The Road to Redemption: The Struggle Over the Nature of Jesus Part 4

    We are finally at a place where we can gain a clearer picture of the nature of Jesus as we in the orthodox churches have come to perceive it. The place I would like to begin is with a quote from Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390 CE) as he wrote about The Word (or Logos). "Remaining what he (the Word) was, he assumed what he was not." I realize that his may seem very esoteric but it is actually a rather simple way of speaking about the Incarnation (which we will celebrate on Christmas day). So let's unpack it.

    "Remaining what he (the Word) was" – the Word according to the Gospel of John was in the beginning with God and was in fact God. Thus the Word remained what he was (unchangeable and enteral) when he became incarnate. Thus the Word continued to be God in every way.

    "He (the Word) assumed what he was not" – the Word then "assumed", or took upon himself, what he was originally not…true humanity. This means the Word took on our vulnerability, suffering and death. Thus the Word became human in every way.

    These understandings (along with the understanding that God is one) helped to form the basis of the first great creed (creed is a statement of belief…from the Latin word "credo" which means "I believe") of the church, Nicaea. Soon after the church was legalized in 313CE by Emperor Constantine the disputes about the nature of Jesus came into the open. While this might not seem like such a big deal it became one when bishops on either side of the controversy tried to stop their church members from trading with church members on the other side of the controversy. Constantine would have none of this and so called the bishops together at Nicaea in 325 in order that they find common ground.

Nicaea was the first creed of the church to use non-Biblical language. While this was a cause of concern to some, most of the bishops believed such language was needed in order to clarify what the church ought to believe (and not believe) about the nature of Jesus.

    The central theme of Nicaea was that in Jesus of Nazareth God had fully come into human history as a human being. This was made clear with statements such as:

• Jesus is made of the "same essence (reality) of the Father"
  
• Jesus is "God from God, Light from Light, True God of True God"
  
• Jesus was begotten not made (you and I are made) and thus is eternal with God
  
• Jesus was "incarnate, becoming human"
  
• Jesus "suffered"
  

The most famous phrase in the creed is "homoousion to patri" which affirmed that Jesus was the same reality as God. This replaced another similar phrase which said Jesus was only "like" God.

    This creed was slowly but surely refined over the next 300 or so years. In fact the creed that we call the Nicene Creed is actually the creed edited in Constantinople in 381. Ultimately this creed was augmented by something called the Definition of Chalcedon in 451. Chalcedon insured that the church understood that Jesus:

• Was perfect in deity and in humanity
  
• Was actually God and actually human...with a rational (fully human) soul
  
• Had two natures (divine and human) which were not combined yet were not separated
  

In other words the creed and the definition try to help us understand the deep and profound mystery of God becoming en-fleshed in human history. Even though they are composed of mere human words they guide us into the belief that in Jesus of Nazareth we encounter the fullness of who God is and the fullness of what humans are supposed to be. This is the core of what it means to be a Christian; that we hold these two difficult ideas in tension and allow the Jesus they describe to guide our lives.

    

The Road to Redemption: The Struggle Over the Nature of Jesus Part 3

    This past Sunday (between church and From Classics to Christmas) I watched a video lecture on Christology (yes I know I lead such an exciting life…however when it was over I did watch the Lions). Cindy was in the basement with me (on the computer and not watching the video) and as she overheard some of the discussion on some of the seemingly more esoteric portions of the topic (monophysitism as an example) she called out, "Why does it matter?" And that is a very good question. For those of you who have read the previous two articles you might wonder why people spent so much time fussing over the nature of Jesus. Surely the church should just put pull together and follow in the way of Jesus; which is in fact what most Christians do. We strive to be faithful to the Jesus of scripture and spend little time worry about whether some early Christian theology was better than another.

    So why does it matter? It matters because what we believe about Jesus ultimately shapes how we exercise our lives of faith. This is what the early church understood and so they laid out the three critical issues with which they had to deal if Christians were to be faithful to Jesus and to God.

The first critical issue was that Jesus had to be fully God. They argued it this way. If Jesus is not actually God then when we look at the teachings of Jesus we are not looking at the teachings of God but of either a really holy man (the view of many of those in today's Jesus Seminar) or a demi-god (the view of Arius). Either way, it means there can be others (Mohammed for example) who could be closer to God and thus offer us a more reliable way to live (which is by the way what Islam teaches). Thus we ought to be looking for better teachings and direction. In addition if Jesus were not God then he would not have been able to deal with our sins any better than any of the rest of us could have dealt with them. Thus salvation has not been accomplished.

