More on Energetic Procession about icons and authority - 2

Perry Robinson has gone off on another rambling, repetitive comment at his blog.  You'll note that numerous things he said go unresponded-to, and that's b/c I don't think such things are worth rebutting, either b/c they are redundant, unimportant, or mere naked assertions in place of arguments refuting my own previously-offered arguments.  You'll also note the screwed-up Christology he's working with, which is, it is becoming clear, is effectively monophysite.
Here's the comment:

You equate worship and veneration. I showed that veneration or honoring comes in a variety of forms.

1) But since I *don't* equate worship and veneration...
I simply identify the actions you perform in conjunction with each other to painted pictures of dead people as fulfilling the conditions of worship, and reject the convenient "but it's not our INTENTION" excuse.
2) Have I admitted to venerating the Reformers themselves in memory?  No.  To say nothing of statues of them.


The Reformed statues are religious in nature given the name Jesus below them in abbreviated form as “IHS”.

1) You'd need more proof that the IHS refers to the statues and not to the Jesus that they preached, reminding us that above all they preached Jesus.
2) You still wouldn't've proved any inconsistency on MY part since you never asked me if I would've built those statues or supported their construction.  Which I probably wouldn't've.
And since you go on to say (in another example of your being all over the place):  "I grant with the Geneva idols that no one is bowing down and rendering honor to them", it would appear you grant me the point.  Thanks!




will only bring to light the Procrustean lengths you need to go to maintain your position.

Sorry, it's not ad hoc that I would claim to judge everything by the Scripture.  Have I ever said that before?



you also noted that you would allow images of Jesus even in a church building even if not in the “worship hall.”

And you might have sthg if I'd said sthg like "...and it's OK to venerate those images of Jesus".
But, since I didn't...


Certainly the Reformed tradition has held that it is impermissible. Is it or not?

Am I "the Reformed tradition"?  I don't see how my position isn't quite clear.


And if it is, how then do you evade the objections from the Reformed that you are guilty of idolatry and breaking the second commandment?

Anyone can contact me to get the email fwded to them of my convo with one TurretinFan's friends about this very point.



But 1 Kings shows things that Solomon put in on his own apart from a command by God and yet God approved them.

This is me being consistent.
Where did anyone ever do before those images what you do before yours?  And where did God say that was OK?



Third, if you think that I need to refute them all jointly because jointly they have some argumentative force that individually they lack, you will not actually demonstrate that this is so and that my dealing with them one at a time fails to take this into account

I'll have to appeal to the reader's common sense at this point.
You keep asking where it's wrong to kiss someone or a Bible or sthg.  Yet do you ONLY kiss sthg in the practices to which I object?  Ditto for candles, incense, bowing down, etc.  Then you attempt to equivocate and ask "oh, so it's wrong to ask living persons to pray for you?"  But you do ALL of those TOGETHER.  To PICTURES OF DEAD PEOPLE.  Sorry, again, it's pretty clear this is self-serving equivocation on your part.  Either defend your practices or don't.

A Lutheran who just can't grasp the Hypostatic Union

I've been in conversation with Lutheran Edward Reiss recently about my monophysitism argumentation. Here is his latest offering.

Rhology,

The problem for you is this: Calvinism teaches that when the Logos became man a new person came to be--Jesus Christ the God-man. And because of this, the human nature of the God-man is not really God at all, but a mere human nature, as your claims here have amply brought out. This is why Calvinists do not give a simply "yes" answer to the question: Is shaking Jesus' hand shaking God's hand? It is always qualified, as Steve Hayes stated in his blog entry--shaking Jesus' hand is to shake a human hand. So, part of the person is not divine, period, while another is divine. Indeed, his human nature has no special qualities at all, again as is amply brought out by your comments, and to maintain it does have special qualities is to become "Monophysite".

So I would ask, if Jesus Christ is in only one place at any given time, how is "he", i.e. the person Jesus Christ, in any meaningful way God since omnipresence is a quality of God? If, as you say, the person is in two natures, (and I agree BTW), how can you maintain the divinity of the person if you assert that his divinity is present where his humanity is not and not therefore divide the person?

This is why I say you deny the divinity of the person of Jesus Christ. You may say that his divinity is God, but that is a useless tautology. Just repeating the words "Jesus is God" is not good enough, because even Arians claimed that, though with qualification.

