@Bizzlebin "This is not supported by the Patristic sources that were already provided. Nor is disease limited to sin (cf, the man born blind). Nor is Christ completely unable to truly take such things upon Himself: that might be Docetism or another early heresy, depending on the theology behind it—be very careful!"
Can you flesh this out a bit? I'm confused by this statement. And what were the Patristic statements provided?
The idea of a not-quite-human Christ was not just an early heresy, but a big part of the middle Ecumenical Councils, popping up in later guises such as Eutychianism, which (in)famously likened the human nature of Christ to a drop of vinegar being swallowed by the ocean (compare that with the idea that Jesus's divinity swallows up and dissolves all human "conditions"). Whatever the guise, the chief problem with Christological heresies is that they all fundamentally deny that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. And these heresies specifically target the human side, claiming that Jesus was unable to take upon things as diverse as hunger and death. If we adhere to the 8 Ecumenical Councils, then we obviously know those positions to all be false: Jesus Is fully a human, and fully able to experience the totality of human nature, although He never did so in a such a way that His human will was opposed to His divine will (eg, His hunger was truly *voluntary*, in an ultimate sense). A difficult passage from St Athansios is actually helpful here:
"
How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, "Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?". Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did He then not hunger?". Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself.
"
—St Athanasios (On The Incarnation: 4 (21))
This passage can seem confusing at first because we tend to look at just the surface of things. He hungered and died, that should be clear. But was He ever sick? St Athanasios seems to disagree. Why the seeming difference here? Various heresies would like to read St Athanasios as saying Jesus could not have viruses or bacteria (they are seen as "bad", whereas hunger is just "neutral"), but this is not warranted: He's fully human, and St Athanasios makes this clear in his words "the property of His body"—and the fact that He took on not just suffering but death! So what is the key? It is Jesus Christ's mission: He did precisely what He was supposed to do, which is a simple way of saying (again) that His human and divine wills were totally synergized. Thus, if He did not manifest certain parts of the human experience, it was not because He wasn't fully human but because they were not part of His specific mission on earth. This is the orthodox meaning of St Athanasios.
As to the man born blind, St John Chrysostom preaches something very instructive here:
"
But I assert that he even received benefit from his blindness: since he recovered the sight of the eyes within. What were the Jews profited by their eyes? They incurred the heavier punishment, being blinded even while they saw. And what injury had this man by his blindness? For by means of it he recovered sight. As then the evils of the present life are not evils, so neither are the good things good; sin alone is an evil, but blindness is not an evil.
"
—St John Chrysostom (Homilies On St John: 56)
Leaving aside what this means for everything from neurodiversity to sexuality, this sermon very much agrees with the *orthodox* interpretation of St Athanasios: there is nothing sinful about creation, no "sacred vs profane" division, and no silly "prosperity gospel" where we avoid viruses and change—Jesus Christ is *fully* man (and fully God), and all creation is sanctified! The question for us is therefore this: are we also living with our human wills in complete synergy with the divine, or are we disrespecting God's good creation and solid science which reveals it? God has established the world, He took upon that world, and it does us no good to deny (in an almost Marcionite fashion) that natural law is *His*—to paraphrase from Matthew: 5.17, Christ came not to destroy viruses but to *fulfill* them.
). I was debating once with a priest this problem, and I remembered that during lockdown I saw a video of a bishop distributing communion through the use of tongs. This seemed very interesting to him as he did a parallel to a prophecy or story? from Isaiah, where God is assimilated to heated coal.
