Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Who do you say Christ is? (and other questions) Message-ID: Date: 8 Sep 89 06:10:25 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 294 Approved: christian@geneva.rutgers.edu This is a response to some questions from kodak!isctsse!mcmahon@cs.rochester.edu (Brendan McMahon). He is looking for an alterative to the Jehovah's Witnesses for his wife. He asked 3 specific questions, which I'm going to comment on. There has recently been an extensive discussion in talk.religion.misc on the question of the Trinity and Incarnation. However the volume and complexity of that discussion was a bit much for someone in your situation. So let me simply try to give a summary answer to your questions and let others fill in details as seems appropriate. 1) Most "mainstream" Protestant churches teach the divinity of Christ. In general Protestants differ radically from Catholics on issues involving the nature of the Church and how authority in the earthly Church is handled, as well as some aspects of the sacraments. On issues such as the nature of God and Christ there is much less difference. The definitive formulations on the Trinity and Incarnation were in the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, respectively. While Protestants don't give quite the same authority to councils that Catholics do, most acknowledge Nicea and Chalcedon as true councils and in general terms accept the results. The major exceptions are churches that are sort of obviously out of the mainstream: e.g. Unitarian, Quaker, JW, and LDS (Mormon). But Protestant denominations such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran and the more evangelical/pentacostal churches all accept the Trinity and Incarnation just as you are used to them in the Catholic Church. (Of course as in the Catholic Church this doesn't mean that every individual member or even minister holds orthodox views.) 2) The Incarnation and Trinity are both relatively complex doctrines. They are attempting to do justice to a number of different aspects of the NT evidence. Here are the major things said about Christ that have led to these doctrines: - Jesus prays to the Father, and tells us that the Father is greater than he is (John 14:28). - Christ is spoken of as having existed before the world. (Col 1:15ff, John 1:1ff, Heb 1:2ff) - Christ is in one way or another identified with God. The last one is the most complex. Nowhere that I know of is it said baldly that Christ is God. What does appear are several things: - Jesus forgives sins, which only God should be able to do - The rather odd episode of John 18:6. They come to arrest Jesus. He says "I am he" and they fall to the ground. An interesting interpretation of this, which fits John's style and theology, is that Jesus has said the Greek form of the divine name ("Jehovah" is a mistransliteration of a name that is probably closer to "Yahweh". Its literal Hebrew meaning is something like "I am". See Ex 3:13-14.), applying it to himself. Despite the hostility of the arresting officers, God's glory is briefly present, forcing them to their knees. Although indirect, this is the strongest statement in the NT identifying Jesus with God. - various statements in John such as "I and the Father are one" - Christ's actions in saving us were God's. See Eph 4:32, 2 Cor 5:19, Col 1:19-20. Here's a brief outline of how these lead to the Trinity and Incarnation. Let's start with Christ's preexistence. What are we to make of that? When it is said that Christ existed with God at the beginning, some people concluded that there were two independent eternal entities, Father and Son. This has two problems: (1) it looks amazingly like two gods, something that Christians have never wanted (2) it is probably too literal a reading of language that is ultimately poetic. "In the beginning was the Word" is a Christianized form of Jewish speculative ideas about the Torah, Wisdom, etc. At places in Prov. (e.g. Prov 8:22-31) Wisdom is treated like a living entity, who was present with God from the beginning. Later Jewish speculation (probably under the influence of neo-Platonic ideas) developed this even further. But ultimately, it is hard to believe that any Jew really meant God's Law or his Wisdom to be a separate creature. If you ask what was really present in the beginning, I think we'd have to say that Wisdom was present in God's mind, not that it was really a separate entity. Similarly, one suspects that the Word that John says was present was God's word, and was ultimately present in God's mind and his will. I don't think that in the prolog to John, John had in mind a really separate entity. The Trinity is the result of the Church dealing with folks (called Arians) who took preexistence more literally, and believed that there was actually a second preexistent entity alongside of God. In the Trinity, the Church rejects this idea, and interprets the eternal Son as being a mode of being of one God, not something separate. It seems paradoxical to some, but the Trinity was originally intended as a way of *preserving* the idea of one God. I am not entirely sure that the exact metaphysical formulations used at Nicea are meaningful to all Christians today. We may need to reformulate this doctrine, probably by removing its cloak of neo-Platonism and returning to more Hebraic concept of God. But I think we do want to preserve its major accomplishment, which is to interpret the preexistence of Christ as saying something about God, not as involving a second eternal entity. (More below about what it actually says about God.) Now let's look at the Incarnation. This doctrine is an attempt to deal with the fact that Christ lived an earthly life in dependence on God, but that he is also in some sense identified with