He’d been in Detroit? I didn’t think Detroit had even been invented yet…
Well, I believe that Jesus experienced real separation from the Father during His “My God, my God…” cry. But the “Hell” of Sheol/Hades was not the “eternal separation” of Gehenna Hell aka The Lake of Fire (of course, I interpret that totally differently anyway.)
Diogenes- the belief here is that the Paradise that Jesus went to that day was the realm of the righteous souls in Hades, and from then on, Paradise was transferred into Heaven. Of course, that is Church Tradition, but it does seek to reconcile the Biblical data.
In this context, Paradise != Heaven; Paradise = ‘Abraham’s Bosom’ (metaphorical use) = Abode of the Righteous Deaad = ‘Limbo of the Fathers’ (secundum Bricker and the old Baltimore Catechism).
Also, in analyzing what Jesus “knew”, it’s important to realize that He experienced the world as a human being, albeit one with a unique link to the Divine. When we proclaim Him “truly God and truly man,” we’re not just saying “He was God wearing a human body”; He was totally and completely a human being just like us. In the words of the song, “What if God was one of us? … / just a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home.” – That’s the essence of the Incarnation in a nutshell; He was.
How this plays out in the events of Holy Week is this: contrary to hindsight’s view, He didn’t know He was going to win an all-expense-paid weekend in Sheol followed by a Resurrection. Rather, He had faith that it was going to all work out all right. He put His trust in the Father and accepted the risks, confident in the Father’s love but not knowing for sure what would happen. On the Cross, Jesus quoted the first verse of Psalm 22 – and we can be sure He knew that Psalm. Now, what’s interesting about it is that it starts from a point of despair and works its way to calm faith. Like any other human being in extremis, Jesus felt that final sense of doubt, despair, separation, uncertainty – and worked His way past it to restored faith.
Woah, Carp-meister. That’s, like, totally like Gandalph wrestling the Balrog, dude!
Well, Poly is expressing his own personal interpretation, but none of that is actually in the Bible.
I find it difficult to believe that someone who could obviously see the future to some extent was “just like one of us”.
Aren’t the son and the father each individually the totality of God? They don’t each make a piece of God, but are God? Is so, how can they be separated, when they are each, at all times, the totality of a single substance?