Jason Dulle article:

[mizpeh]

Originally Posted by Esaias

John says the Word was made flesh. Did the Word cease to be the Word when it was made flesh? He also says the Word was God, and was made flesh. Did the Word cease to be God when it was made flesh?

No. Jesus is God in the flesh. Everything that makes God to be God dwelled bodily as Jesus Christ. When we look at Jesus, we are seeing all we will ever see of God (as far as I know).

I believe the use of "Word" is a synecdoche.

Obviously not. God cannot cease to exist, or cease to be whatever He is. God however can become a man, because that does not involve ceasing to be something, but rather taking on a new way of being. God 'took on himself human nature', isn't that what everyone says? So God became a man - that is what 'assuming to himself human nature' means, indeed, that is all it CAN mean because a Person, who has human nature, is a MAN (ie human being). So when God 'took human nature to himself' he began to exist as a man, a genuine human being. Yet, God did not cease to exist as God, such a thing is a logical impossibility.

I basically agree with what you've said. Who says that God ceased to exist as God?

God did all those things, as a human being, did he not? Therefore, he did them 'as a man'. It was God who did them, via the human nature (the human existence).

Yes, of course.

Dulle and Bernard seem, to me, to be trying to express a Biblical truth via trinitarian christological terminology, which derives from Greek pagan metaphysics. My point is that going that route, instead of simply sticking to the Biblical data and statements, leads to unnecessary complication of a simple fact - God became a man, died for us, rose again, and demonstrated to us in living technicolor the very character and will of God.

I agree with you. I think Dulle would agree with you also. Thanks for the explanation.