When the Homily is about Immunology

Jesus, a sinner?
Part 2: I am not a theologian, but I play one on the Internet

A quick review of what I babbled previously. We do not HAVE to sin. We are not, by nature, sinful beings. Our love of darkness is unnatrural. Our propensity towards sin is unnatural. There is NO such thing as a “natural” death. Furthermore, God is to sin as black is to white. Since humanity and sin are not synonymous or neccesarily connected in any way, and God and sin are contradictory; the God-Man could not have sinned. And therefore what we see in the incarnation is a fulfilled human being, sinless and united to God. Jesus, then, is our example to follow.

Now, pay close attention here, because this is where I delve into realms for which I am supremely unqualified and yet none-the-less will shoot off my mouth...err umm...fingers. By saying that Jesus is our example, I do not mean in the mere and insignificant sense that he is a doer of great charitable works and that we ought to emulate Him…no, no, no…I mean much more than that. Jesus is our example in the ontological sense of who He is, that which we also ought to become. Be careful…I am not saying we become by nature God…no, the scripture tells us though that we will share in Jesus’ nature and be grafted into Him and become partakers of the Divine Nature.

You will often hear the Greek term synergy used in Orthodox circles. Basically, as I feebly understand it, the word is in reference to the perfect submission of our human will to the will of God. And it is from the Theoanthropos that we derive this understanding. St. Maximos the Confessor would face torture in order to insist that Jesus had both a divine will and a human will in the face of opponents who refused to acknowledge this, under the general assumption that it would leave Jesus as a sort of indecisive schizophrenic (as is arguably portrayed in The Last Temptation of Christ). But St. Maximos upheld the ancient patristic and apostolic concept which would time and time again rescue the Church’s Christology from heresy: “That which is not assumed is not healed.” Jesus MUST have had a human will and that that will was in perfect synergy with His Divine will. In this way OUR wills are now healed and able to follow our Lord’s example. A will in perfect synergy with God simply cannot sin.

St. Maximos, by the way, lost his tongue and hand over the matter.

more to come...