Duality of Jesus
Jesus Christ is the metaphysical union of a divine nature with a human nature (thanks to Jason Dulle for this insight). He is both God and man. He is unique in this perspective - this makes Him both the Son of God and the Son of Mankind. Only God could save Humanity but only a man could die.
Just a Simulation?
In the back of the Concordant Literal New Testament, Knoch defines image (Greek word: eikon) as simulate. Here's the definition of simulate as found at dictionary.com:
1. To have or take on the appearance, form, or sound of; imitate. To make in imitation of or as a substitute for.
2. To make a pretense of; feign: simulate interest.
3. To create a representation or model of (a physical system or particular situation, for example).
David Guzik wrote the following:
He is the image of the invisible God: Image (the ancient Greek word eikon) expresses two ideas. First, likeness, as in the image on a coin or the reflection in a mirror. Second, manifestation, with the sense that God is fully revealed in Jesus
i. If Paul meant that Jesus was merely similar to the Father, he would have used the ancient Greek word homoioma, which speaks of similar appearance.
ii. “God is invisible, which does not merely mean that He cannot be seen by our bodily eye, but that He is unknowable. In the exalted Christ the unknowable God becomes known.” (Peake)
1. To have or take on the appearance, form, or sound of; imitate. To make in imitation of or as a substitute for.
2. To make a pretense of; feign: simulate interest.
3. To create a representation or model of (a physical system or particular situation, for example).
David Guzik wrote the following:
He is the image of the invisible God: Image (the ancient Greek word eikon) expresses two ideas. First, likeness, as in the image on a coin or the reflection in a mirror. Second, manifestation, with the sense that God is fully revealed in Jesus
i. If Paul meant that Jesus was merely similar to the Father, he would have used the ancient Greek word homoioma, which speaks of similar appearance.
ii. “God is invisible, which does not merely mean that He cannot be seen by our bodily eye, but that He is unknowable. In the exalted Christ the unknowable God becomes known.” (Peake)
What if...
Mark 8: 31 And He begins to teach them that the Son of Mankind must be suffering much and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and after three days rise.
Mark 14: 34 And He is saying to them, "Sorrow-stricken is My soul to death. Remain here and watch."35 And, coming forward a little, He fell on the earth and prayed that, if it is possible, the hour may pass by from Him.36 And He said, "Abba, Father, all is possible to Thee. Have this cup carried aside from Me. But not what I will, but what Thou!"
Now according to Mark 8:31, Jesus knew that the day would come when he would suffer and be killed. He knew and believed it so well that He taught it to His disciples. Yet, in Mark 14:35-36, He asked the Father if it might be possible that "the hour may pass". Had Jesus gone through something similar before? Could this situation be similar to when Jesus spoke of the events preceding and leading up to the Tribulation.? He knew what was going to happen but He didn't know the exact time and hour. After all Jesus was still a relatively young man at age 33 and perhaps even though He knew with certainty He would one day suffer and die, He didn't know exactly when. Just food for thought.
Mark 14: 34 And He is saying to them, "Sorrow-stricken is My soul to death. Remain here and watch."35 And, coming forward a little, He fell on the earth and prayed that, if it is possible, the hour may pass by from Him.36 And He said, "Abba, Father, all is possible to Thee. Have this cup carried aside from Me. But not what I will, but what Thou!"
Now according to Mark 8:31, Jesus knew that the day would come when he would suffer and be killed. He knew and believed it so well that He taught it to His disciples. Yet, in Mark 14:35-36, He asked the Father if it might be possible that "the hour may pass". Had Jesus gone through something similar before? Could this situation be similar to when Jesus spoke of the events preceding and leading up to the Tribulation.? He knew what was going to happen but He didn't know the exact time and hour. After all Jesus was still a relatively young man at age 33 and perhaps even though He knew with certainty He would one day suffer and die, He didn't know exactly when. Just food for thought.
What is History?
Reference has been made to a remark by a modern writer about "the essential element in Christianity which transcends history" and nothing displays more vividly the general intellectual decay of our age than the widespread use of vague and ambiguous phrases of this sort. For it is impossible to discover from the context what the writer means by it; and he takes great care to avoid a definition. At first, he appears to mean simply that Christiani ty is not only history but something more - a truism that none of us could possibly deny. Yet, if that was what he meant, one must query why he did not say so plainly and leave his meaning beyond doubt. He even reinforces this interpretation of his apparent meaning by telling us that "both the Christian and the historian are concerned with what happened in history".
This is true, and an admirable statement of the truth of the matter; and if he had left it at that all would have been well. But at once he gives it a twist, thus, "but they start from different places and with different presuppositions".
No explanation of this strange assertion is provided, and there is no attempt to justify it, let alone prove it. So in spite of what went before, we are left without any clear idea of his meaning.
Nevertheless, the purpose in this writer's mind soon becomes clear enough. It is to suggest that it does not matter whether the events recorded in the Scriptures are historically true or merely myths. So he presents us with a brand new myth. In his own words:
"As the Biblical writers and their predecessors over a period of time reflected on and interpreted what God was remembered to have done, expressing it in what seemed to be the most telling imagery, God was giving them a better understanding of the substance of His revelation."
