Who is Jesus?/Book 2/Chapter 1
I. WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT
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THERE can be little doubt that the writers of the New Testament teach the deity of Christ, even though they did not, and could not, in their state, perceive how Father and Son were united. They accepted the deity of Christ as a fact of experience and belief in a decidedly practical way; but there are many evidences to show that they regarded Christ, in spite of what they themselves put down concerning his deity, as somehow subordinate to the Father. For example, John, whose Gospel teaches the deity of Jesus most unequivocally, states near its close: "But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of God; and that believing, ye might have life through his name." (John 20:31.) This is precisely the statement upon which Jesus himself told Peter that his church was to be founded, namely, that he was the Messiah, the Son of God.
It is evident that Jesus regretfully accepted that which their limitations made necessary, although Divinely he foreknew it would be so, namely, that they should teach that he was merely the Messiah, the Son of God; but he did so, as we have already seen, because they could not receive the fuller truth of his identity with the Father. That he actually taught this identity we have shown, and there can be no other rational explanation of him, for his deity in any degree means his absolute oneness with the Father. His own statements concerning himself can be reconciled only by the possession of this knowledge. And he provided in the documents that were written concerning him the basis for the completer revelation of himself at a later time, promising that the later and fuller revelation would be given. "These things have I spoken unto you in parables: but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in parables, but I shall show you plainly of the Father." (John 16:25.) We believe that the time has come when it is no longer necessary for men to perceive the reality only dimly by the light of parables, but openly and fully, upon the basis of his parabolic statements, and it is for this reason that men today are beginning to worship the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour with a fulness and completeness that they never did before.
It was infinitely better that men should look upon Jesus as the Son of God, as subordinate to the Father, if in this way they regarded him as truly Divine, rather than that they should reject him altogether because of their inability to accept as the very God of heaven and earth one whom they had known intimately as a teacher and companion. There can be little doubt that his disciples, even though they perceived the fact of his Divineness from experience and teaching, and later gave their lives in defense of this belief, would have rejected the fact altogether in view of their Jewish ideal of Jehovah if Jesus had demanded that they accept him as the Father. He plainly told them the fact, but when he saw they could not receive it, he allowed them to continue to think of him merely as the Son of God.
It was essential to the salvation of men that they should look upon Jesus as somehow God, and certainly Saviour. "Except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." It is essential today, and it was no less so then, for without this belief in him as somehow Divine, but nevertheless as essentially Divine, and hence a Saviour, there would have been no Christian church. The Jewish idea of God was inexpressibly more imperfect than the new and yet still imperfect one of the disciples, but God had to be satisfied with the imperfect reception of the knowledge of Him by both Jews and Christians.
The teaching of the Apostles and of their immediate successors evidently confined itself to the simple statement of the facts and prophecies about Jesus. It was a simple Gospel that they preached, despite Paul's eloquent and elaborated arguments in his epistles. The theology involved did not greatly trouble the masses of the early Christians. They worshipped Jesus as a unique person, Divine as men never were and never could be Divine, as essential God. Pliny's letter to the emperor Trajan confirms this when he tells us that "they met before daybreak and sang a hymn to Christ as God." We know, from innumerable testimonies, that they prayed to Christ as God, but we also perceive that they always thought of him as the Son of God. Polycarp, at his martyrdom, exclaims: "For all things, O God, do I praise and bless and glorify thee, together with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ, thy well-beloved Son, with whom to thee and the Holy Ghost be glory both now and forever." This prayer, whether authentic or not, is an example of the theology of the Church as it began to shape itself in the first Christian centuries.
When the Greek philosophic mind took up the new teaching it was already accustomed to the doctrine of the Logos as a lower expression of God, as an emanation of God below the plane of the Infinite One, and yet incomparably above men—an intermediary between them. And the whole heathen world was adjusted to the idea of a still lower manifestation of God, which was that of God expressing Himself temporarily in the human form. The prevalence of these two general ideas made it easy for the world to accept the new and rather vague teaching of the deity of Jesus. Neither the philosophic classes nor the unreasoning masses found it necessary to make any sharp mental readjustment; the new teaching fitted in with their previous education in such matters; they needed only to think of the man Jesus as either the Logos or God incarnate. They had heard of such things before; this was the one true concrete example that superseded all previous philosophic concepts or reputed incarnations.
Yet there were those who were not satisfied with the tendency toward polytheism exhibited in such utterances as the prayer of Polycarp just quoted. Celsus, for example, in criticism of the Christian position, said: "The worship of Christ is fatal to the Christian doctrine of the unity of God, while they offer an excessive adoration to this person who has lately appeared in the world. How can they think that they commit no offense against God by giving these Divine honors to his Son?"
Celsus was right in stating that the worship of Christ, if it is a worship of Christ as a being apart from God, and not a worship of the one and indivisible God of heaven and earth, is fatal to the Christian doctrine of the unity of God. If Jesus was anything less than or not identical with the Father, it was wrong to worship him as God; the saving part of their position was that, even though they did not comprehend it, Jesus and the Father, even as he said, were one. It matters little that Origen, the most brilliant of the early Christian fathers, defended the Christian position ably, for Origen, because of supposed doubtful orthodoxy, was soon relegated to the position of being no authority.