The second critical issue was that Jesus had to be fully human. They argued it this way. If Jesus is just a physical body with the Spirit of God in complete control (view of Apollinaris) or partial control (Nestorius) then we would have little if anything in common with Jesus because he was not essentially human. And if Jesus were not essentially human in the ways we think of being human (rational mind and soul that struggles with doing the will of God) then why ought we to try and follow his example. It would be impossible to do so because we are not infused with God in the same way Jesus was infused with God. In other words when we look at Jesus we are not seeing true humanity, only a body inhabited by God. Thus, in the end, we have no clear view of how we as fully human people ought to live.

The third critical issue was that God was one. They argued it this way. God, as we understand God from the scriptures is one, a "monad." This belief is at the heart of Judaism and is made explicit in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4 "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one."). This was also the belief of Jesus that there was one God (not many) and that this one God alone ought to be worshipped and obeyed. If we began to argue for multiple gods (Jesus is one God, God the Father is another God, and the Spirit is another God) then we would no longer be in anyway in line with the faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus. Thus we would be creating an entirely new faith (one perhaps much closer to pagan religions than to Judaism).

Thus if the church wanted people to believe that in Jesus we are saved (our sins are forgiven and new life is a real possibility); that in Jesus we see the way real human beings ought to and are capable of living; and that the God we worship is the one true living God, (all of which the Bible claims to be true) then they would have to figure out a way to speak of Jesus such that all three critical issues were addressed. This is why all of these arguments matter; because if we stumble with any of them, our faith and our way of living change dramatically.

The Road to Redemption: The Struggle Over the Nature of Jesus (Part 2)

    So who was/is Jesus? That was the question which confronted the early church. As we looked at last week the Biblical titles given to Jesus (Lord, messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, Word, rabbi, savior) were all functional titles. They spoke to what Jesus did and what he accomplished. They did not speak to his inherent nature. As the church moved further away from its Hebraic roots and moved into the Greco-Roman world the desire to know about the metaphysical nature of Jesus began to grow. Over the centuries there were a number of contending belief systems about Jesus. Ultimately however the church decided that there could be only one Orthodox position. Today we will take a quick look at some of the contenders for the coveted prize of Orthodoxy.

    Manichaeism was a tradition built upon the work of the prophet Mani (216-276 CE) who lived in Persia and was of Parthian descent. He believed that Jesus was merely one in a line of prophets (including Zoroaster and Buddha) and that he Mani, was the final prophet and the "Comforter" which Jesus had promised his disciples. Mani's view of the universe was that it was composed of two competing sources (good and evil) and that Jesus had been sent to enlighten humans to the good. The Manichean church had apostles, bishops and presbyters. It was finally extinguished in the Roman Empire around 390 CE though it survived in the east for more than 1,000 years. Augustine was originally a member of this church.

    Docetism was the belief that Jesus was never actually physically real. His body was an illusion as was his crucifixion. This belief developed out of a concern for and a rejection of the possibility that God could become flesh. Docetism believed that the body as inherently evil and that only the spirit was good. This belief was proven by the fact that bodies wither and die while the spirit remains. These movements began around 70 CE but mainly died out within a hundred years…though we can see remnants of them in movements such as Christian Science.

    Gnosticism was a movement that gained ground as Christianity spread out from mainly Jewish areas. The core belief of the Gnostics (derived from the Greek word gnosis…or knowledge) was that the physical was evil and the spiritual good. The goal of life was to discover the correct knowledge which would allow one to escape this physical world. Jesus was seen as the teacher who brought this knowledge. There are many Gnostic scriptures which present Jesus in this light. This school of thought became prevalent among the Germanic tribes which conquered the Roman Empire and still exists today.

    Arianism was based on the works of Bishop Arius who lived from 250-336 CE. Arius believed that Jesus was neither God nor man. Jesus was instead a semi-divine being. By being a semi-divine being Jesus was able to be obedient to God and not fall prey to the temptations of the world. The battle over Arius' beliefs lasted for more than 200 years and was the greatest threat to Trinitarian beliefs. You can see remnants of this belief in the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses.

