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That
Jesus died is history; that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins is the
Gospel. – Alister McGrath
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Modernism
has laid down two fundamental challenges to the doctrine of the divinity of
Christ, especially as it is expressed in the doctrine of the incarnation.
First, it is wrong.
Our growing understanding of the background to the New Testament, the way in
which Christian doctrine has developed, the rise of the scientific world-view,
and so on, force us to abandon the idea that Jesus was God in any meaningful
sense of the word. Second, it is unnecessary.
Christianity can exist without the need for such obsolete and cumbersome ideas
as God becoming man, traditionally grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ
and expressed in the doctrine of the incarnation. In a world come of age, Christianity
must learn to abandon these ideas as archaic and irrelevant if it is to
survive.
It
is significant that most recent criticisms of the incarnation, such as those
expressed in The Myth of God
Incarnate (1977), demonstrate a tendency to concentrate upon
objections to the idea of
incarnation, rather than the basis
of the idea itself. After all, the idea of God incarnate in a specific
historical human being was quite startling within its first-century Jewish
context, whatever may have been made of it in the later patristic period, and
the question of what caused this belief to arise requires careful examination.
Of central importance to this question is the resurrection itself, a subject
studiously ignored (along with the major contributions to the incarnational
discussion by Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, Walter Kasper and others)
by most of the contributors to The
Myth of God Incarnate.
The
idea of incarnation is easy to criticize: it is paradoxical, enigmatic, and so
on. But everyone already knows this, including the most fervent advocates of
the idea. And it is absurd, even offensive, to suggest that those who regard a
belief in the incarnation as legitimate are intellectually hidebound or trapped
in their traditions, unable to think for themselves. The question remains, as
it always has been: is the incarnation a proper and legitimate interpretation
of the history of Jesus of Nazareth?
The
fact that something is paradoxical and even self-contradictory does not
invalidate it. Those who have worked in the scientific field are only too aware
of the sheer complexity and mysteriousness of reality. The events lying behind
the rise of quantum theory, the difficulties of using models in scientific
explanation – to name but two factors which I can remember particularly clearly
from my own period as a natural scientist – point to the inevitability of
paradox and contradiction in any except the most superficial engagement with
reality.[1] Our apprehension of reality is partial
and fragmentary, whether we are dealing with our knowledge of the natural world
or of God. The Enlightenment world-view tended to suppose that reality could be
totally apprehended in rational terms, an assumption which still persists in
some theological circles, even where it has been abandoned as unrealistic
elsewhere. All too many modern theologians cry 'Contradiction!', and expect us
all to abandon there and then whatever it is that is supposed to be contradictory.
But reality just isn't like that.
An
example of this approach deployed against the principle of the incarnation is
provided by John Hick who asserts ('argues' is not the mot juste) that the idea of
Jesus being both God and man is logically contradictory.[2] Quoting Spinoza, Hick asserts that talk
of one who is both God and man is like talking about a square circle. Hick's
consistency at this point is difficult to trace, as he is already committed to
the belief that all the concepts of God to be found in the world religions –
personal and impersonal, immanent and transcendant – are compatible with each
other. Indeed, such is the variety of the concepts of divinity currently in
circulation in the world religions that Hick is obliged to turn a blind eye to
the resulting logical inconsistency between them – only to seize upon and
censure this alleged 'inconsistency' in the case of the incarnation. But Hick
cannot be allowed to make this robust assertion concerning the logical
incompatibility of God and man unchallenged, and his less than adequate
knowledge of the development of Christology in the mediaeval period is clearly
demonstrated in this matter. The fact that there is no logical incompatibility
between God and man in the incarnation is demonstrated, and then theologically
exploited, by that most brilliant of all English theologians, William of Ockham.[3] Ockham's discussion of this point is
exhaustive and highly influential, and has yet to be discredited. Indeed, it is
confirmed by the superb recent study of Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate,[4] which has received considerable critical
acclaim within philosophical circles.
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Temptation on the Mount
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Let
us look briefly at some of the points that might be raised here. Under what
circumstances might the idea of Jesus Christ being both God and man, divine and
human, be considered a logical absurdity? We can bring out the point at issue
by considering Spinoza's example of the square circle, made to bear such
theological weight by Hick. Why is the idea of a square circle an absurdity?
Because 'square' and 'circle' both occupy the same space on a logical map. They
are both examples of shapes. A single shape cannot conform to two
irreconcilable forms. It is one (a square), the other (a circle), or neither
(perhaps a triangle, or some ill-defined shape). 'Circle' and 'square' thus
define mutually exclusive categories of shape: a shape cannot be both of them
at one and the same time.
