One of the most common accusations of Trinitarians is that IF Jesus is not God then he must just be a “mere” or “common” man and therefore he could not be the Messiah or able to die for our sins.
(I would reply that if Jesus is God he could not have died for our sins because God can not die!! I will save that for another post)
The best way to answer the question “Was Jesus a Mere or Common Man” is what I have found explained in the Polish Racovian Catechism of the 16th Century.
It is the view of Jesus that I as a Biblical Monotarian holds to.
(NOTE : The author of this blog hopes to reformat the entire Racovian Catechism some day because of its historical and theological value)
Let us look at what I believe is the correct response to the question, “Is Jesus just a Mere of Common Man”?:
Begin —–
You must he informed, then, that there are some things relating to the PERSON, or nature, of Jesus Christ, and some, to his OFFICE, with which you ought to be acquainted.
QUESTION : What are the things relating to his PERSON, which I ought to know ?
This one particular alone, that by nature he was truly a man ; a mortal man while he lived on earth, but now immortal. That he was a real man the Scriptures testify in several places : Thus 1 Timothy 2:5 ”There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the MAN Christ Jesus;” 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 “Since by MAN came death, by MAN came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in ADAM all die, even so in CHRIST shall all be made alive;” Romans 5:15 “If through the offence of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one MAN, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” John 8:40 “But now you seek to kill me, A MAN that has told you the truth.”
See also Hebrews 5:1 Such, besides, was the person whom God promised of old by the prophets; and such also does the Apostles Creed , which all Christians, in common with ourselves, embrace, declare him to be.
QUESTION : Was, then, the Lord Jesus a mere or common man ?
By no means :
First, though by nature he was a man, he was nevertheless, at the same time, and even from his earliest origin, the only begotten Son of God. For being conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of a virgin, without the intervention of any human being, he had properly no father besides God : though considered in another light, simply according to the flesh, without respect to the Spirit, of which he was conceived, and with which he was anointed, he had David for his father, and was therefore his son.
Concerning his supernatural conception, the angel thus speaks to Mary,
Luke 1:35 “The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the Power of the Most High shall overshadow you; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God”
Secondly, because, as Christ testifies of himself, he was sanctified and sent into the world by the Father ; that is, being in a most remarkable manner separated from all other men, and, besides being distinguished by the perfect holiness of his life, endued with divine wisdom and power, was sent by the Father, with supreme authority, on an embassy to mankind.
Thirdly, because, as the apostle Paul testifies, both in the Acts of the Apostles, and in his Epistle to the Romans, he was raised from the dead by God, and thus as it were begotten a second time ; particularly as by this event he became like God immortal.
Fourthly, because by his dominion and supreme authority over all things, he is made to resemble, or, indeed, to equal God : on which account, “a king anointed by God”, and the Son of God are used in several passages of Scripture as phrases of the same import. And the sacred author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 1:1) shows from the words of the Psalmist (Psalm 2:7), “You are my Son, this day have I begotten you”; that Christ was glorified by God, in order that he might be made a Priest, that is, the chief director of our religion and salvation, in which office are umpired his supreme authority and dominion. He was, however, not merely the only begotten Son of God, but also A GOD, on account of the divine power and authority winch he displayed even while he was yet mortal : much more may he be so denominated now that he has received all power in heaven and earth, and that all things, God himself alone excepted, have been put under his feet. But of this you shall hear in its proper place.
QUESTION : But do you not acknowledge in Christ a divine, as well as a human nature or substance?
If by the terms divine nature or substance I am to understand the very essence of God, I do not acknowledge such a divine nature in Christ ; for this were repugnant both to right reason and to the Holy Scriptures. But if, on the other hand, you intend by a divine nature the Spirit which dwelt in Christ, united, by an indissoluble bond, to his human nature and displayed in him the wonderful effects of its extraordinary presence ; or if you understand the words in the sense in which Peter employs them (2 Peter 1:4), when he asserts that “we are partakers of a divine nature”; that is, endued by the favor of God with divinity, or divine properties, I certainly do so far acknowledge such a nature in Christ as to believe that next after God it belonged to no one in a higher degree.
QUESTION : Show me how the first mentioned opinion is repugnant to right reason ?
First, on this account, That two substances endued with opposite and discordant properties, such as are
God and man, cannot be ascribed to one and the same individual, much less be predicated the one of the other. For you cannot call one and the same thing first fire, and then water, and afterwards say that the fire is water, and the water fire. And such is the way in which it is usually affirmed ; first, that Christ is God, and afterwards that he is a man and then that God is man, and that man is God.
QUESTION : But what ought to be replied, when it is alleged that Christ is constituted of a divine and human nature, in the same way as man is composed of a soul and body ?
The cases are essentially different : for it is stated that the two natures are so united in Christ, that he is both God and man : whereas the union between the soul and body is of such a kind that the man is neither the soul nor the body. Again, neither the soul nor the body, separately, constitutes a person : but as the divine nature, by itself, constitutes a person, so also must the human nature, by itself, constitute a person ; since it is a primary or single intelligent substance.
QUESTION : Show me, in the next place, how it appears to be repugnant to the Scriptures, that Christ possesses the divine nature which is claimed for him ?