As invariably happens with people of his sort, no proof of any kind is offered by this man. This is easily understood, for none exists; yet he evidently expects his readers to believe HIM. Why this should be so is not explained either, and in a saner age than ours the immediate retort would be: "If you believe not Moses and the Prophets, why on earth should we believe you?" In effect, we must not believe the Word of God, but we are expected to believe this man's myths:
"Rationalists" in past days, though seldom very rational in practice, were far less irrational than this person. They believed that the Biblical writers were mistaken and the victims of superstition: but they were not so credulous as to believe what this modern teacher regards as their GUESSES and superstitions as being able to give anyone a better understanding of God. A god who supposedly reveals himself in speculations and memories regarding events that never happened, or never happened as they are recorded as happening, is hardly a subject for our admiration or worth even a moment's serious consideration.
Let us, however, suppose for a while that this myth gives us a true picture of how Scripture was written; in other words, that what is presented in Scripture as history is simply the reflections of the writers on memories of events that may (or may not) have happened. Several awkward questions at once arise. Why should we taka seriously the reflections of such people? Why could not they, or their predecessors, have told us what actually DID happen? Why should we suppose that God, Who is Truth, should have a hand in so dubious a transaction? In short, what ground have we for believing ANYTHING AT ALL of the whole silly idea?
Indirectly, all this rubbish has a us to ask one further question, this time one that concerns realities: What is history?
Few people have any precise idea of the answer, because so much of what nowadays passes for history is no better than tendentious propaganda. This results from the circumstances that in the modern world events are so vast, and so complex, and are so numerous and move with such speed, that it is impossible to keep up with more than a fraction of them. The tendency, therefore, is to report only such events as happen to interest the one who is reporting. Quite often something "hits the headlines" for a day or so, and then subsides into oblivion, so that few ever discover what eventually took place unrecorded.
The history of any event is, simply, the record of what happened. It is truly history only if it is COMPLETE, CONSECUTIVE and ACCURATE. By these three tests, all modern history and most ancient history falls to the ground. At best, they are only history in part.
Where then can we find true history? By a strange paradox, only where the writer quoted rejects is as largely myth: in the Sacred Scripures.
Complete history, as with complete truth, cannot be set out in earthly circumstances, for the reason so cogently stated by the Apostle John (21.25), but history that is complete within suitably defined terms of reference is possible...a good diary is also consecutive and, with men of probity, reasonably accurate. This is as about as far as history in the ordinary sense can go.
Scripture, however, comes on a higher plane, simply because, if it is anything at all, it is the Word of God. If it is not in fact just that, it is too diffioult to believe to be anything better than a myth. Some think they are able to demythologize Soripture, that is, to sift out the grain of truth that, they suppose, lies beneath the myth. The towering pride of such a claim is staggering. For those who have any realixation at all of what Chriatian humility and modesty mean, it makes them out at once and finally as teachers not worth even the slightest notice.
R. B. Withers
This is true, and an admirable statement of the truth of the matter; and if he had left it at that all would have been well. But at once he gives it a twist, thus, "but they start from different places and with different presuppositions".
No explanation of this strange assertion is provided, and there is no attempt to justify it, let alone prove it. So in spite of what went before, we are left without any clear idea of his meaning.
Nevertheless, the purpose in this writer's mind soon becomes clear enough. It is to suggest that it does not matter whether the events recorded in the Scriptures are historically true or merely myths. So he presents us with a brand new myth. In his own words:
"As the Biblical writers and their predecessors over a period of time reflected on and interpreted what God was remembered to have done, expressing it in what seemed to be the most telling imagery, God was giving them a better understanding of the substance of His revelation."
As invariably happens with people of his sort, no proof of any kind is offered by this man. This is easily understood, for none exists; yet he evidently expects his readers to believe HIM. Why this should be so is not explained either, and in a saner age than ours the immediate retort would be: "If you believe not Moses and the Prophets, why on earth should we believe you?" In effect, we must not believe the Word of God, but we are expected to believe this man's myths:
"Rationalists" in past days, though seldom very rational in practice, were far less irrational than this person. They believed that the Biblical writers were mistaken and the victims of superstition: but they were not so credulous as to believe what this modern teacher regards as their GUESSES and superstitions as being able to give anyone a better understanding of God. A god who supposedly reveals himself in speculations and memories regarding events that never happened, or never happened as they are recorded as happening, is hardly a subject for our admiration or worth even a moment's serious consideration.
Let us, however, suppose for a while that this myth gives us a true picture of how Scripture was written; in other words, that what is presented in Scripture as history is simply the reflections of the writers on memories of events that may (or may not) have happened. Several awkward questions at once arise. Why should we taka seriously the reflections of such people? Why could not they, or their predecessors, have told us what actually DID happen? Why should we suppose that God, Who is Truth, should have a hand in so dubious a transaction? In short, what ground have we for believing ANYTHING AT ALL of the whole silly idea?
Indirectly, all this rubbish has a us to ask one further question, this time one that concerns realities: What is history?
Few people have any precise idea of the answer, because so much of what nowadays passes for history is no better than tendentious propaganda. This results from the circumstances that in the modern world events are so vast, and so complex, and are so numerous and move with such speed, that it is impossible to keep up with more than a fraction of them. The tendency, therefore, is to report only such events as happen to interest the one who is reporting. Quite often something "hits the headlines" for a day or so, and then subsides into oblivion, so that few ever discover what eventually took place unrecorded.