It's a neat summary of the way he has only in small part actually engaged the question at hand and how little he either understands or can intelligently and correctly reproduce the viewpoint I've been advocating, which is really pretty simple. Jesus has always been God, always had a divine nature. Jesus is God and has a divine nature now. Jesus always will be God and always will have a divine nature.
At the time of His Incarnation, Jesus took on a human nature in addition to the divine nature He has always had. He has a human nature now, and thus He is a man now. He will always have a human nature and will always be a man. Thus, from the time of His Incarnation unto eternity, He has been, is, and will forevermore be the God-man.
Now, let's take that into account as we examine Edward's statements.

when the Logos became man a new person came to be--Jesus Christ the God-man

I doubt that "Calvinism" teaches that, but at any rate that is definitely NOT what I've been saying.
Totally wrong.


the human nature of the God-man is not really God at all, but a mere human nature

Correct. What part of "HUMAN nature" communicates "God" to you? This is indeed monophysite.
But you're switching terms AGAIN. We're talking about Jesus - the God-man. A person.


Is shaking Jesus' hand shaking God's hand? It is always qualified

Of course it is, b/c it's a terrible question. Shaking Jesus' hand is shaking Jesus' hand. Jesus is the God-man. It is just as correct to say "You're shaking a man's hand" as it is to say "you're shaking God's hand", but both are incomplete. You seem not to grasp the Incarnation or the Hypostatic Union very well at all.


if Jesus Christ is in only one place at any given time, how is "he", i.e. the person Jesus Christ, in any meaningful way God since omnipresence is a quality of God?

1) Why put "He" in quotations? Jesus is a He. I don't even know why you'd do that if you weren't very confused.
2) He is God in a meaningful way since --wait for it-- He's God. Jesus the person (hypostasis) has always had a divine nature, has always been God, a 'member' of the Trinity. Always has been, always will be. He also has a human nature, now, since the Incarnation.



If, as you say, the person is in two natures, (and I agree BTW), how can you maintain the divinity of the person if you assert that his divinity is present where his humanity is not and not therefore divide the person?

I DON'T say that His divinity is present where His humanity is not. YOU DO. You do because you say that His human nature is somehow divine b/c it's dang near omnipresent. I don't b/c I say that Christ the person is in ONE place at ONE time, ALL the time, from the time of His Incarnation unto eternity.


Just repeating the words "Jesus is God" is not good enough, because even Arians claimed that, though with qualification.

Well, good for them, but I say "Jesus is God" WITHOUT qualification.
It's just that "Jesus is God" is not the only correct and substantive thing to say about Jesus. There was this little thing called the Incarnation and Hypostatic Union...

Index of recent argumentation regarding the Real Presence as monophysitism

I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect to provoke a lot of anger and vexation over my recent post: Is transubstantiation a Monophysite doctrine? But it was so much fun to write! And it's been even more fun to watch:
1) how fired up certain interlocutors became
2) how bad their arguments generally were
3) how little they actually interacted with the fundamental point - that Jesus, as both God AND man, is not multilocational but is, rather, always in one place at one time
4) how it made bedfellows out of practitioners of otherwise fairly hostile systems, such as Scott Windsor, loyal son of Rome, and Edward Reiss, fairly conservative Lutheran.

This index post is to serve as a collective reference point to see all the conversation that has gone down over this point.
First came Steve Hays' Anti-Incarnational sacramentalism.
I'd had my post written for some time but was waiting for a good time to post it, and figured that I should go ahead and strike while the iron was hot. So then came my post, which has accumulated more than 120 comments.

Scott Windsor added Transubstantiation Question, and I interacted a lot there.
Later he posted Transubstantiation Question II, and I interacted some there as well. Read these if you want a lot of strawmen and a failure on Windsor's part to even understand what I was saying.

And then you can see Matthew Bellisario post barely-relevant quotations from Thomas Aquinas over at his post: For Those Confused About Transubstantiation..., in which combox I interacted some.
As one philosopher (apocryphally) said: if you speak nonsense in Latin, you can write many books; if you speak nonsense in Saxon, you are found out at once.

Perry Robinson aka Acolyte4236 interacted extensively with me in the combox of my post, starting here.

Edward Reiss jumped in with How Jesus' body--even before the resurrection, is not "Just like ours", then Calvin's framing of the question about the Incarnation--i.e. Jesus' body, is flawed, as if I appealed to Calvin or care particularly what he had to say about this issue if it's irrelevant. Find a great deal of interaction there between us.
Later, Jesus as a "Spiritual reality", since it really seems that the monophysitism proponents in this discussion have a hard time admitting that the spiritual is real. Strange for someone who confesses to be a Christian, but you know.
Later, If St. Peter can do it, Jesus' miracles don't tell us anything special about Jesus as a man..., in which he attempts to assert that Jesus' status as God-man makes Him more buoyant, more cooperative with the surface tension of water than my status as regular man makes me.

