One of the things I marvelled at when reading The Da Vinci Code was author Dan Brown’s claim that the early church, (in a power grab, of course), shrouded Christ’s humanity in a veil of divinity, thus obscuring His humanity. This created the need for the church as a mediator of Christ’s revelation, otherwise Jesus would be incomprehensible. Brown’s claims are backed up by several gnostic “gospels,” such as those found at Nag Hammadi.
What was amazing to me about this view, (aside from the fact that it is historically puerile and hopelessly inconsistent to the point where one wonders if Brown even bothered to read a gnostic text, or even look up the word “gnosticism”), was that Brown made such an effort to assert Christ’s humanity, and emphasize his human ministry. This was interesting to me merely on a personal level, because for the bulk of my Christian life, I have had far greater struggles convincing non-Christians of Christ’s divinity.
This struggle, I learned, was actually much easier than describing what Christ’s divinity actually meant. How was he God and man? This difficulty could have been much reduced if only I had read Packer’s 5th chapter in Knowing God. Here, with the simplicity and clarity that has made this book so popular, Pakcer tackles the incarnation: Jesus as fully human and fully divine.
Particularly helpful in this chapter is Packer’s precision in expressing that Jesus was not God minus certain divine characteristics, but God plus humanity. His explanation of Paul’s text in Php. 2:7 is helpful (p.60,63):
When Paul talks of the Son as having emptied himself and become poor, what he has in mind, as the context in each case shows, is the laying aside not of divine powers and attributes, but of divine glory and dignity…a volutary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony-spiritual even more than physical -that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it.
As well as one may be able to describe Christ’s nature, we should note that it will always be mysterious and intrinsically baffling; there is nothing in the universe that serves as an accurate analogue for the Trinity. God is our only example. All we can do is express what the Bible teaches.
But even after understanding (best I could) the Bible’s teaching on Christ’s nature, I encountered a third struggle when I met with some Jehovah’s Witnesses to discuss the Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses deny Christ’s divinity, and instead claim that he was a created being, and while he may be ontologically superior to us, he is not divine. As I labored to reason with them through the Scriptures that Jesus is indeed the God-man, a chilling question surfaced in my head: What’s at stake? Does it matter that Jesus was human and divine? Am I still Christian if I deny this?
Packer hints at the ramifications of Christ’s nature in the beginning of his chapter. Gallons of theological ink can be spilled to answer why it is crucial to Christianity that Jesus be divine and human. Consider my very brief, very incomplete list:
- Jesus as the God-man is the only adequate explanation for the information we have of him (i.e., Scripture). It best accounts for his self-understanding, his actions, words, and teachings. If he were not divine and human, Jesus was either a lunatic, an apparition, or a scoundrel. None of these seems a plausible option.
- Jesus’ nature as God-man means he is the perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins in kind (he is human) and quantity (he is infinite). Even more, we might ask of Scripture: Who alone saves? Who alone forgives sins? It is only and always God. Jesus is no savior if he is not God.
- Jesus’ nature explains the resurrection. How could one die, yet raise himself up again by his own authority (see Jn. 10:17-18) if he were not both God and man?
- Jesus’ nature cements the authority with which we understand his teaching. If he’s just another guy with amazing, revolutionary things to say, why would we listen to him over and against the teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama or Karl Marx?
- If Jesus were not human, we lose the awesome realization of how deeply God loves us, and the expanse of Christ’s humility. C.S. Lewis says it this way in Mere Christianity (p.179):
The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.
Packer concludes with the practical application of my point above, that as we model God, and “make our attitudes the same as Christ Jesus,” (2 Cor. 8:9), we too become poor, so that others might become rich.
danny
bmarchio