The history of any event is, simply, the record of what happened. It is truly history only if it is COMPLETE, CONSECUTIVE and ACCURATE. By these three tests, all modern history and most ancient history falls to the ground. At best, they are only history in part.
Where then can we find true history? By a strange paradox, only where the writer quoted rejects is as largely myth: in the Sacred Scripures.
Complete history, as with complete truth, cannot be set out in earthly circumstances, for the reason so cogently stated by the Apostle John (21.25), but history that is complete within suitably defined terms of reference is possible...a good diary is also consecutive and, with men of probity, reasonably accurate. This is as about as far as history in the ordinary sense can go.
Scripture, however, comes on a higher plane, simply because, if it is anything at all, it is the Word of God. If it is not in fact just that, it is too diffioult to believe to be anything better than a myth. Some think they are able to demythologize Soripture, that is, to sift out the grain of truth that, they suppose, lies beneath the myth. The towering pride of such a claim is staggering. For those who have any realixation at all of what Chriatian humility and modesty mean, it makes them out at once and finally as teachers not worth even the slightest notice.
R. B. Withers
Is God a Person
Kurios ho Theos ho pantokrator. Who is the Lord, God Omnipotent? It is He Who is `King of kings and Lord of lords' (Rev. 19:16). What is His name, is it known? Yes, and no:
`He had a name written, that no man knew, but He Himself' yet `His name is called The Word of God' (Rev. 19:12,13).
He Who takes to Himself His great power and reigns is Christ which Revelation 11 follows by saying `Thy wrath is come' (Rev. 11:18). At the time of judgment, this is declared to be `the wrath of the LAMB' (Rev. 6:16).
Returning once again to Revelation 4, we noted that the title `Which was, and is, and is to come' is given (Rev. 4:8). In chapter 1 this title is assumed by Christ (Rev. 1:8), and is used again in chapter 11. Here however a somewhat remarkable feature demands attention. All the critical texts and the Revised Version read `Which art and Which wast', omitting the words `and Which art to come' for the glorious reason, He is seen here as having come. The name Jehovah was assumed by the Invisible God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, `This is My name unto the age, and this is My memorial unto all generations' (Exod. 3:15). This is not correctly translated by the title `Eternal' for `the age' and `generations' are within the limits of time. The glory of the name Jehovah is that it will be fulfilled, and pass away, even as it is the glory of the office of Priest, and at long last, even `The Son also Himself' shall be subject unto Him that did put all things under Him `That God', not Elohim, nor Jehovah, nor El Shaddai, nor the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, but God in a sense hither to unrevealed and uncomprehended by man, shall then `be all in all' (1 Cor. 15:28)! The Son takes back the glory that was His before the world was, the Son ascends the throne of Deity, the Mediatorial kingdom being finished and the purpose of the ages achieved, all the self-limitations and voluntary humiliation which Creation and Redemption imposed, being no longer necessary, the day of Redemption being reached, reconciliation being complete, God will then reveal why creation was called into being; why it was necessary for The Image, The Form, The Word to be assumed; why the relation of Father and Son came in with the Gospel; how it is that no name or collection of names can ever set forth the Infinite; how the `Persons' of the Godhead were assumptions of Deity until seeing through a `glass darkly' gives place to sight.
In Acts 17:27 the apostle Paul, speaking of the Creator, said `That haply they might feel after Him and find Him'. `Feel after Him'. This expression uses the Greek word pselaphao `HANDLE Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have' (Luke 24:39). `That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; which we have looked upon, and our hands have HANDLED, of the Word of Life, for the life was manifested' (1 John 1:1,2). Christ in resurrection, the One Who `In the beginning' created all things, Who `from the beginning' in resurrection was `manifested unto us', was preached by Paul to the philosophers at Athens. They, in the dim light of their philosophy, `groped' (as the word is translated in the Old Testament Isa. 59:10), but the disciples of the Saviour had actually `touched' or `felt' Him (as the first occurrence of the word is translated in Genesis 27:12).
While the Articles of Religion rightly speak of the `One living and true God, without body, parts or passions', we must not allow this man-made article to rob us of the testimony of the Scriptures, that He Who created heavens and earth, could be `handled' by those who beheld Him in the flesh. Why should God say `before Me there was no God FORMED, neither shall there be after Me' (Isa. 43:10)? This cannot refer exclusively to the making of idols, for millions of `gods' have been `formed' since Isaiah uttered these words. Israel were chosen to be `Jehovah's witnesses', were called upon to know and believe and to understand `that I am He'. `I, even I, am the LORD; and beside Me there is no Saviour' (Isa. 43:10,11). These words refer to the Son of God, Who in fulness of time was literally and actually `formed'. The word translated `to form', the Hebrew word yatsar is used by Jeremiah of the forming of a child in the womb (Jer. 1:5), even as in Isaiah 44:24. In the same chapter that contains the words `no God formed', Israel is said to be `formed' (Isa. 43:1,7,21). These are the words with which the Holy Ghost teacheth (1 Cor. 2:13). Idolatry is the usurpation of the prerogative of Christ, Who is the Image of the Invisible God (Isa. 44:10). Calvin looks upon the words `Before Me there was no God formed' as a kind of irony, but in the selfsame chapters that reveal that `The Word' and `The Image of the Invisible God', is the Creator of heaven and earth we read that, `in the BODY OF HIS FLESH' He wrought out our redemption (Col. 1:22), and in the next chapter we are assured that `In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead BODILY' (2:9).
