Christmas: The God Who Comes (2)

The Christ mass, by contrast, is “the feast of Nicene dogma.”                                                                                                                                                  Fleming Rutledge, Advent: 1164

Theology rests on the narrative of biblical faith we find in Holy Scripture. This story is the life-blood of God’s people. This story norms and orients theology. It is “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). To this story the church repeatedly returned for its nourishment and sustenance. The Christmas stories we find in Matthew and Luke are benchmarks of its long and winding tale. In the first piece on Christmas we looked at it from a narrative-historical angle and drew out some of the significances present there.

In this piece we look at some theological significances the church has found in these stories as it reflected on them in the light of the places and situations the church faced as it spread through the world. What did God’s coming into the world mean in these changed and changing locales?

The church is always telling its perennial story (the biblical story) wherever it is. But it also interprets that story in light of the questions and dynamics of the place where it lives and worship. These latter interpretations are what we call theology. As noted above, theology is necessary given the church’s mandate to share the good news of the gospel with the world, And it is also necessarily subordinate to that biblical story it interprets. We may find extended insights and meanings of the Bible’s story as we seek to interpret it for our culture. But those insights must cohere with the story and never supplant it.

When Rutledge calls Christmas “the feast of Nicene dogma” she reflects this theological meaning. The Nicene Creed (late 4^th century) interprets the Christmas stories (and the entire phenomenon of Jesus) in categories of substance – two natures in one person (“fully human and fully divine”) – which were the dominant philosophical categories of that time.

Who is this God who comes among and as a human being? Obviously a crucial question, it occupied much of the early church’s attention. It took several centuries before an acceptable understanding was hammered out which affirmed Jesus as simultaneously fully human and divine in the Nicene Creed (381 a.d.) and was spelled out in some more detail in the Creed of Chalcedon (451 a.d.).

Simultaneously fully human and divine – hardly a straightforward, uncontroversial, maybe even nonsensical formula for describing Jesus. The babe in the manger is God in human flesh? Even worse, both at the same time? Not hard to imagine the variety of views about that! And variety there was. Let’s look at this variety in terms of contemporary superheroes.

Is Superman like Jesus?

Some thought Jesus could not really be God in human flesh. God and humanity could not mix with each other. Plato taught us that – the spiritual and material realms, the one good and perfect, the other deficient and inferior, simply could not interact with one another. God may have taken on the likeness of human flesh, a disguise so-to-speak, but he was not really human but divine. If you think of a certain mild-mannered reporter at a great metropolitan newspaper who underneath his suit wore a uniform of tights and a cape with a big “S” on it, you’re thinking like these early thinkers did. Superman was not really human though he disguised himself as one to be involved in human life and rescue all who needed his superpowers to rescue them.

This view, called Docetic from a Greek verb which means to “seem,” means Jesus only appeared to be human but really, and importantly, he was truly God in human disguise. Some of these folks believed that since death could not touch the divine, the divine Christ must have left the human Jesus prior to his death and returned to the spiritual realm from whence he came. Salvation, then, comes not through his death but rather through the special or esoteric wisdom one might gain about his true identity.

As reasonable as such a view is in terms of the spiritual-material dualism widespread in that time and culture, the church ruled it out-of-bounds, an unacceptable deviation from the Bible’s testimony. Truly divine, yes. But also truly human. This is the Bible’s testimony. The one in and through whom we know God; the one in and through whom we know humanity as we were meant to be. The one human who lived a life of utter love and loyalty to God (remember Jesus as the one faithful Israelite from our first post on Christmas). And that took him to death on a cross, which sacrifice of love God accepted as a sacrifice for our sin, the defeat of the spiritual powers of evil and death which had a stranglehold on humanity, and the redemption of creation from its bondage to futility (Rom.8). He did for us what only God can do and did as one of us what humanity should have but would not and could not do towards God. Jesus Christ is no Superman according to the biblical testimony.

This “Superman” view was prominent in the early church. A man named Arius was a chief exponent of it. He famously claimed “there was a time when (Jesus) was not.” But he was the highest and most powerful of all God’s creatures. The council of Nicaea was called to resolve the disputes over these views. In some sectors of the church even today Jesus is believed to be God. Human, too, yes. But not in such a way that his humanity contributes in any way to his work as Savior. What’s really important about him is that he is God.