    Apollinarianism was the belief that while Jesus had a fully human body his reasoning was taken over by the Spirit of God. This school was founded by Apollinaris of Laodicea who argued that Arius was wrong in that Jesus had divinity within him (he was after all "The Word") while at the same time arguing that the Trinitarians had to be wrong because you couldn't have two natures (human and divine) integrated in one person. While being declared a heresy in 381 this view continues to be expressed by Christians around the world.

    As you can see the church spent hundreds of years wrestling with the nature of Jesus. Next week we will take a look at the victor (at least in terms of the Western Church) and what it means for us.

    

The Road to Redemption: The Struggle Over the Nature of Jesus (Part 1)

    So who was Jesus? Was he really God? Was he sort of like God? If he was God or like God was he also human in a way you or I would recognize? Do the answers to these questions actually matter? The answer to the last question is "far more than you or I could possibly imagine." The historic reality was that those questions mattered so much that people were excommunicated and even executed if they believed in the "wrong" answers. Why was that? Well, let's find out.

     In the beginning (so to speak) of the Jesus movement (which was originally called "The Way" meaning it was a movement and not a religion) no one really cared about the "nature" of Jesus. What mattered was that Jesus had accomplished something on the cross. As we looked at over the past several weeks Jesus' followers believed that by his death and resurrection the power of sin and the powers of this world had been overcome. Death was defeated and resurrection awaited all who followed the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth. Even those letters of Paul which appear to focus on the "nature" of Jesus (Romans and Philippians) do so only in a passing and cursory way. This functional view of Jesus proved to be sufficient for a considerable period of time. However as the church became more organized (in the third and fourth centuries) two very distinct groups began to not only wonder about the nature of Jesus but began to vehemently disagree about that nature as well.

    The first of these two groups were the monastics. These were the monks and hermits who had withdrawn from the Greco-Roman world in order to live lives of solitude and self-sacrifice. They began to wonder how it was that anyone other than God could save humanity. In other words, how could an ordinary Jew, even a really, really good Jew save humanity by dying on the cross? They concluded that a human being could not do so, and therefore (reading John's Gospel and inferring from some of Paul's letters) they argued that Jesus must somehow be fundamentally God. The monastics, because of their informal power in the early church began to push the church to clarify its position.

    The second group that began to discuss this issue consisted of the bishops of the early church. Long before there was any sense of a "Roman" church with Cardinals and a Pope, there were bishops. While initially the bishops (those priests who oversaw a number of congregations) were elected by and were accountable to the people, they slowly gained enough power to be able to do as they pleased and to set doctrinal beliefs for the congregations they oversaw. As discussions about the nature of Jesus increased in frequency and complexity, the bishops disagreed with each other and this led to divisions within the church.

    Eventually these discussions led to the creation of two different schools of thought about Jesus. The first was the Antiochene (from the church of Antioch, in Syria) and the second was Alexandrian (from the church at Alexandria, Egypt). The difference between the two was significant. The Antiochene School emphasized Jesus' humanity. They saw salvation as coming from the perfect obedience of the perfect man. The incarnation in this sense was the power of God present in the perfect man that allowed Jesus to be faithful. The Alexandrian School emphasized the divinity of Jesus. Salvation was accomplished because the perfect God/man gave his life for the world. The incarnation here meant that God was fully and completely present in Jesus.

    Needless to say the subtleties of these two schools can be, and often are lost, on most of us today. What is fascinating however is that the issues at the heart of this discussion are still with us. While the majority of churches have ultimately agreed with the Alexandrian school (meaning they are considered to be theologically orthodox) many others have not. Latter Day Saints, Jehovah Witnesses, United Pentecostals and others follow some form of the Antiochene School. Next week we will look at the variety of ways people talked about Jesus and the following week how this issue was resolved.

    

What Happened on the Cross (Theologically Speaking)

    Over the past several weeks we have looked at the trial, death and resurrection of Jesus. There is one last issue concerning the death of Jesus at which we need to look and that is the church's understanding of how Jesus accomplished our salvation on the cross. The word which has been used to describe the outcome of Jesus' death is atonement. A simple definition of atonement would be "making amends for a wrong that has been done for the purpose of repairing a relationship. " As we discussed last week what makes this story a bit strange is that God, in the person of Jesus, made amends for the sins of humanity, because we could not ultimately make amends for ourselves. A struggle for the church has been to explain "the how" of this process in a way that made sense to people in different times and places. We will look at four different ways in which atonement is described. These are Ransom, Christus Victor, Substitutionary and Moral Influence (listed in the order they were adopted by the church).