But
now consider Jesus Christ as God and man. What common logical area is occupied
by 'God' and 'man'? Of what species are they both examples? In fact, they
occupy no common ground; God is creator, man is a creature. As Thomas Aquinas
stressed, divinity and humanity occupy no common logical – or even, as his
famous distinction between essentia
and existentia makes
clear, ontological
– territory. They are totally distinct. The parallel between the square circle
and the incarnation is thus devoid of any serious logical basis.
Again,
at the purely logical level, it is interesting to challenge Hick concerning why
'divinity' and 'humanity' should be treated as irreconcilable.[5] They are different – but why should they
not co-exist? Square circles do not exist, for the simple reason that they are
mutually exclusive categories of shape. But why should not divinity and
humanity be complementary? On the basis of what logical rule can such a
possibility be excluded? A trivial example is suggested by a colleague of mine,
who has both British and Swiss citizenship. Dual nationality is a common enough
occurrence to make its theological potential worth exploring. Hick's crude
analysis of the logic of the incarnation suggests that the following are
logically incompatible:
b. Jesus is human.
But consider my friend Francis, who is fortunate enough to have dual nationality. We could summarize his situation like this.
a. Francis is British.
b. Francis is Swiss.
A
logical contradiction exists if, and
only if, being British excludes being Swiss. But it does not. And
why, at the logical level, should being human exclude Jesus from being divine?
Might he not be a citizen of heaven, as well as of earth?
The
charge of logical incoherence thus remains unpersuasive, except to those
precommitted, for whatever reason, to anti-incarnational view-points. At
points, Hick seems to reject incarnationalism on account of the difficulties
that it raises for his theory of religions, which is more than a little
disrupted by the traditional doctrine of the incarnation. Hick's interest in
challenging the doctrine seems to be motivated by a quite different agenda,
concerned with the homogenization of religions – a process to which the
doctrine of the divinity of Christ is a serious stumbling block.
More
seriously, Hick seems to work on the basis of the assumption that he already
knows exactly what
God is like, and on the basis of this knowledge is in a position to pass
judgment on the logical niceties of the incarnation. But this is obviously not
the case. (None of us has privileged access to God in this way; we are all
limited in our knowledge of God, which is why the news that God has revealed
himself is such good news. We need to be told
what God is like; left to our own devices, we would wallow about in
confusion and chaos.) Hick may be saying that there is a logical problem
involved with classical theism (a philosophical
system) in relation to the incarnation – but this is merely to
suggest that classical theism is not necessarily compatible with Christianity,
a point which has been made with increasing force by theologians such as Jürgen
Moltmann and Eberhard Jüngel in recent years. It is not to discredit the incarnation.
Hick may be in a position to say that God is totally unable to come amongst us
as a human being, and that the incarnation is impossible on account of who and
what God is – but if he can do so, he would seem to have access to a private
and infallible knowledge of God denied to the rest of us. And do we really
fully understand what is meant by that deceptively familiar word 'human'? Do we
really have a total and exhaustive grasp of what it is to be human? Many of us
would prefer to say that the incarnation discloses the true nature of divinity
and humanity, rather than approaching the incarnation on the basis of
preconceived ideas of divinity and humanity.
Critics
of the incarnation appear to envisage their criticisms as establishing a new,
more relevant and universal version of Christianity. But what might this new
version of Christianity be like? The inclusion of the word 'new' is deliberate:
historically, Christianity has regarded both the resurrection and the
incarnation as essential to its historical self-understanding, and any attempt
to eliminate or radically modify them would seem to lead to a version of
Christianity which is not continuous with the historical forms it has taken in
the course of its development. In the following section, we shall look at the
consequence of the elimination or radical modification of these two traditional
ideas.
Let
us suppose that Jesus was not God in any meaningful sense of the term. Let us
suppose that he was a man, like the present writer in every way (although
hopefully a nicer person), but far superior religiously and morally, and that
everything which Christianity has wanted to say about the significance of Jesus
can be said, and said well, without the belief that he was God as well as man.
Let us see if this can actually be done.
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Christ in the Wilderness
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First,
let me explore a comment made by Paul Elmer Moore, the noted American Platonist
who became a Christian late in life. He wrote powerfully of the 'loneliness of
an Ideal world without a Lord'. He longed for Platonic forms to turn into a
face – into something personal. Without the incarnation, we are left in the
realm of ideas. We are left unable to put a human face to God. We are left in a
world of ideas and ideals – a chilly world, in which no words are spoken, and
the tenderness of love is unknown. The incarnation allows us to speak with
authority of God being personal. It speaks of God entering into our history,
and allows us to abandon the cold and unfeeling world of ideals in favour of a
world charged with the thrilling personal presence of God. That difference
matters profoundly.
