How Can God Die And Be Killed?

In Christian Theology:
  1. Death in our view actually means separation of the physical from the spiritual (spirit leaves the body) 
  2. Death therefore only applies to the conjoint entities who are both physical and spiritual. A prerequisite to dying then, is that you must possess a physical body (with a spirit). 
  3. Immaterial spirits (like God) do not possess a physical body and therefore cannot die (be separated from the physical, since God is an immaterial spirit alone without physicality).
  4. But to ask "How Can God Die" presupposes God actually possesses a physical body since death can only apply to physical entities. 
  5. Since God doesn't begin with a physical body (as he is immaterial spirit), he must of created one for himself in order for the objection to be true (for God to have died)
  6. This means God in his humanity had already existed prior to his death, on earth with a human body, as a man for 33 years.
  7. But for God to exist as a human on earth, assumes God has two distinct realities. One as God, an omnipresent immaterial spirit, uncreated and eternal being of divine essence yet another sense of reality as a man, created, limited and temporal 
  8. The objection then presupposes God can exist as God and more than God (man) without affecting God's divinity by having an additional existence as a fully natural man
  9. In essence this means the objector actually agrees with Christian theology up unto the point of Christ's death: "God's incarnation is true, but then God in his humanity dies, proving Jesus can't be God!"
  10. But to grant God's incarnation, is to grant the two natures of Christ. To concede God has a physical body is to concede Christ's duel nature. e.g. for God to have no physical limitations in one way and yet in another way to have physical boundaries like sleeping and physical nourishment. 
  11. And to truly be fully man, God must be capable of dying as a man, otherwise he would not possess the inherent properties that make one fragile, weak and mortal and could not truly be rendered as human. God only in his humanity can die, since death is a human condition that applies to all humans, those who possess physical bodies.
  12. In conclusion: God Incarnate can die and indeed the spirit of Christ was separated from his physical body. But God in essence does not possess a body to die with and be separated from.
  13. God cannot die, divine death does not exist, it is a misnomer. Yet God incarnate experienced death
  14. The actual objection should then be from the very start of Jesus life and incarnation: "How can God be born on earth?" But this implies God cannot exist in two modes at once which is just speculation. The incarnation is not a logical impossibility in light of God's power and his desire to do it.

1 comment:

  1. Looks great and makes a lot of sense. I had made this conclusion but never saw these steps spelled out so well. :-)
    I hate to self promote, but I recently did a study on the pre-incarnate Jesus that would go wonderfully with this information.

    http://blueeyedshyguy.blogspot.com/2014/02/jesus-pre-incarnate.html

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