The seminary where I did my M.Div. was charismatic. Half the students were roughly "hyper-charismatic" and the other half were "Well, I guess I'm not a cessationist" charismatic. (The reader may guess which category I fit into.) In our theology classes, I recall three major controversies:
- Calvinism versus Arminianism (Duh, like we were actually going to resolve that one.)
- Can Christians be demonized? (I'm not even touching that one here.)
- Could/did Jesus get sick?
Some believed, and this, if I recall correctly, was our professor's position, that since Jesus was without sin, he was also without sickness. Sickness was a consequence of sin, therefore he was exempt from it.
Others, including me, responded, "Of course he got sick. He was truly a human being and was subject to the same bacteria and viruses etc. that everyone else is. Why would he be exempt?"
My biblical backing for this view comes from Rom. 8.3, which states that the Son was sent "in the likeness of sinful flesh." His flesh, though not actually sinful, was like sinful flesh in all other ways and subject to the same afflictions that every other human is. Some people believe that in the original creation before the fall, Adam and Eve had special graces that would seem super-human to us today; these were then lost in the fall. Whatever the case may be with those, Jesus didn't have them. He was free from sin, not from infection. The other view strikes me as somewhat docetic and ignorant of biology to boot.
Now, here is the interesting part. As I noted earlier, about half the students were hyper-charismatic and the other half technically charismatic. The hyper-charismatics believed it was always or normally God's will to heal and that healing was part of the atonement; the others didn't. The hyper-charismatics were the ones who believed Jesus could get sick. The technically charismatics didn't.
Interesting, at least to me.
1 comments:
I gotta vote for Jesus getting sick for pretty much the same reasons you gave.
But let me take this somewhere else (although I feel it is related). My position on Adam and Eve is different than most folks and I've been called a heretic a time or two because of it, but I don't believe that they were ever:
(1) Perfect -- If they were then sin seems nearly (if not totally) impossible.
(2) Immortal -- which I base on Genesis 2:17 and the little phrase מות תמות (you shall surely die / dying you shall die). In other words, physical death was always a reality which is why restricting access to the tree of life ultimately caused their deaths.
Now if we accept the doctrine of original sin to be a true doctrine (which I tentatively do at present because I can't find a way around Romans 5 without it) then the virginal conception should except Jesus from it (I have a whole boatload of questions about that though).
But does being excepted from original sin equate to being excepted from what the Jews call the Yetzer Hara (the evil inclination)?
Adam had no original sin either yet something led him to sin. We can here assert libertarian free will which I believe was certainly the case, but something guided that choice to disobedience over obedience. The inclination doesn't make one sinful, but yielding to it does.
So my question is, did Jesus have the evil inclination in the same manner that Adam had it?
If he did that would certainly make a lot of sense of the temptation passages in Matthew 4, Luke 4, and Hebrews 4 and it would have some serious implications for the issue of Jesus' impeccability.
Anyway... forgive me for rambling and I apologize if I strayed too far from your point in this post.
But it is indeed interesting that the hypers thought he could get sick and the others did not... you'd think it would be the other way around.
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