Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Christology that Matters - Post #2 - Who is this God
Last week I posted the first of what I hope to be a long ongoing series, I wrote about why we really should care and study what it means to say that Jesus is fully God and fully man. You can find that first post here:
This week I begin to talk about the divine person who lives in Jesus. In particular, how is the Son related to the God we meet elsewhere in scripture.
Who is this God?
As I mentioned in my first post, the issue of Christology in the first few centuries was never “Is Jesus God” but “what kind of God is he?” Dan Brown with his silly speech (it seemed even sillier in the great vocal tones of Ian McKellen, who of course has no love for Christianity) that the deity of Christ was voted on at Nicea and barely passed is just plain ludicrous. Now, the big issue was always, well, “If Jesus is God, is he the same level as the Father or lower?” And of course, “Is Jesus is in any way the same God as the mean old God of the Old Testament?” That last question was part of the move behind a man by the name of Marcion, who didn’t see how the God made known in Jesus was at all the same as the God of the Old Testament. That God had to go…but Jesus we like.
So Dan Brown’s little notion in The DaVinci Code is ludicrous, but that still doesn’t help us. If Christology is the study and discussion of the God-man Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, well, what of this God?
For many Christians when they think of Jesus being divine, the first place they go to is John 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
While the Gospel of John was written later in the first century, probably around 90AD (some date it as late as 100AD, but well before Nicea in 325), it is clear that the idea of Jesus as God in a serious way was part of Christian thought early on. John also includes the magnificent “My Lord and My God” from Thomas in Chapter 20. In this paper, I am going to focus entirely on John’s treatment of Jesus’ deity, because it is the cornerstore of many Christians’ beliefs, and because it gives us a lens to look at the rest of the New Testament.
John 1 is very careful in what is says. In the beginning, literally we are to understand from the Greek, before all else ever was, the Word was, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
The Word, as you have probably heard before, was a Greek philosophical concept to incorporate the notion of divine self-expression or speech. Some commentators, even as early as the 2nd century, saw this John 1 passage as a restatement of Genesis 1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…and God said…” Creation began by the utterance of God, the Word of God, and that would then affirm the third verse of John 1, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” It is by the Word of God that all things, as seen in Genesis 1, came into existence. As we shall see in a later discussion, it is also by the Word all things are held together.
Now, before going too far into this, I need to deal with what has been an accusation against this passage on and off for a long time. In the Greek there is no definite article in front of the second use of God. So it should be read, some say (mostly today Jehovah’s Witness), “and the Word was “a God.” In other words, the Word is not equal to God, and thus is a lower deity, and there should be no Trinity or any other such silliness. These people of course ignore the relatively common Greek rule called (and this is great at parties) “Granville Sharp,” which makes the second definite article (the) unnecessary. John was being quite clear – the Word was with God and the Word was God.
One of the things I often say is that, because most Christians have no clue about the Trinity, they will affirm it when they sing Holy, Holy, Holy or say the creeds, but they give no further thought to it from that point on. As a theologian I am supposed to say, “What is wrong with you all, don’t you know how important it is that you think about the Triune God all the time when you think you about God?” Well, the truth is that God is really complex, and our doctrine of the Trinity, while a true expression of who God has revealed himself to be, is not always really clear. The reason most Christians don’t do anything with the doctrine is that we who are tasked with making it clear and usable and important in their lives have tried to impress each other rather than focus on helping everyday Christians without PhDs to get it. So, here is my best attempt.
The Father is the one whom most of the New Testament is thinking of when it says God. The Father is the first “God” we really get introduced to. And yet, the Father cannot be God without the Son and the Spirit. The Son and the Spirit give of themselves to the Father, and thus help make the Father who the Father is. The Father is a complete and separate person, but were it not for what the Spirit and the Son give him, he would not be who he is – he would not be the Father (after all, you cannot be the Father without the Son) and God. But when we talk to the Father…when we meet the Father, we are meeting all of God at the same time. He has all that the Son and Spirit has given him, which is everything. So he is fully God and the fullness of God. And yet, if you take away the Son and/or the Spirit, he ceases to be that. In the end, he would not be Father or God. The same holds true for the Son and the Spirit. Each has all the fullness of the other two, but is a separate person, and is both the fullness of God and at the same time needing the other two and needed by the other two to be God.