The Ransom theory of atonement was the earliest and most widely held theory of how humanity was reconciled to God. It is partially based on Mark 10:45 : "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many"; and 1 Timothy 2:5-6, "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men…". This theory implies that Adam and Eve, by their actions in the garden sold humanity to Satan. Justice required that a ransom be paid to Satan for our salvation. Jesus paid the ransom with his death, but God raised him from the dead thus tricking Satan and insuring eternal life for all.

Christus Victor is a theory which though related to the Ransom theory has some important differences. Christus Victor (or Christ the victor) puts forth the idea that in Jesus God defeated the powers and principalities of this world. The powers did their worst in killing Jesus, God's only Son, but in raising Jesus from the dead God defeats sin and death, thus liberating humanity. Because sin and death have been defeated human beings can once again live as God-centered moral agents. The main difference between the Christus Victor and Ransom theories is that Christus Victor does not see Jesus' work as a transaction between God and Satan (paying a ransom) but as a dramatic victory over the forces of evil.

Substitutionary atonement reflects the ancient sacrificial system employed by Jews at the Temple in Jerusalem. This theory is based on the scriptures in the Gospel of John which speak of Jesus as "the Lamb of God" as well as those in Hebrews which specifically speak of Jesus as the perfect sacrifice. This model works in the following fashion. Human beings sin and are thus deserving of death. The only way in which people can be saved is through a blood sacrifice. While the Temple sacrifices had been sufficient for temporary forgiveness, humans were always likely to sin again and thus be libel for punishment. In Christ however, we have the perfect sacrifice (because Jesus is the perfect man) and this brings about perfect, lasting forgiveness based in a renewed relationship with God.

The Moral Influence theory, while not as dependent on Jesus' death as the other three theories has still been influential across the entire history of the church. This theory claims that Jesus, through his teachings, his examples and ultimately his death on behalf of the world, provided a clear example of the life that God wishes humans to lead. The Holy Spirit then took that example and made it possible for the human beings to align their lives to Jesus' examples. This matters, according to Moral Influence because judgment will be based on the content of our character and not on a particular set of beliefs. In a sense then Jesus' death did not "accomplish" something specific, but instead offered us a perfect example of one who would "lay down his life for his friends."

The gift of scripture is that it offers us a wide variety of ways in which we can understand how Jesus saved and transformed us. The challenge for us is to live into the new life we have been given.

The Road to Redemption – Why the Cross

    Why the cross? That has long been an issue for Christians. Surely, we ask, there had to be an easier way for God to make forgiveness of sins and human renewal possible? Perhaps God could have continued to use the sacrificial system of the Temple (God tried this but people never seemed to change). Maybe God could have started over and the world would have learned its lesson (tried that with Noah and Noah started all over by making wine and getting drunk). Maybe God could have simply forgiven humanity (not sure how many times God forgave and we humans went right back to our same old ways of living). So again, why the cross? I believe the answer can be found in D. M. Baillie's book God Was in Christ. By following Baillie's argument I hope it will become clearer why God chose the horror of the cross as the instrument of God's reconciling and renewing work in the world.

    The first part of Baillie's argument is that sin is real, cannot be ignored and must be dealt with. This is so first because sin is not simply people doing somewhat bad things but that sin is instead the orientation of human hearts that leads them to death dealing ways thus destroying the good that God has created. Sin robs persons of their opportunity to be fully human, and enjoy the blessings that God offers in this world. Sin must also be dealt with because sin's destruction of humanity and creation causes great pain to God who loves the whole world. God's love for the world is so great that God desires nothing more than for human beings to live in right relationship with Gods self, one another and with creation. Thus in order to save humanity from death and into life something has to be done about sin.

    The second part of the argument concerns what must be done. For Baillie this is a costly self-offering of God's own self. Why is this? This is so because there is a great deal of difference between a "good natured indulgence and a costly reconciliation." Baillie puts it this way, "Is there no difference between a good-natured indulgence and a costly reconciliation? There is an immense moral and spiritual difference between the two. And which of them are we to attribute to the love of God? Does the whole process of reconciliation cost Him nothing? Is His forgiveness facile and cheap? And if it were, or if we accepted it as such, would it have the liberating power, to set us free for a new and better life?"
(p. 172) To grasp concept this we must consider the difference between indifference and forgiveness. If someone takes something from me about which I do not care I can say, "I forgive you," and it will cost me nothing because I am really indifferent. In addition my indifference will have little if any impact on the one who has taken from me because they can tell I do not care. However, if someone takes something from me that is dear to me, for me to forgive them is costly to me because it hurts to forgive. I pay a price. That kind of costly forgiveness also contains within it the possibility of real change in the life of the one who has taken from me because they can see the pain they have caused.

