God is great! Jesus is super … but is he unique?

Bo, So much has been going on at HBC that I can scarcely keep up. Your productivity is simply amazing!! I guess many of us are and will be pondering the whole question of how to strike the right balance between the affirmation of Christ and genuine open dialogue with other religious traditions. For those interested, some very thought-provoking audio has recently been put up by Heythrop College in London where the three authors of the book 'Only One Way?' (Gavin d'Costa, Paul Knitter and Daniel Strange) made three contrasting presentations on the question of inter-religious conversation which set out the issues in a helpful way, I think. Even if I wish they had recorded some of the subsequent interplay between them! You can hear the talks at http://soundcloud.com/oakhillcollege I'd put d'Costa slightly ahead on points myself, although both Knitter and Strange make some extremely pertinent and valuable remarks. In terms of internet resources, another dialogue well worth listening to is a conversation in Istanbul in 2010 between the great (well, for me, anyway) Harvey Cox and the eminent Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr entitled 'Religion, Modernity and the Future' at http://themathesontrust.org/papers/audio/audio_page.php?filename=nasr-harveycox/nasr-harveycox I would also very much recommend a typically profound take on things by Rowan Williams (yes, he of the facial hair ... and one of the Emergent Church's staunchest supporters on this side of the Atlantic) entitled 'The finality of Christ in a pluralist world' which you can find at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/585/the-finality-of-christ-in-a-pluralist-world both in audio and transcript formats. It's a powerfully cogent and yet humble plea for Christian theology not to be too hasty in abandoning the Church's traditional view of the absolute uniqueness of Jesus, while absolutely taking on board the many objections that have understandably been levelled against that position on ethical, philosophical and political grounds. Listening to it reminded me that, for all that his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury has been extremely problematic, Rowan Williams is still one of the theological giants of our time. What strikes me in this talk, as in many others, is his patient and unfashionable insistence on thinking with a real 'theo-logic' that is both intellectually penetrating and yet knows when to keep what he calls a 'hard silence' in the face of Divine mystery. I guess that comes out of his long engagement with the contemplative tradition of apophatic mystical theology both in its ancient forms and in the work of modern Eastern Orthodox theologians such as John Zizioulas and Christos Yannaras. There is something about that whole stream of thought and practice which gets beyond doctrine to address spirituality at a far deeper level - and it is precisely at that level (here Cox and Knitter are spot on, I reckon), as well as in demonstrating practical compassion, that real progress is going to be made in what has to be one of the most exciting conversations of the epoch in which we are living. Shalom, Peter B.

My major anxiety is that we start acting like Jesus was some super human who had these amazing powers. Jesus was just like you and me. According to the church fathers, it is his humanity that is the vehicle of salvation. The fathers were relentless in defending the fact that Jesus was fully human. When you ask in what way was God present in Jesus? My question is this: what do you mean by God? Do you mean the Father? It was the Son of God who became human. I just want to emphasize that we don't need to act as if Jesus was somehow omniscient, omnipotent, or brilliant beyond measure. He acknowledges that he doesn't know things, and he is even corrected by the woman in Mark 7. If we claim that the this man was the Son of God we don't have to pretend that he wasn't actually human. Bonhoeffer says it best in Christ the Center: “If Jesus Christ is to be described as God, then we may not speak of this divine essence, of his omnipotence and his omniscience, but we must speak of this weak man among sinners, of his cradle and cross. When we consider the Godhead of Jesus, then above all we must speak of his weakness. In christology one looks at the whole historical man Jesus and says of him, ‘He is God.’ One does not look at a human nature, and then beyond it to a divine nature; one meets the one man Jesus Christ, who is fully god.” (108) “We say of the Humiliated One, “This is God.’ He makes none of his divine properties manifest in his death. On the contrary, all we see is a man doubting in God as he dies. But of this man we say, ‘This is God.’ Anyone who cannot do this does not know the meaning of ‘God became man.’ (110)

@Bo I think my use of "super" was akin to dipping my toe into the water to see: a) Is it warm, or b) are their crocodiles lurking somewhere underneath waiting to consume my mortal soul. :)

YES! nice. Now let me take it up a notch... do it without the 'super'natural. I believe in the miraculous but there is no such thing as the SUPER - natural. God's work is the most natural thing in the world. :) I have been chipping away at this in my workshop. It is going pretty well! -Bo

