THE FAITH OF JESUS
Chapter 7
Faith in Christ: A Christological Postscript
In the preceding chapters that made up the bulk of this book, I have given my own personal version of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, one based on a largely psychological theory of faith development with the assist of modern New Testament scholarship. In much the same vein, I have also tried to show that, given belief in the resurrection, there is a natural progression from belief in Jesus as a failed Jewish "Messiah" to the Lord Christ who is a universal redeemer of humanity, indeed, of the whole universe. Loosely speaking, these chapters have centered more on what is sometimes called, at least by Christian theologians, a "soteriology", that is, an approach to Jesus of Nazareth that focuses on his function or mission as "savior" (soter in Greek) of humanity.
In this final chapter or epilogue -- really, just a "postscript" in contrast to the vast amount of study this subject deserves -- I will attempt to reflect, however briefly, on "Christology" as such, which is that branch of theology that focuses primarily the personal identity of Jesus, not simply on his function as the Savior, but on his personal identity as "Son of God" in the full Christian understanding of that term.
Of course, the two areas, soteriology and christology, are closely intertwined. The latter exists to explain the former. But theologically speaking, there is a huge gap, on the one hand, between acclaiming this savior as the "Servant-Son of God" in the Hebrew sense of the words, as contrasted, on the other hand, to the full-blown Christian confession that this same Jesus is "God from true God, Light from true Light" (Council of Nicea, 325 AD). Although the doctrine of the Trinity supposedly kept the identity of Jesus as "Son" distinct from the "Father", once this belief in the preexisting divinity of Christ became defined, another very difficult problem has taken its place, that of maintaining his humanity along with his divinity. This is what is often called "the christological problem" or sometimes, alternately, the "Chalcedonian problem" because, according to the classic statement of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), this "one and the same person", Jesus Christ, is "consubstantial", that is, of the same nature, with us in his humanity, and consubstantial with God in his divinity". But instead of settling the problem, Chalcedon only restated it in more exact terms. History has shown that the problem of keeping the two statements about Christ in balance has been all but impossible -- while the mystery of how this can be has proved all but insolvable.
The effort to maintain this delicate balance or seeming contradiction has unfortunately led toward a popular view that splits the single reality of Jesus Christ into the mere semblance of a man (Jesus) who is the visible form of a totally divine person called "Christ". One of the major aims of this book has been to do away with this caricature by picturing him as a real, suffering, believing human being. The purpose of this postscript or epilogue is to ask or suggest briefly how we might also look upon him as divine or as the self-revelation of God.
Many contemporary theologians have suggested that a major part of the problem has been in assuming that we really know what God is like, and that as a consequence, we have projected onto the figure of Jesus certain ideas that are incompatible with the human condition as we generally know it to be -- for example, the idea that he had to have known everything, and that, as a consequence, he had no necessity for faith. They suggest that if Jesus Christ really is "the image of the unseen God" (Colossians 1:12) then we should instead start the other way around and begin with what we see in Jesus and only then draw our conclusions about God.
However, as much I am inclined to agree with that approach -- and I will come back to it -- I am even more inclined to agree with those theologians who suggest that perhaps even more our trouble lies in supposing that we have correctly understood human nature to begin with. As strange as this suggestion might seem -- after all, don't we experience being human first hand? -- I think there is much merit in the suggestion. I say this for two reasons: first, because I think that we have in the past misunderstood the biblical view of human nature, wrongly reading into it ideas derived from certain ancient Greek philosophies; and, second, because modern science has revealed a different view of human nature, one that in some ways is much closer to the ancient biblical view. For despite the apparent contradiction between the scriptural understanding of creation and the modern scientific theories of evolution, there are some surprising convergences. Nowhere is this more striking than when it comes to our view of ourselves.
7.1 The Bible and the Evolution of Human Nature
Too often we have assumed, in the mode of ancient Greek philosophy (and in everyday speech as well) that we are composed of body and soul. Science, of course, knows of no such thing as "soul." But, as we have already seen, neither did the ancient Jews, at least in the sense that Greeks, or even modern Christians and many others, like the Hindus, do. True, the Hebrew scriptures at times seem to speak of a shadowy existence after death, either pessimistically referring to those who went down to she'ol (the "pit") or more optimistically about those who are in "the bosom of Abraham". Still it may surprise us, despite most Christian translations of the Old Testament, to find out that the ancient Hebrews had no such word as "soul" or its equivalent, at least not in the sense that traditional Christian thought has assigned to it.