The final part of Baillie's argument then is that in order for God to save humanity from sin, and transform us into loving human beings, God must pay a price…God must go to the cross. "What Jesus offered to God was Himself...But if, on the deepest interpretation, this was not only an offering made by a man to God, but also a sacrifice made by God Himself, then it is part of the sacrifice that God is continually making, because He is infinite Love confronted with human sin. And it is an expiatory sacrifice, because sin is a dreadfully real thing which love cannot tolerate or lightly pass over, and it is only out of the suffering of such inexorable love that true forgiveness, as distinct from an indulgent amnesty, could ever come. That is the objective process of atonement that goes on in the very life of God." (pp. 197-198) Thus the cross becomes a necessary evil/good through which humanity can be and is being changed into the very likeness of the image of God. Forgiveness now makes an actual difference in our lives so that we can become new people. The challenge for us then is to allow that transforming power to work within us that we too might be continually brought from death to life.

The Road to Redemption: The Resurrection of Jesus

Jesus died quickly. Unlike many victims of crucifixion who often endured several days of pain before they died, Jesus died quickly. The Roman soldiers were as surprised as anyone at his early demise and even checked to be sure that he was dead by poking his body with a spear. Though none of his followers were directly at the foot of the cross, many of the women who had followed him were nearby and saw him die. After his death a follower of his, Joseph of Arimathea, went to Pilate and asked for the body…a very brave act considering Jesus has been crucified for sedition. Permission having been granted Joseph took the body and had it placed in a family tomb. A stone was rolled in front of the tomb and everyone went home. The Sabbath had come.

    This much of the story would seem to be commonly agreed upon by most commentators. I say that for several reasons. First no one in the first century would have made up a story about someone being crucified. It was a humiliating and ritually unclean way to die. Second crucifixion meant one was an enemy of the state…hardly a selling point for a religion in the first century. Finally there are both Jewish and Roman sources which confirm the crucifixion. At the most basic level then, most people will acknowledge that Jesus lived and died. The question that has divided people is what happened to the body.

     Where Jesus' story begins to take a turn for the unusual is that when the women (or woman) arrived at the tomb on Sunday, after the Sabbath they discovered that the tomb was empty and the body gone. What remained were the grave clothes only. Depending on which Gospel we read they were informed by men in bright clothing, an angel or a number or angels that Jesus was not here but had been raised from the dead. Next we have various accounts of what message the people received, who saw Jesus first and how those persons interacted with him. There is little consistency within these elements of the stories. What is consistent however is that Jesus' body is gone and that all the persons are told he has been raised and is alive. In other words he has been resurrected.

    I want to take a moment and make sure that we are all on board with what resurrection means. Resurrection means that someone who was dead…clinically dead…no heartbeat and no brain activity…is now alive…heart beating and brain working. Resurrection is not that a person dies and becomes a spirit or a ghost. Resurrection is not that someone lives in our memory. I say this because the Greek language has words to describe ghosts, spirits and memories. The Gospels do not use those words to describe what happened to Jesus. They speak of resurrection, meaning being made alive in a fully physical sense. This being alive is confirmed by people touching Jesus (Mary), Jesus eating with his friends and the witness of more than 500 persons (according to Paul) who interacted with Jesus after his resurrection.

    Across the centuries people have had trouble with this resurrection thing. The Romans claimed that the disciples stole Jesus' body so they could claim he was raised from the dead (hardly seems likely since the disciples were not expecting him to be raised). Some have claimed that he was probably a specter of some kind (note my earlier comments). More modern scholars have spoken of resurrection as a common memory (not sure why anyone would have made up a memory of a living Jesus when it went against almost all understandings of life and death in both Jewish and Roman cultures).

    Ultimately our faith rises or falls upon the resurrection of Jesus. If he was not raised then Jesus is just another dead Jewish teacher. If he was raised then the world has been changed. We profess that he was resurrected and lives even now. Over the next couple of weeks we will look at the interplay of the cross and the resurrection and why they are so important to our faith. So stay tuned.