Is Batman like Jesus?

The Gotham city hero, subject of numerous movies in recent times, is like Jesus in  certain way. The Jesus they believe only a human being, albeit one who in his unfettered openness to God accomplished great things. Batman does not present as a superhero. No superpowers – no ability to fly or super strengths – he relies on his extraordinary ninja-warrior training and mastery of bodily skills and technological prowess (his utility belt) to perform his powerful deeds. And he is driven by the passion of revenge for the deaths of his parents before his eyes as a young child. He seeks to fight all evil-doers as a generalized expression of that passion. A Batman-like Jesus is what many people, especially in modern times, believe.

Not believing in something a bizarre as the gospels’ birth stories, many believe Jesus is an extraordinary human being who in his close relation to God and the way he cares for others, especially the poor and the outcast, serves as a model for us, a “Son of God” so to speak. This view of Jesus is like the one the famous Jesus Seminar of the nineties promulgated. I remember doing the theology portion of elder-training at a large church I once served. After the session on Jesus one man, a prominent church member and very active in the community, walked down stairs with me and asked incredulously, “The church really believes that Jesus was God?”  

Thus view is somewhat life Arius’ view (above). But where in Arius’ time almost everyone believed in God and took God as their point of reference, in the time this Batman-like view arose belief in God was not so widespread or important in people’s lives. So Arius had to labor to try and explain was Jesus was not co-equal and co-eternal with God, modern folk had no belief or interest in that sort of thing and simply took it for granted that Jesus was simply a good, a very good, human being.

The same biblical views articulated above apply here against this Batman-like Jesus view. The Docetist view left us with only a divine Christ who mattered for our salvation. This “Batman” view leaves us with but a human figure who shows us in his God-like actions what we must do to be saved.

Is Ant-man like Jesus?

A less familiar superhero (though subject of a couple of recent movies), Ant-man gives us a picture of Jesus that is modalistic. That word means a deity who adopts different persona at different times to do his work in the world. Much like masks ancient actors wore to signify their characters in a play, some Christians saw God as at times the Father, at other times the Son, and at yet other times the Spirit. Father, Son, and Spirit were three “modes” or ways of being God has.

Ant-man is an analog to this modalistic God. Scientist Hank Pym made a startling discovery of some electrical waves that could transform him to the size of an ant, though maintaining his normal human strength even in this reduced state. Later he discovers the waves can work the other way and turn him into a 12-ft. tall person. But whether tiny or large he was the same person and possessed the same powers. Later still, after a nervous breakdown, Pym adopts a third persona attaching yellow wings to his suit and became Yellow Jacket (an oddball character). Now we have one person, Hank Pym, with three persona he could not be at the same time.

This way of thinking bout God does not allow for a triune understanding of God – “always and at the same time, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (A Declaration of Faith [PCUSA], ch.5, par.8). This biblically-based view (though it was only formulated the way we know a few centuries later) stand completely opposed to the “Ant-man” view. Hank Pym can be only one of his three persona at a time. God is Father, Son, and Spirit “always and at the same time.” No question how this could be baffles the human intellect. Yet it is the truth God has revealed about himself in the scriptures. The Jesus we meet in the gospels is always the Son of the Father and baptized and energized for service by the Spirit.

The great trick for the early church was to take the uncompromising monotheism (there is only one God) of the Old Testament with the New Testament’s insistence that Jesus and the Spirit also belong to the identity of Israel’s God. This difficulty is part of the reason why it took so long to come to a proper formation of this view.

A man named Sabellius (early 3^rd century) not only viewed God as “Ant-Man” (modalistic) he also divided the work of God into three phases. God was the Father during the Old Testament, the Son through Jesus’ ascension to heaven, and the Spirit since then. There are some groups today that hold such views but it is more important to note its distortion of the understanding of God as triune. The same objections to the anti-trinitarian thrust of above views also apply here. Not only does this “Ant-man” view disavow the “always and at the same time’-ness of the trinitarian view it also divides the work of God which should never be divided. The Father, Son, and Spirit are all involved together in the work of creation, redemption, and consummation.  And Jesus comment to his disciples that “the one who has seen me has seen the Father” cuts against the separation between them this view entails.

