Answer
a person who can see no more to Jesus than a good person or a
great moral teacher.
I have faced a serious dilemma in answering this
question as it tells us
nothing about the person making this statement.
He/she could be:
1.
A
‘seeker’ on an Alpha course on the verge of asking
Jesus into his/her life.
2.
A
regular church-goer who from time to time struggles with the concept of
Jesus
as God.
3.
A
student of theology.
4.
A
person of another faith with a genuine wish to learn something about
Christianity.
5.
A
vehement atheist with a compelling passion to denounce Christianity.
The way
in which I
would answer the person would vary considerably depending on which of
the above
groups he/she belonged to. In
particular, if he/she belonged to one of the first two groups I most
certainly
would not
start by talking about the issues we are told to consider,
namely the significance of the incarnation, the cross, the
resurrection,
atonement and suffering as to do so could be counter productive. In order to complete the
assignment I have,
therefore, made the assumption that the person is a student of theology
so that
I can speak freely about the Christian faith without the complication
of the
need for pastoral care.
Accepting Jesus as ‘a good person and/or
a great moral teacher’ is a
perfectly acceptable starting point on the journey to faith and is an
equally
acceptable ‘fall-back’ position for those whose
faith occasionally wavers (and
whose doesn’t!).
The question that arises when trying to move
forward from this point is
essentially that of Christology – who or what is or was Jesus
of Nazareth? There
can be few questions that have had as many
hours of thought devoted to them as this.
Every disciple, every saint, every theologian, every
ordinary member of
the congregation that has ever lived since Jesus walked on this earth
has given
thought to this question and, I suspect, the majority will have had
some problems
in answering it.
Such problems often stem from the inability of man
to express in human
terms that which is beyond human understanding.
We may have a faith as strong and firm as mountains but we
cannot ever
begin to understand the true nature of God and even less to explain it
to
others. Whatever
words we choose to use
will be hopelessly inadequate and be no more likely to be correct than
the
gurgles of a baby are to be an exposition on the philosophical
consequences of
postmillennialism! God
cannot be
constrained by the limits of our knowledge or imagination.
The development of Christology in
the New Testament
In his book Christian Theology, Alister McGrath
explains:
Christology sets out to locate Jesus of Nazareth on a conceptual map. It attempts to place him along the co-ordinates of time and eternity, humanity and divinity, particularity and universality, and answer the question of how an event which took place at a specific time and place can be relevant for all people and all times.
A study of the New Testament suggests that there
was no doubt in the
mind of any of the writers that Jesus was a man.
However, the early Christians struggled with
how to portray the fact that he was more than that.
Jesus had enabled his followers to see God in
a way that they had never seen him before.
He seemed to have access to what a modern
children’s hymn writer has
dubbed the ‘Royal Telephone’ giving direct access
to God. How could
this very special relationship
between Jesus and God be expressed in words?
This question taxed the minds of the early Christians for
at least four
hundred years during which they explored a great many possible answers. Those early explorations
eventually led to
the accepted orthodoxy that we have inherited today, though the debate,
of
course, continues unabated in academic circles.
A study of the words used in the New Testament to
describe Jesus gives
an insight into the issues that confronted the writers and the
terminology that
they developed:
Lord
The earliest known confession of faith in the
Christian Church was to
acknowledge Jesus as Lord:
Romans
10:9 If you confess
with your lips that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you
will be
saved.
The word Lord appears throughout the bible. It is a translation of the
Aramaic word mar and the Greek word
kyrios.
Alister McGrath explains:
The term Lord appears to have powerful theological associations, partly on account of its use to translate the Tetragrammaton – the four Hebrew characters used to represent the sacred name of God in the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, often represented in English as YHWH or Yahweh.
The use of the word Lord in that early confession
of faith can be looked
upon at two levels. First,
it acknowledged
Jesus as a spiritual leader and guide that could offer a path to a
better life
and ultimate salvation. Secondly,
by
association with the use of the word to represent YHWH, it implied what
McGrath
describes as “a high degree of identity between Jesus and God.
Saviour
The New Testament contains several descriptions of
Jesus as Saviour.
Matthew
1:21 She will bear a son, and
you are to name him
Jesus, for he will save
his people from their sins.
Luke
2:11 Unto you is born this day
in the city of
David a Saviour,
who
is Christ the Lord.
Acts
4:12 There is salvation in
no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.
Hebrews
2:10 It was fitting that God,
for whom and through
whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make
the
pioneer of their salvation
perfect through sufferings.
The development of the doctrine of salvation in
Christian theology over
the years has turned it into an extremely complex issue, not least in
terms of when it occurs. Are we saved at the moment
when we proclaim
Jesus as Lord or at some time thereafter?
McGrath explains it thus:
The Christian
understanding of salvation presupposes that something has
happened, that something is now
happening and that something further
will still happen to believers.
In its simplest interpretation, the doctrine of
salvation tells us that,
if we invite Jesus into our lives, he can save us from the consequences
of sin
here and now as we live our life on earth.
More complex interpretations introduce an eschatological
dimension along
with the question that so vexed Paul in his letter to the Galatians:
does
salvation depend upon good works or on sola
fide - faith in
Christ alone.
Son of God
The designation of Jesus as “Son of
God” is seen by many as a central
pillar of Christianity, but what does the phrase mean? Does it mean
‘son’ in the biological sense or
is its meaning metaphorical?
