ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (03/19/85)
From Chuck Hedrick: > ...let me start by quoting the definitive document, the Definition of > Chalcedon, written in 451: > ..... > None of this discussion is present in these terms in the New Testament... For those of us who reject all dogma appended to the original teachings (i.e: the Bible), could somebody please list references by book, chapter, and verse, of the most important Biblical descriptions of the Divinity of Christ? I'd also be interested in knowing what Biblical references, if any, support the ideas below: * Trinity * Virgin Birth * Anyone's Bodily Assumption By the way, I really appreciate it when people are careful to use such language as `all ORTHODOX Christians believe in the Trinity' rather than `all Christians believe in the Trinity'. Pax Vobiscum.. -michael kai wmosen en tw zwnti eis tous aiwnas twn aiwnwn, hos ektisen ton ouranon kai ta en autw kai tyn gyn kai ta en auty kai tyn thalassan kai ta en auty, hoti xronos ouketi estai; Apokalupsis Iwannou X.vi
hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (03/21/85)
Ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) asks > For those of us who reject all dogma appended to the original teachings > (i.e: the Bible), could somebody please list references by book, chapter, > and verse, of the most important Biblical descriptions of the Divinity of > Christ? [There were some other questions in the original letter, but I am not going to try to answer them all now. Indeed I have already had my say on the Trinity, and may simply forward my previous message privately. About the Assumption, I assume he means the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. The assumption of Elijah is clearly documented in 2 Kings 2. Enoch's is referred to in Heb 11:5. The tradition of Melchizedek's is a bit more shadowy, but there is a hint of it in Heb 7:3. I believe the other person who is supposed to have had a bodily assumption is King Arthur. If indeed he does mean the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, I can only say that an RC is going to have to answer that. I am as mystified as Michael. I can't believe he really meant to ask about the Virgin Birth. The Biblical evidence for that is hard to miss. Try Mt 1:18-25 and Lk 1:26-38. I wonder whether he meant to ask about the Immaculate Conception, which somehow seems to get confused with the Virgin Birth. If so, he should enlist the aid of one of our friendly RC's. here too.] The Divinity of Christ is based on several things: - specific Biblical evidence - Biblical evidence of a more general nature - prayerful reflection on the meaning of it all, and later Christian experience. Specific Biblical evidence. I place this in 4 categories: - actual references to Christ as God - possible references to Christ as God, but with some textual or exegetical ambiguity - indirect references - statements that Christ performs functions that only God performs Since some people may find the full list of passages a bit tedious, I am including them as an appendix. To summarize, there is only one unambigous, direct reference to Jesus as God [Jn 20:28], and that was an exclamation uttered by someone who had just had the shock of his life. It may be that when he was saying "My God!" he meant it the same way one of us would mean it when we had just gotten a surprise. However there are a number of indirect references, that say that Christ had "the form of God", "the likeness of God", and statements like "I and the Father are one." This is important, because the orthodox doctrine is not quite a bald statement "Jesus is God." It has a certain indirectness about it. Roughly the same indirectness as Scripture... In addition, we can look at what Jesus did. He seemed to have an authority about him. He called disciples. (Mk 1:14-20, 3:13-19) He ordered out evil spirits. (Mk 1:23-27) He discussed who would be first in his kingdom. (He objected to the question, but did not seem to object to the idea that he had a kingdom.) (Mk. 10:34-45) He forgave sins. (Mk 2:1-12) He judged the Pharisees (Lk. 11:37-53) The overall impression that one gets from the accounts of Jesus' life is that he felt he was sent by God to establish God's kingdom. He also felt that he had a special relationship with God. There have been a lot of reevaluations during the 20th Century. There are people who believe that the whole idea of the Divinity of Christ was a misunderstanding, that he was just a teacher. I am willing to accept that some of the words that he is quoted as saying in John may have been added later as commentary. But I do not see any plausible interpretation of the gospels that makes him into an ordinary rabbi. He seems to think that he is a direct representative of God, and that he is establishing God's kingdom. This viewpoint is inherent in everything that he does, and can't be removed without totally throwing away the Gospels. However the idea of Christ's divinity is not based solely on what he said. It is also based on the experience of people who were with him, that when they looked at him, they saw God. Jesus' own statements, such as "The Father and I are one" help, but they alone would not have resulted in the Orthodox doctrines. The doctrines resulted because Christians felt that when they had seen Jesus they had seen the Father. This reaction didn't start at the Council of Nicea. It is there in Jn. 14:9, and in several passages in Paul's letters (which I quote below). The other primary source for the orthodox belief is the idea that Jesus died for us. Again, this is based both on some things that Jesus said and on the experience of Christians. Jesus talks about laying down his life for his people in several places. (e.g. Mt 20:28, Jn 10:11 ff) And the early Christians felt that he had died for them. (e.g. Ga 2:20, Ep 5:2, but probably the clearest exposition is the whole chapter Rom 5) This became part of the idea of the Divinity of Christ, because the Church started thinking of this as God's own sacrifice of himself. After all, lots of men have died. What was different about this case? What was different is that it was God's action. In the Bible, this is normally expressed by saying that God offered his Son, rather than saying directly that God offered himself. (Rm 5:10) In my opinion, the Biblical image of Jesus as God's Son performs roughly the same function as the later doctrine of two natures. It preserves Jesus as a human being, but gives him a very direct connection with God. The problem with the image of Son is that it is just an image. Images can be understood in many ways. When the church started running into subtle misunderstandings, they needed a more explicit