46 Then, after three days they found Him in the
temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking
them questions.
47 And all
who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers.
48 When they
saw Him, they were astonished; and His mother said to Him, "Son, why have
You treated us this way? Behold, Your father and I have been anxiously looking
for You."
49 And He
said to them, "Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know
that I had to be in My Father's house?"
50 But they
did not understand the statement which He had made to them.
51 And He
went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these
things in her heart.
52 And Jesus
kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. (Lk.
2:46-52 NAU)
How could Jesus, who IS God (supposedly), "increase" in wisdom?
Apologists will say v. 52 is only referring to Jesus' human nature, not his divine nature.
But "nature" is what a thing really is, it's essential properties, as opposed to what it merely appears to be. From the Oxford dictionary:
So if Jesus had two natures, BOTH of them would have to be implicated in anything the bible asserts him to have been, said or done. There is no logical possibility for a person to act in a way that doesn't implicate their nature.
So the only way to rescue Luke from denying Jesus' divinity here is to insist, contrary to all reason, that Luke ascribed to the erroneous belief that Jesus could do things contrary to one of his natures (like acting in his earlier years in a way that involved less wisdom than he'd have acted with in his later years, when his nature as God during his early years would require that he always spoke/acted during said early years with the fullest amount of wisdom logically possible for God.)
Yes, the bible elsewhere teaches that Jesus is God, but using a teaching in one part of the bible to dictate what interpretative options are and aren't available for some other bible verse, presupposes the truth of the doctrine of full biblical inerrancy. But since bible inerrancy has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other interpretation-tools such as "grammar" and "context" have (inerrancy is denied by most Christian scholars too, not just skeptics), I have reasonable justification to refuse to exalt inerrancy in my mind to the status of "interpretation-tool".
Since I have reasonable justification to reject inerrancy as a governing heremeneutic, I have reasonable justification to not be worried about my interpretation of Luke 2:52 causing it to contradict something else in the bible. Something more than this must be shown before I will be morally or intellectually obligated to renounce my interpretation. If such is not shown, then the fact that my interpretation contradicts something else in the bible, will only be interesting to inerrantist-Christians, thus showing the subjective nature of such a rebuttal.
For all these reasons, Luke's statement that Jesus increased in wisdom can only mean either a) Jesus wasn't God since God cannot increase in wisdom, or b) the divine nature of Jesus increased in wisdom.
However, Christians who interpret Genesis 6:6-7 literally (i.e, God really does sometimes regret one of his own decisions), can safely assert that Jesus, as God, can increase in wisdom. Their interpretation of Genesis 6 is probably correct, there is no grammatical or contextual justification for the "anthropomorphic" interpretation, only a worry that it needs to be rendered non-literal so it won't contradict other bible verses asserting God being all-knowing. Take a look at Exodus 32:9-14 for another example of God being imperfect and needing the wisdom of humans.
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