Let
us develop this point in a slightly different direction. On the basis of a
number of important works reflecting the spirit of Enlightenment modernism, it
is clear that a central idea congenial to the modern spirit is that Jesus
reveals to us the love of God. It is frequently pointed out that the modern age
is able to dispense with superstitious ideas about the death of Jesus (for
example, that it represented a victory over Satan or the payment of a legal
penalty of some sort), and instead get to the real meat of both the New
Testament, so movingly expressed in the parable of the prodigal son, and modern
Christianity – the love of God for humanity. In what follows, I propose to
suggest that abandoning the ideas of resurrection and the incarnation means
abandoning even this tender insight.
This
may seem an outrageous suggestion to make, but I cannot see how this conclusion
can be avoided. How may the death of Jesus Christ upon a cross at Calvary be interpreted
as a demonstration of the love of God for humanity? Once modernism dispenses
with the idea of incarnation – that Jesus is God – a number of possible
alternative explanations of the cross remain open.
a. It represents the devastating and unexpected end to the career of Jesus, forcing his disciples to invent the idea of the resurrection to cover up the totality of this catastrophe.
b. It represents God's judgement upon the career of Jesus, demonstrating that he was cursed by the law of Moses, and thus disqualified from any would-be messianic status.
c. It represents the inevitable fate of anyone who attempts to lead a life of obedience to God.
d. It represents the greatest love which one human being can show for another (cf. John 15:13) inspiring Jesus' followers to demonstrate an equal love for others.
e. The cross demonstrates that God is a sadistic tyrant.
f. The cross is meaningless.
All
of these are plausible, within the framework of modernism. The idea that the
cross demonstrates the love of God for man cannot, however, be included among
this list. It is not God who
is dying upon the cross, who gives himself for his people. It is a man – an
especially splendid man, who may be ranked with others in history who have made
equally great sacrifices for those they loved. The death of an innocent person
at the hands of corrupt judges is all too common, even today, and Jesus cannot
be singled out for special discussion unless he is something or someone
qualitatively different from us.
Someone
might, of course, immediately reply that Jesus is a higher example of the kind
of inspiration or illumination to be found in all human beings, so he must be
regarded as the outstanding human being – and for that reason, his death
assumes special significance. But this is a remarkably dogmatic assumption –
that Jesus is unique among human beings in this respect. One of the puzzles
about The Myth of God
Incarnate is that its contributors seem content to dismantle what
they term the 'myth' that God became incarnate in a human being – only to make
extravagant claims about the religious superiority of Jesus, which cannot be
justified by their basic assumptions. Commenting on these trends, a perceptive
American theologian notes:
Extravagant claims are ... made about the supreme religious worth, the sublime teaching, the transforming power, the overwhelming and vibrant God-consciousness, the tremendous ability to challenge and change people, and the contagious spirituality of Jesus ... After reading such romantic pap, one wonders why anyone would have bothered to crucify Jesus. Such Christologies try to explain the existence of Christianity apart from the discontinuity and shock of cross and resurrection, and so end by making highly inflated claims about the 'human' Jesus.[6]
The
notion of the uniqueness of Jesus was established by the New Testament writers
through the resurrection, and the subsequent recognition that Jesus was none
other than the living God dwelling among us. But this insight is given and
guaranteed by two doctrines which modernism cannot allow. It would seem that
modernists are prepared to retain insights gained through the traditional
framework of resurrection and incarnation – and then declare that this
framework may be dispensed with.
But
this is clearly questionable, to say the least. If the traditional framework is
declared to be wrong, the consequences of this declaration for each and every
aspect of Christian theology must be ascertained. Discard or radically modify
the doctrines of resurrection and incarnation, and the idea of the 'uniqueness'
or the 'superiority' of Jesus becomes a dogmatic assertion without foundation,
an assertion which many of more humanist inclinations would find offensive. We
would be equally justified in appealing to other historical figures – such as
Socrates or Gandhi – as embodying the best of Christian moral behaviour.
This
point becomes more important when we return to the question of how the death of
Jesus can be interpreted as a self-giving divine act, demonstrating the love of
God for humanity. It is not God who is upon the cross: it is a human being.
That point must be conceded by those who reject the incarnation. It may then be
the case that God makes his love known indirectly (and, it must be said, in a
remarkably ambiguous manner) through the death of Jesus Christ, but we have
lost for ever the insight that it is God himself who shows his love for us on
the cross.