The Hebrew word nephesh is usually translated as "soul" , but this is far too narrow of a translation. The word (which actually seems to have been derived from the word meaning "throat") can mean all sorts of things: life, person, self, indeed, any living thing, or sometimes (no doubt reflecting on our most persistent appetite) simply "desire". No doubt their ideas were still quite confused, even to the extent that they seem to have imagined that life somehow resided in the blood. That in turn accounts for a major feature of their dietary laws, the prohibition against eating any meat with blood in it. Still, their idea of life was not so much a thing as an activity, and a rather expansive one at that. Hence another Hebrew word, kabod, is also sometimes translated "soul", but literally means "glory", "honor" or even "wealth".
From this it should be evident that from the ancient biblical point of view that it is not some kind of immortal, spiritual substance called "soul" that gives life. Instead, life is a gift and it is God's ruah or "wind", "breath", or "spirit" that gives life. When God breathes this spirit into the bashar or "flesh", only then does it become a nephesh, a living being (Gen. 2:7). Or on the contrary, take away God's ruah or "spirit", and living beings simply return to the earth (Psalm 104).
Certainly, this very much down-to-earth Hebrew picture of human life and death was later modified by inroads of certain Greek, and possibly even Egyptian, ideas concerning a "soul" and the afterlife. Among the deuterocanonical books, the Book of Wisdom of shows definite Greek influences in this respect. Later on, medieval Judaism developed its own cabbalist mysticism that was heavily influenced by neo-platonist ideas about the soul, even to the point of seeming to adopt in some cases such unbiblical concepts as the pre-existence of the soul or even theories of reincarnation. Mainstream Judaism, on the other hand, has more or less hewed to the more ancient biblical mode of thought, even to the point of generally ignoring the later biblical development of belief in a resurrection -- which obviously would play into Christian hands. In this, Jewish conservatism bears a striking resemblance to modern scientific agnosticism in these matters.
This is not to say that the Hebrew scriptures and modern science are entirely in agreement on what makes us alive. Evolutionary science sees life as a "property" of matter -- given sufficient complexity under the right conditions -- and not as a result of some mysterious divine "breath". But the two views agree completely on the basic materiality of human nature. We are rooted in our earthiness. "Man (adam)" was made out of "the dust of the ground (adamah)" (Gen. 2:7). Of ourselves we are merely "dust, and to dust we shall return" (Gen. 3:19).
Thus we see again why the Jews of old could only think of life after death, at least any such after-life worth living, as the effect of what came to be called, by New Testament times, "resurrection" -- which was imagined to be more or less literally the result of God breathing his spirit back into the bodies of the dead that they might live again. And again, as we have seen, there is no reason to think that Jesus himself saw things any differently. As a Jew, he believed, as did most of the Pharisees against the conservative skepticism of the Sadducees, in the resurrection, and this apparently not just of the "just", but even of the wicked -- otherwise it is hard to explain the "fire and brimstone" nature of the punishments awaiting them.
Nevertheless, it was St. Paul, and not Jesus, who has given Christianity the most nuanced and expansive view of resurrection. By adapting the more sophisticated Greek vocabulary, but still basing himself on the same ancient Hebrew bashar + ruah = nephesh (body plus spirit equals a living person) view of human nature, Paul was able to add a new twist or two to the still developing concept of "resurrection". But in doing so he also introduced a problem or two. One of these has to do with his use of the Greek term psyche.
For many Greeks, particularly those influenced by platonic ideas, the psyche was an eternal, immortal "soul" or immaterial "substance" which, much the same as the Hindu idea of atman, keeps coming back through a process of "reincarnation" into a series of earthly lives in different bodies. Although the basic concept of an immortal "soul" seems to have contributed to the development of some lines of Jewish thought at that time, both mainstream Judaism and Christianity had to nevertheless reject the idea of the soul's eternal preexistence and the idea that we have more than one chance to live our life as being incompatible with biblical revelation. The attempt of one early Christian theologian, Origen, to incorporate such notions into his approach to Christianity, even as modified by a later neoplatonic mysticism, was to result in his later condemnation.
