Is Jesus a Contradiction?

God-Man?

Photo by Edal Anton Lefterov

Aside from "How can anyone still believe there's a God in our modern, push-button world?" and "Isn't God a sadist for throwing people into hell on the slightest whim?" one of the most frequent Quora questions is some variation of this one. 


Q: Is there a contradiction in the Trinity since Jesus was a human being and a god being at the same time?


A: The Christian teachings on the Trinity and the nature of Jesus are probably its 2 most misunderstood concepts. Just to clarify, the Trinity is defined in Christian theology as one being (“ousia” in Greek, the language it was first defined in) eternally existing as three distinct and infinite underlying personal realities (“Hypostasis” in Greek) — commonly called “Persons” to emphasize God’s personal (i.e., He’s not a force) nature. These three are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God (specifically the 2nd ‘person’ of the Trinity) took on and fully united with human nature in the single person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was not God only or a man only, but truly God and truly man, “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” In Christian theology this is called the Chalcedonian Definition and is based on the concept of the incarnation in the Christian Scriptures.

Hence, there is no contradiction because Jesus was first, foremost, and eternally the infinite God, but God plus something — God plus human-ness.

Light From Light

Meditation for a Sunday Morning

(This is a very old song in the Christian Movement, going back at least to the AD 900s. No one knows who wrote it.)

NATA LUX DE LUMINE

(Light that from the light was born)

I

O Light that from the light was born,

Redeemer of the world forlorn,

In mercy now your suppliants spare,

Our praise accept, and hear our prayer.

II

You who wore our flesh below,

To save our souls from endless woe,

Of your blessed body, Lord, would we

Efficient members ever be.

III

More bright than sun your aspect gleamed,

As snowdrift white your garments seemed,

When on the mount your glory shone,

To faithful witnesses alone.

IV

There did the seers of old confer

With those who your disciples were;

And you on both did shed abroad

The glory of the eternal God.

V

From heaven the Father’s voice was heard

That you the eternal Son declared;

And faithful hearts now love to own

Your glory, King of heaven, alone.

VI

Grant us, we pray, to walk in light,

Clad in your virtues sparkling bright,

That, upward borne by deeds of love,

Our souls may win the bliss above.

VII

Loud praise to you our homage brings,

Eternal God and King of kings,

Who reigns as one, you one in three,

From age to age eternally.

(Hymns of the Early Church, Rev. John Bownlie. London : 1896)

Why Unpack?

As we were discussing in the last post, Jesus' original teaching to his disciples was slowly unpacked and developed over the following few centuries. Not changed or discarded, but filled out and explained.  But why should it be "unpacked" at all?

Why can't we just stick with "the pure word of the Bible" and ignore whatever happened after the last New Testament book was written? Or better yet (as some people say) why not go by Jesus' words alone. The Apostles never understood him anyway, you know.

One reason is this: People ask questions.

The appearance of a person like Jesus raised a lot of questions. Eventually they dawned on people and the early Christian Movement had basically two choices: either tell them to 'just believe' (which was tried), or come up with an answer. And not just any answer, not something off the top of your head. After all, you were handling a revelation from God, not just some good ideas devised by a philosopher. This required some serious thinking.

Just one example: here is a question asked by an early critic of Christianity named Celsus: If there is only one God, as Jesus himself taught, and you worship Jesus also as a God, how are the two related? "If," Celsus wrote, "these people worshipped one God alone, and no other, they would perhaps have some valid argument against the worship of others. But they pay excessive reverence to one who has but lately appeared among men, and they think it no offense against God if they worship also His servant," (Against Celsus, book 8 chapter 11 - 14)

It was this question, which Christians had already been asking themselves for awhile, that led 150 years later to the concept of the Trinity.

Questioning Basil

An old Romanian painting of Basil
Courtesy of Țetcu Mircea Rareș

Oddly enough, out of all the stuff I've written here recently the post that generates a question is Sunday's quotation of Basil the Great about the Holy Spirit. And not so much on what he said but why we should care what he said at all. I thought it was a great question but it appeared on my personal Facebook page. So I've made it into today's post.

My response was typed during breaks while doing my real life job, so it's not the most well written, but other than cleaning up the spelling and inserting links and brief annotations for context's sake, it's the way I wrote it.