God. The idea is that God took to himself a human life in such a way that when we saw Jesus, we really saw God. Yet it remained a human life. Thus in Christ we have two things: God and a human being. Whenever we speak of Christ, we must do justice to *both* of these things. Again, it's useful to look at what this was rejecting. The ideas were developed as a reaction to the concept that Christ was a supernatural entity who appeared on earth with a human appearance, but was not actually a normal human being. In effect, rather than maintaining both Christ's humanity and his union with God, it posited an entity sort of halfway between man and God. The problem with this is that it's not clear what benefit such an entity has for us. One basic principle of theology has been that in order to save us, Christ must be both God and man. If he isn't God, he can't *save* us. If he isn't man, he can't save *us*. Heb 2:14-18 makes it clear that our salvation depends upon the fact that Christ is really human, not a demigod with a human appearance. Yet Christians have always felt that Christ's death on the cross must be considered to be God's self-sacrifice. So the classical doctrine attempts to say both that Christ is a normal human being, and that God somehow united himself to Christ in such a way that Christ's actions were really God's, and in him God was really present. Again, it's not clear how much the neo-Platonic language of Chalcedon really does for 20th Cent. Christians. I am very sympathetic with people who would rather find a way to think of Christ that doesn't involve figuring out what essenses and hypostases are. But the ideas they come up with should be consistent with the original ones. They must preserve the fact that Christ's death is God's self-sacrifice, but also the fact that Christ is a normal human being, who lived a life under the same limits as ours, in trusting dependence upon his Father. Note that Christians very commonly use language about Christ that is in some sense misleading. Christ really involves two things: God and man. Yet because Christ is only one person, things that normally would be true about only God or man can be said to be true about the other. E.g. properly speaking, God can't die. But because God has taken this human life as his own, God can be said to have suffered death. I have no objection to people who find the traditional wording inappropriate for the 20th Cent. I think reformulations may be called for. However I'd like the reformulations to be 20th Cent. equivalents of the orthodox view, not of one of the positions that the Church rejected. Those who reject the Trinity quite commonly seem to hold the equivalent of the Arian position. They think of Christ as a second eternal entity. They normally think of his appearance on earth as being something akin to wearing a mask, or putting on a human suit. They do not normally think of their eternal Son uniting himself with a true human life. This conflicts with the clear NT concept of Christ as a man exactly like us. And because it is not really God but this separate Son who comes down, it's also not clear that he has any power to save us. In the previous paragraph, I'm describing some views that appeared on talk.religion.misc. I don't know the precise JW stand, so this shouldn't necessarily be taken as an analysis of the JW views. You'll have to figure out what they have been saying to your wife and see how they compare with the orthodox position as outlined here. I have also made no attempt to deal with the Mormons. Their ideas about God are as far as I can tell like no other Christian or Christianity-derived group. Although there are some superficial similarities between their views and the Arian ones, I don't think they are really Arian. They are sort of a case to themselves. If you are seriously interested in these things, I recommend a book by John (?) Baille, "God was in Christ". This is an attempt to recast the Trinity and Incarnation in modern terms. As described above, the Trinity almost looks like a way of "defusing" the NT's insistence on Christ's preexistence, so as to protect monotheism. Rather than saying that the preexistent Christ is a separate entity, it is interpreted as saying something about God. But I haven't said what precisely it says about God. Baille supplies that content. Baille's view is hard to summarize briefly. Basically he says that the Trinity is a consequence of the concept that God is love. If God is really and truly love, he did not need the world in order to love. So he must have had love even before there was anything outside himself to love. This means that there must be a relationship within God himself. Father and Son are seen as being, not separate entities, but the two "ends" of the relationship of love which is present within God. The Spirit holds the relationship together. This has interesting consequences for the Christian life. God calls us to loving obedience. At first, one would think that obedience is something appropriate only to creatures. God himself would not have had the experience. But because God had this relationship, he has experienced the role of Son as well as the role of Father. Thus he is not calling us to a role that is foreign to himself. Rather, he is calling us to participate in a relationship that has always existed in himself. Thus he is able through his grace to give us the obedience that he demands. This analysis is viewed by many modern theologians as being one of the most insightful and innovative contributions ever made to Trinitarian doctrine. The book is not written for casual reading. But it is written to make sense to laymen. It includes a good detailed explanation of where the traditional doctrines came from and what they mean. But its meat is his attempt to recast the