The Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent was about the temptations of Jesus in the desert. During the course of his homily, the priest at the Mass I attended asked if it was possible for Jesus to sin, and asked for a show of hands who thought he could have. A few went up, then he asked those who thought he couldn't have sinned to raise their hands. Most everyone raised their hands. He then went on to say that the temptations could not have really been temptations if it were not possible for Jesus to sin, and Jesus could not have really been human if he didn't possess free-will and, hence, the ability to choose wrongly.

So what do you think? Do you agree with this priest? Could Jesus have sinned? Cast your vote, and register your comments. I'll weigh in with my input and share the email I sent this priest a little later.

Question:
Was it possible for Jesus to sin?

Choices:
Yes.
No.
Don't know.

 

What your priest said makes sense to me, Phil.

Good to see a comment from Derek and a few votes coming in. So far it's 5 - 1 in favor of Jesus being able to sin, which is about the opposite percentage of the community where I was worshiping. Let's see how it continues to go.

And, again, note that you can vote without posting a comment. Voting is for registered users only, as that's the only way to prevent people from voting more than once.

I voted no, it wasn't possible for Jesus to sin.

Jesus was both God and man. He had free will as a man, but he said, "I do only what I see the Father doing." In some mystical way that I cannot know about, He experienced the full power of the pull to sin, but even with free will, could not have chosen sin.

BTW, asking for a public show of hands is pretty poor methodology for getting at a valid assessment of one's private beliefs...especially in church! in front of the priest! ...as you know.

A very good question, Phil!

At first, I thought: He couldn't. But then I started to wonder what "could" really means.

It's like asking: could you right now shot yourself dead if you had a gun? Of course, I COULD, because I'm able to take a gun in my hand and put it to my head, I know where the trigger is, and how to pull it (I suppose so, at least...) etc. But psychologically it's impossible because of my values, my actual emotional and cognitive state.
Could a loving mother abandon her child? Of course, she COULD, but... she wouldn't ever do it.

So the spiritual state of the man Jesus - closely related to his divinity, as Shasha pointed out - made the possibility of sin only a theoretical possibility. That's my understanding, so I voted - yes.

I voted "I don't know". I know he was free of any addictions that would have made sin seem attractive. He was exasperated at times, it appears to me; He got angry sometimes, too--those feelings can allowed without sinning, though. He seemed to struggle in Gethsemane, but even if He had backed out--disappointing His Father?--would that have absolutely been a sin? And, I do think that unlike Eve, He was unable to doubt God's goodness--He knew better.

Everyone's made good points, so I'm undecided.

I'm attaching a table below that shows how I understand Jesus (admittedly, a "high Christology" a la the Gospel of John). It's from a teaching I do on Jesus and the Trinity. The column on "Nature" shows a progression from inanimate to human to divine. In the case of Jesus, I understand his human nature to "subsist" in his divine nature rather than the two existing "side-by-side." The analogy would be the animal nature subsisting in our human spiritual soul; we still have an animal nature but it is radically transformed so as to exist for the soul and to serve the soul -- it is transparent to the human spirit, we might say, even as it continues to function within the realms of its own lawfulness. Same for the body.

Note, too, that Jesus is only one Person, that of the Divine Son. Whatever kind of self he might have from his human nature subsists in the Person of the Word, or Second Person of the Trinity. Hence, to encounter Jesus is to encounter the Word in human form. His human nature is real, and he is really hungry in the desert, but he, the Word incarnate, could not have possibly done the will of Satan. Still, he knows what hunger is, and can understand how people would really want to do something to fill that need.

So . . . I voted no.

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I've often wondered about whether Jesus knew he was God. It seems Phil that you would answer, Yes.

What do you understand from Philipians that Jesus emptied himself of in order to become like us. I always thought he placed (for a time) his divinity under his humanity so as to enter fully into our experience. I've sometimes thought that his miracles and ministry were of the Holy Spirit rather than of Himself as the Word of God.

Could Jesus have had an experience of discovering who he was and where he came from? Or was he always completely aware that he was God?

quote:

Could Jesus have had an experience of discovering who he was and where he came from? Or was he always completely aware that he was God?

Jacques.

When he experienced his baptism, my sense is that this was when he finally fully 'knew' who he was.

quote:

What do you understand from Philipians that Jesus emptied himself of in order to become like us. I always thought he placed (for a time) his divinity under his humanity so as to enter fully into our experience. I've sometimes thought that his miracles and ministry were of the Holy Spirit rather than of Himself as the Word of God.

