Response to Anba Takla website: (How does God die as you say?!)

 

How does God die as you say?! Question: If Christ is God, how does God die while He is the Living and Self-Sustaining?! How does Christ die despite His divinity? Does God die? Was the death of Christ a weakness? This question was submitted to the Anba Takla website for the Years with People's Emails section . The priest's answer: God does not die. Divinity does not die. And we say in the Three Sanctifications hymn "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Living Immortal." But the Lord Christ is not only divinity, but He is united with humanity. He took humanity from the same human nature as us, and because of that He was called "the Son of Man." His humanity is composed of the human body united with a human spirit, with a nature like our nature that is subject to death. But it is united with the divine nature without separation.. And when He died on the cross, the body died, with the humanity . This is what we remember in the prayer of the ninth hour, and we pray saying "O you who tasted death in the flesh at the time of the ninth hour." And the death of Christ was not a weakness. It was not against His divinity. It was not against His divinity, because divinity is alive by nature and does not die , just as He willed for His humanity to die as a burnt offering of joy, also to redeem the world . His death was not weakness, for the following reasons: 1- His death was not weakness, but love and sacrifice. As the Bible says, "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). 2- The Lord Christ went to death by His own choice, for He is the One who gave Himself up to redeem humanity from the sentence of death. How great is His saying in indicating that, "I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again" (John 10:17, 17). The weakness of the ordinary man in his death is concentrated in two matters: A- He dies in spite of himself, and he has no power to escape death. As for Christ, He gave Himself up without anyone taking it up from Him. B- When a normal person dies, he cannot rise unless God raises him. But Christ rose of His own accord . He said about His spirit, “I have power to take it again.” These are words that are said from a position of strength, not from a position of weakness. Among the evidences of Christ’s power in His death are: 3- That in His crucifixion and death, “the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints were raised.” So much so that the centurion who was guarding Him was afraid - because of this miracle - he and his soldiers and said: Truly this was the Son of God (Matthew 27:51-52 ). 4- Another evidence is that in His death He worked, as He opened Paradise and brought Adam and the rest of the righteous and the thief into it. 5- Among the evidences of His power in His death is that by death He trampled death (2 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 2:14). Death has now become just a golden bridge by which people reach a better life. Paul the Apostle says, “O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Who was running the universe then during his death?






















His divinity governed the universe. The immortal divinity, which was not affected at all by the death of the body... the divinity that is present everywhere, which is also in heaven (John 3:13). God
is truly alive and does not die, and He is self-sufficient, and the cause of the existence of every living thing. But since there became a need for the forgiveness of sin through the death of the One who is like God and God is not equal to Himself and His Word, He accomplished for us His incarnation and His incarnation in His Word, which is of His nature and essence. And through the incarnation and His incarnation of the Word, He became subject to death. But the one who tasted death was the body of His humanity and not His divinity, because divinity does not die . Therefore, death for the Word of God became spiritual because of His union with the body. That is, the Lord Christ died according to the flesh, but He did not die according to His divine nature. The ordinary man has a spirit and a body: His spirit does not die, but his body dies, and He is one man. So after the body of man dies , He remains a living spirit because our God is “not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27). From the above we conclude the fact that God died in one sense and did not die in another . Read another article on this topic here on St-Takla.org in the Questions and Articles section. He did not die in his divinity, but the condition of death applied to him because he was united with a human body that tasted death. When the Lord Christ died on the cross, he died in the body, but his human spirit remained alive, and both were united with the divinity: “being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit which is in him also, he went and preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18). In this way we understand that the incarnate Word can die according to the flesh, and not die according to the human spirit, and of course also does not die according to the divine nature, because neither the human spirit dies nor the divinity dies.



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Reply:
The priest says: ( And when he died on the cross, the body died, with the humanity .)
If what died on the cross was the humanity, then what is the benefit of choosing Christ for redemption? This means that any human being would have served the purpose, especially since the one who sinned was human,
so why would the redemption be through a god? This means that God (the divinity) was not affected in any way by the crucifixion, so how can we consider Him in this case to have offered a sacrifice?
The one who offered the sacrifice here is a human being, a human body with a human spirit, the one who tasted the pain of crucifixion, so what is the role of the divinity here?
This is supported by the priest’s statement: ( He willed for His humanity to die as a burnt offering of joy, also to redeem the world ). So, the divinity willed for the humanity to be the victim and the redemption, and the humanity in itself is not God without union with the divinity. This means that the one who redeemed the world is merely a human being.
The truth of these words is indicated by the priest’s admission at the end of his speech, saying : ( From the above, we conclude the truth that God He died in one sense and did not die in another sense ) Therefore we say that the one who died is not God, but the human body that surrendered the spirit because death is the exit of the human spirit from the human body. As for the divinity, it was not separated from the humanity even inside the grave as they claim, and the divinity is not subject to pain by everyone’s agreement. So what is the aspect of the redemption that the divinity offered?

So, the one who died is the humanity
that tasted the pain of crucifixion. It is the humanity
that remained in the grave for three days. It is the humanity
because the divinity, according to the priest, was working ( because it opened paradise and brought Adam and the rest of the righteous and the thief into it )
. The truth is that the one who sinned was originally human, so how can he be a God who works as a sacrifice (a burnt offering of joy according to the priest )?
This indicates that the one who died on the cross is just a human being, and thus the theory of God’s redemption of humanity by himself falls, since the death of God is impossible and unreasonable.

And how can God himself be a burnt offering of joy? A burnt offering of joy for whom? For himself or for another god?

As for the priest’s statement : ( If a normal person dies, he cannot rise unless God raises him. But Christ rose of himself ), we respond to his statement with Paul’s statement:
Galatians 1:1
1 Paul, an apostle, not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.
Therefore, the one who raised Jesus from the dead is the Father, because the Christians claim that Jesus rose by the power of his divinity, but Paul admits that the divinity of the Father is what raised him. Here the Christians resort to the old trick, which is that “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God,” but at the same time they admit that the Father is not the Son and is not the Holy Spirit, otherwise they would fall into the heresy of Sabellius, which says that God sometimes shows himself in the form of the hypostasis of the Father, sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Like the Holy Spirit.

As for the priest’s saying:
But since there became a need for forgiveness of sin through the death of the one who is like God and God is not equal to anyone but Himself and His Word. Therefore, He completed His incarnation and His incarnation in His Word, which is of His nature and essence. And through the incarnation and incarnation of the Word, He became capable of death. But the one who tasted death was the body of His humanity and not His divinity, because divinity does not die. Therefore, death became spiritual for the Word of God in order to unite with the body

of the response:
Who obligated God to have forgiveness of sin through the death of the one who is like God ? Where did they get this assumption on which they built their religion? Where is the clear evidence in the Gospels that forgiveness of Adam’s sin is not possible except through the death of God?

Then the priest admits after that that ( therefore, death became spiritual for the Word of God ), if death is merely a spiritual meaning, then why all this drama?
And why did the Lord wait thousands of years recently for redemption?
And does anyone have the power to review God ? If He forgave sin by His direct authority without this spiritual redemption process? And
God Almighty
is truthful when He said:
Say: Who then has power against God if He should will to destroy the Messiah, the son of Mary, and his mother, and everyone on the earth? And to God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them. He creates what He wills, and God is over all things competent.