It will, we trust, be evident that Creation is nowhere ascribed to `The Father' but is everywhere ascribed to Him, Who being God, became Man; Who is declared to be the Only begotten Son; Who was God manifest in the flesh, Jehovah, He that was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. When the moment comes, which is depicted in Revelation eleven, `The mystery of God' shall be finished.
pp. 50-52 Is God A Person Charles H. Welch
`He had a name written, that no man knew, but He Himself' yet `His name is called The Word of God' (Rev. 19:12,13).
He Who takes to Himself His great power and reigns is Christ which Revelation 11 follows by saying `Thy wrath is come' (Rev. 11:18). At the time of judgment, this is declared to be `the wrath of the LAMB' (Rev. 6:16).
Returning once again to Revelation 4, we noted that the title `Which was, and is, and is to come' is given (Rev. 4:8). In chapter 1 this title is assumed by Christ (Rev. 1:8), and is used again in chapter 11. Here however a somewhat remarkable feature demands attention. All the critical texts and the Revised Version read `Which art and Which wast', omitting the words `and Which art to come' for the glorious reason, He is seen here as having come. The name Jehovah was assumed by the Invisible God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, `This is My name unto the age, and this is My memorial unto all generations' (Exod. 3:15). This is not correctly translated by the title `Eternal' for `the age' and `generations' are within the limits of time. The glory of the name Jehovah is that it will be fulfilled, and pass away, even as it is the glory of the office of Priest, and at long last, even `The Son also Himself' shall be subject unto Him that did put all things under Him `That God', not Elohim, nor Jehovah, nor El Shaddai, nor the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, but God in a sense hither to unrevealed and uncomprehended by man, shall then `be all in all' (1 Cor. 15:28)! The Son takes back the glory that was His before the world was, the Son ascends the throne of Deity, the Mediatorial kingdom being finished and the purpose of the ages achieved, all the self-limitations and voluntary humiliation which Creation and Redemption imposed, being no longer necessary, the day of Redemption being reached, reconciliation being complete, God will then reveal why creation was called into being; why it was necessary for The Image, The Form, The Word to be assumed; why the relation of Father and Son came in with the Gospel; how it is that no name or collection of names can ever set forth the Infinite; how the `Persons' of the Godhead were assumptions of Deity until seeing through a `glass darkly' gives place to sight.
In Acts 17:27 the apostle Paul, speaking of the Creator, said `That haply they might feel after Him and find Him'. `Feel after Him'. This expression uses the Greek word pselaphao `HANDLE Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have' (Luke 24:39). `That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; which we have looked upon, and our hands have HANDLED, of the Word of Life, for the life was manifested' (1 John 1:1,2). Christ in resurrection, the One Who `In the beginning' created all things, Who `from the beginning' in resurrection was `manifested unto us', was preached by Paul to the philosophers at Athens. They, in the dim light of their philosophy, `groped' (as the word is translated in the Old Testament Isa. 59:10), but the disciples of the Saviour had actually `touched' or `felt' Him (as the first occurrence of the word is translated in Genesis 27:12).
While the Articles of Religion rightly speak of the `One living and true God, without body, parts or passions', we must not allow this man-made article to rob us of the testimony of the Scriptures, that He Who created heavens and earth, could be `handled' by those who beheld Him in the flesh. Why should God say `before Me there was no God FORMED, neither shall there be after Me' (Isa. 43:10)? This cannot refer exclusively to the making of idols, for millions of `gods' have been `formed' since Isaiah uttered these words. Israel were chosen to be `Jehovah's witnesses', were called upon to know and believe and to understand `that I am He'. `I, even I, am the LORD; and beside Me there is no Saviour' (Isa. 43:10,11). These words refer to the Son of God, Who in fulness of time was literally and actually `formed'. The word translated `to form', the Hebrew word yatsar is used by Jeremiah of the forming of a child in the womb (Jer. 1:5), even as in Isaiah 44:24. In the same chapter that contains the words `no God formed', Israel is said to be `formed' (Isa. 43:1,7,21). These are the words with which the Holy Ghost teacheth (1 Cor. 2:13). Idolatry is the usurpation of the prerogative of Christ, Who is the Image of the Invisible God (Isa. 44:10). Calvin looks upon the words `Before Me there was no God formed' as a kind of irony, but in the selfsame chapters that reveal that `The Word' and `The Image of the Invisible God', is the Creator of heaven and earth we read that, `in the BODY OF HIS FLESH' He wrought out our redemption (Col. 1:22), and in the next chapter we are assured that `In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead BODILY' (2:9).
It will, we trust, be evident that Creation is nowhere ascribed to `The Father' but is everywhere ascribed to Him, Who being God, became Man; Who is declared to be the Only begotten Son; Who was God manifest in the flesh, Jehovah, He that was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. When the moment comes, which is depicted in Revelation eleven, `The mystery of God' shall be finished.
pp. 50-52 Is God A Person Charles H. Welch
Equality
God will be All in All. Could we also say that God will be Equal in All? After all, the premise of apocatastasis is that everyone will eventually be saved, i.e., restored and reunited to the Source of All.