The phrase is used in the Old Testament where it
can generally be
translated as meaning “belonging to God.”
It was applied to the People of Israel in general in
Exodus 4:22 and to
David in 2 Samuel 7. A
similar term was
used by Jesus himself:
Mark
3:17 James son of Zebedee and
John the brother of James
(to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder);
The term “son of ... ...” was
used in the time of Jesus to mean “in the
likeness of.” Indeed,
it still is in
England today. We
might say “Bill is
very much the son of his father” meaning that the two share
many
characteristics.
Although the Christology of some branches of the
Christian church today
interpret the phrase “Son of God” in a literal way
it seems unlikely that this
was ever believed by the early Christians who almost certainly used the
term as
a metaphor.
Son of Man
The term bar nasha
in Aramaic,
translated into English as Son of Man,
is used to refer to Jesus in all four gospels and in both Acts and
Revelation. There
has been fierce debate
about whether Jesus used the term to describe himself or whether it is
a later
invention of the post-resurrection Church.
In the Old Testament it is a form of address used by God
to the prophet
Ezekiel and in Psalm 8 it is used to refer to mankind in general as
pre-eminent
in the created order. Some
interpretations of the term give it an important eschatological
significance
but others see it as no more than Jesus’ way of saying
“I, being the man that I
am.”
Messiah
At the time of Jesus there was a strong belief and
an almost desperate
hope for the coming of a new King in the Davidic tradition who would
lead them
out of the oppression they were suffering under the Romans. Traditionally, Kings were
anointed with oil
as a public sign that their kingship had the approval of God. The Hebrew word for
“the one who has been
anointed” is mashiah,
better known in
its anglicised form of Messiah. The
Greek translation of mashiah is Christos, which is the root of the title
Christ that we now apply to Jesus.
There are several accounts in the New Testament
where we learn from
Jesus that he is the Messiah. In
Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus affirms Peter’s statement that
he is the Messiah
and the Son of God, but he does not utter the words himself.
Mark 8: 27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ 28 And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ 29 He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
Later in the same three gospels, Jesus tells the
High Priest that he is
the Messiah, but only in response to a question.
However, in his conversation with the
Samaritan woman he volunteered the information at a point when he could
easily
have remained silent:
John 4: 25 The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26 Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’
God
The Jewish faith was strictly monotheistic so the
early writers would
have been extremely hesitant in referring to Jesus directly as God for
fear of
denouncement as blasphemers.
Never-the-less, there are a number of passages in the New
Testament that
appear to do just this, the most significant of which is the opening of
St
John’s gospel:
John 1: 14-18 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The term ‘The Word’ is used
throughout the Bible with a variety of
shades of meaning. In
this context it
refers to God, the same God by whose word
heaven and earth were made as recorded in Genesis.
The Latin word for flesh is carne
from which is derived the English
word incarnation which is used to denote the description in John 1 of
God
taking on human form.
How the incarnation affects our
understanding of God and His world
This concept of God taking on human form as Jesus
caused deep divisions
amongst the early Christians. Was
Jesus
a man or was he God? The
debate was
finally resolved, at least in doctrinal terms, at the Council of
Chalcedon in
451. The
‘Chalcedonian definition’
described Jesus using the ‘two natures’ formula: he
is both truly divine and
truly human.
The doctrine of the incarnation has a major impact
on our view of both
Jesus and God. If
Jesus is ‘God made
flesh’ he is not ‘just a good person or a great
moral teacher’ – he is
God. If God was
prepared, in the words
of the well know hymn, to ‘take frail flesh and
die’ he is not the fierce, tyrannical
God of the Old Testament inflicting punishment on sinners but a loving,
caring
God who wants to give his children a further chance to mend their
sinful
ways. Through Jesus
we have been given
what McGrath describes as “a window into God’s
being and a door into his
presence.”
Atonement and the meaning of the
Cross and the Resurrection
The doctrine of Atonement has its roots in early
Judaism. Sin
destroys the relationship between man and
God and atonement is the mechanism employed to bring about
reconciliation
between the two. The
earliest mechanism
employed to bring about atonement was animal sacrifice carried out
using the
elaborate rituals described in the Pentateuch.
In these the blood or life of the animal was given to God
to atone for
the sins of man.
This principle of the suffering of one being (in
the Pentateuch, an
animal) atoning for the sins of another was taken a step further in the
time of
the Maccabees in the first and second century BC.
The Maccabean Martyrs (seven Jewish brothers
and their mother) appealed to God to allow their suffering to atone for
the
sins of the whole nation.
2 Maccabees 7: 37 I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our ancestors, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by trials and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God, 38 and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty that has justly fallen on our whole nation.’
This well-established practice of atonement was
taken up by the writers
of the New Testament and applied to Jesus, the verse below from Mark
suggesting
that Jesus understood his coming death in terms of atonement:
John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Mark 10: 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’
This belief that Jesus died to atone for our sins
and so restore our
right relationship with God has been a continuous theme of orthodox
Christianity throughout its history.
It is good, and indeed inevitable, that those with
an enquiring mind
should question the divinity of Jesus, but when the debate is ended it
is what
we feel with our heart or soul that is important, not what we can
reason in our
head. If we feel
the presence of Jesus
in our soul and we have determined to follow Him then we can call
ourselves a
Christian no matter what conflicts may rage in our head. Our inability to
conceptualise Him or to
understand the nature of His incarnation must never be allowed to
become a
barrier between Him and us. He
would not
want it so.