Today, despite the widespread use of the term "psychology", most contemporary thought has also rejected such ideas. Not only is the concept of a "soul" as existing apart or independently from a body held to be unverifiable in scientific terms, but even the concept of a"soul" as existing apart from its association with, or even its origin in, a specific body makes the idea of reincarnation highly problematic. If, you or I are who we are in terms of our race, or sex, or specific location in time, then to speak of our "self" returning to life in a different body or as a member of a different race or of the opposite sex becomes a contradiction in terms.
All this leads us, especially given his own Jewish background, to suspect that in his use of the Greek term psyche Paul really meant simply the nephesh, the living being or person, or at least the human person on what we could call the psychological level of human existence. Indeed, in some places Paul substitutes the Greek term nous ("mind") where we would expect to find psyche.
Instead, when Paul speaks of immortality, he uses a quite different term, the word pneuma or "spirit". But first and foremost in Paul, the "spirit" is God's spirit, the ruah Yahweh of Hebrew thought, the same being the "Holy Spirit" or the "Spirit of Jesus" who raised Christ from the dead. On the other hand, there is, for Paul, such a thing as the human "spirit", as well as the "spirit of this world" -- so not all "spirits" are divine or even necessarily good.
But as soon as we look at the way he generally used the word pneuma or "spirit" we should notice something else. Even when he speaks of the human being, we will see that our "spirit" is not so much a thing as it is a quality or a capacity that points toward another distinct level of life beyond that of the mere body or psyche/mind. This closely corresponds to one meaning of nephesh as a "desire" or "appetite". So too, St. Paul speaks (see Romans 8:16) about "our spirit" reaching out, as it were, to "God's Spirit". Our lives are limited and incomplete without God. Without God's life-giving spirit our bodies as well as our "minds" or so-called "souls" are doomed to death. Only God's spirit, the "Holy Spirit" or "the Spirit of Jesus" who raised him from the dead can guarantee the longing of our spirit for eternal life.
Accordingly, it was very important for Paul to emphasize the "spiritual" quality of the resurrection. Paul's understanding of resurrection was not simply that of human bodies being restored to life, as a more primitive view might imagine -- that would be mere "resuscitation". Instead, for Paul, resurrection is a transformation of "natural" life into a whole new realm of existence. In a passage where he compares the first Adam to the second (Christ) we can gain a keen insight into the evolution of Paul's thought about resurrection:
If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body too. So the first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul; and the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit. But first came the natural body not the spiritual one; that came only afterwards. The first man, being made of earth, is earthy by nature; the second man is from heaven. The earthly man is the pattern for earthly people, the heavenly man for heavenly ones. And as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the heavenly one." (II Corinthians 15:45-49)
If I have used both the words "evolution" and "transformation" to describe the above passage also because, I think, you can see a whole new mode of thinking about human nature revealed here. The "living soul" who is represented by Adam (psychen zoosan are the Greek words Paul used here instead of simply psyche, but it's obvious he's thinking of the Hebrew nephesh) is succeeded by Christ who has become a "life-giving spirit" (pneuma zoopoioun). This is why Paul sometimes calls the Holy Spirit the "Spirit of Jesus" -- that is, the spirit that transformed the earthly Jesus into the "heavenly" or glorified Lord Christ.
So here I think we can see a change, not just from a more "earthly" concept of "resurrection", from a primitive view of a mere resuscitation of a corpse -- the kind of thing for which Paul was ridiculed in his preaching at Athens (see Acts 17:32) -- to a more advanced view of a breakthrough into a new level of existence. It is also, if we may go on to consider this altered concept of resurrection from a more scientific approach, a view that, if it is correct, in turn raises the idea of evolutionary "progress" to a whole new level of understanding.
We are always, or at least should be, in the process of becoming more human. This is not just true of the beginning stages as we develop into fully formed embryos from mere specks of reproductive matter or even after we are born as squalling infants to gradually become children who learn to speak or eventually young people who think on their own. Nor do we suddenly come to our adulthood or "majority" at some arbitrary age, with it all downhill from there. No, we can continue to evolve even in the direction of the "spirit" -- a never finished task which, if anything, should be accelerated by the onset of midlife and old age. In this way, every human life can be said to be an evolution individually in itself.
