True God and True Man

[Stunster]

Over on the Religion and Theology pages, there was a topic asking Christians whether they believed in the Divinity of Christ. Rather foolishly, I responded. I reproduce (slightly revised) my response here:

I'm a Roman Catholic, and our (Nicene-Constantinopolitan) Creed says that Jesus Christ is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father".

That indeed is what I personally believe.

Why? Well, for one thing, I don't believe that the the doctrine of the Trinity could just have been made up out of thin air. It must have captured something essential in the early Christian community's experience of God, and of the revelation of God in and by Christ.

I would find it very hard to imagine that God would just allow such a colossal error--if the doctrine of the Trinity is erroneous---to become so widespread and conceptually central to Christian tradition, (assuming there is a God, and assuming God regards Christianity as the fullest revelation of God available to us). I mean, if God is guiding the Church in any meaningful sense, it seems that the doctrine of the Trinity would be an important one to get right, given that it is so distinctive of Christianity historically. Otherwise, why not just be content with Judaism? But if you're a Christian---and the thread was addressing the question to Christians---then it seems you kinda have to believe in the Trinity----but that implies a belief in the divinity of Christ.

Secondly, the doctrine of the Trinity (and its implication for Christians that Jesus is divine) makes sense, to me at least, of the idea that God is love. I think of love as essentially the revelation/communication/gift of the self. If God is transcendent, then God has to reveal/communicate/give Godself to God. This is what is captured by the Johannine notion of the Logos/Word, who was 'with God' and who 'was God'. This just sounds right to me philosophically. Here's what I mean:

Rational consciousness by its very nature is inherently in the business of knowing (truth/reality) and loving (i.e. willing the good). An eternal infinite rational consciousness must therefore know and love, in the first place, itself. But being infinite, the divine rational consciousness which by its very essence knows and loves (in the first place itself) cannot be divided, but is essentially one.

So the Logos/Word is one and has to be one with that which speaks it forth.

So if Jesus is the incarnate Logos/Word, Jesus is one with God.

Hence Jesus is divine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Given that God creates a world and not only reveals/communicates/gives Godself to God, then God's self-revelation, self-communication, self-gift will rather naturally be willed by God to be present in the world God creates. Hence the Incarnation of the Divine Logos/Word.

All this makes good sense to me, just reflecting philosophically upon the concepts involved.

The next bit is trickier in a way. Is the Divine Word incarnate in all human beings, or only in Jesus or somebody else? That's the big question.

This is where faith enters into it. I believe the apostolic witness that the man Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. To me this confirms that what Jesus said and did was true, and was in virtue of his resurrection, validated/vindicated by God.

Now, there are many texts in the Gospels where Jesus implicitly claims that he has not only a higher authority than Moses, but indeed the same authority as God---the authority to forgive, the authority to command demons, to compel the wind and the waves, the authority to heal on the Sabbath, and he frequently identified himself in terms of divine sonship---e.g. "Simon barJonah, flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven". See also the parable where the son is sent by the father to the vineyard but is killed---the son is contrasted in the parable with those servants who had been sent earlier but had been beaten.

But most significant of all---the Jews believed that the 'shekinah' or divine presence resided in the inner sanctum of the Temple, and Jesus, I think, very clearly and controversially and just prior to his death proclaimed that HE was greater than the Temple--which would be destroyed---and identified his own body as the true temple in which the 'shekinah' truly dwelt.

So here's the argument in a nutshell: 1) Jesus by act and word proclaimed his own person as being indwelt by God in a rather unique and salvific way; 2) the Apostles told the truth about the resurrection; 3) Therefore, Jesus was telling the truth about himself, and we should readily identify him with the Logos/Word of God, testified to in the Gospel of John.

All comments welcome!



:crazy:

[DemBones DemBones]

1. Very nice, Stunster. I'm glad you're here at DU,

your posts are adding a lot. Welcome! :hi:

[Stunster]

2. Why, thank you!

I am of the opinion that the Trinity is such a remarkable doctrine that God would not have allowed it to be propagated so widely were it false.

The other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, of course deny the doctrine and hence deny the divinity of Christ. But if they were right on that score, why would God have let Christianity be so successful historically. Furthermore, given the inherent difficulty of the doctrine of the Trinity for rational creatures like us even to make sense of, why would it ever have been thought up by human beings if it weren't in fact revealed by God. The very existence of the doctrine seems like evidence for its truth!

:think: :wow: :hi: