[TruthTalk] Please hear me out before ousting me.

[Wm. Taylor]

Okay, Judy, I'll turn my other cheek.   You say, "Why is it so difficult to believe that God is able to create a holy child in the womb of Mary?"   I say, it is not difficult for me to believe this. In fact, it is just what I do believe. What I don't accept is a definition of "holy" that does not allow God to be God, and notice that I did not say that it does not allow God to be man. In the way you are using this word, it is doing its damage long before it reaches the Incarnation.   Any definition of any attribute of God that, if correct, would force God to be dependent upon creation in order to fulfill that attribute, has to be a faulty definition -- end of discussion. Because God, by definition, is self-sufficient. But if you insist on using "holy" in the sense of some sort of set-apartedness on God's behalf, then this is just what you are saying: that God had to create in order to be what he is: i.e., holy.    Let me explain: You seem to be working on a definition of holy that has at its root the idea of set apart, set away from, or something very close to this. But this is Aristotle! Furthermore, right above that root is a second-story meaning of moral perfection. In other words, God is set apart from his creation, firstly. And, secondly, he is set apart morally, because his creation is immoral. Said another way, God is holy and creation is unholy. But this definition of holy will not work (I'll get back to the reason why in a minute).   What I hear you saying throughout this discussion, is this: that since God is holy and humanity is unholy, and since the Bible says Jesus was holy from the womb, this means that Jesus could not have had a fallen nature, because that would make him unholy. Therefore, God had to have created a new kind of humanity, different from fallen humanity, for Jesus to inhabit, in order for him to be holy. Am I on the mark?   Well guess what, that will not work. It makes God dependent upon his creation in order to be holy. Why? because if "holy" means set apart, then God was not holy until he created; because until he created there was nothing to be set apart from. It's impossible, even for God, to be set apart from something that does not exist. And when there was nothing there but God, there was nothing there to exist, nothing there from which to be set apart.   Moreover, by your definition, he was still not holy even after he created. Why? because of your faulty secondary idea of moral fortitude. You seem to be saying that if humanity had not fallen it would have been morally perfect de facto. Well guess what, that doesn't work either. Why? because it makes God's holiness dependent upon humanity's fall. Because until his creation fell apart morally, there was no distinction, no set-apartedness, between God's holiness and humanity's.   (By the way, perfection can also be what takes place after a state of becoming. Adam and Eve did not have to be perfect to be "very good." They only had to be growing in relationship with God to meet these requirements; they were becoming, in other words, and then they fell. In the same way, we have a context for understanding Hebrews, the "having been perfected" language for Christ, throughout his suffering, he was becoming)   So, what do I think the Bible is speaking to when it speaks of God's holiness? and why is it that I can affirm, even celebrate, Jesus' holiness, when at the same time insist that his human nature was like our own? I will tell you -- but I am going to have to speak about that terrible Trinity word when I do it.   The first rule in any discipline, whether we are talking about doing science or reading the Bible, is to allow the object of the study to determine the means by which it is known. Let me make myself clearer. If you are studying Scripture, then the object of your study is God. We have to let God define himself. When the Bible speaks of holiness, it is speaking about the unity, the beauty, the harmony, the fellowship, the relatedness, the other-centeredness, the uprightedness, the moral perfectedness, ad infintum; in short, THE LOVE, which exists between the Persons of the Trinity -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts." Get it?   (By the way, this is the strongest argument we have for the Trinity, i.e., the eternality and divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit; for if the Son and Holy Spirit were not eternally divine within the Godhead, then, again, God could not be holy, because he could not be these things, because every one of these terms are relational: their existence demands an object other than themselves. The Trinity has this: the Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. Their fellowship is in the Holy Spirit, etc. etc.)   How is it that Jesus can be holy and at the same time embody fallen flesh? At no time in his life did he ever deny or refuse to participate in the aspects of holiness as they are defined by the Father/Son relationship. Jesus kept the unity. He kept the harmony. He kept the other-centeredness. He kept the beauty, the fellowship, the uprightedness, the moral perfectedness, and on and on, of his eternal love relationship with his Father through the Holy Spirit.   Yes Jesus was born with Adam's blood running through his veins. BUT HE WAS ALSO GOD! The relationship between the two natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ was asymetrical. And this is important to know: God was going to win. This is why Jesus could touch the leper and not catch the disease: HE WAS ALSO GOD. It's not that his humanity could not be diseased; it's that he was not only human. When he touched the leper, he healed the disease, BECAUSE HE WAS ALSO GOD. In the same way he healed sinful flesh and was not corrupted by it, because he was also God.   By this biblical definition, then, what does it mean to be unholy? Do I really need to go any farther.   Bill