What
the cross might conceivably demonstrate, among a number of other, more
probable, possibilities, is the full extent of the love of one human being for
others. And as the love of human beings can be thought of as mirroring the love
of God, it would therefore be taken as an indirect demonstration of what the
love of God is like, in much the same way that countless other individuals have
given up their lives to save their friends or families throughout history. But
whom did Jesus die to save? None, save possibly Barabbas, can be said to have
benefited directly from his death, yet it would seem that modernism would like
us to understand Jesus' death as making some sort of religious point which will
enrich our spiritual lives. But this is not how the New Testament writers
understood his death (not least because they insisted upon interpreting that
death in the light of the resurrection, a procedure regarded as illegitimate by
modernists), and it is certainly difficult to see how it would have cut much
ice in the hostile environment in which Christianity had to survive and expand
in the first period of its existence.
Had
Jesus died in western Europe in the modern period, such an interpretation of
his death might have had a certain degree of plausibility – but the historical
significance of Jesus' death was determined by its historical context, and we
are committing historical errors which parallel those of the ill-fated
nineteenth-century 'quest of the historical Jesus' if we project modern
cultural preoccupations onto the event of the death of Christ. The
interpretation which modernism wishes to place upon the death of Christ is
culturally conditioned by the social and personal values of western society,
and is imposed upon (rather than discerned within) the history of Jesus.
The
traditional framework for discussion of the manifestation of the love of God in
the death of Christ is that of God humbling himself and coming among us as one
of us, taking upon himself the frailty and mortality of our human nature in
order to redeem it. To deny that the lonely dying figure upon the cross is God
is to lose this point of contact, and to return to the view which Christianity
overturned in its own day and age – that 'God is with us only in his
transcendence' (Don Cupitt). A divine representative – not God himself –
engages with the pain and suffering of this world. It is his love, not God's,
which is shown. And to those who might think that this difficulty may be
eliminated by developing the idea of God allowing himself to be identified with
the dying Christ, it may be pointed out that the exploration of this idea by
Moltmann and Jüngel leads not merely to an incarnational, but to a Trinitarian, theology. In
order to do justice to the Christian experience of God through Jesus Christ, we
cannot view Jesus Christ merely in terms of his function – we are dealing with
an identity of being, rather than just an identification of function. Jesus
acts as and for God precisely because he is
God.
A
similar point may be made in relation to suffering. As we noticed earlier,
twentieth-century apologetics has recognized that any theology which is unable
to implicate God in some manner in the sufferings and pain of the world
condemns itself as inadequate and deficient. The twentieth century has
witnessed previously unimagined horrors of human suffering in the trenches of
the First World War, in the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, and the programmes
of genocide established by Nazi Germany and Marxist Cambodia. The rise of
'protest atheism' – perhaps one of the most powerful sentiments to which modern
theology must address itself – reflects human moral revulsion at these acts.
Protest atheism has a tendency to select soft targets, and there are few
targets softer in this respect than a non-incarnational theology.
An
incarnational theology speaks of God subjecting himself to the evil and pain of
the world at its worst, in the grim scene at Calvary. God suffered in Christ,
taking upon himself the agony of the world which he created. A
non-incarnational theology is forced, perhaps against its intuition, to speak
of a God who may send his condolences through a representative, but who does
not (or cannot, for fear of being accused of logical contradiction?) enter into
and share his people's suffering at first hand. And for a modernist who rejects
substitutionary theories of the atonement, God can hardly be allowed to take on
himself his own punishment for the sins of humanity through a human
representative, who suffers instead of and on behalf of man.
In
1963, the English Sunday newspaper, The
Observer publicized John Robinson's book Honest to God with the
headline 'our image of God must go'. The image that Robinson had in mind was
that of an old man in the sky. But the 'image of God that must go' in the face
of the intense and deadly serious moral criticisms of protest atheism is that
of a God who does not experience human suffering and pain at first hand – in
short, a non-incarnational image of God. Many of those who criticize the
incarnation seem to realize the force of this point, and attempt to retain it,
despite their intellectual misgivings. A non-incarnational theology is fatally
flawed. Perhaps in the end, it will not be the protests of orthodoxy which
destroy non-incarnational theologies, but protest atheism, which wisely and
rightly detects the fundamental weakness of such a theology in precisely this
respect.
A
final point which may be made concerns the permanent significance of Jesus
Christ. Why is he of such importance to the Christian faith here and now, some
twenty centuries after his death? The traditional answer is that his
significance lay in his being God incarnate; that in his specific historical
existence, God assumed human nature. All else is secondary to this central
insight, derived from reflection upon the significance of his resurrection. The
fact that Jesus was male; the fact that he was a Jew; the precise nature of his
teaching – all these are secondary to the fact that God took upon himself human
nature, thereby lending it new dignity and meaning.