formulation. Of course for the everyday practical purposes of living a Christian life, a good image is likely to be more useful than a bunch of Greek metaphysics. But if you haven't though about the Greek metaphyics, you may be misunderstanding the image! In my opinion, this combination of Jesus' own words, the experience of the early church as recorded in the Bible, and the experience of all Christians after them, made it inevitable that something like the orthodox doctrine would develop. Perhaps that specific form of that doctrine was not inevitable. There is no question that Greek metaphysical language is being used. But I do not see any way to avoid the basic items being expressed: - that Jesus was a normal man. This is made abundantly clear in the Bible. He suffered and died. The entire book of Hebrews is an eloquent testimony to the importance that Jesus was a man like ourselves. - but that Jesus revealed God, not just by preaching about him, but by the life he lived and the death he underwent. The church tried very hard to avoid what was finally said at the council of Nicea. (That Christ is of the same substance with the Father.) However the alternatives are not appealing. All of Christian experience (including that recorded in the Bible) says that he reveals God more directly than a preacher or teacher. It says that when we look at Christ, we see God. However we do want to maintain a certain indirectness about this. Christ may be the "human face of God", or a mirror in which we see God. But we do not want to break down the distinction between human nature and the nature of God and make him into some sort of superman or demi-God. I believe that the definition of Chalcedon does a good job of striking this balance. It says very clearly that there were two things going on here. We have a normal human life, but God fully presented himself to us through it. Every attempt to say less ended up with Jesus as just another teacher. Every attempt to say more ended up with him as only an imitation human being. I agree that we should not blindly accept something just because some Council said it is true. On the other hand, it is not always obvious where a certain belief is going to lead. The early Church didn't just go around pronouncing people heretics right and left. There was a good deal of diversity of viewpoint, and most possible views were allowed to work themselve to their natural conclusions. The things that were rejected were generally rejected for good reason. Of course, church councils may err. But I would judge it far more likely that you or I would do so. This is particularly true of the early councils, which represented a much more diverse spectrum of opinion than the Council of Trent and later Catholic councils. Not only hadn't the Protestants split off yet. The Eastern Church was still there. Some of the most creative work happened because of the interaction between the East and the West. One recent attack that has been made on Chalcedon is that the formulation they came up with was seriously corrupted by Greek metaphysics, and has no meaning to those of us who hold a more modern world-view. I believed this until recently. Indeed I still believe it to some extent. I find that much of the language about substances and essenses and hypostates seems far separated from the events that I read about in the Gospels. But as I have looked back over it in the last few weeks, I conclude that what the folks at Chalcedon was basically right. In the Gospels, and also in the rest of the New Testament, it is clear that in Christ we are confronted with God, but that Christ continues to be a man. That is really all that Chalcedon is saying. They are just trying to build in absolutely bullet-proof protection against the extremely subtle misunderstandings that they had run into. There is no way to do this without themselves using subtle definitions. This is not idle philosophical speculation. Nor are those misunderstandings gone even now, as other discussions on this list have shown. ............... Appendix A. List of passages referring to Christ as God, directly on indirectly. This list is taken from the entry on God in the "Modern Concordance to the New Testament," ed. Michael Darton, Doubleday, 1976. I will quote from the TEV, except in cases where a more literal translation is needed to make the point. (1) actual refererences to Christ as God Jn 20:28 Thomas answered him: "My Lord and my God!" (2) ambiguous references to Christ as God Rm 9:5 and of their race ... is Christ, who is God over all, blessed [RSV margin] and of their race ... is Christ. God who is over all be blessed [RSV text. TEV adopts this interpretation] Tt 2:13 glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ [TEV text] glory of our great God and our Savior Jesus Christ [TEV mg] [RSV has similar translations, but their marginal not seems to been dropped in my printing. I.e. the superscript is there in the text, but there is no footnote!] Heb 1:8 about the Son, ... God said: "Your kingdom, O God ..." [This is ambiguous because the original OT reference referred to the king of Israel, so "O God" may not mean what it sounds like. If this sounds like an odd interpretation, Jesus himself used it in Jn. 10:34-35] 2 P 1:1 our God and Savior Jesus Christ [RSV text] our God and the Savior Jesus Christ [RSV mg] 1 Jn 5:20 in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God [RSV] [I consider this ambiguous because it is not at all clear who the "This" refers to.] (3) Indirect references, i.e. Christ represents God or is the same in some way, but not a direct statement: He is God. Jn 1:1 he was with God, and he was the same as God Jn 5:18 he had said that God was his own Father and in this way had made himself equal with God. Ph 2:6 He always had the nature of God, [This passage is interesting because it is the primary Biblical support for the idea that Christ existed eternally.] Col 1:15 Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. Col 2:9 for the full content of divine nature lives in Christ, in his humanity. Jn 10:33-35 [in this passage Jesus is accused of making himself out to be God. He takes the interesting defense that Scripture [Ps. 82:6] calls everyone a god to whom the Gospel is addressed!] 2 Cor 4:4 Christ, who is the exact likeness of God Jn 10:30 The Father and I are one. Jn 14:9 Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (4) Christ does things that only God can do Mk 2:7=Lk 5:21 God is the only one who can forgive sins! 2 P 1:3 His divine power has granted to us all ... [RSV] [This one is ambiguous, because it is not clear who "His" refers to. TEV thinks God. The people who did the concordance that I was using think Jesus.]