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Q: What does a guy in the early 4th century that was rife with superstition and political intrigue, just a couple decades after Constantine, ignorant of quantum theory, relativity theory, etc. etc. know about the nature of God? Isn't time for a "New" conference on the nature of God?


A: My short answer to the original question about the 'guy in the early 4th century' is that he's an integral part -- one of the most integral, in fact -- of the subject of my blog. My theme is classic early, consensual, ecumenical Christianity as it developed over the first 5 centuries and that what many people take as Christianity today (fundamentalism and progressivism in particular) is only superficially like it.

My longer answer is that I'm all in favor of research into whatever relation there may be between God and quantum physics (John Polkinghorne, Theoretical physicist/Priest, has some interesting ideas there), and I would add Neuroscience too. I'm especially fascinated with the work on reproducing some mental states usually associated with deep religious experiences. And the 4th century certainly was superstitious (though not as much as is usually made out, especially for well-educated people like a Basil or an Augustine) and politics was rampant as in all ages. You might remember my view of Constantine and the intermingling of Christianity with the state -- any state [Which is that it was one of the worst things ever to happen to the Christian Movement].

Validity

But I'm not sure that affects the validity of what Basil was doing on the nature of God. The basic presupposition of Christianity is that God revealed himself supremely through 'the Christ event' [fancy theologian-speak for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus]. That's one of the things about Christianity that bothered the Romans, that it was a revealed religion, not a philosophy or even a mystery religion. Because of that it was passed down from Jesus to the Apostles to the Church at large as a deposit of faith given "once for all to the saints." [In other words, since it was a revelation and not a philosophy or nature religion, it was by its nature something you received and tried to explain, the way physicists try to explain the universe.] 

The Father-Son-Spirit aspect was there from the beginning [in Second Letter to the Corinthians chapter 13 verse 13 for instance] (though not the trinitarian theology, of course). At first there wasn't a lot of deep thought about it, [i.e., the relation of Father to Son to Holy Spirit] except by Paul and to some extent John. But as evangelism continued, they ran into educated fellows like Celsus who wanted to know how we reconciled the one God with the man Jesus, who was worshiped, called 'Lord', prayed to and various other things that usually pertain to God. 

Basil and others weren't trying to do something quantum physics would help them on, I don't think. What they wanted was to define, as well as possible from the rather spare data left by Christ and the Apostles, the inner life of God.  

So what Ignatius, and Justin Martyr,  Irenaeus and Tertullian, Theophilus of Antioch, Arius (I'd include him too) and Athanasius and on down to Basil were doing was unrolling this revelation, this deposit, puzzling out which scenario covered the data (of the revelation) most completely, and struggling to come up with words with enough precision to describe their conclusion. And then, right after they produce their best effort, you find Basil and Augustine et. al. warning that even that doesn't quite do it; it's just the best try of the greatest Christian minds of their age.

The key words they used, "Ousia" and "hypostasis," were cutting edge Greek philosophy at the time, and their work has stood up well for 2 millennia. I'm not sure we have better today.

"...Properly Applied..."

Meditation for a Sunday Morning

But the Helper will teach you everything and cause you to remember all that I told you. This Helper is the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name. 

(Gospel of John chapter 1 verse 14, ERV)

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Basil of Caesarea was one of the most important theologians the Christian Movement has ever had. Both Catholics and Orthodox consider him a "Doctor (in the sense of a great teacher) of the Church." Here Basil blogs one his many demonstrations that the Holy Spirit is God.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all make holy, revive, enlighten, and comfort. No one would attribute a special, peculiar duty of making holy to the the Spirit after hearing the Savior ask the Father this about his disciples in the Gospel: "sanctify them in Your name, (Gospel of John chapter 17 verse 17, CEB). In the same way all other tasks are performed equally, for all those worthy of them, by the Father, by the Son, and by the Holy Spirit -- every grace and virtue, guidance, life, comfort, transformation into immortality, the passage into freedom and every other good thing that comes down to humanity...  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit performing one and the same duties clearly proves that they are of the same nature. It follows then that, even if the name of "Godhead" does signify God's nature, their common essence proves that this title is also quite properly applied to the Holy Spirit.

Basil of Caesarea, also known as Saint Basil the Great (AD 329 - 379)
Letter 189 chapter 7