Is Jesus like Green Lantern?

In the Green Lantern mythology the universe is protected a group of police called the Green Lantern Corps. Each of them bears a ring of power which give them great powers. Only the will, imagination, and talent limit the power of these rings. This makes these powers essentially will-power. One member of this Corps is mortally wounded and lands on earth. He uses his ring to locate an earthling of such character and competence that he may take the ring and place of this dying police officer. Hal Jordan is the man the ring locates.

Jordan accepts this call and takes his place in the Green Lantern Corps. He receives this ring, which gives him seemingly unlimited power, due to his character and competence. He was but one of two or three such qualified person on earth. So the Green Lantern, then, is a human being endued with special powers because the quality of his person qualifies him for it.

Some Christians say the same thing about Jesus. He was a good man on account of whose good deeds and mercy God adopted to be his Son. This “Adoptionistic” view, as it is called, reflects similar bases as the Green Lantern myth. Jesus was a good man and God gave his special powers to do the work God called him to. No incarnation, no God becoming a human being, Jesus is a human being both before and after his adoption.

Adoptionists believed God adopted Jesus at his baptism and gave him the Spirit (often thought of as a power or force similar to the Lantern’s ring). Of its advocates Paul of Samosata (3^rd century) was perhaps the most important. Certainly the most eccentric. Unitarians are today’s adoptionists. They stress the undivided oneness of God and the goodness of Jesus as one empowered by God to do good works and model for us the life God desires for us.

By now you can spot the weaknesses here, I suspect. Adoptionism is anti-trinitarian, anti-incarnational, and has little place for the cross as a moment of salvation.

Is Jesus like the Hulk?

Dr. Bruce Banner, a physicist, discovers the power that gamma-ray radiation gives and in a crisis does himself with it to make up for power he lacked to save his wife in an auto accident. This power is triggered by anger when it turns the scientist into the Hulk.

As the Hulk he is both immensely powerful and virtually indestructible. He can restore himself immediately from any injury. His intellect and emotions, however, are lacking in inverse proportion to his strength and durability. Hulk’s mantra is “Hulk smash!”

Little of Bruce Banner remains when he helplessly turns into the Hulk. He remembers nothing of the Hulk’s escapades when the anger subsides and he returns to himself. It is as if the Hulk were another “person” residing within the Doctor.

Some within the church have thought similarly of Jesus. He had a human body, of course, but is possessed of a divine will. All he wills and does is from this divine will and this quickly becomes the most important thing about him thoroughly eclipsing his humanity (similar to Hulk’s taking over Banner’s body for its purposes). In effect, the work Jesus does in the power of the Spirit is divine and the significance of his bodily existence is effaced.

After the Council of Nicaea (325 a.d.) disagreement continued about how to describe Jesus. A man named Apollonaris offered a Hulk-like theory later on the 3^rd century. He knew that if the deity of Christ was sacrificed our salvation was imperiled for only God can save. In his time humans were thought to have a body, a soul, and a rational mind (thanks again to Plato). The latter is the most important and powerful of these parts of us. Indeed, the rational mind was divine. In Jesus, God replaced his rational mind with the divine Logos (or reason) as the most important part of his being.

This move protected both Jesus’ deity and divine immutability (unchangeability). The idea that God cannot change because to change suggests imperfection (hence the need to change) and God is perfect was widespread in the culture of Apollonaris’ time and had infiltrated much church teaching. Therefore, to protect Jesus’ deity and immutability he posited that Jesus had a fully-formed divine mind from the beginning with no need to change.

The problem here is that this is another version of a basically non-human Jesus. The third of him that was divine overwhelms the two-thirds that are merely human. Somewhat like Bruce Banner, Jesus had within him another being (so to speak) who overwhelmed and ruled his human being to accomplish the work of God.

