Who Do You Say That I Am?

 Note: So it's been about a week and a half. Here's a culmination of what I've been thinking about for that time. Hope it pricks you as it has pricked me.            

           The first week in divinity school has been a blast. Being in one place with so many like-minded, academically inclined (read: nerdy) Christians has been eye-opening and thrilling for me. But the conversations that I have been involved in have reminded me of one over-arching, pervasive fact: our answer to Jesus’ question in Mark 8:29 dictates how we think about God and ultimately how we live our lives.

            At first the response might be, “Uh…well, duh! Since Christ is the Son of God, Christology and theology have to be inextricably linked.” But it’s deeper than that. I’ve come to define my research interest as an interest in patristic Christology.¹ In undergrad, I wrote my final paper in religious studies about two early Christian writers, Athanasius and Arius, their Christologies, and their views of pilgrimage. For these two men, it was their disparate views of Christ, which led to extended, vitriolic polemics. In their day and in ours, people are quick to call the details of Christ’s identity irrelevant.² In many cases, the focus is instead shifted to focus exclusively on his actions.* But in their day and in ours, Christ’s identity is paramount if we are to serve Him in Spirit and in truth. But back to the specifics of these two…

These different views of Christ stemmed from different views of God. For Athanasius (in my view, the orthodox one), Jesus was/is the Word of John 1: in the beginning with God, God Himself, and active in creation. If one were to diagram the cosmic order according to Athanasius, God the Father and God the Son would be at the top together, with the rest of creation below them. (Note: to properly imagine Christ’s immanence, imagine Him also among creation. He’s got the transcendence and the immanence going on at the same time.) Arius, on the other hand, had a slightly different view of Christ. He operated with, in my opinion, a Middle/Neo-Platonic backdrop. In other words, he saw transcendence and oneness as the primary attributes of God. To him, nothing was like God or could ever be like God³. So to suggest that Jesus was God would be a grave error in his mind. Arius said this, “If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this, it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he had his substance from nothing.” To Arius, there was a time that God the Father was not a Father, he was just God. But at some later “time”⁴, God created Jesus. But Jesus’ status as a creation has some key implications, which Arius goes on to explain: Jesus “neither exactly understands nor knows the Father. He is not the…Word of the Father, but is in name only called Word and Wisdom, and is called by grace Son and Power.” Thus, Christ is given the names of Scripture because of access as opposed to possession, according to Arius. To him, Jesus has access to the Wisdom and Power of God the Father, but that is the extent of his uniqueness. Besides that fact, he is portrayed as just another human being. To diagram Arius’ cosmic, imagine God the Father at the level of the outer reaches of the Milky Way, imagine Christ at the ceiling of your local church/cathedral, and you and the rest of creation right where you sit. Needless to say, this type of thought definitely had practical, pastoral implications.

Do you see the issues that this brings up when it comes to salvation? Athanasius definitely did. If Jesus doesn’t fully understand or know the Father, how in the world are we supposed to trust in Him for salvation? Is John sorely mistaken when he says that the Word became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ? To borrow Paul’s characteristic response, μη γενοιτο⁵! Jesus has to be fully God for Christianity to make any kind of sense. Let’s look at one practical, pastoral issue that this Christological assertion speaks to: pilgrimage and holy travel.

To Athanasius, pilgrimage and holy travel are unnecessary. The Kingdom of God is within you. You don’t need to travel to a far away holy place or some far away holy person to experience God’s presence and build your relationship. The body of believers is more than enough for that. His view stems from his view of Christ as both transcendent and immanent. He is both above His creation and among His creation. After all, He became human for us. That wasn’t a sign of his weakness, as Arius might argue, but rather a manifestation of his power. To formulate for yourself some external locus of holiness is to misunderstand the Gospel. To Arius, however, pilgrimage and holy travel would seem natural, if not imperative. After all, God is far away and difficult to understand. I mean, Jesus is close but not quite there. So for me to think that I need to travel a great distance to talk to a sage or go to Christ’s birthplace and tomb to experience holiness makes sense. In my mind, the same kind of logic applies to prayer and how we think about it and practice it. It is difficult to pray and have a conversation with a God who, intellectually, we think is far away. But if our Christology is informed by Scripture, we know that we serve a God who will never leave us nor forsake us. In the words of Athanasius: “He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father. For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are.”

This is all just to show that Christology and theology are not just lofty ideas that should be left to theologians and pastors to contemplate. These are things that we all as Christians should consider. As a matter of fact, if we don’t, that is a kind of consideration in and of itself. If who Christ is isn’t important to us, how can we claim to know Him? Do we run the risk, at the time of the Final Judgment, of Him turning to us saying that He never knew us? Believe me, that is literally the last thing I want to hear from my Savior. The Master has given us the opportunity to know him. I say we seize that opportunity and run with it because it is only by knowing Christ that we can truly do what He wants us to do and be who He wants us to be.

1: To the unitiated, patristics is the study of early Christian writers.

2: Emperor Constantine wanted Arius and Athanasius to lay aside their differences and to stop “quarreling about small and very trifling matters”. We offer the same kind of dismissal in the name of ecumenism and “tolerance”. We disagree about theology. That’s a fact. Let’s civilly engage that disagreement.

*: This is just something I recently noticed. This is what I see as the root of "liberation theology", which is prominent in a lot of divinity schools and some seminaries. Whether it is black liberation theology, gay/lesbian liberation theology, feminist theology, or other similar schools of thought, the root is this: God, and by extension Christ, is seen as first and foremost a protector and advocate for the oppressed. Each of these groups then appropriate that as a theological declaration that God is for them because they are oppressed in today's world. This leads to a reinterpretation of Scripture on those grounds. I think the social justice bent is definitely an important aspect of the faith, but it was neither my nor Christ's main focus. He came to set the captives free, but not necessarily in earthly terms. Sometimes freedom from sin manifests itself in prosperity and earthly freedom but sometimes it doesn't. We've still got to be patient for Christ to come back and set the world straight. We can't do all of that on our own. 

3: Looking at this today, it reminds me of the pure, indivisible monotheism that Islam suggests. One of the necessary conversations that needs to take place between Christians and Muslims is a correct elucidation of what we (Christians) believe about Christ and how, truly, it doesn’t make us polytheistic. While the Trinity is a weird kind of monotheism, God is indeed still One.

4: We can’t really call it “time”, since all of this is taking place before time actually exists…yeah. Intense.

5: The NIV translates this, “By no means!” Other translations have things like “Let it not be!”, which is the literal translation. In context, however, it’s much more similar to the contemporary “Hell no!” Paul has quite a few slightly vulgar moments.