Page 157 - Bible Writers Theology Original

Kenotic Christology holds that Christ (God the Son) emptied Himself of many attributes of deity, such as omniscience, onmipresence, and onmipo- tence when He became the Son incarnate. Instead of saying that the Word
of God became flesh, they say that "God the Son" lowered himself from deity becoming humanity. This doctrine cannot exist as a part of Oneness theology, because it involves an abdication of deity. The error is that if they make the Word be God, the Son and co-equal to God the Father, how can
he be both co-equal and lowered at the same time. However, if you under stand the simple, plain truth, that the Word of God was made a littel lower than Elohim to be the Lamb of God in an obedient sacrifice, leading to the
cross,isconsistentwithallBibledoctrine(SeeHebrewBiblePsalm8:5). The loweringwaswhen theWordbecamefleshandblood,todieasaholysac rifice on the cross. The Word of God was invisible in God before he became Christ the lamb of God. But since the Word of God became flesh, it also became the visible, touchable, tabernacle of God, and will remain the tem
ple of the Godhead forever. For the Bible says in Colossians 2:9, "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."
Many early Christians strayed away from the doctrine ofthe apostles and were influenced by gnosticism, which held that all matter is evil (Genesis 2:17;Genesis 3:17; Galatians 3:13; Romans 5:15-21).
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The docetists in the first century followed this to its logical conclu sion and determined that if all matter is evil, and if the human body is
matter, and since Jesus is taken from the nature of man, Jesus could nothavehadahumanbodybecausethatwouldmakeHimevil. They stopped proclaiming the humanity of Jesus Christ, and spread the heresy that He was only a ghost.
The monophysites, in the fifth century while technically confessing to the earthly humanity of Jesus, held that the human portion from Mary and divine portion from God were so intermingled to become
God theSon incarnate, that the humanity ofJesus was absorbed into the deity; thus Jesus had only one domiitant nature, the divine. Biblically, this is incorrect because it is God the Father who was incar nated; there are not two Gods in the Godhead. Since the biblical truth is the "word became flesh", there is no person from Mary to be
absorbed.
Apollinans in the fourth century stressed such a fusion between the human and the divine that he sacrificed the complete humanity of Jesus. Apollinarianism taught that Jesus had a human body and soul
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