@Bo That is the question exactly..."In WHAT way was God presenting Jesus?"–and it is an awesome conversation starter if you are willing to look beyond the vail of inherited dogma :) It is the crux but how do we answer without speculating (which I guess is the point)? I am fascinated with the idea that Jesus was fully man but had a supernatural understanding of humanity (he had an instinctual and full comprehension of the powers and limitations of being human); he understood the Father, His creations, and how everything was meant to work. Did this understanding elevate him above all other men into Deity or was Deity preconceived? These are the types of questions that get us in trouble but in my opinion (as a Christian) should be more widely welcomed.

See, this for me is the thing. We can start with pre-suppositions (I don't mean that critically) that we inherited with from the classical formulations.... and I was raised, trained and have practice that way of apologetics as an evangelical. BUT this is where Process lures me to value it as a conversation partner. It asked "In WHAT way was God present is Jesus?" and starting with a different question has led me into such better answers. -Bo

You're right that his supposed sinless life is also a uniqueness, but it's theologicall incorrect to view this as somehow constitutive of his divinity. Although to be fair, it's hard for me to understand what it means, phenomenologically, for Jesus to always choose right over wrong.

His 'sinless' life is not the grounds of his uniqueness. It is simply a consequence of his divinity.

Isn't the fact that Jesus lived a perfect life within the boundaries of being fully human a uniqueness in itself? If I am understanding the tenants of process theology (and I can't say I fully grok them) we progress through the daily process of experience and choices we make–good or bad, throughout our existence, under only the influences of God. Thus if Jesus, as man, was able to make all the 'right' choices and understand and follow all of God's influences obediently, then that establishes his uniqueness. Am I understanding this correctly?

That's good to know because I don't think the incarnation is dispensable, and I think Tripp's said before that incarnation has priority over Trinity (which I also accept). I'd be interested in hearing more, and I just think that we need to be clear that Jesus' uniqueness can only be located in his personhood. It's not as if what he said was that different from John the Baptist, and apocalyptic prophets weren't hard to come by during that time.

Yeah, I was kinda alluding to 'super'man but also just being playful like he is 'swell'. ... meaning we have a high opinion of him in an innocent mentality. But on a serious note, I am intrigued by your line of reasoning. We might take this up in a future TNT. and just for the record - I am 100% on the incarnation. I am not as confident in the hypostatic formulation being the final word on the subject. -Bo

The incarnation wasn't specifically denied, but I'm saying that the being of Jesus is the only grounds for his uniqueness . If one does not affirm that Jesus was fully God and fully Man, then I don't think we can make the claim that he was unique - by any stretch of the imagination. Neither his actions nor his teaching were unique. I suppose I don't understand what you're getting at it: Jesus was "super", i.e. the God-man, no?

I have to admit that I don't understand why the debate is being shifted from Jesus' action to Jesus' being. I suppose my anxiety is that liberal christology tends to strip Jesus of his deity, but always makes the concession that he is the best person EVER in word and deed. I don’t buy that. He didn’t end world hunger. He loved the people and he was killed for preaching justice to the poor by the state (similar to someone like a Fred Hampton). Many people have suffered a similar fate, and many people have helped out more people than Jesus. We honestly don't have much ground to say about Jesus' life and whether or not he was good of a person as Martin Luther King, etc. I'm also unclear about how Jesus' mission differs from the one God also calls us to - namely - striving for peace and justice in solidarity with the oppressed. I don't really see how affirming the divinity of Christ somehow minimizes the goodness of other human beings. In fact, if we grant Jesus' divnity, it actually makes human accomplishment that much more amazing, considering Jesus' actions can't be compared to another human being's action. Furthermore, Jesus might have done good things, but it wasn't like he lived the most extraordinary life every. Like Althaus-Reid once said Jesus might have been a feminist, but he could”ve done a helluva lot more for women’s rights. Last question - isn't the absurdity and violence of Christianity being diminished here in the hopes of not offending others? It is pretty ridiculous to think that the Son of God became man 2000 years ago, but that's basically Christianity in a nutshell. The incarnation is absolutely indispensable to Christianity, and I don't think we benefit from denying that.