But there is more to it than that. There is also the whole collective dimension to this evolution. Modern science, at its best -- when it isn't devising ever more horrible weapons -- has dedicated itself to improving humanity's condition and making this world a better and longer-lasting place. This drive toward human progress should show us that "evolution" is not just a mechanism that results in ever higher and more complex forms of biological life, but is also an impulse or energy in human nature which impels us to surpass ourselves searching for a better and ever more fulfilling level of existence. Philosophers sometimes speak of this as the human drive or desire for transcendence, which means to go beyond where or what we are. But "transcendence" must be more than just a desire to go beyond what we are as mere individuals. It must be also a "self-transcendence" in the sense of transcending or going beyond concern for self.
So too in biblical thought. Redemption or salvation is not just a matter of individual "soul-saving". For St. Paul, the movement towards transcendence was not just a case of individual human longing for salvation but of all creation, which as depicted by Paul (see Romans 8:20-21) has been "made subject to frustration" or "vanity". So it is not just the fate of individual humans but the fate of all creation that concerned Paul. But again, Paul's answer is to be found in the power of God -- the power of the Spirit -- that power that raised Jesus from the dead, and which will raise us also, so that by finally defeating death in all its forms, Christ can turn over the redeemed universe back to the Father "that God may become all in all" (see I Corinthians 15:28).
What we see here is, I would submit, a whole new view not just of resurrection, but of redemption as well. I think it also gives us the key to a whole new way of understanding the divinity of Jesus Christ.
7.2 Jesus in Evolution towards God
We know that the concept of "evolution" involves not just the development or growth of things from birth to death, but also evolution implies the transformation from one level of life to, or into, another. It has been this idea of the "transmutation of species" that has been most controversial, particularly when it has come to the area of human origins. While part of the problem may seem only to be semantic -- humankind's "descent" from the ape should be more accurately described as being humanity's "ascent" from a now extinct species of primate -- there are nevertheless real puzzles. For example, it is probably easier to explain a degenerative evolution or "devolution" by means of the biological understanding of atrophy (that "what isn't used disappears") than it is to explain how any species acquires new advanced characteristics.
In somewhat the same way, even though the earliest New Testament christologies spoke of Jesus being raised to his position as Lord -- thus a "low christology" beginning with his humanity and "ascending" to his divinity -- still, it is easier to think in terms of divine power which has no limits, and of God "descending" into the human condition, or at least at first glance. Later New Testament christology, and almost all official Church teaching, has been in this "high" christological mode, so much so that most modern attempts to revive the low christology of ascent has been viewed as dangerous ta the faith.
Nevertheless, at the same time, traditional Christian teaching -- with the exception of some lines of reformation theology -- has always held an "ascending" approach when it comes to the doctrine of "sanctifying grace". Unlike Protestant (especially Lutheran) theology that held that grace only "justifies" us, that is, covers over our sinfulness to make us acceptable to God, the Catholic doctrine of grace has always held that human life is transformed or elevated to a new level of existence, one that makes our lives and our persons "holy" in a special way. This sanctifying grace was also to be distinguished from the "actual graces". These latter are seen as divine helps to become better persons in various ways such as acquiring good habits, overcoming temptations, etc. Sanctifying grace, on the other hand, was seen as an sharing in divine life, although in a derivative, creaturely form.
But Eastern Christians (both Orthodox and Catholic) go even further, viewing this grace as "uncreated", that is, not just as a share in godlike qualities, but as an actual participation in the divine life. Hence their doctrine of theopoesis (usually shortened to "theosis") or the "divinization" of the human being. Indeed, it can be said that this divinization has been the central theme of Eastern Christian theology, so much so that it has lead to another theological rift, this time between the Eastern and the Western Church.
This split is over the whole idea of what we mean by "supernatural". The western insistence (and here I mean Protestant as well as Roman Catholic -- both deriving from the Augustinian theological tradition on this point) on the use of the word "grace" (charis) to describe this divine action upon human life has been to emphasize its sheer gratuity as purely a gift from God. It is seen as in no way due to human nature, therefore everything above and beyond what is strictly human is in some way "supernatural". Human nature is fixed. It is naturally complete, body and soul. The soul may survive death, because it is "naturally" spiritual. But without "sanctifying grace" eternity itself is a dead end. With it, we get to enjoy heaven. And without it, we are consigned to "hell".
But eastern theology has always been uneasy with such a division. From one point of view, it sees all creation as a gift. But on the other hand, it sees true or full -- and therefore natural -- human destiny as being to share in God's life. Hence, to the eastern mentality, to call grace "supernatural", makes it sound like an add-on, like a hat placed on a head, on top of what is already a complete human nature. This distorts the true situation. It reduces sanctifying grace to a commodity of sorts, to a mere ticket (if indeed precious) ticket to heaven. On the contrary, easterners see the effect of divine grace to be primarily a share or participation in divine life, not just in the next life, but even here and now.