Question: if God actively works to eventually make everyone equal, has it been necessary to work equally hard to make them unequal?
Question: if God actively works to eventually make everyone equal, has it been necessary to work equally hard to make them unequal?
Dealing with the Truth
I had a thought the other day and it went a little bit like this: you can't change the truth but the truth can change you. We are all familiar with the noble search for truth and the idea that one should be totally objective in searching for it. But such objectivity is probably an impossible ideal that we mere mortals can never realize. Too much is at a stake: our reputations, our sense of place in the world, our sense of place in the world to come. Finding truth may mean having to say we're sorry. Now is that really such a bad thing? Isn't the search as well as the discovery of truth worth the pain, the discomfort, the embarrassment? We have to be willing to shed the baggage and face the light. No use trying to hide in the bushes; especially in the windy part of the day.
Divine Linkage
"Christ's faith is indivisibly linked with the revelation of the Son of God, which is also the revelation of God as Father." J. Philip Scranton
God Was in Christ
It is a commonplace to say that most of the great heresies arose from an undue desire for simplification, an undue impatience with mystery and paradox, and an endeavour after a common-sense theology. And it is plain that the theology which repudiates all high Christology suffers from precisely these weaknesses. God our Father and Christ our Teacher: that sounds easy. It has an attractive simplicity—which is wholly illusory. It is as if, in contrast with the mysteries of Christology, the idea of God were quite easy, free from all paradox. It is as if the idea of God were a kind of counter, or a coin of fixed value in some universal system of currency, which could be handed out to all comers in the name of Jesus the Teacher, and accepted by everybody without difficulty. It is as if, while the idea of Incarnation presents great difficulty, it were a much easier matter to believe in God our Father. But is it easy to believe in God? In the kind of God that Jesus gives us? Not a 'deistic' God, or even a 'theistic' God (for Christianity is not theism plus Christology), waiting for men to discover His existence and then pass round the idea with its proofs; but the God whom we find in the New Testament? Is it easy to believe in such a God? Is it easier than to believe in the Incarnation? Surely the Incarnation is not an added difficulty, but is rather the sole way in which the Christian conception of God becomes credible or even expressible. It is only an extreme theological naivete that can be blind to the mystery and paradox of the word 'God' in the Christian sense; and we shall never do justice to the height of that paradox—we shall never do justice to the love of God—if we leave out the supreme paradox of the Incarnation. Such an omission would fatally impoverish and compromise our faith in God. That is why it is necessary to retort: Are you sure that you know what you mean by 'God'?'Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also.' That is as true against modern as it was against ancient Gnosticism. For the whole Christological question is a question about God.
For a whole generation now theology has been coming to a clearer understanding of this. We may think of William Temple's bold statement in an early essay (1912): 'The wise question is not "Is Christ Divine?" but "What is God like?" '9 That may indeed be understood in a sense which would falsify the issue again by another over-simplification, and this has sometimes happened, with the suggestion that Christology can be exhausted in sayings such as 'God is like Jesus', 'Jesus reflects the character of God', 'Christianity gives us a Christlike God'. These sayings are doubtless true so far as they go, but they cannot stand by themselves. Dean Inge once wrote: 'The controversy about the Divinity of Christ has been habitually conducted on wrong lines. We assume that we know what the attributes of God are, and we collect them from any source rather than the revelation of God in Christ. . . . But surely Christ came to earth to reveal to us not that He was like God, but that God was like Himself.'a That was well said in its time, but to take it as the whole truth would be to fall into a common-sense simplification such as makes for heresy-in this case perhaps the Semi-Arian heresy which substituted homoiousios for homoousios! 'Like Christ' prompts the question, 'How like?' and may lead either to an 'Ebionite' Christology or to the quite pagan (and Arian) conception of a demigod, an intermediate being who is neither God nor man. There is a sense in which it may truly be said that God cannot be like anyone else and that no one can be quite like God except God Himself. A true Christology will tell us not simply that God is like Christ, but that God was in Christ. Thus it will tell us not only about the nature of God, but about His activity; about what He has done, coming the whole way for our salvation in Jesus Christ; and there is no other way in which the Christian truth about God can be expressed.
The Dialectical theologians of our age are most impressive in their assertion of this principle, that Christology is not a subsidiary study, or a limited department of Christian theology, but is at the very centre, and indeed is all-inclusive, because it is fundamentally concerned with our doctrine of God. Emil Brunner writes: 'The question, "What think ye of Christ?" is in no sense a deflection of interest from the main body of Christian truth. From the beginning this has always been the central question within the Christian Church, and from the outset the Christian answer to this question has always been the same: It is "the power of God unto salvation", as Paul defines the Christian faith. The question, "Who is He?" means the same as the other question, "What has God to say to us in Him?" The one cannot be answered without the other. . . . Unless you know who He is, you cannot know what God has to say to you. . . . For the question, "Who is He?" is the same one which says, "What part does God take in this whole process? What happens?" Karl Barth writes: 'An ecclesiastical dogmatic must indeed, as a whole and in all its parts, be Christologically determined, as surely as the revealed Word of God, attested by Holy Scripture and proclaimed by the Church, is its one and only criterion, and as surely as this revealed word is identical with Jesus Christ. If dogmatics does not in principle understand itself as Christology, and succeed in making itself intelligible as such, it has certainly succumbed to some alien domination, and has come very near to losing its character as ecclesiastical dogmatics.'
