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.
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