But if this is true, then it is equally true to say that human nature, all by itself, is radically incomplete. We may very well need God's help or graces to reach heaven, but we also need it to become just even fully human as well! Or perhaps a better was of saying this is that God did not create us simply to be human but even to be divine. So the real division is not between what is natural and what is supernatural, although theoretically I suppose such a division does exist, but what is of much more significance is the division between what is created by God and what is "uncreated"-- which is to say, God himself. Grace, then, at least the truly sanctifying kind, is no mere holy "thing". It is a participation in the life of the uncreated creator -- hence the life of grace is a "divinized" life. Through it we not only share divine life, but we even become, as it were, God!
Yet this very traditional doctrine of the "divinization" of human beings, even if it sounds somewhat strange to western ears, stands in a rather odd contrast to the way such an approach has been excluded from our more traditional ways of looking at Christ, even in the eastern tradition. I suppose this is due to the belief that because Christ is God, that he must always be considered primarily as the "divinizer" rather than the divinized.
True, there was a whole vein of so-called "Spirit Christology" in early Christian thought, largely associated with the School of Antioch in Syria, that also very much emphasized the humanity of Jesus as revealed in the gospels, particularly the "synoptics" more than that of John. For this line of thought, the Holy Spirit, who is the agent of God's grace, was also the primary agent of the Incarnation -- the act by which God's Word took up residence in the human person of Jesus. Theirs was also, to put it in more modern terms "low christology" and it was eventually to pass into disfavor under accusations of "adoptionism" and other related heresies, to be replaced by the domination of the "high christology" the Johannine gospel and of the Alexandrian school.
This is strange in a way, and in view of the doctrine of human divinization, unfortunate, because it has set aside Christ in such a way that all the things the gospels say about Jesus as a human can't be taken at face value -- things like his psychological suffering as well as his physical suffering, his temptations, and certainly not, heaven forbid, his faith!
Yet if we wish to look at the life of Jesus from the viewpoint of his own faith, a "low" christology of "ascent" is an altogether necessary presupposition. For we have already seen that the life of faith is a life lived unrelentingly in a spirit of self-sacrifice in total, complete abandonment to the will of God. Jesus may well have displayed miraculous power, prophetic knowledge, and divine compassion, but none of this was equal to the love he showed when he laid down his life for others through a total act of trust and faith in God. Even the Gospel of John exalts this moment of self-sacrifice as the moment of glory and moment of the triumph of God's all-consuming love.
Of course, the whole problem here, when we look at it this way, is that the call of Christian discipleship, like the promise of "divinization" itself, is seen as putting us all on an equal footing, as it were, with Christ. Being told that we must become like him ("other Christs"), traditional main-stream "high christology" seems to do an about-face, always quick to remind us that of course, "he was different." No doubt he was, but the question is, just how?
7.3 Probing the Difference
If the question of Christ's uniqueness is held to be all important, the answer is even more so.
In modern christological debate, it has become commonplace to express concern that our understanding of Jesus, if it is to remain "orthodox", must be such as to establish his difference from the rest of humans in terms of kind rather than simply in terms of degree. Low christologies or christologies of "ascent" like that which I appear to be suggesting are typically faulted for reducing the difference between Christ and ourselves as being simply one of degree, thus implying that his divine identity is being denied or simply reduced to being a preeminent example, even if the preeminent example, of "divinization".
On the other hand, it is often held that the touchstone of Christian orthodoxy is the confession that Jesus Christ is different in "kind" from the rest of us, in that he alone can be said, among all humans, to be really, truly God -- and that, of course, he always was so, in the person of the divine "Word" or "Son". In this way, a "high christology" or "christology of descent" is held to be altogether necessary for a full understanding of the truth, no matter how helpful a low christology may be in helping us understand Jesus from a human point of view.
Put in these terms I'm inclined to agree. Yet I'm also greatly in sympathy with theologian Robert MacAffie Brown's warning that to the extent we insist on Christ's difference in these terms, to that extent we end up denying his true humanity. Too much stress on a supposed difference in kind ends up making him into an altogether different species, a kind of E.T. (for "extra terrestrial"), a type of alien form of life, sharing some affinity for humanity, but nevertheless distinctly different. In fact, it should not go unnoticed how the film by that name some years back was seen by not a few critics as a parable of the Incarnation. Is this how we really wish Jesus to be understood?
