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Charlie Traffas
Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com.
Religion
2010-11-01 13:31:00
The divine and human nature in Jesus
Question: Tell me, as Jesus was growing up, did he have to learn everything he knew with his human nature? For instance, when he was teaching in the temple, was he teaching things he had learned with his human nature or his divine nature?
Answer: The basic creed of the Christian faith expresses the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, whom St. John the gospel-writer called the Word of God, “came down from heaven and became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” He did this so that we might know God’s love, and be our model of holiness. This does not imply that Jesus is part God and part man, nor that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man, while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man! During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of faith against the heresies that attempted to falsify it. Thus, remaining God from all eternity, Jesus’ person assumed a human nature. Therein he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, born as a normal male baby, cried and laughed, ate and drank and functioned as a human being, grew through childhood to adulthood, learned from books and teachers, worked and taught, had friends as well as enemies, suffered and died on a cross, later he rose from the dead and, after being seen and recognized by persons who knew him before death, ascended into heaven. All this he did as a human being, while remaining divine and in union with God his Father in heaven. As related in the Gospels, at times Jesus invoked his divine nature without revealing it at the time, as when he performed miracles or demonstrated extraordinary knowledge and powers. The questioner asks about Jesus teaching in the temple. He probably spoke about matters he had learned as a boy or young man, but also showed knowledge and insights about heavenly things, which he might have learned from prayer and intense contemplation in the manner of certain saints, who are only human. At times he performed actions, which only God can do, e.g. instantaneous healings, calming the storm at sea, healing the man-born-blind, passing through an angry crowd at Nazareth who were determined to kill him before he had fulfilled his mission, foretelling future events, and his greatest feat: coming back to life after being murdered by crucifixion. These prove the reality of his divine nature. Jesus is God, a divine person, without a human personality but possessing two natures, human and divine. This doctrine, carefully worked out in the early Christian centuries, provides for the unity of his personality as well as for the reality of his humanity.
 
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