But
if Jesus is not God incarnate, his significance must be evaluated in terms of
those parameters which traditional Christianity has treated as secondary or
accidental (in the Aristotelian sense of the term). Immediately, we are
confronted with the problem of historical conditioning: what conceivable
relevance may the teachings and lifestyle of a first-century male Jew have for
us today, in a totally different cultural situation? The maleness of Christ has
caused offence in radical feminist circles: why should women be forced to
relate to a male religious teacher, whose teaching may be compromised by his
very masculinity, as well as by the patriarchal values of his cultural
situation? And why should modern western humanity pay any attention to the
culturally-conditioned teaching of such an individual, given the seemingly
insuperable cultural chasm dividing first-century Palestine and the
twentieth-century west? And even the concept of the 'religious personality' of
Jesus has been seriously eroded, as much by New Testament scholarship as by
shifts in cultural perceptions. For reasons such as these, a non-incarnational
Christianity is unable to convincingly anchor the person of Jesus Christ as the
centre of the Christian faith. He may be the historical point of departure for
that faith, but its subsequent development involves the leaving behind of the
historical particularity of his existence in order to confront the expectations
of each social milieu in which Christianity may subsequently find itself. Jesus
says this – but we
say that. This may
be acceptable in a first-century Palestinian context – but that is acceptable in a
modern western culture, in which we live and move and have our being. Jesus is
thus both relativized and marginalized. Many non-incarnational versions of
Christianity accept and welcome such insights – but others find them
disturbing, and perhaps unconsciously articulate an incarnational Christianity
in order to preserve insights which they intuitively recognize as central.
Critics
of doctrines such as the divinity of Christ tend to work on the basis of two
presuppositions. First, that there exists a theological equivalent of precision
surgery, which allows certain elements of the Christian faith to be excised
without having any detrimental effect whatsoever upon what remains. Second,
that by eliminating logical and metaphysical difficulties, a more plausible and
hence more acceptable version of Christianity will result. Both these
assumptions are clearly questionable, and must be challenged.
To
return to our surgical analogy, we are not talking about removal of an appendix
(a vestigial organ serving no useful purpose), but of the heart, the life-pump
of the Christian faith. As C.S. Lewis so perceptively noted: 'The doctrine of
Christ's divinity seems to me not something stuck on which you can unstick but
something that peeps out at every point so that you'd have to unravel the whole
web to get rid of it'.[7] Far from being an optional extra, the
divinity of Christ, given expression in the doctrine of the incarnation, is an
essential and integral part of the authentically Christian understanding of
reality.
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Within each of us exists the image of
God, however disfigured and corrupted by sin it may presently be. God is able
to recover this image through grace as we are conformed to Christ. Just as the
figure of David lay hidden within the marble, discernible only to the eye of
its creator, so the image of God (however tarnished by sin) lies within us, see
and known by God Himself. Yet God loves us while we are still sinners. He
doesn't have to wait until we stop sinning. Acceptance of His love is a major
step along the road that leads to our liberation from the tyranny of sin. -
Alister McGrath
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1403884]
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Faith in the resurrection and incarnation is what
kept and keeps Christianity growing and spreading. The sheer vitality,
profundity and excitement of the Christian faith ultimately depends upon these.
In a day and age when Christianity has to fight for its existence, winning
converts rather than relying upon a favourable cultural milieu, a non-incarnational
theology despoiled of the resurrection has little to commend it. It is perhaps
significant that many critics of the resurrection and incarnation were
themselves originally attracted to Christianity through precisely the theology
they are now criticizing.
The
history of the church suggests that such a version of Christianity is a
spiritual dead end. To recall the words of Thomas Carlyle: 'If Arianism had
won, Christianity would have dwindled to a legend.' To its critics,
incarnationless Christianity, seems to be scholarly, bookish and devoid of
passion, without the inner dynamism to challenge and conquer unbelief in a
world in which this is essential for its survival. But this is where history
will pass its own judgment. Only a form of Christianity which is convinced that
it has something distinctive, true, exciting and relevant to communicate to the
world in order to transform it will survive.
Rev Dr Alister McGrath holds the Andreas Idreos
Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion
at the University of Oxford. Previous posts include the Professor of Theology,
Ministry, and Education at Kings College London and Professor of Historical
Theology at the University of Oxford. McGrath holds three doctorates from the
University of Oxford, covering Science, Theology and their relationship and is
the author of many academic and popular books on apologetics.
View all resources by Alister McGrath
View all resources by Alister McGrath
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.bethinking.org/jesus/the-divinity-of-christ
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Professor Alister McGrath - On The Trinity
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