[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

It might help if I post the full quote of Luther below, found here:

http://bookofconcord.org/sd-person.php.

The part I highlighted in bold should satisfy both those who say God did not die and those who say He did. I should add here that Lee had a way to put it that should be more conciliatory and that was to say the "God-man died".

The problem with saying "God dies" is that it implies that God's divine nature ceased. This is resolved by a caveat to say that in His nature, God cannot die.

However it is nonetheless correct to say "God died", according to Luther:


44] Dr. Luther says also in his book Of the Councils and the Church: We Christians must know that if God is not also in the balance, and gives the weight, we sink to the bottom with our scale. By this I mean: If it were not to be said [if these things were not true], God has died for us, but only a man, we would be lost. But if "God's death" and "God died" lie in the scale of the balance, then He sinks down, and we rise up as a light, empty scale. But indeed He can also rise again or leap out of the scale; yet He could not sit in the scale unless He became a man like us, so that it could be said: "God died," "God's passion," "God's blood," "God's death." For in His nature God cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is correctly called God's death, when the man dies who is one thing or one person with God. Thus far Luther.

I note that in discussions of God becoming man, many took issue with the idea of man becoming God, but few if any took issue with the first part of the quote "God became man". As such, few should take issue with saying "God died", as it is no worse than saying "God became man" (to a Jewish or Muslim mind, at least).

"God died" - a fundamental truth of the Reformation, lost since in the modern evangelical times, even spoken against in their ignorance, yet recovered by Lee and Nee.

If things continue the way they have, then Christians will eventually believe that Jesus was just a man on the cross and not God at all.

There is not anyone who took issue with saying that God died because God and Man are united. These two were united after the ascension of Jesus Christ.

That is, after the crucifixion. Hence God did not die on the cross according to your previous logical reductio ad absurdem.