The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Historical Jesus – Part 5

Where did Jesus come from? The simplicity of the question belies the complexity of the answer. If Jesus incarnated true humanity, by what power did he accomplish this perfection? Did this person simply arise out of the gene pool, or is there more to the story? 

The traditional understanding is that God the Father sent his Son to earth to die for our sins. We have previously discussed the dying part of this narrative, but what about the Father’s decision to send his son? The gospel of John, written in the second century, does not speak of Father and Son, but rather of the Word. He begins his story of Jesus with these well-known words: “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.” We should note that the Greek word “Word” includes connotations of both spokenness and of the rational creativity of the universe. But whether one speaks in terms of Father/Son or Word, the question remains: how did this true person come to be? 

Understanding the divine-human status of “Lord Jesus” [Jesus the Christ] tortured the early church for centuries. He was only a man. No, he was God and only seemed to be a man. The two natures were separated in him. No, they were mixed up. He was a perfect man, so good in fact, that God adopted him to be his son. The so-called christological controversies of the early church declared there to be more heresies that one might think possible. The creed promulgated in Nicaea in 325 stated that Jesus was of the same “substance” as the Father. He definitely was God. The council in Chalcedon in 451 [over 100 years later] stated that the divine nature and the human nature in Jesus were neither separated nor mixed, but the council was unable to describe positively what they were trying to say. Easier to say, with John, that the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. 

Perhaps an answer to the dilemma is to focus on the true humanity of Jesus. Because he had no self-created world, and because all of life was for him a Moment in which he was continually aware of the Presence of God, he therefore became a window through which one could experience God. This is certainly what the disciples believed, that they experienced in Jesus both who they were and who God was. It was for them not an academic enterprise of relating substances as at Nicaea nor of relating abstract natures as at Chalcedon, but rather an experience that mysteriously made the truth known.

But our question, however, still stands. Where did this perfect Jesus come from? Did God, whether as Father or as Word, decide that humankind needed help, and so decided to become incarnate during the time of Caesar in the hill country of Galilee, planet Earth? Given that Jesus was homo sapiens, might we suspect that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other hominins also required a divine incarnation to show them how to live righteously? And perhaps elsewhere in the universe, among the 200 billion trillion stars? And back on earth, do we assume Jesus to be the only “perfect” man?

Or is it the case that all homo sapiens [let us limit our inquiry to homo sapiens] have the same capacity and opportunity to be perfect as was Jesus? If that were true, then we must ask why the opposite seems to be the case, that we are not only not perfect, but that we are drastically imperfect. So, did God send Jesus? or was he a particular outcome of an evolutionary process that enabled him to reject the apparent inevitability of egocentricity, and instead be perfect even as God is perfect? As humans, we have an inescapable awareness of our shortcomings, and much prefer to have a savior come to us rather than to be required to save ourselves. Probably God, the Word, knew this, and decided to intervene. And has probably intervened in many such situations across the universe. Accepting such a mystery would seem to be the only answer available.

 

Read All Parts Here.


Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith,   The Void and the Vision and  The New Matrix: How the World We Live In Impacts Our Thinking About Self and God. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife Margaret in Norwich, VT.

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