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.