I really don't think so. If we must choose between seeing him as different in "kind" or simply different in "degree" I think we find ourselves facing an impossible situation, an "either/or" dichotomy, either of which, understood strictly on such terms, amounts to heresy. If "different in kind" is our answer, then we really end up denying his humanity. But on the other hand, if it is simply a difference of "degree", then we end up putting his divine nature into doubt.
To try to avoid this dilemma I would like to highlight that ancient maxim cited St. Athanasius and St. Augustine and many other early theologians going as far back as St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century:
"God became man -- that man might become God!"
I think that this saying (updated perhaps in more gender inclusive language -- not that it was ever taken in any other way) sums up, in two short phrases, the highest expression of christology and soteriology as well. Of course, it needs to be explained or "unpacked". But, rather than concentrating on the first half, which is the christological problem, let's look again at the second part of the saying, but this time at the metaphysical implications of the soteriological assertion that humans can "become God."
Strictly speaking, of course, God alone is (or ever can be) God. Divinity as such is incommunicable. Augustine, who used the maxim in its original form (in Sermo 27 de Tempore -- as quoted above) also qualified it somewhat when in another occasion he paraphrased it to write:"The only Son of God became a son of man to make many men (sic) sons of God." (Sermon 194). Certainly this precision is what one might expect from him who has been dubbed "The Doctor of Grace", even though "sons" in the last use of that word in the above quote is obviously meant in the sense of merely adopted children of God.
Yet on the other hand, not just humanity through "grace", but all creation is, in a way, "adopted" -- not in simply having been created by God, but in the sense of its continued existence being dependent on God, that is, by "divine concurrence". But even going back to the act of anything existing in the first place, the very nature of God is God's "aseitas" as the medieval theologians put it, or as is sometimes said, "existence in itself". Thus God's most basic "property" is to exist, indeed, to be God is to be in such a way that all other existence is, in itself, a participation in God's being. Or put another way by the modern Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, taking his cue from the late medieval mystical theologian, Johann Eckhart -- God is the very "Ground" of being. Although Tillich didn't go quite so far as Eckhart in proclaiming that in itself "existence is God", still, in the sense that everything that is, insofar as it exists, partakes in the divine quality of existence, Eckhart's point is well taken -- even just to exist is therefore, at least in some sense, to already be divine!
But normally we don't speak this way because you or I have only a borrowed existence. No matter how holy or complete we become, our existence as individuals is but a derived existence. Even when raised by "grace" or the Holy Spirit to participate in God's life, we at best are "divine" as adapted sons or daughters of God. To suggest that existing as isolated individuals we can somehow actually be or become God or to be ontologically "the Son of God" -- as the critics misunderstood Eckhart to be saying -- is of course metaphysically impossible or absurd. Only God can be God as such.
However, it is less commonly pointed out that strictly speaking, the first part of the statement -- that "God became man" -- is just as impossible. Only a "man" (a human being with all its limitations) can be truly human. Ontologically speaking (which is to say, in the order of being) God as such cannot actually be a human or became one. Much like the idea of our "becoming God", it is a metaphysical contradiction in terms.
Nevertheless, just as human existence insofar as we exist shares God's existence, so too, looked at from the divine perspective, if we can presume to do so, God's creating and sustaining role in the universe (divine "concurrence") implies that no event in nature, or in our activities, or any imaginable activity of any sort in the universe is accomplished without God's presence. So in this sense of divine immanence, all that exists is divine. This is just the flip side of Eckhart's "existence is God" rightly understood.
Taking such ontological restrictions into effect, then it would seem that strictly speaking to say that "God became man" is just as impossible as to say humans can become God. From this point of view, a christology of "descent" seems to be as impossible as one of "ascent". Nevertheless, in the order of divine concurrence it is possible to say that God "descends" into humanity, just as surely, and perhaps with much greater certainty than we can say any particular human "ascends" to divinity or participation in God's life.