It is quite plain that this is the kind of Christological interest that we find in the New Testament. We never find there anything that could be called a Jesus-cult, or a Christology interested simply in the question of who or what Jesus was, apart from the action of God the Father. Whatever Jesus was or did, in His life, in His teaching, in His cross and passion, in His resurrection and ascension and exaltation, it is really God that did it in Jesus: that is how the New Testament speaks. It becomes most striking of all in connection with the reconciling death of Jesus. When His early followers spoke of His death on the cross as a supreme expression of love for men, it was not so much of the love of Jesus that they spoke as of the love of God who sent Him. In the New Testament we find no Prometheus as the suffering friend and helper of men, set over against a jealous High God. In the New Testament, as we shall see more fully in a later chapter, it is the love of God Himself that is seen in the sufferings of Christ. In the New Testament the love of Christ and the love of God are the same thing: the two phrases can be used interchangeably. 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself', and 'it is all of God'. It is true that in certain parts of the New Testament, not only in the early Petrine speeches in the Acts but in some of the Epistles, we seem to find the elements of a Christology which makes Christ a superhuman being and yet not quite a divine being: a being quite distinct from God and subordinate to Him. The same thing may be said of certain of the early Fathers after the Apostolic Age. This led the philosopher Locke to remark that 'the Fathers before the Council of Nicaea speak rather like Arians than orthodox'. And it is curious to remember that the English Arians of the seventeenth century professed to base their position purely upon the direct study of the New Testament, taken as absolutely inerrant, and understood in the most naively literal way. But it is easy for us to see how unhistorical and unfair this treatment of the New Testament material was. It was based upon the assumption that the function of the New Testament is to provide a complete, ready made and final theology, which only needs to be pieced together by the student and then reproduced; whereas, in truth, if we use the New Testament in that way we shall merely falsify its real witness. Its function is not to provide us with a ready-made theology of the Christian faith (for the task of theology has to be done over again in age after age, and is never finished), but rather to witness to the faith. It comes from an age when Christian theology, as yet in its infancy, was but beginning to tackle the problems which have occupied theologians ever since; and to interpret and assess its theological beginnings in the light of later controversies would be an historical and theological blunder. The New Testament gives us not the final theology but the supreme and classical testimony to Christ. And no one can maintain that this testimony, as a witness of faith and devotion, as an expression of the actual Christian attitude to Christ, falls short of the highest or savours of anything 'heretical'. There is nothing lacking in the practical Christology of the New Testament. In its conception of the coming and the work of Christ, 'everything is of God', and the love of Jesus is the love of God in a sense which makes nonsense of Arianism. So its whole theology is Christological, and its whole Christology is a witness to God as 'the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'.
The same thing is essentially true of Patristic thought. The questionings of the Patristic writers about Jesus were questionings about His relation to the Father, and therefore were questionings about God. What kind of God could they be sure of? How far and in what way was God involved in the phenomenon of Jesus? That is the real significance of the Logos-Christology of the second, third, and fourth centuries, with its endless discussions, repeated and developed by one writer after another, about the nature of the Logos and the relation between the Logos and God. Sometimes these discussions appear to have little to do with Jesus. They have, in fact; everything to do with Him. For the belief that Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos was what gave these discussions such a burning interest for Christians. If Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos, then the vital question was that of the relation of the Logos to God, because on that hung the whole question of the character of God and His attitude to men. Was it the very God Himself that was manifested in Jesus?
To the earlier Logos-theologians the Logos was hardly a 'personal' being, but was the Wisdom or Glory or Reason or Word of God; or, more definitely, God's creative and condescending and redemptive purpose which leads Him out of His eternal self hood into the life of mankind. Thus when Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen set themselves to grapple with the I question as to whether the Logos was of the very being of God I Himself from all eternity, the discussion was not on some remote I point of ancient metaphysics. The question was: Is the redeeming purpose which we find in Jesus part of the very being and essence of God? Is that what God is? Is it His very nature to create, and to reveal Himself, and to redeem His creation? Is it therefore not some subordinate or intermediate being, but the Eternal God Himself, that reveals Himself to us and became incarnate in Jesus for our salvation? When we come to the Arian controversy, the same issue becomes still plainer. It was not a matter of theological hairsplitting, or a dispute about a diphthong. It was not an argument as to whether there was in Jesus a supernatural incarnation of the heavenly pre-existent Logos or Son of God, for the Arians themselves believed that the Logos or Son of God, who had existed from before all ages in glory as a heavenly being above all angels, had. come to earth through a virgin birth, lived a supernatural life in a human body, was crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, to be worshipped with divine honours. They believed all that. But what availed all that, when they did not believe that this Logos was of one essence with God the Father? To the Arians God was remote, inaccessible, incapable of directly approaching the created world. And thus it is not the eternal God Himself that comes to us in Christ for our salvation, but an intermediate being, distinct from God, while God Himself is left out, uncondescending, unredemptive. That is what Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea would not be content with. They could not accept such a Christology because it involved a hopelessly unsatisfying theology, a sub Christian view of God. 'Arius never speaks of the love of God.' The Arian Christology was far simpler, far easier to state, far more readily popularized, than the paradoxical doctrine maintained by Athanasius and the Church. But it was again a case of the oversimplification which loses half the truth. And the more difficult Christology of Athanasius and the Church (however much it may have needed, and will need, restatement in successive ages) genuinely enshrined the truth of the Gospel, not only because of what it tells us about Jesus, but because of what it tells us about God.