In the end, it's a mystery, Jacques. We do find him as a young boy in the Temple interacting with the religious leaders (Lk 2: 43-49), and when his parents find him, he says "Why do you search for me? Do you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" I'm sure his distressed parents gave him an earful. But what's significant about this passage is that it's not from John, but from Luke, who paints a very human picture of Jesus.

Note that this isn't really a disobedience of his parents -- that he considers it a higher obedience. I don't think the impatience attributed to him at times is a sin, either. Even without the Fall, we would probably be impatient at times, or disappointed and angry -- even lonely (as Adam was before Eve).

As for the kenotic emptying -- don't you think forfeiting his cosmic awareness and heavenly glory to restrict his perception to that of a human is emptying enough? The way I understand this is that Jesus' human nature and its normal manner of developing and learning served as the means through which the divine Person was able experience and exercise His powers. This makes it possible to affirm that: a.) he was always as aware of his divinity as it was possible for him to be; and b.) this awareness was tempered or restricted by his human development. The early Church councils affirmed that his divine and human natures didn't interfere with one another, and the two affirmations above are one way we might understand this.

Keep in mind, here, that there are other, much lower Christologies than what I've articulated above, which is along the lines of the classical understanding. In these lower Christologies, which are much more popular these days, Jesus' divine nature is largely unconscious, and even after his baptism by John, he ministers more by the power of the Spirit than out of his own divine powers, which he forfeited completely with the incarnation. It's not until the resurrection that he comes to know the full measure of his divinity; prior to that, he's following the leading of the Spirit and trusting in the Father as we do.

In the lowest of these Christologies, Jesus' possession of divinity is considered to be no different from our own. As Jim Marion put it in The Death of the Mythic God, Jesus is a human being like the rest of us who "realized" his own inner divinity better than anyone else had. This goes beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, in my opinion. Such a Jesus could definitely have sinned.

There are a lot of good discussions on this topic on the net. E.g.

quote:

Human beings are capable of experiencing temptation, as well as committing sin. If Jesus was fully human, and if Jesus experienced temptation, wouldn't He be capable of sin as well? On the one hand, denying that Christ was peccable seems to entail a denial of the completeness or genuineness of His human existence. .After all, if He could not sin, and yet humans can, how could He be fully human? One might even question the meaningfulness of His temptations. How could Christ be tempted in any meaningful sense of the word, if it was not possible for Him to succumb to that temptation? What point would there be in subjecting Jesus to Satan's temptations? What victory was gained by overcoming those temptations, if overcoming was the only possible outcome?

On the other hand, denying Christ's impeccability has disastrous Christological and soteriological implications: it destroys the unity of Christ's person, and undermines His ability to atone for our sins. Let me explain. If God is not capable of sin, and yet Jesus was capable of sin, then Christ must be two persons--the divine person, and a separate human person--only the latter of whom was capable of sin. But in postulating such a Christ, Jesus ceases to be God. He becomes an ordinary man who is indwelt by the Spirit of God, differing from us only in a quantitative sense (He possesses a greater measure of the Spirit), not a qualitative sense. Such an individual is not God, but a mere man who happens to be in a very close relationship with God. And if Jesus is not God, He cannot make atonement for the sins of mankind . . .

- http://www.onenesspentecostal....mptationofchrist.htm

The latter point was one that Athanasius argued for against the Arian heresy that rocked the church in the early centuries. As we know, Athanasius prevailed at Nicea in 325, and continued to contend with Arian bishops and leaders throughout his life, going into exile on several occasions (one of which positioned him to meet Anthony of the Desert and write a biography of the great saint.)

I think that your quote is quite to the point. I agree that the difficulty arises if the person is the subject of decision - then the Person of Jesus identical to the Son cannot possibly decide contrary to God's will (it would contradict his very nature). But if Jesus Christ couldn't possibly do anything against the Trinity's will, then temptations weren't really temptations, because he couldn't yield to them. He experienced desire, but somehow easily resisted it.

Good points there Phil, and I can quite easily go along with them. Could be we read too much into the temptations from a sinful human perspective. The gospel accounts may be pointing more to the overcoming of temptation (or the correct attitude towards temptation) than to the possibility of Jesus giving in to temptation.

I wonder how Jesus in Gethsemini fits into such a high christology? It appears Jesus was conflicted and desired a different path. But of course he is willing to submit to the Fathers will anyway.