The reason for this is because God is the altogether necessary element or ground of existence. Our existence is entirely contingent on God's existence, even if our individual identity marks each of us as distinct from our creator. But in the case of Jesus, if his existence is qualified in such a way that not only his existing is entirely contingent on God but also his individual identity as a human is in some way identified personally with God's concurrence in human history, then I think we come as close as we can to saying that God has incarnated himself in a human life as it is possible to do without destroying what it means to be a human being, or, on the other hand, without the primary agent of that concurrence ceasing to be God. In this way we might say not only that the degree of but even more the absolute certainty revealed to us of divine concurrence with every aspect of the life of the man Jesus is how he may have been preeminently different than us.
But would even this make him different in kind? Perhaps not really when you get down to it. But I would see another aspect, a temporal one, as well, that does add to his preeminence. From this temporal aspect, the difference between Jesus and ourselves, I would submit, is that from the very beginning, that is, from the first moment of his actual existence as a human, the fullness of the Holy Spirit was there. Not only that, but that even before his conception, from all eternity -- if we can speak of a "before" in respect to eternity -- that this fullness of the divine spirit was intended by God. In this sense he was absolutely "predestined" as the summit of all divinized humanity. There never was, nor, as far as we know, will there ever be a union between God and man as complete as his.
This is not to say that he was necessarily conscious of this fact as a human. Instead he slowly -- or perhaps more quickly at some times than others -- grew into full consciousness of this union between himself and God. It may even be that the summit of this consciousness was not reached until after his death and that his "resurrection" was but the outward sign of this totally conscious consummation.
Furthermore, I could add a certain ontological slant to this divine immanence and indwelling as well. If we can say that God exists in or subsists (which is to say supports or gives existence to) the person whom we call Jesus -- which is true of all persons -- still in the case of Jesus would it not be possible to say that the indwelling of God was so intense that he is raised to a higher level of existence?
Here I'm thinking of Engel's evolutionary principle --that enough difference or increase in quantity can amount to a difference in quality as well. For example, few would doubt that humans are qualitively different from mere animals, yet when we try to account for that difference, we seem, at least according to evolutionary evidence, to be reduced to concluding that the greatly increased amount of thinking ability is what makes this difference possible. As Teilhard de Chardin was wont to say: "animals know, but man knows that he knows."
In a parallel fashion, might it not be then that in the case of Jesus, the absolute influx of divine grace at the beginning of his existence as a human being made a qualitative difference in the meaning of the second part of the saying "... that man might become God"? If a person's thinking and willing become, due to the influx of divine grace, totally one with that of God, can it not be said that person has become fully one with God, at least to the extent that any creature could be said to become "divinized" in this way?
Finally, if such considerations still seem to smack too much of a "low" christology, no matter how high the ascent, I would suggest that we consider the divine initiative or influx of grace into Jesus in an even more radical and personalizing way. If, as we have seen, no human person is complete or fully human without the influx of the Holy Spirit, could we not say that so complete was this divine influx into the composition of Jesus' humanity, that his personhood was that of God's archetypical plan for human personhood? If so, it would to be to say that this archetype (the true "Adam") has taken shape fully in this man, and because this archetype is, at the same time, God's expression or "Word" about himself -- "let us make man in our own image ... in the image of God he created him " (Gen. 1:26,27). Thus Christ is also the perfect "image of the invisible God" (see Collosians 1:15).
If so, then it seems that the only real barrier, even
within a high christology, towards seeing Jesus as fully human --
as well as fully divine -- is the false dichotomy that is set up
when we presuppose that on the one hand, that human beings are
complete, fully conscious, fully self-sufficient creatures all by
themselves, and, on the other hand, that the divine
"Word" or "Son" whom we presuppose Jesus to
have been (in his divine nature) was himself a complete,
fully-conscious "person" in his own right apart from
the existence of Jesus in his humanity. Might it not be that what
the later Old Testament books "personify" (in the
literary sense) in the figure of divine Wisdom (hochmah/
It also raises another problem in light of contemporary understandings of the universe and the origins of life. Why would God single out the planet earth amoung possibily billions of other planets and the human race among a proportionate number of intelligent species within the universe, to become, in this single instance, the person of the divine Word -- "the Word made flesh"?
This is, of course, the same old problem of particularity - - "How odd of God to choose the Jews!" (Belloc) -- writ large. But in this case, what may have been a large problem, at least for some, has become immense. Instead, what I would suggest along the line of this "process" view of the Trinity is that the hypostasis of the divine Word (to use the term that the early Church Fathers borrowed from platonism to describe the "persons" of the Trinity) becomes personalized as often as and wherever God deems necessary throughout the passage of time-space. But if this turn out to be the case, then the following conclusion of this "Christological Postscript" is more necessary than ever.