Over the years we have tried just about every analogy to get this idea to make sense in the everyday to people. The egg doesn’t get you there (shell, white, yoke). Water doesn’t get you there (ice, water, steam). These are either three separate and unconnected things or the same thing just in three different states. Marriage, although it is just two (and the Holy Spirit, of course) gets us closer. Today there is a thing called “Christopher and Tanya.” Tanya (as best as we can get in human sinful life), gives herself fully to me. I do the same for her. When you meet one of us you meet close to the fullness of this thing called “Christopher and Tanya.” If either one of us was to die or leave (may it never be), there would be no Christopher and Tanya, even though I would still have known her and she likewise me. We are both fully “Christopher and Tanya” and yet needing the other.
I know, it probably is still not really clear. But I hope this helps. Anyways, back to Christology right. Well, what John 1 tells us is that the Word (who in a few verses will be born human) was with God in the beginning. There was never a time, then, when the being of God was not the Father and the Word/Son. This is really important and very cool because it means that if we know the Word/Son, we know God, from the beginning. While God doesn’t tell us everything about himself (it’s not like we could take it in or have the time to learn it), it does mean that there is no secret “side” of him – you know, as if while Jesus loves us and all, the Father has this hidden side to him where he really hates us. This was the view that Martin Luther, at least the early Luther had. But no, the fullness of God’s character is also seen in the Word/Son. His face turned towards us in grace is the face of God. There is no hidden dark side.g
Of course there is judgment and justice. We tend to see these words as opposites of love and mercy. But love cannot allow all things or it ceases to be love and becomes indulgence and sentimentality. And mercy without justice becomes a disease of the oppressor, not the redeemer. When God does judgment and justice in both the Old and New Testaments, it is not anger or hatred for their own sakes coming out, but the power of love working out the mercy of God which will bring judgment to those who desire to mete it out and justice for those who opposed justice.
One of the problems with talking about Jesus today is that he is so sentimentalized that he becomes a stand-in for everyone’s ideal of the perfect uncle. Some people are surprised that I am not a pacifist, being that I attempt to be Christ-centered. But while Jesus calls for turning the other cheek, he also calls for taking up your sword. He is the one who will bring final judgment and justice. Jesus does not call us to turn a blind-eye to injustice. But in the view of the cool uncle who never does anything but buy you stuff and take you to the theme-park, some see Jesus as just saying, “Can’t we all get along,” even to those who have so identified with evil (like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot) that their ideal of getting along includes only injustice, murder and hatred.
The danger in this sentimentalized Jesus is that you have made the God who we come to know in Jesus Christ as dead-set against the God who in the Old Testament destroyed the world in a flood, sent plagues on Egypt, ordered the elimination of whole tribes in the conquest of Canaan, and who brought Assyria, Babylon and Persia to be his agents of judgment. It is falling into the same trap as Marcion. We don’t much like the God we meet in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, 2 Kings, and Ezra. So we edit him out and look only at Jesus – but not Jesus as he is, but as we wish he was.
But we don’t get that option. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God in the beginning, and the Word was God. The Word, the Son of the Father who comes into the world into the person of Jesus of Nazareth, is the same Word that was spoken to announce judgment and to send down plagues. While the “rules of the game” do change when the Incarnation (the Word/Son becoming human in Jesus of Nazareth), the character of God doesn’t.
So, first and foremost we can say these two things about the God who is in Jesus of Nazareth. He is fully God alongside the Father (and the Spirit) and he is the same God who brings creation and redemption for his people, but also judgment and justice.
Jesus of Nazareth is fully God and fully human. But we must take care to say which God and what kind of humanity.