doctrines in terms that have real content for Christian life. (3) You ask about choosing a church. There are books that do what you ask, but I don't know the titles. I hope someone else can suggest one. I've looked through our local phone book in preparing the following, to try to make sure I didn't miss any major groups. However I have by no means mentioned every group. You shouldn't take the following information as authoritative, as I don't know every church equally well. Although a Catholic may find some of the practices of some of the following somewhat of a jolt, I don't think you'll find anything heretical in any of them (aside from their ideas about what the Church is, and if you are into Catholic sacramentalism, the lack of sacramental theology in many of them). There are some theological differences between denominations such as Lutheran and Baptist. However they are less than you might expect. Many of the divisions among Protestant groups are simply due to history. And they are differences in the way the church governs itself or in the type of liturgy it uses. No one takes these differences as having any ultimate significance. Theology is more important to me than to many people. I am a Presbyterian because I value the Reformed theological tradition, and I think its form of church government is both effective in practice and in accord with the NT. But most Protestants choose churches because they feel comfortable there, by a combination of compatibility with the people, respect for the pastor, etc. I'm not entirely comfortable with this approach, since I happen to think that doctrine is important. I would start by trying to determine what general parameters your wife is interested in. The first dividing line is between what I'm going to call "fundamentalist" and more liberal churches. This comes down to whether you believe that you can apply the words of the Bible directly to modern questions without further examination, or whether you are willing to consider the possibility that the Bible writers heard the Word of God through their own culture, and some adjustment may be needed in applying the Bible to modern times. This shows up with issues such as ordination of women. If she wants to take the more literal view, then the largest denomination is probably the Southern Baptists. Baptists demand adult baptism. (If your wife isn't baptized, this won't be an issue for her. She'll be baptized by any church she joins. But if you decided you wanted to join, and you were baptized as a child, Baptists and certain other denominations would insist on rebaptizing you. If that upsets you, you may want to think about it. I think the "pentacostal" churches also will insist on adult baptism. Some others listed in this section probably do as well, but I'm not sure which.) To my way of thinking this is a sign of a slight over-emphasis on the role of our decision. I also find the "low church" views on the sacraments slightly unsatisfying. But this is largely a partly a matter of taste. I just prefer a more liturgical church. If I suddenly became conservative, I'd tend to look at a group like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or Presbyterian Church in America, which are smaller conservative branches of Presbyterianism. For someone who wants more liturgy, Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod Lutheran are probably worth looking at. These are all relatively "cerebral" churches. Wesleyan Methodist is a smaller conservative branches of Methodism. Methodism has emphasized "heart religion" and revivalism, but not to the extent of the pentacostals. I think this distinctive heritage is tending to blur, and there may now be little practical distinction between Methodists and Presbyterians. I'm not as familiar with the pentacostal churches. But there are plenty of them. These are churches that have more emphasis on speaking in tongues, etc. Churches with names involving "holiness" and "pentacostal" tend to be in this direction. But there are a huge number of denominations, and I have only started the list... If she is willing to take a more flexible view of the Bible, then there's another set of churches. Roughly the same set of choices present themselves, but you're now dealing with slightly more "liberal" representatives from the same basic families. From the Baptist tradition, we have the American Baptists. Relatively "low church", informal. Believe in adult baptism. Still relatively conservative in their view of Scripture, but they're not purging their seminaries of people who take more liberal views. In the Reformed tradition you have churches like Presbyterian (USA), United Church of Christ (the old Congregational), Congregational (those that didn't join the UCC), and Reformed in America. Slightly more liturgy (though this depends a lot on the church), slightly more central organization (except for Congregational), infant baptism. Generally slightly more liberal on social issues (probably UCC is the most) and Biblical interpretation, but still tend to be "Biblical". Methodists are often indistinguishable from these, though historically they were more associated with "heart religion" (revivals, etc.), and recently some of them have been involved more in the "social gospel". It depends upon the local church. The more liturgical churches are American Lutheran or Lutheran Church in America and Episcopal. Lutheran is probably more theologically oriented and Episcopal more sacramentally oriented. I have not mentioned the groups that I consider outside "orthodox Christianity," though among these groups I have a great admiration for the Quakers. Everyone should experience a Quaker service at least once. It will change your attitude towards silence and prayer. (I attended a Quaker church for a year in college.)