Dr. H. G. Wood, referring to Cicero's complaint that the gods of Epicurus do nothing, asserts that what appealed to the ancient world in Christianity was God's action in sending Christ. It gave them a new view of God, which nothing else could do, and which could not be fully expressed except by the doctrine of divine Incarnation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.' Thus Christology is bound up with the whole Christian apprehension of God, and to leave it out would be to sink, perhaps unawares, to a sub-Christian theology. 'The saying of John', says Calvin, 'was always true: Whosoever denieth the Son hath not the Father. For though in old time there were many who boasted that they worshipped the Supreme Deity, the Maker of heaven and earth, yet as they had no Mediator, it was impossible for them truly to enjoy the mercy of God, so as to feel persuaded that He was their Father.'
That is why those who wish to have God and the Jesus of history without Christology must be answered with the question: Are you sure that you know what you mean by God?
pp. 65-71D. M. Baillie "God Was In Christ"
For a whole generation now theology has been coming to a clearer understanding of this. We may think of William Temple's bold statement in an early essay (1912): 'The wise question is not "Is Christ Divine?" but "What is God like?" '9 That may indeed be understood in a sense which would falsify the issue again by another over-simplification, and this has sometimes happened, with the suggestion that Christology can be exhausted in sayings such as 'God is like Jesus', 'Jesus reflects the character of God', 'Christianity gives us a Christlike God'. These sayings are doubtless true so far as they go, but they cannot stand by themselves. Dean Inge once wrote: 'The controversy about the Divinity of Christ has been habitually conducted on wrong lines. We assume that we know what the attributes of God are, and we collect them from any source rather than the revelation of God in Christ. . . . But surely Christ came to earth to reveal to us not that He was like God, but that God was like Himself.'a That was well said in its time, but to take it as the whole truth would be to fall into a common-sense simplification such as makes for heresy-in this case perhaps the Semi-Arian heresy which substituted homoiousios for homoousios! 'Like Christ' prompts the question, 'How like?' and may lead either to an 'Ebionite' Christology or to the quite pagan (and Arian) conception of a demigod, an intermediate being who is neither God nor man. There is a sense in which it may truly be said that God cannot be like anyone else and that no one can be quite like God except God Himself. A true Christology will tell us not simply that God is like Christ, but that God was in Christ. Thus it will tell us not only about the nature of God, but about His activity; about what He has done, coming the whole way for our salvation in Jesus Christ; and there is no other way in which the Christian truth about God can be expressed.
The Dialectical theologians of our age are most impressive in their assertion of this principle, that Christology is not a subsidiary study, or a limited department of Christian theology, but is at the very centre, and indeed is all-inclusive, because it is fundamentally concerned with our doctrine of God. Emil Brunner writes: 'The question, "What think ye of Christ?" is in no sense a deflection of interest from the main body of Christian truth. From the beginning this has always been the central question within the Christian Church, and from the outset the Christian answer to this question has always been the same: It is "the power of God unto salvation", as Paul defines the Christian faith. The question, "Who is He?" means the same as the other question, "What has God to say to us in Him?" The one cannot be answered without the other. . . . Unless you know who He is, you cannot know what God has to say to you. . . . For the question, "Who is He?" is the same one which says, "What part does God take in this whole process? What happens?" Karl Barth writes: 'An ecclesiastical dogmatic must indeed, as a whole and in all its parts, be Christologically determined, as surely as the revealed Word of God, attested by Holy Scripture and proclaimed by the Church, is its one and only criterion, and as surely as this revealed word is identical with Jesus Christ. If dogmatics does not in principle understand itself as Christology, and succeed in making itself intelligible as such, it has certainly succumbed to some alien domination, and has come very near to losing its character as ecclesiastical dogmatics.'