Most of the heresies that developed proceeded from the inability of men to comprehend that a mere man, as they saw him, could be Divine. Men were willing to admit that Jesus exhibited qualities which put him in a class apart from other men; but then, they reasoned, God is one and indivisible, hence Jesus cannot be Divine, for the Father is God. Among these sects it is not necessary for us to differentiate in this discussion between those who, like the Ebionites, denied his divinity altogether, while admitting his Messiahship, and the Arians, who denied his co-equality with the Father, but taught that he was Divine and different from other men, a subordinate deity.
Those who denied his divinity altogether were logical so far as the facts of Divine unity are concerned, for the Divine essence cannot be divided, but they left out the facts of Christ's personality and his claims concerning himself.
The Arians were logical in realizing that the Divine essence cannot be divided, and they tried to be just, at the same time, to the facts of Christ's life and utterances, and so made him semi-Divine.
Their idea is at least conceptually possible, for it was the Greek concept of the Logos, and it is conceivably what multitudes of others in all ages, nominally orthodox and followers of Athanasius, have held, despite their nominal orthodoxy and formal acceptance of Athanasianism.
The Athanasians who prevailed, and who hence call themselves orthodox, were wholly illogical in declaring that God could exist in three persons; but we must believe that they prevailed and were considered orthodox by the will of God, in spite of their defective logic, indeed, in spite of absolute irrationality, because they defended the essential deity of Christ. Although they did not understand how Christ was Divine,—of the same essence as the Father,—and although logically he could not have been Divine if existing apart from the Father as a separate personality, as they stated in their creeds; yet because of their dogmatic statements that he was truly God the Church as a whole believed in Christ's deity. And that was, after all, the most important thing, and their illogical belief the best choice out of many imperfect beliefs.
There were those who, like the Patripassians, in order to defend the doctrine of Christ's essential deity, went so far as to insist that Jesus, even as to his assumed humanity from Mary, was the one and only God. They perceived that God is truly one and indivisible; hence they claimed that the human being who walked the roads of Palestine as Jesus of Nazareth was even as to his limitations Divine. God must exist in one person; hence if Jesus was God at all, he was at all times and in all places and under all circumstances and in all parts God.
These people were logical within certain limits. But they left out some of the facts, and without all the facts no correct conclusion can be obtained. They left out the obviously limited conditions of the purely human nature assumed from a human mother, the material body and its associated planes of life, which provided a temporary vehicle for the indwelling of the Divine.
They were soon brought to confusion. If their theory was correct, then God suffered on the cross, God died, and God cannot be imagined as suffering in such a way, nor can He die. The Patripassians were reaching out for the truth, and they almost grasped it; but they failed because they did not differentiate between the two natures in Christ, the purely human and the Divine. The limitations of Jesus were not Divine, for the Divine cannot be limited, even though it may limit itself in manifestation and usually has to do so when dealing with men.
Jesus as a person was Divine, for he was Jehovah manifesting Himself in accordance with prophecy; but he was not Divine in the limitations that were necessary to be assumed in order to manifest himself. He very evidently had two natures—a lower and purely human one, and a higher and Divine one, and a consciousness manifesting itself first on one plane and then on the other, and when it manifested itself on the higher plane, it was one with the permanent, non-fluctuating Divine consciousness.
The difference between him and us is that his higher nature was Life-in-itself, self-existent life, Jehovah, whereas our higher nature is life derived from Jehovah. As his higher nature, his essential nature, his true soul, was Jehovah, when he had put off forever his earthly limitations by "glorifying" or making them Divine, he was wholly Divine, but possessing a Divine Human nature which is infinite and makes permanent his residence with men. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, their God." (Rev. 21:3.)
It was the lower, purely human nature, that suffered, and it was merely the material body that died. The death of that body did not affect the indwelling Divine, nor was it the Divine that suffered, but the human consciousness on the still existing limited human plane of consciousness. It was this consciousness that cried out on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" It was about at this time that the purely human, limited body, with its planes of consciousness, was put off forever, and the Divine Human plane took its place, so that God forever dwells directly with us.
Sabellius endeavored to avoid the error of the Patripassians, but he tried to get out of it by saying that there was no real incarnation. The appearance of Christ in the flesh was merely a Theophany similar to the Theophanies of the Old Testament, when God appeared before men in the quiescent form of an angel. The incarnation was thus not real; it was temporary, not permanent. There was no actual assumption of the human, no glorification of it, no resurrection and ascension.
Sabellius was also grasping at the truth, but he did not grasp it, for Christ was an objective reality. His life and death were real. John insists that this is so when he says in his epistle, "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, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us); that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." (1 John 1:1, 2.) We also recall this statement: "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." (1 John 4:2), and he declares that he who denies it is anti-Christ.
Sabellius taught that the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not existent inherently in God, but in His revelation or manifestation of Himself in the Law, in the Incarnation, and in the Holy Spirit. He failed to see that the substance or quality of God, the Father, is Love or Good; that His form, the Son, is Wisdom or Truth, and that His manifestation, the Holy Spirit, is Use or Power, and as such they are permanent. These three phases of Substance, Form, and Proceeding are the three essentials permanently existent in the nature of God, as indeed they are in the nature of all created things, and as in created things, so in God, they make a one, not three equal ones, as the Athanasians leave us to infer, but three component parts or phases that make a one, as soul, body, and proceeding life together make one man. The man re-created into the image and likeness of God is loving, wise, and useful, an image and likeness of these three phases of Love, Wisdom, and Use in the one and indivisible God. The Trinity is not existent merely in manifestation, but also in permanent reality.
Now let us take up again and anew the contention of the Athanasians, whose views prevailed and dominated the entire Christian Church.