God, Man and Jesus

And then as told in the Bible, on the third day from his death God restored Jesus to life.

The assumption of humans having an immaterial, intelligent and durable spirit should be acceptable to theists. I realize it would not be accepted by a materialist (a physicalist, often an atheist). However, since the argument of this blog episode is generally not written for atheists, this is not an issue.

The second assumption of the brain being an interface between the body and spirit is a proposal for how the two are integrated. I expect this last assumption would also not be accepted by materialists. For theists, I don't think it would be a huge problem even though some might not directly hold this position.

This proposal is a dualist view that seems reasonable to me because it explains aspects of human experience very well:

• First, purely physical things are never about anything. Physical things do not have intentions; they do not have a will or any freedom because everything about them is determined.
• However, humans have ideas about things outside of themselves, and humans have intentions for doing things based on choices made with (at least some) freedom.
  • If humans had a spirit it would explain why humans can think about things, but why rocks do not.

• The perception of free will (even though limited) which all humans have is the most basic experience and most repeatable experiment that humans are able to know. It is a most basic truth.
  • The spirit explains these human intentions.

If instead we take the position (common for materialists) that these characteristics are nothing but illusion (because we are fully determined and we have no free will), then it follows that all intellectual effort is futile and useless.

• There is then no value in pursing learning and development of ideas because we cannot actually pursue anything.
• All thinking is illusory because a freedom for choosing best ideas does not exist.
• We have no choice to do anything.
• We are like rain that falls out of the sky, and unthinkingly goes down-river to the ocean.

• Logically then the consistent materialist should just give up and not care about anything because they are just an unthinking machine.
  • If that despair is unacceptable then maybe that model of reality is wrong!

A dualist view of humans having both physical body and immaterial spirit explains things that physicalism cannot, therefore, it is a better way to understand the world.

At the beginning and end of life we have limited mental powers:

• As an infant, people have no conscious cognitive ability because their brain is undeveloped.
• When the brain is old, it again loses cognitive capability. Sometimes this cognitive loss can be so great that the individual does not even remember their identity!

• It was the body that changed across time. The person did not become an different individual. They remained the same person because the center of the self is the spirit, not the body.

From these things, we can develop more ideas:

• The human spirit is capable of consciousness at the level of a human in their prime.
  • After this physical life the spirit would be capable again of that person's best experience of being a human.
  • A failing body limits what the spirit can do while it is containing it.
  • The body remains compatible to the spirit even though the spirit has abilities beyond what the body could do.

• The body does not change the spirit's capabilities, but it mediates them.
  • The earthly experience of some as they get old is that they become disconnected from self. Does the spirit also become permanently disconnected from self in the same way? This seems unreasonable.
  • What does seem resonable is that the observed decline in humans simply a physical effect of the failing brain interface.
  • It is also reasonable that the spirit doesn't lose connection to the real self. This is because the spirit is the locus of the real self and the body only acts as an interface to this spirit in this material world.
  • It also seems reasonable that the spirit becomes freed after the death of the body from the (temporary) restrictions of the damaged body interface.
    • What value would there be in any religion for an afterlife of the human spirit if this were not true?

So, in all humans, the spirit inhabits a body that limits it. And often the capabilities of the spirit exceed the capabilities of the body. In this situation, the spirit and the body remain compatible.

How did God make Jesus human? In short, we don't know how. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was told:

“You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”   Luke 1:31,34,35 NIV

God is the creator of all things, material and otherwise, and it is trivially within God's power to create a conception that was not of a human father.

It is completely reasonable to think Jesus’ spirit had capabilities greater than his body. For instance as a human infant he should not have been able to reason like an adult.

Curiously however, there are wild stories about Jesus from certain ancient documents which suggest he did not have normal human limitations. (Search "infancy gospels".)

• One story describes him as talking intelligently with adults while still a baby. A being that was both a God and a human theoretically could have been able to do what ordinary humans could not. Hypothetically then, a God-human infant could have intelligently talked.
• However, I think that this story is instead legendary (not actually true). And, I think that its purpose was to argue that Jesus was God by hyperbole.

Do note with caution that this story was written a long time after Jesus was on earth - generations even - and it has no corroboration about its truth by any eyewitnesses. The "infancy gospels" therefore cannot be authoritative and they should not be trusted.

Reliable sources about Jesus' life actually give no support for him ever having done something like that. Many of these reliable sources knew Jesus personally. One of the most reliable of them says that as a boy Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. (Luke 2:52) This means, therefore, that when Jesus was younger, his human body was less grown and his human wisdom was less matured.

A human spirit can be restricted by the physical nature of a body and yet the spirit is capable to inhabit a human body. Likewise, there is no reason preventing God (who is spirit) from inhabiting a human body. Certainly God is not inherently limited so as to be incapable of being in a human body.

The spirit of God as the identity spirit in a fully human body would experience the limitations of the human body. That however represents nothing about God's unlimited spirit. The human body itself represents no impossibility or fundamental restriction on the being of God. It only represents the truth of the human experience of living with physical limitations.

The idea of the spirit of an unlimited God inhabiting a limited human body is no more illogical than the idea of a capable human spirit inhabiting a limited human body. If the spirit of God could therefore inhabit a human body, then Jesus could be both God and human.

Here is another way to see that Jesus is God - Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of God! It was announced by an angel:

But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”   Luke 1:30-33 NIV

And Jesus claimed it was his own kingdom:

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”   John 18:33, 36 NIV

Humans have been kings over the people of God (such as was told about the ancient Hebrew people). In a case like this the human king still had to acknowledge that God was the real King over them and over all. Their kingship was temporary, and they were only a trustee because the kingdom was not actually theirs. Only God can be the true King over God's Kingdom.

Jesus is the permanent King of the Kingdom of God, therefore, Jesus is God.

The true nature of who and what Jesus was could not be changed by the opinions of people around him. Since Jesus knew who he was, it did not matter what people thought about him. He never became offended by the disbelief or the derision of other people toward him. Jesus never became baited by people disrespecting him.

This is the same way that God behaves and acts toward us. After we choose how we think and act with respect to God, God respects our choices.

These choices do result in consequences - both good and bad. When we seek to be like God in his most essential values-based motivation, we have relationship with him. When we diverge from this, the natural consequence is that relationship with him is cut off.

We should follow Jesus' example of responding to people. We should not be baited by people disrespecting us because we also know who we are - we are made in the image of God and are loved by him. That is enough.

Jesus gives us our best representation of God:

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

"The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

"After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Hebrews 1:1-3 NIV

Jesus also was the prophet who came to show God most clearly to us. Jesus clearly considered himself to be a prophet:

“Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”   Mark 6:3-4 NIV