God, Jesus, Sleep, and the Trinity

I know what the Trinitarian "response" will be, but here it goes:

Jehovah God doesn't need sleep: "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:4 KJV).

However, Jesus apparently did need sleep: "And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?" (Mark 4:38 KJV)

God doesn't need food or drink: "Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?" (Psalm 50:13 KJV)

But Jesus evidently did need food to live: "The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children" (Matthew 11:19 KJV).

It's hard to understand how one person can both need sleep and food qua human, but not need sleep and food or drink qua divinity. I would also argue that some things we do as humans do not befit the dignity of God and I'm not talking about sinful acts but simply things associated with being biological entities like expelling waste products.

Incarnation and Immutability

The Catholic doctrine of Incarnation teaches that the second Person of the Trinity (God the Son/the Logos) united humanity with his preexistent deity. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

The Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh. ln this technical sense the word incarnation was adopted, during the twelfth century, from the Norman-French, which in turn had taken the word over from the Latin incarnatio.

However, I have serious reservations about divine immutability (in a strong sense) being compatible with the so-called Incarnation of Christ:

1) If God is immutable in a strong sense, then he cannot assume human nature. (P---->Q)
2) God is immutable in a strong sense. (P)
3) Therefore, he cannot assume human nature. (Q)

Maybe I could rework the argument this way, but I think the results are the same:

1*) If God the Son is immutable in a strong sense, then he cannot assume human nature.
2*) God the Son is immutable in a strong sense.
3*) Therefore, God the Son cannot assume human nature.

Uniting one thing to another sounds like a change to me but Trinitarians (most) will deny that any such change occurred. However, if I unite a man and woman by marrying them in a formal ceremony, then it could be said that a genuine change has taken place. But Trinitarian logic works differently I suppose.

One move for the Incarnation crowd is to propose an ad hoc idea called potentia oboedientialis. I want to say more about this idea in the future. For now, it seems ad hoc to me. 

Having said all of the foregoing, I do believe the truth of John 1:14, just not its distortion.

Words of the Month (June 2023)

1. Incarnation (English)-Merriam-Webster defines the English noun, incarnation as "the act of incarnating : the state of being incarnate, a particular physical form or state; a concrete or actual form of a quality or concept."

When the noun is capitalized and used within the context of discourse about Jesus Christ, it traditionally means "the union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ."

John 1:14 serves as the locus classicus for the teaching of the Incarnation: "the Word became flesh."

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides this explanation:

c. 1300, "embodiment of God in the person of Christ," from Old French incarnacion "the Incarnation" (12c.), from Late Latin incarnationem (nominative incarnatio), "act of being made flesh" (used by Church writers especially in reference to God in Christ; source also of Spanish encarnacion, Italian incarnazione), noun of action from past-participle stem of Late Latin incarnari "be made flesh," from in- "in" (from PIE root *en "in") + caro (genitive carnis) "flesh" (originally "a piece of flesh," from PIE root *sker- (1) "to cut"). Glossed in Old English as inflæscnes, inlichomung. As "person or thing that is the embodiment" (of some quality, deity, etc.) from 1742.

See https://www.etymonline.com/word/incarnation

2. Paraenesis (English)-Oxford Bibliographies has a helpful introduction for the subject of paraenesis. The word comes from the Greek παραίνεσις, "which originally meant any kind of advice, instruction, or counsel." Some scholars think we find occurrences of paraenesis in the NT when vice and virtue lists occur, warning examples are given or when NT writers set forth the so-called Haustafeln. Due to insurmountable difficulties with this approach, others choose to define NT paraenesis "in terms of its ancient meaning as an umbrella term for any kind of instruction, moral or otherwise."

The problem with the second approach is that paraenesis becomes semantically vacuous with no specific content to differentiate it denotationally from similar terms. Hence, the predominant view of paraenesis is to interpret it as specific moral counsel given within a determinate Christian setting; in other words, NT writers are supposed to be unfolding the moral implications of the Christian faith and, in this sense, their counsel is evidently paraenetic.

See https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0143.xml

Come On, Trinitarians! Really? The Trinity Is Like Particle Physics?

This is meant to be a light blog post, but it might spark a little discussion. The Trinitarian statements I have in mind can be found here: https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-council-of-nicaea-and-subatomic.html

I hope the author is somewhat joking, but I have seen philosophers and theologians appeal to QM/QP to support their belief in the Trinity and Incarnation of Christ. For example, they reason that light is both a wave and a particle, so Christ could be God and man simultaneously and fully God, fully man.

But see https://heidelblog.net/2013/07/why-analogies-and-illustrations-of-the-trinity-fail/