Finally, Steve Hays had numerous helpful things to say in his posts:
The Styrofoam Jesus, in which he mocks the buoyancy argument.
A Lutheran's unresponsive response
Lutheran cartoons
The Heisenberg compensator
The Real Presence of the Big Mac, a specific response to some of the comments from Perry Robinson, Acolyte4236 in the combox of my post.
Why Lutherans deny the empty tomb, a reductio on the Lutheran view Edward Reiss has been defending (and by extension, the Roman view).

Overall, a very interesting and satisfying exchange. It's good to be Reformed. Sort of funny how I'll be teaching through Eric Svendsen's curriculum on the Lord's Table starting pretty soon in my Sunday School class.

(Please leave any comments at the Beggars All post.)

Is transubstantiation a Monophysite doctrine?

CrimsonCatholic and Perry Robinson participated a few months ago in a fairly technical but somewhat interesting discussion at David Waltz's blog.
CrimsonCatholic made a very interesting statement:

The key feature of Chalcedonian theology is that Christ's nature is exactly the same as ours, so what happens to the human nature in Christ happens to everyone who is "in Christ Jesus" (to use St. Paul's term) by grace, including the sharing of the divine glory.

I'd like to ask a few questions, if we're going to take this consistently with the rest of our theology.
So Christ's nature if exactly the same as mine. My nature is human. Part of being human (as opposed to being divine) is to be limited to a particular physical location at any one time, is it not? My body cannot be in more than one place at any one time. That's obvious.

Now, Christ Himself, at the time of His Incarnation, took upon Himself a human nature and a physical body. At the time of His Resurrection, His body became glorified and immortal; He doesn't necessarily have blood anymore, but He retains flesh and physical tangibility, among other properties. He can perhaps walk through walls, or perhaps not; John 20 simply says, "when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, 'Peace be with you.'" Maybe He created a key and let Himself in; maybe He knocked and they let Him in; maybe He passed through the door via "teleportation"; the text does not tell us. Obviously He can perform miracles such as walking on water and perhaps passing through walls, disappearing right in front of two disciples at dinnertime on the road to Emmaus, etc, but we never see Christ in more than one place at any one time.

CCC 1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."

1377 The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist. Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species and whole and entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the bread does not divide Christ.

1378 Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession."

1379 The tabernacle was first intended for the reservation of the Eucharist in a worthy place so that it could be brought to the sick and those absent outside of Mass. As faith in the real presence of Christ in his Eucharist deepened, the Church became conscious of the meaning of silent adoration of the Lord present under the Eucharistic species. It is for this reason that the tabernacle should be located in an especially worthy place in the church and should be constructed in such a way that it emphasizes and manifests the truth of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

1412 The essential signs of the Eucharistic sacrament are wheat bread and grape wine, on which the blessing of the Holy Spirit is invoked and the priest pronounces the words of consecration spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper: "This is my body which will be given up for you. . . . This is the cup of my blood. . . ."

1413 By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1640; 1651).

On any given Sunday, or really most any day of the week, Mass is performed at thousands of churches across the globe. On any given Sunday morning, to be sure, the Eucharistic host is transubstantiated in multiple locations, at the same time. How well does this match with the conception of Christ's body's substance? It is supposed to be of human substance, yet here it displays a trait better assigned to divinity, that of omnipresence. Christ's human body, it turns out, is NOT "exactly the same as ours", as I don't think CrimsonCatholic has ever been at two or more places at once. I know I haven't, much as I'd like to be; I could get a lot more accomplished!

And the situation seems to be even worse than that. Take a look at this from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

On the contrary, He continues His Eucharistic Presence even in the consecrated Hosts and particles that remain on the or in the ciborium after the distribution of Holy Communion.

Thus the red candle/light that one often sees perpetually lit on the altar of a Roman church - one or more transubstantiated hosts are still there. The real and substantial body of Jesus Christ is enclosed there. In many hundreds or thousands of churches across the world, simultaneously.

So, taking the doctrine that CrimsonCatholic has expressed and applying it consistently across the board, we run into a serious snag in the doctrine of the Eucharist. It would seem that, if transubstantiation is true, then the RC position leads to a denial of the true human nature of Christ, because the substantial, real human body of Christ is simultaneously in thousands of different places, thus applying a divine trait to Christ's human nature. Not Chalcedonian at all, then; more like Monophysite.

(Please leave any comments at the post at Beggars All.)