7. 4 Conclusion: A "Monotheocentric" Faith
By way of a theological summary to this whole book I would have to say this: if it is to remain faithful to its origins, Christian belief, which includes our faith in Christ, must be at most a universalized version of Jesus' own faith. Anything else must be viewed as a depature from that norm.
Such a faith is, above all, a belief in one God, in other words, an uncompromising monotheism. All trinitarian elaborations, whatever be their beauty or profundity, must be held subservient to that central tenet. The God of Jesus, his "Father" and ours, is the God revealed to Israel. And, no matter how many "worlds" or even "universes" there be, that God is one!
Furthermore, we must always keep in mind the basic revelatory function of Christ. Even if we believe him to be divine, it is obvious from the New Testament that the mission of Jesus was not to make himself worshipped, but to direct all attention to the Father. Believing what we do about him, we Christians may be forgiven our enthusiasm and proclivity to make Jesus Christ our central cult figure, but this is not following most faithfully in the footsteps of Jesus himself. In other words, "Christianity", despite its name, must always be theocentric, not "christocentric" at heart.
Keeping these two central points in mind, even when we enter the realm of trinitarian elaboration, we must always keep it subservient to the kerygmatic demands of the New Testament -- the liberating "good News." We must always remember, historically speaking, that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity emerged out of the prior necessity of explaining how Jesus Christ, through the power of God's Spirit, is the revelation of the one God whom Jesus addressed as "Father." In more technical terms, "immanential" trinitarianism, which is speculation upon the inner workings of the divine nature, must remain secondary to and dependent on "economic" trinitarianism, which is to say, upon the work of God in relation to salvation history. Otherwise, Christian thought opens itself up to the charge of theological (or dare I say "mystical"?) adventurism.
Nor is this trinitarian trend even uniquely Christian. Plato seems to have developed a trinitarian view of divine nature, one that may even have it roots in Vedic or Hindu thought and if one were to read the Roman philosopher Plotinus (205-270 AD) one cannot help wondering just how much his mystical reworking of Plato influenced Christian doctrine as it took shape in those early years. So too, some more recent western philosophers, such as Hegel and Whitehead, devised their own trinitarian insights. Christians may well rejoice at all this, or even see it as a providential working of God's grace, but we would do well to take all claims of insight into the inner nature of God with a grain of salt.
But even within the realm of an "economic" trinitarianism that claims to adhere strictly to the New Testament, we must also remember that even such scriptural Johannine and Pauline themes as the pre-existence of the divine Word/Wisdom/Son are "third level" traditions. As explained in the very beginning of this book, most of these must be understood as inspired theological elaborations. Otherwise we run into great difficulty in explaining what seems to be evident contradictions. Even the personalization of the Spirit in John's Gospel does not meet the strict criteria of having been part of the remembered words or deeds of Jesus -- otherwise how explain the complete absence of this approach in the rest of the New Testament? Nor do these themes seem ta be part of the original kerygma as well. For this reason, none of them should be taken as the only possible approach. The same should be said about the various soteriological themes in the New Testament, whether expressed in terms of "justification", "enlightenment", or "cosmic restoration". They seem more complementary than definitive.
So must something similar be said about the "fourth level" -- the "creeds" and other post-scriptural theological elaborations formulated early in the history of Christian thought. Such formulations as "one nature, three persons" to summarize the Trinity, or "one person, two natures" to describe Christ are all too subject to misunderstanding. Indeed, perhaps the respected Catholic theologian of this century, Karl Rahner, suggested a moratorium the term "person" in the trinitarian context, the modern usage of the term being too far from what the ancient Church theologians were trying to convey.
Finally, and most of all, the same must be said about what we might call the "fifth level" -- modern attempts (including this one) to make sense of everything. While I have found myself increasingly resistant to the ancient Christian practice of extolling paradox as a sign of God's working in this world -- which seems to me to be deliberate and unwarranted "mystification" -- still, I have to admit that there is more than enough mystery to begin with to keep theologians occupied until the end of time. So maybe important thing is not so much to be a theologian, trying to explain or fully understand all that has been believed about Jesus, but rather, most of all, to walk simply and humbly in the footsteps of Jesus, "the leader and perfecter of faith."
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