First, because the Scriptures propose to us but one only God ; whom I have already proved to be the Father of Christ. And this reason is rendered the more evident from Christ’s being in several passages of Scripture not only distinguished from God absolutely so called, but often also expressly from the one or only God. Thus 1 Cor 8:5-6 “There is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him ; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.: And John 17:3 “This is life eternal, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you hast sent.”
Secondly, because the same Scriptures assert, as I have already shown, that if Christ is a man; which itself deprives him of the divine nature that would render him the supreme God.
Thirdly, because the Scriptures explicitly declare that whatever of a divine nature Christ possessed, he had received as a gift from the Father ; and refer it to the holy Spirit, with which he had by the Father been anointed and filled. Thus Phil 2:1 “God has highly exalted him, and GIVEN him a name which is above every name.” 1 Cor. 15:27 “When he said all things ARE PUT UNDER HIM, it is manifest that HE is executed which DID PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIM.” Luke 4:14 and Luke 4:18, “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.” “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” Matt 28:18, “All power is GIVEN unto me in heaven and in earth.” Acts 10:38, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, Isaiah 11:2 “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding-, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” John 5:19 and John 5:36, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do : for what things soever he does, these also the son does like wise.” “The works which the Father has given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me.” John 7:16 “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.” John 8:26 “He that sent me is true ; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.” John 10:25 “The works that I do in my Father s name, they bear witness of me.”
And, moreover, because the same Scriptures plainly show that Jesus Christ was accustomed to ascribe all his divine words and works, not to himself, nor to any divine nature which he possessed distinct from the holy Spirit, but to his Father; which renders it evident that the divine nature which some would claim for Christ must have been wholly inactive and useless.
Fourthly, because Christ repeatedly prayed to the Father : whence It is evident that he had not in himself a nature of that kind which would have made him the supreme God. For why should he have recourse to another person, and supplicate of him, what he might have obtained from himself ?
Fifthly, because Christ explicitly declares, that he is not himself the ultimate object of our Faith; for he thus speaks, John 12:44 “He that believes on me, believes not on me, but on Him that sent me.” On this account Peter (1 Peter 1:21) states that it is “by Christ we do believe in God.”
Sixthly, because Christ frequently asserts that “he came not of himself, but was sent by the Father” (John 8:42). That he spoke not of himself, but that the Father which sent him gave him a commandment, what he should say, and what he should speak (John 12:49). That he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him (John 6:38). Neither of which could have happened in respect to the Supreme God.
Seventhly, because Christ while he was yet living on earth affirmed of himself, that he was ignorant of the day of judgement; and stated that the knowledge of it was confined to the Father alone. “But of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, NEITHER THE SON, but the Father” (Mark 13:32. See also Matt. 24:36). But the supreme God could not have been wholly ignorant of any thing.
Eighthly, to omit other reasons, because Christ distinctly affirms (John 14:28)_, that his Father was greater than he by which he intimates that he is not equal to his Father. He also, on several occasions, calls the Father his God. Matt 27:46 and Mark 15:34 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” John 20:17 “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Revel 3:12, “Him that overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out ; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God.” The Father is called the God of Christ by other sacred writers, particularly by Paul : thus Ephes 1:17 “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory” And the same apostle observes (1 Cor. 11:3), “that God is the head of Christ”; (1 Cor. 3:23), that as we are Christ’s, so in like manner, “Christ is God’s” And (I Cor 15:28), that at a certain period “the Son himself would be subject unto him, that had put all things under him” things which could not have been predicated of Christ, had he possessed a divine nature.
But to these arguments, and others of a similar kind, it is replied, that such things are spoken of Christ in reference to his human, and not his divine nature ?
But this is done without reason : partly because those who so assert, take for granted the very point in dispute; namely, that Christ is possessed of a divine nature; and partly because there is no room for such a distinction when anything thing is absolutely, and without any limitation, denied, or might he denied, concerning Christ. For otherwise I might at one time be allowed to say, that Christ was not a man, that he did not die, that he was not raised ; and at another, on the contrary, that he was not the only begotten Son of God, that he was not, as themselves pretend, the supreme God, and that he was not possessed of this divine nature : because the former circumstances would be incompatible with the divine, the latter with human, nature. The reason of this is, that those things which may be, and usually are, affirmed absolutely of any whole, without any limitation being expressly stated, cannot be denied absolutely of the same whole, although in respect to some part those things may not appertain to it.
Thus when we affirm absolutely that a man is tall, that he is corruptible, that he eats and drinks, and the like ; we cannot at the same time deny these things absolutely concerning him, because they do not appertain to one, and that the nobler part of him, his soul. Much less then ought any thing to be denied absolutely concerning Christ, which may be affirmed absolutely of him, although it may not comport with his human nature, which is infinitely inferior to the divine ; the more particularly in those places where Christ is thought to be described and designated from his divine nature ; such as when he is called “the Son” that is “of God.”
It appears then, from these considerations, that that cannot be affirmed absolutely of any whole which may be denied absolutely of it; and also, that things cannot be attributed absolutely to Christ on account of one nature, if they may in terms equally unqualified be denied of him on account of another: for though we read of many things attributed absolutely to Christ on account of his human nature, which might and ought to be in terms equally unqualified denied of him in relation to his divine nature; as, because it may and usually is denied concerning man that he is endued with a spiritual or incorruptible nature ; the same thing cannot, on this account, be affirmed absolutely of him, notwithstanding such may be the case in respect to one of his parts.