(10-27-2021 08:14 PM)Crayton Wrote: This article's author is not very measured in the tone of his response. Many appeals to emotion, and some theological leaps.
I suppose I do disagree with the 'Woke' pastor's interpretation just the same.
Jesus was questioning the woman on whether she thought herself worthy to have her daughter healed. The woman agreed that it was not by her own worth that her daughter should be healed, but that it would be by the grace of God.
An attractive statement the pastor makes is that Jesus was human, had prejudices and bias, and was willing to work to shed those.
There are often 2 theological perspectives of the incarnation. One is that Jesus had access to perfect knowledge and therefore was perfectly righteous in his human judgement. The other is that the Christ emptied himself of certain things including perfect knowledge, and therefore Jesus learned and grew much like any human, discovering new truths to the day he died.
The first perspective dominates conservative theology (in which I was trained) in large part because it is easier to simply equate Jesus to the Christ. But I think we lose perspective of Jesus's humanity when we do this, and statements like this Pastor's rub us the wrong way. (though calling Jesus a racist was rather triggering too)
There are certain aspects of Christ and the Father that we simply cannot understand the depth of yet. Not doctrine based perspectives but more of the exact detail of how He was God in the flesh, and how He was the Son and how He had full spiritual knowledge yet grew as a child and man in those things.
Its clear from scripture He was not born will full knowledge and that He studied, learned and grew. But its also clear the Spirit of God descended upon Him and also played a big role in his spiritual growth and understanding.
Theologically the Bible teaches the aspect that this was God experiencing life as a mortal and shedding his own blood for our redemption. How can the eternal God know what its like to be a mortal man unless He has really been one AS A MAN, not as God the eternal creator? So there is clearly some aspect of understanding that He set aside to experience life as a mortal with all the fears, struggles and death itself as a man experience. Remember how He wept, remember the total horror and fear He experienced the night before the crucifixion, even though He knew what was coming and what He was there to do and why.
Yet he was in total misery and suffered with overwhelming fear and dread the night before His arrest as any mortal man would have knowing what was to come. If He had not set aside some aspect of knowledge and consciousness that He had from before His mortal birth, He would not have experience the fear and suffering as a man in the same manner.
This is actually a good point to use when debating non believers and agnostics who question why we have to struggle and suffer in life. God is not asking anyone to experience or deal with anything He Himself did not make Himself go through. Even as our Eternal creator He too experienced life, struggles, pain and fear and even death itself that all go through in life. God seeks fellowship with us on a personal and intimate level, and how can He really know us if He never experienced what its like to be us. So one of the whole points of the life if Jesus is just that. God willingly humbled Himself to the flesh and even death itself. That is also a major difference between the God of the Bible and other false gods.
Personally (in a general sense) I am not a fan of these type of theological debates, because we can't grasp the full depth and width of this yet and its appears we are not expected to. I also think it takes away from studying the things the Word teaches us, and focuses more on a speculative theology with no real conclusions available to us.
But I understand why people get into it, its very human.
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Woke Pastor - Jesus repented of racism
