The Search For Perfection

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Good point Nakia. Satan's temptation of Jesus for forty days is explicitly chronicled in the bible. This would have been a pointless passage if Jesus did not have the free will to give in to human temptations such as sating his hunger by turning a stone into bread or testing God himself when Satan asked Him to jump from a cliff. I appreciate the fact that you included "I think" when reffering to Jesus' initial "perfection". Although I agree with your interpretation, this is one of many ambiguous concepts of the bible that, in my opinion, cannot be known for sure. In any case, Jesus' perfection in the end was verified by his corporeal induction into heaven (Corporeal induction into heaven is the sign of a sinless [perfect] existence as IMPLICITLY stated in the bible iirc). So, Jesus did have free will and could have faltered in his humanity, but he did not. I would say this qualifies him as a benchmark for perfection. In any case, the strive for perfection is a very benificial drive....and if you don't ever live up to Jesus' example, just remember, he had friends in high places and probably benefited from a little nepotism.

 

And as no-one can say that Jesus had any flaws, one can however claim that even Jesus had some characteristics that are not usually associated with a perfect human being. He even might have thought that he's been abandoned by God.

Now my point is that however we define perfection, it always falls short of the properties the people we defined perfect, or the idea we have in our minds. Our language isn't enough to deal with a subject so elusive, yet possibly achievable.

So never you mind the exact 'dot the i's, cross the t's'-details. When a goal is set and you try your hardest, it's not the goal which makes you perfect, it's the path you tread in your every-day life. The road changes as you go along it, and you might find that whatever the goal was as you pictured it in your mind when you started the journey, the goal itself has changed as well.

The more we define something, the less it responds to actual reality. There is no 'thing in itself', or if there is, we have no knowledge of it. Actual reality is always fluctuating and contemporary, even more so when dealing with subjects concering our culture and our minds. Perfection is no exception.

Because perfection itself is not a static state of being, it is quite possibly achievable. And permanently static anything is something that goes beyond any possible human experience, especially with complicated things such as perfection.

 

This issue was up for debate in the early church. The predecessor of Mark implied Chirst to be wholy man (as a number of theologians believe the synoptic gospels to imply), while the gospel of John claimed Christ to be man and god in the modern notion. The Gospel of John was written in 85 A.D. was considered heritical into the 2nd century A.D. The Gospel of Peter, which, along with the Gospel of Thomas, is considered heretical to this day, claimed Christ to be wholly god.

The views of "Mark" and "Peter" where the pervailent views of Christ in the 1st century AD before the theological implications of Peter lead to the gospel's dimise.

In other words, there is a theological basis for disagreeing with the notion of Christ being the perfect man as Christ's divine status has been and still is in question (as ultra-leftwing churchs are returning to the orginial belief of Christ being a man).