The Nature of the Lord Jesus Christ

Below are a couple of questions that were submitted to a Swedenborg Discussion Group and the responses to the questions:

Questions and First Response

> When the Lord Jesus was on earth, did He have two natures, two minds, two 
> wills, i.e. one human and one divine? 
>  
> If so, now, after His glorification, does He still have these? 
God took on a human nature by birth as Jesus Christ. This human nature had all the limitations and weaknesses that every human being has. As to His human nature He was like any other person, but His soul was God. Thus there were two natures, the outward human nature, and the inner divine nature.

As He grew, He gradually overcame and limitations and weaknesses of the human nature, and made it Divine. In this way the Human and the Divine were united. This is what Jesus meant by saying that He was going to the Father, that He was becoming one with the Father, and that He was being glorified.

The Divine itself is unknowable. The Divine Human is the manifestation of the unknowable Divine. These two are now perfectly united, but still distinct, like soul and body--the invisible within the visible.

Before these were united, there was an appearance of them being two people--Father and Son. But Jesus said that in speaking of the Father He was speaking figuratively. The "Father" and "Son" were two only in the sense that each one of us is two people. We each have an inner person and an outer person, or if we are being regenerated, a new, spiritual person and an old, worldly person. These two can be in conflict within us, but as we overcome our evils, the conflict ceases, and the outer, natural person becomes united with the inner spiritual person.

The process was the same with Jesus, except that we become spiritual or angelic, and Jesus became Divine. This difference was because our souls are finite, but His was infinite and Divine from birth.

If you want a longer answer you can read "What the Bible Says about Who is Jesus?" at http://members.aol.com/johnodhner/WhoisJesus.html or you can read what Swedenborg says in his book the Doctrine of the Lord 29-36, 45-46, 55-60, or True Christian Religion 81-133.


Second Response

>When the Lord Jesus was on earth, did He have two natures, two minds, two 
>wills, i.e. one human and one divine? 
My response to this, which may or may not be doctrinally sound, is that Jesus had a divine soul and a natural body, as well as a spiritual and a natural "self" much as we have. He however worked this out much more fully than we do, to the point of completely "putting off" his natural, and becoming solely spiritual, which in his case [alone] was/is divine.
 
>If so, now, after His glorification, does He still have these? 
After the glorification, His "natural" ,made fully spiritual, is what we can [spiritually] "see" of Him, and in another sense may exist within each of us.

His reappearance after the glorification is much more important than his "death". While the glorification was a completion of regenerating the natural to become spiritual, it is His continuing presence which makes it work for us today. "Blood of the lamb" philosophy fails to account for this short but most important event of the Gospel.


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