It is quite plain that this is the kind of Christological interest that we find in the New Testament. We never find there anything that could be called a Jesus-cult, or a Christology interested simply in the question of who or what Jesus was, apart from the action of God the Father. Whatever Jesus was or did, in His life, in His teaching, in His cross and passion, in His resurrection and ascension and exaltation, it is really God that did it in Jesus: that is how the New Testament speaks. It becomes most striking of all in connection with the reconciling death of Jesus. When His early followers spoke of His death on the cross as a supreme expression of love for men, it was not so much of the love of Jesus that they spoke as of the love of God who sent Him. In the New Testament we find no Prometheus as the suffering friend and helper of men, set over against a jealous High God. In the New Testament, as we shall see more fully in a later chapter, it is the love of God Himself that is seen in the sufferings of Christ. In the New Testament the love of Christ and the love of God are the same thing: the two phrases can be used interchangeably. 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself', and 'it is all of God'. It is true that in certain parts of the New Testament, not only in the early Petrine speeches in the Acts but in some of the Epistles, we seem to find the elements of a Christology which makes Christ a superhuman being and yet not quite a divine being: a being quite distinct from God and subordinate to Him. The same thing may be said of certain of the early Fathers after the Apostolic Age. This led the philosopher Locke to remark that 'the Fathers before the Council of Nicaea speak rather like Arians than orthodox'. And it is curious to remember that the English Arians of the seventeenth century professed to base their position purely upon the direct study of the New Testament, taken as absolutely inerrant, and understood in the most naively literal way. But it is easy for us to see how unhistorical and unfair this treatment of the New Testament material was. It was based upon the assumption that the function of the New Testament is to provide a complete, ready made and final theology, which only needs to be pieced together by the student and then reproduced; whereas, in truth, if we use the New Testament in that way we shall merely falsify its real witness. Its function is not to provide us with a ready-made theology of the Christian faith (for the task of theology has to be done over again in age after age, and is never finished), but rather to witness to the faith. It comes from an age when Christian theology, as yet in its infancy, was but beginning to tackle the problems which have occupied theologians ever since; and to interpret and assess its theological beginnings in the light of later controversies would be an historical and theological blunder. The New Testament gives us not the final theology but the supreme and classical testimony to Christ. And no one can maintain that this testimony, as a witness of faith and devotion, as an expression of the actual Christian attitude to Christ, falls short of the highest or savours of anything 'heretical'. There is nothing lacking in the practical Christology of the New Testament. In its conception of the coming and the work of Christ, 'everything is of God', and the love of Jesus is the love of God in a sense which makes nonsense of Arianism. So its whole theology is Christological, and its whole Christology is a witness to God as 'the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'.
The same thing is essentially true of Patristic thought. The questionings of the Patristic writers about Jesus were questionings about His relation to the Father, and therefore were questionings about God. What kind of God could they be sure of? How far and in what way was God involved in the phenomenon of Jesus? That is the real significance of the Logos-Christology of the second, third, and fourth centuries, with its endless discussions, repeated and developed by one writer after another, about the nature of the Logos and the relation between the Logos and God. Sometimes these discussions appear to have little to do with Jesus. They have, in fact; everything to do with Him. For the belief that Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos was what gave these discussions such a burning interest for Christians. If Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos, then the vital question was that of the relation of the Logos to God, because on that hung the whole question of the character of God and His attitude to men. Was it the very God Himself that was manifested in Jesus?
To the earlier Logos-theologians the Logos was hardly a 'personal' being, but was the Wisdom or Glory or Reason or Word of God; or, more definitely, God's creative and condescending and redemptive purpose which leads Him out of His eternal self hood into the life of mankind. Thus when Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen set themselves to grapple with the I question as to whether the Logos was of the very being of God I Himself from all eternity, the discussion was not on some remote I point of ancient metaphysics. The question was: Is the redeeming purpose which we find in Jesus part of the very being and essence of God? Is that what God is? Is it His very nature to create, and to reveal Himself, and to redeem His creation? Is it therefore not some subordinate or intermediate being, but the Eternal God Himself, that reveals Himself to us and became incarnate in Jesus for our salvation? When we come to the Arian controversy, the same issue becomes still plainer. It was not a matter of theological hairsplitting, or a dispute about a diphthong. It was not an argument as to whether there was in Jesus a supernatural incarnation of the heavenly pre-existent Logos or Son of God, for the Arians themselves believed that the Logos or Son of God, who had existed from before all ages in glory as a heavenly being above all angels, had. come to earth through a virgin birth, lived a supernatural life in a human body, was crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, to be worshipped with divine honours. They believed all that. But what availed all that, when they did not believe that this Logos was of one essence with God the Father? To the Arians God was remote, inaccessible, incapable of directly approaching the created world. And thus it is not the eternal God Himself that comes to us in Christ for our salvation, but an intermediate being, distinct from God, while God Himself is left out, uncondescending, unredemptive. That is what Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea would not be content with. They could not accept such a Christology because it involved a hopelessly unsatisfying theology, a sub Christian view of God. 'Arius never speaks of the love of God.' The Arian Christology was far simpler, far easier to state, far more readily popularized, than the paradoxical doctrine maintained by Athanasius and the Church. But it was again a case of the oversimplification which loses half the truth. And the more difficult Christology of Athanasius and the Church (however much it may have needed, and will need, restatement in successive ages) genuinely enshrined the truth of the Gospel, not only because of what it tells us about Jesus, but because of what it tells us about God.
Dr. H. G. Wood, referring to Cicero's complaint that the gods of Epicurus do nothing, asserts that what appealed to the ancient world in Christianity was God's action in sending Christ. It gave them a new view of God, which nothing else could do, and which could not be fully expressed except by the doctrine of divine Incarnation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.' Thus Christology is bound up with the whole Christian apprehension of God, and to leave it out would be to sink, perhaps unawares, to a sub-Christian theology. 'The saying of John', says Calvin, 'was always true: Whosoever denieth the Son hath not the Father. For though in old time there were many who boasted that they worshipped the Supreme Deity, the Maker of heaven and earth, yet as they had no Mediator, it was impossible for them truly to enjoy the mercy of God, so as to feel persuaded that He was their Father.'
That is why those who wish to have God and the Jesus of history without Christology must be answered with the question: Are you sure that you know what you mean by God?
pp. 65-71D. M. Baillie "God Was In Christ"