You want to suggest it was acceptable for him to experience grief and sorrow over what lay ahead but not uncertainty. Such reasoning is flawed b/c both emotions can be interpreted as a lack of confidence.

Your statement that fear would show obedience that is grudgeful is silly. Are you suggesting that if Daniel was uncertain about being tossed among the felines that he was obeying grudgingly? Again fear does not equal a sinful lack of faith. It is a natural human response that hopefully pushes the child of God to a deeper level of faith.

5. I have never said Jesus was afraid of a person. I am not sure I have even said He was afraid of what lay ahead of him. I have simply said fear is a natural human emotion, and if Jesus was 100% human, it needs to be explained biblically how he escaped the emotion fear.

This verse simply reveals the reality of Jesus' "not my will but yours be done" prayer. There is no question Jesus knew what was coming and was totally committed to fulfilling His calling. What is in question is what emotions Jesus experienced as a human on this journey of obedience.

Once again, the text you have employed have failed to demonstrate your point. Nice try though.


BTW, congratulations on the birth of your child. I hope your wife did not sin by feeling any sense of fear or uncertainty throughout the birthing process. I know it can be a stressful time. It would be very difficult to say my wife was fearless through the birth of our 3 children (especially during the hemorraghing that almost took the life of both my wife and last child), but I can say she was a model of absolute dependence during those hours.

 

(But sometimes it is not worth the trouble of unlacing my gloves)

Trust me -- I never take a word you say seriously enough to alter my thinking.

The difference between you and me is that I recognize the reality that the truth is larger than what my finite mind can completely grasp. Therefore I leave room for flexibility on things outside of the basic fundamentals. You, on the other hand, seem to honestly believe you are dogmatically right on both the trivial and the core matters.

But what is truly refreshing is that most evangelicals fall into my camp and not yours. And that is what preserves us from the cookie-cutter mentality that drives a minority of evangelicals and many fundies.

 

I will simply take it as your usual course of action: make a dogmatic, unproveable generalization -- use a single text outside of its context to try and support it -- bail out of the discussion when confronted with legitimate exegesis -- blame your departure upon a "fundamental" difference -- make a remark about the broader evangelical community -- pretend the one you are debating does not understand the true meaning of the Bible or his hermeneutics is inferior.

At least your cycle is consistent

BTW, I took off my gloves for that last diatribe. Of course everything I type must be taken with a flavor of sarcasm (I write this for the lurkers and not Preach specifically, who I think understands the nature of most of our "discussions"). BTW, I am still waiting for that proof on your attacks on Warren.

Do the Scriptures actually say that Jesus never experienced fear? Your logic must work both directions. Come on Preach.

If you mean by this that I allow for possible interpretations on non-fundamentals outside of my own, then you are right.

Wrong. But I do believe the Bible is silent on certain issues for a reason. That being the case, we should not make dogmatic assertions where the text is silent.

I am not sure you are even open-minded enough to see the inconsistency of your own words and actions in this statement. You are right, one can argue endlessly (and dogmatically) about a number of issues where the Scripture is unclear or quiet. That is why it seems more appropriate to allow room for flexibility in those areas rather than creating unverifiable dogma from them.

The word "evangelical" puts parameters upon the circle itself, so the circle cannot continue to widen at the funamental level.

Neither is isolating oneself theologically from the broader Christian circle a badge of honor. I would simply suggest the Pharisees of Jesus' day seem to fall into the latter category.

It does seem that you are abandoning the discussion, but I wish you would take time to answer my questions how it is acceptable to say Jesus experienced emotions such as grief, sorrow, and uncertainty but that he could not have experienced fear.

 

One of my primary assertions from the beginning of this discussion is that we cannot fully grasp the mystery of the Incarnation. I allow room for Jesus to experience a full range of human emotions. Others in the discussion place unproveable restrictions upon what Jesus could or could not have experienced.

I would disagree to an extent that his emotions are totally undefineable. We know that he was 100% human, thus there is at least a framework with which we can work.