Note that the Gospels do not say that Jesus struggled in himself to refuse what Satan was offering. Mt. 4, 1 states: "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. . . ." The temptations, then, might be understood in terms of what Satan does rather than what Jesus experiences.

I think it's important to affirm that it is not sin nor the capacity to sin that constitutes us as humans and defines the essence of who we are. Being unable to sin does not in any way diminish Jesus' ability to experience the full range of human emotions. Even those ensuing from sin were sensed by him empathically -- especially on the cross, where, it seems, he was given to know the full measure of the fear and despair wrought by sin on the human race.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
Note that the Gospels do not say that Jesus struggled in himself to refuse what Satan was offering.

Phil and others:

A quote from the above link in an earlier post here from Phil, under the section, "If Jesus Could Not Sin, Was His Temptation a Sham?":

"Successfully resisting temptation requires a battle of the mind, spirit, and will. The longer one resists, the greater the force of the temptation becomes. While we often succumb to temptation, Jesus resisted to the end, and thus felt its force in full."

Would you all agree with that, esp. "the longer one resists..." part? I would tend to think otherwise; IOW, if it requires a drawn out battle, we have an unhealed addiction. But I'm open to hearing another view.

I have to go outside, but I'd like to ask more about this.

quote:

Originally posted by Ariel Jaffe:

Would you all agree with that, esp. "the longer one resists..." part? I would tend to think otherwise; IOW, if it requires a drawn out battle, we have an unhealed addiction.

I'm thinking "addiction" might be too strong a word.

The article I was quoting is at the link provided by Phil (a good and clear article) from March 10, 4 posts up.

I think I'll move my question to a new thread.

I was thinking about salvation in terms of a perfectly just human being who can respond fully to God and thus bring us back to him. And I thought that if the center of Jesus was the Word, than it wasn't really a human being that was just. Not merely a human begin. But if we as humans weren't innocent enough to come back, we needed the God-Man to say "yes" to God in our name, as a Man, but perfectly holy as God. In that view the God's salvific activity and power is more obvious - the human nature of Jesus is passive, the Word is active in him. My view of Jesus as a perfect, holy man who can say "yes" for the whole human kind, was more emphasizing the human desire to come back to God and the human drive to reach God. Maybe that's not entirely Christian position, after all. No human being could possibly do anything to bring us closer to God, after the fall, couldn't they?

What about Mary? She was able to sin, but she didn't. For a moment I thought it was more heroic than in Jesus' case - he couldn't even sin, she could, but for love of God she didn't.
Of course, she was protected and sanctified by grace, so it wasn't her "effort" that she was immaculate. But if she wasn't under the influence of the original sin, as Catholics believe, than she could quite easily resist temptations, like Adam and Eve, although she could sin, if she wanted to.

quote:

My view of Jesus as a perfect, holy man who can say "yes" for the whole human kind, was more emphasizing the human desire to come back to God and the human drive to reach God. Maybe that's not entirely Christian position, after all. No human being could possibly do anything to bring us closer to God, after the fall, couldn't they?

Right, Mt. I'd bet that position is the one held by many Christians today. And, to my thinking, there's nothing wrong with it, as we can surmise that Christ in his human nature experienced this strong desire for God. Still, this position is inadequate in that only God can extend and effect the forgiveness and reconciliation to the human race that restores the intimacy that was lost with the Fall. That was Athanasius' point: if Jesus isn't God acting in human form (as a real human being), then the At-one-ment hasn't yet happened and we are still without saving grace. It's not that Athanasius was saying anything new, of course; Paul had said as much, and it wasn't such a novel thing for a Christian to be saying that the incarnation meant the "Word had become flesh and dwelt among us." The prologue to John's gospel leaves little doubt about what that community believed.

Mary? Sure, she was able to sin. She stands before God in the same place that the baptized do, and we know we can still sin. We have no evidence that she did so, of course, which is why she is worthy of the title, "the new Eve."

quote:

"Successfully resisting temptation requires a battle of the mind, spirit, and will. The longer one resists, the greater the force of the temptation becomes. While we often succumb to temptation, Jesus resisted to the end, and thus felt its force in full."

Right, Ariel. As I mentioned earlier, there's much mystery in all this. My sense is that Jesus wasn't in the least attracted to doing anything sinful, as he clearly saw the hand of Satan at work in situations; he did, however, experience the same intensity of desire that moves people to act out sinfully and so could empathize with us in that respect and thus become our Mediator who understands our human condition from the "inside" rather than through external observation.

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