Is Jesus a human being or is a human being a Jesus?
The question is simple:
Is Jesus a human being or is a human being a Jesus?
Possible answers:
1. Jesus is a human being
2. A human being is Jesus
If you say 1 then in my view you would be someone who considers Jesus to be divine, different from humans, and yet has to do what humans do like eating, sleeping, etc. It's like someone who wants to maintain a distinction between the divine and the human and yet "explain" the similarities between Jesus and humans.
If you say 2 then you would be denying anything divine in Jesus - he's human. This is similar to how Buddhists believe that the Buddha was a human being, nothing divine in his person.
I still haven't figured out the logical structure of the two answers. If someone can enlighten me that'll be fantastic.
I don't fully grasp the importance, if there is one, of such a question form but the answer to this question seems to separate the religious from the non-religious and if you dig a bit deeper it may do other interesting things.
Is Jesus a human being or is a human being a Jesus?
Possible answers:
1. Jesus is a human being
2. A human being is Jesus
If you say 1 then in my view you would be someone who considers Jesus to be divine, different from humans, and yet has to do what humans do like eating, sleeping, etc. It's like someone who wants to maintain a distinction between the divine and the human and yet "explain" the similarities between Jesus and humans.
If you say 2 then you would be denying anything divine in Jesus - he's human. This is similar to how Buddhists believe that the Buddha was a human being, nothing divine in his person.
I still haven't figured out the logical structure of the two answers. If someone can enlighten me that'll be fantastic.
I don't fully grasp the importance, if there is one, of such a question form but the answer to this question seems to separate the religious from the non-religious and if you dig a bit deeper it may do other interesting things.
Comments (24)
NB Regarding your 'logic' request.... 'Privileging one side of a dichotomy' is a common aspect of general semantics raised by Derrida with his adage that 'all assertons imply their negation'. This point is metalogical in that it questions the basis for 'set membership'. In other words, 'is-ness' relates to human functionality.
Jesus Christ is not a man; Jesus of Nazareth is.
Let's infer a substitute:
1. Persona is corpus.
2. Corpus is persona.
Does it appear more coherent now?
Good game !
Change the label..change the set membership ! :grin:
I love it ! The 'us-them' dichotomy ! ...the essence of our primate tribalsm ! :cool:
This makes sense. Indeed one is trying to privilege one of two things in the dichotomy, in this case human and divine. I'm just amazed by how meaning can change just by changing the order of words in what is an equality (is =).
In predicate logic the statement "Jesus is human" is translated as
A) Hj where H = is human and j = Jesus.
The statement "a human being is Jesus" would be translated as
B) Ex(Hx & x = Jesus)
The two translations aren't equivalent. A includes Jesus in the class of humans and also leaves open the option that Jesus may belong to another category (divine). B, as I suspected, suggests that Jesus is "just" a human.
My logic is rusty. May be you can help me out. Thanks.
Believers seem to prefer the statement "Jesus is a human being" over "a human being is Jesus".
The former statement allows for divinity in Jesus even though he behaves like us.
The latter statement doesn't allow for such an interpretation and Jesus can no longer be divine.
1. All A are B
2. All B are A
1 and 2 are not equivalent. That's what I want to say.
A) Jesus is human = All things identical to Jesus are humans
B) A human being is Jesus = Some human beings are things identical to Jesus
Well bugger believers. What everyone wants to know is their own status, isn't it? Is you saved or is you ain't? Is God on our side? When you meet Jesus you can ask him. But if he says he doesn't know you...
What I mean to say is that you are concerning yourself in the arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic, or else you are interesting yourself in whether the Mad Hatter made top hats or derbys. The story of Jesus is more significant than that even, and especially, if it isn't factual.
Proposition A eliminates the the Jesus circle outside the Human circle. This leaves Jesus as Human only, or both Human and Divine. Proposition B places at least one Human in the Jesus circle but not necessarily in the Divine circle. So the two propositions taken together imply that Jesus is Human but not necessarily Divine, If, however, you say Jesus is axiomatically Divine, then it follows that at least one Human is both Jesus and Divine.
So much for static set membership on which classical logic is based. But consider, say, a 'dynamic Jesus' that can pop in and out of the Divine set or consider tha dichotomy that membership of the Divine set precludes membership of the Human set, then here we glimpse the limitations of a request for 'logical analysis'.
A human has imbibed Jesus.
Like a glass imbibes water.
Does it really come off as that wacky? What about psychological dimensions of which answer one prefers. Would you rather keep believing in the divine despite the fact that Jesus had to go to the loo or would you reject the divine in favor of a more natural explanation of things?
What kind of person prefers the supernatural over ordinary explanation and what kind of person prefers it the other way?
Either language is at fault or logic is at fault. I can't decide. Thanks.
I don't know, is there some other difference in general? It seems a fairly trivial difference to me, compared to the difference between, say, those who think Jesus was wise and those who think he was foolish.
:up:
Thanks for the gravitational assist :grin:
The mainstream tradition is that Jesus Christ is at once human and divine. There were attempts to understand Jesus as two different beings or natures in one body, but they were declared heretical. Nevertheless, it is a vexed question, as the precise nature of the identity of 'the Son and the Father' was one of the grounds of the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
In any case, the significance of it is that Jesus is a 'bridge to the Divine', so to speak (and I don't think any Christian denomination would disagree with that. ) By being fully human, shares in our joys and sorrows - rather than the detached and indifferent gods of the ancient Pantheons, who looked down on humans from their Olympian heights.
I think one interpretation is that offered by non-dualism, which means 'not two' - that the divine nature and human nature are not two, that the same nature can appear as both human and divine. Nondualism (advaita or advaya) is associated more with Indian religious philosophy but as Fr Richard Rohr notes, is also ideally suited to understanding the non-dual nature of Jesus.
How about "Jesus was a human being"? This allows us to deny 2), and it's more truthful. But what is Jesus now? I think that's a more interesting question.
That's a vexed question, actually.
In Theravada Buddhism, the Buddha is depicted as being human in the sense of not being a deity. However, there is a scriptural account where the Buddha is challenged as to whether he's a deity, a yaksa, or a human - to which the answer is 'no' in each case. 'Well, what then?' - 'Buddha, awakened', was the reply. Certainly the Buddha is not 'just' a human being, in not being subject to rebirth in the six realms. The Buddha is described as 'lokuttara' meaning 'world-transcending' from the very earliest texts.
In some schools of Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas occupy roles that are functionally similar to God and the angels in Western religions, although the term 'divine' is generally not used (as it's actually derived from 'deva' which is the Sanskrit word for the Hindu pantheon).
So it's not such an easy matter.
:up: As always very illuminating. Thanks. It's very interesting to know, as you have kindly shown, that thinking alone is not enough. You have to think well.
:down:
Well, we could cite what the Romans, the Greek, and the Jewish believed at the time, or the disciples and followers, and was people believed 300 years later when Christianity flourished; however, what people go for, whether in one's own belief's favor now, or not, can't be trusted.