Let me comment in reverse, God as referring to the Father has no body. But as referring to the Logos incarnate He does have a body, “a body you have prepared for me” Hebrews 10:5. But when God physically died, we can’t say His humanity dies, because death is a personal experience. God died. Not the Father but Logos incarnate. About Nestorian tendency in Reformed Christology, I can point out one which nowadays manifested among Pentecostal and Charismatic circle. That as Christ’s humanity can’t do any miracles but that which the Holy Spirit did in his humanity, so through the second blessing we mere human can also have a similar power, and even greater things, cf. John 14:12, one of the most abuse passage in Scripture.

It could be argued that John Owen represents the logical outcome of the Reformed insistence upon the integrity of the natures and resistance to an instrumentalizing of the human when he says, “The only singular and immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself” (John Owen, Works, vol.3, “Pneumatologia”, p.160). Every other act, then, including all of Christ’s miracles, were performed by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the human Jesus. “The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, no less than the Spirit of the Father. … And hence he is the immediate operator of all divine acts of the Son himself, even upon the human nature. Whatever the Son of God wrought in, by, or upon His human nature, he did it by the Holy Ghost, who is his Spirit, as he is the Spirit of the Father” (ibid., p.162). With these words, Owen introduced a final clarification into the doctrine of a “communication of operations.” In every act of the God-human, both natures operate in a manner consistent with each nature but the Logos acts by bestowing His Spirit upon the human Jesus. In this way, the full humanness of the activities of the Mediator is preserved.

That’s a blatant Nestorianism without any antidote. This is in direct and frontal opposition against Cyril’s ninth anathema. “If any man shall say that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Holy Ghost, so that he used through him a power not his own and from him received power against unclean spirits and power to work miracles before men and shall not rather confess that it was his own Spirit through which he worked these divine signs; let him be anathema.” I hope in the next session there would be a special discussion regarding Nestorian Christology in Reformed tradition as pointed by Bruce McCormack. And also on Triadology between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Calvinian distinctive Autothean Triadology. I’m looking forward for these two issues.

In “The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews” Vos argues that the statement about Jesus’s prayers being answered refers back to Jesus’s prayers in Gethsemane where he asks the father to take this cup from him. Vos concludes that Jesus was not praying to get out of his sufferings but instead was praying for resurrection. I can see from your discussion where Vos would favor such an interpretation. There are multiple passages in the NT where Jesus has not only his impending death but his resurrection in view. Since Jesus death and resurrection are inseparable, and he clearly had both in mind, it becomes unclear how Jesus could ask the Father to let him escape his death, i.e., when he is set on his death AND resurrection, and when asking to forgo suffering is in a sense asking to forgo resurrection. Jesus prayer that the cup be taken from him was in fact answered in the affirmative in his resurrection.

Thanks for what you do! I have learned a lot through these podcasts.

A long time ago John Gerstner wrote in Table Talk (I’m going from old memory here) that in Christ’s death on the cross God did not die but God’s body died. Agree, not only does that seem Nestorian, but now we still have another problem. God does not have a body, so how does it help to say God’s body died?

I love Reformed Forum. Thanks so much for your amazing service!

This was a great episode. It re-promtped a question for me that I’ve often thought of with regard to the extra Calvinisticum (which you guys have convinced me of, by the way) … It seems the Reformed side is happy to ‘have a go’ at the Lutherans for their divinising the human nature of Christ (and vice-versa), but I don’t think I’ve heard you criticise the Roman Catholic view of the mass in a similar way. So here’s my question: would you accuse the Roman Catholic view of the mass of divinising the human nature of Christ? If so, would you label this Eutychianism?

Thanks!

Gerard