This Hulk-like view of Jesus is not officially represented by a denomination or sect today. But it does appear particularly at a couple of crucial points debilitating to genuine discipleship. When someone says that our relationship to God is a spiritual matter that does not really touch or include our bodily life in the world but is focused on our “inner” life which is what really matters, Hulk is lurking nearby. Even more to the point, when someone asserts that Jesus could not have sinned because he was God or divine, Hulk-like Jesus is right at hand. Jesus overwhelms temptation because . . . well, because he’s Jesus and can do nothing other than trample temptation and the devil. “Hulk smash” turns out to be his mantra too! In our struggle with and too regular failures to resist sin and temptation we cannot look to Jesus for help only for forgiveness. Our struggle is foreign to Hulk-like Jesus. He remains distant from our struggle. This kind of Jesus is hard to love and feel close to. This obviously makes discipleship as a love-trust relationship with Jesus Christ very difficult indeed.

The church rightly rejected Apollonaris’ teaching at the Council of Constantinople in 381 a. d. We do well to heed their wisdom and rejected Hulk-like Jesus in our time as well. Christmas requires it.

Is Jesus like Spiderman?

Peter Parker was a science nerd and the kid who got sand kicked in his face by bullies at the beach. His parents died in plane crash and he lived with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. On a field trip to a science museum he got bit by an escaped exotic and highly radioactive spider. The spider’s venom transforms Peter into a human with spider-like super strength, agility, sensitivity, and speed. Peter’s scientific prowess enabled him to construct web-shooters which allowed him to swing from structure to structure and to bind up the bad guys for the police to pick them up.

While he appears to be a normal human teen-ager Peter Parker is not really human. He’s a hybrid, a being somewhere between human and spider, a third race, a Spiderman. Some Christians, when they refer to Jesus as the God-Man have a similar idea in mind. Jesus is a hybrid of God and humanity. His God part provides his special divine powers and capabilities as he lives out his human life. Such a hybrid can neither truly save us nor demonstrate the proper response to God he desires from his creatures.

IN the 5^th century at another Council, Chalcedon, the church declared Jesus both fully and truly divine and fully and truly human at one and the same time in one human body. How this could be the council maintained was a mystery beyond human understanding. Not all were content with that, however, and some gave answers as to how this could be.

One was Nestorius, a bishop in Constantinople. He wanted to keep Jesus’ two natures separate from each other, really two persons with two centers of consciousness. The church quickly rejected Nestorius’ ideas, again rightly but in his zeal to correct this error, an over-correction occurred. A man named Eutyches from Alexandria taught that Jesus had but one nature and that the divine and human beings of Jesus are mixed together into a new reality, neither human nor divine. This became known as Monophysitism (one nature). Something like our Spiderman hybrid, Peter Parker.

Response to Eutyches became a political imbroglio. I can’t lay out the ugly story here but suffice it to say that blood was shed and lives were lost in this fiasco. The Council of Chalcedon (451 a. d.) was called to finally resolve it.

Few Christians today think of Jesus as this strange kind of hybrid. But it still influences Christian thinking in subtle ways. Todd Miles explains,

“But if you were to ask if Jesus understands and knows them, if you were to ask if Jesus makes any difference in their lives today (outside of hope for the afterlife), if you were to ask if they are able to relate to Jesus because Jesus can relate to them, you will probably only get a blank and uncomfortable stare in return. ‘How could Jesus relate to me?’ they might ask. His deity probably overwhelms his humanity the way a drop of ink is overwhelmed by the ocean. And that would be a legitimate train of thought if the natures were combined and blended together (like ink in the ocean)” (Superheroes Can’t Save You: Epic Examples of Historic Heresies (Kindle Locations 2476-2480). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition).

At Chalcedon the church rejected this understanding of Jesus and all the others we have looked at. Its key statement is that Christ is “recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” Christmas is the rejection of all these ways humans have tried to explain how God and humanity can come together in Jesus Christ. The “miracle of Christmas”{ (Karl Barth) invites us accept this unfathomable mystery and live into it rather than try to explain it. Explanations, as we have seen, only lead us astray at this point. Chalcedon is wise to simply affirm the mystery of Christmas and fence it around with statements of what it this union of natures is not. This is the glory and wonder of Christmas!