Who are Jesus' teachings for?

    According to most Christians, Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the four gospel accounts are useful for all believers. However, hyper-dispensationalists claim that Jesus’ teachings are meant only for ethnic Jews, “the circumcision” (Rom. 15:8), and aren’t applicable to gentiles. I once held strongly to this view, as you can see from earlier posts on my blog. [1] Although I still think a distinction should be drawn between the teachings of Paul and the other apostles — see my recent posts on “Challenges to Dispensationalism” — I don’t think this distinction is as severe as hyper-dispensationalists claim. What does this mean for Jesus’ teachings? Are they for us, or just for ethnic Jews?

    Jesus and Jesus’ teachings

    First, let’s look at Jesus’ own claims about his teachings. In Matthew’s gospel, when he sends out his disciples, he tells them not to go on the road that leads to gentiles, nor to go into Samaritan cities, but “go instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:5-6). When speaking to a Phoenician woman, he says, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24). This draws upon the imagery, from the Hebrew Bible, of Israelites as lost sheep without a shepherd (Isa. 53:6; Jer. 23:1-2; 50:6; Ezek. 34:5-6); the Messiah, Jesus, was promised to be a shepherd for these lost sheep (Ezek. 34:23-24). Furthermore, the Johannine Jesus says that salvation is “from the Jews” (Gk: ek tōn ioudaiōn; John 4:22).

    These handful of verses, which are often prooftexted by hyper-dispensationalists, should be read more carefully in their context. Just because Jesus sent his disciples out to Israel doesn’t mean that his teachings aren’t applicable to gentiles; that’s a non sequitur. Later on, he did explicitly dispatch his disciples to “all the gentiles” (Gk: panta ta ethnē; Matt. 28:19), using the same word ethnoi (“nations”) used in 10:5. If his sending of his disciples to Israel alone proves that his teachings are for Israel alone, then his sending of his disciples to all the gentiles proves that his teachings are for gentiles (but really, neither argument is valid).

    In the second instance, the context shows that Jesus was testing the gentile woman’s faith. He refers to the Israelites as “children,” teknoi, while referring to gentiles as “dogs,” kunaria (15:26). The woman answers that even dogs eat crumbs from the table of their master, where the children also eat (15:27). Jesus responds, “O woman, your faith is great!” (15:28) In context, Jesus’ mission to the lost sheep refers not specifically to his teachings, but to his miracles, and in fact he does perform a miracle to heal the gentile woman’s daughter (15:28). This proves that Jesus’ miracles, during his earthly ministry, were primarily for Israel (cf. Matt. 15:29-31), though he was also willing to heal faithful gentiles; it tells us nothing about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of his teachings for gentiles.

    In fact, throughout Matthew’s gospel, Jesus anticipates an expansion of scope for his ministry that will include gentiles. When a faithful gentile comes to him for help, he predicts that many “sons of the kingdom” — that is, Israelites — will be cast out, while “many from east and west” will take their place in the kingdom (Matt. 8:10-12; cf. 22:1-14). Jesus “will announce justice to the gentiles... and in his name gentiles will hope” (12:15-21). Though sent to Israel, he performs a miracle for a gentile woman (15:21-28). The kingdom of God is taken from the Jewish religious leaders and given to “another nation” (Gk: ethnei; 21:33-45). This culminates in Jesus sending his disciples to “all the gentiles” (28:19).

    The same thing is found in the other gospel accounts. Mark records the same incident where Jesus saved a gentile woman’s daughter (7:24-30), and in the disputed long ending, Jesus tells his disciples to go out to “the whole world” (Gk: ton kosmon hapanta) and preach the good news to “every creation” (Gk: pasē tē ktisei; 16:15). In the Luke-Acts corpus, Jesus is said to be both “a light for revelation to gentiles and glory to your people Israel” (Lk. 2:32); he tells his disciples to go first to Jerusalem, then both Judea and Samaria, and finally “to the extreme parts of the earth” (Ac. 1:8), to preach to “all the gentiles, having begun from Jerusalem” (Lk. 24:47). They first preach to diaspora Jews of all nations in Jerusalem (Ac. 2), then to Judeans and Hellenists across the land (11:19-20), and it’s divinely revealed that God will accept gentiles who “work righteousness” without requiring them to become ethnic Jews (10:9-11:18).

    In the gospel of John, although Jesus says that salvation is “from the Jews” because the temple for worship was in Jerusalem (4:20-22), he anticipates a soon-coming time when true worship will no longer be only in Jerusalem — by extension, salvation will no longer be only “from the Jews” (4:21, 23-24). The Johannine Jesus anticipates the extension of his ministry to “other sheep which aren’t from this fold,” which will become “one flock” (10:16). At the end of his public ministry, “some [God-fearing] Greeks” seek Jesus and aren’t turned away (12:20-22). John’s gospel never says anything about the gentiles, ethnoi, explicitly, but it does talk about an expansion of Jesus’ ministry beyond the Jews.

    Paul and Jesus’ teachings

    Jesus anticipated that his ministry would expand beyond ethnic Jews, and even hyper-dispensationalists can’t deny that gentiles who “work righteousness” can be saved under his teachings without becoming ethnic Jews (Ac. 10:34-35). However, they claim that Paul’s audience isn’t under Jesus’ teachings; after all, in his gospel, salvation isn’t dependent upon works at all (e.g., Eph. 2:8-10), which is a legitimate difference between him and the other apostles. But what did Paul have to say about the usefulness of the teachings of Jesus while he was on earth?

    The clearest teaching about this is in the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus). There, Paul says that those who don’t listen to “these things” and “the sound words our Lord Jesus Christ” are “conceited, knowing nothing, having an unhealthy attitude about controversy and disputes over words,” from which come all manner of sins (1 Tim. 6:3-4). The preceding context suggests that Paul is referring to Jesus’ words as recorded in the gospel accounts, because he quotes the exact words of Jesus as recorded in Luke 10:7 (Gk: axios ho ergatēs tou misthou autou), referring to them as “the Scripture” (1 Tim. 5:18). Elsewhere, he says that “every Scripture” is useful for teaching and moral instruction (2 Tim. 3:16-17), which must therefore include Jesus’ teachings in his ministry.

    The best case for strict hyper-dispensationalism could be made if the Pastoral Epistles aren’t actually written by Paul, which is ironic, since hyper-dispensationalists are mostly absolute Biblical inerrantists who must regard the Pastorals as authentic. However, even in Paul’s undisputed epistles, he assumes the usefulness of Jesus’ teachings for his audience.

    In one place, he cites a command of “the Lord” that a husband and wife shouldn’t be divorced, and that the wife should stay unmarried if she is divorced, which Paul considers to be binding on his audience (1 Cor. 7:10-11). This command is found in all three synoptic gospel accounts (Mk. 10:2-12; Matt. 19:3-12; Lk. 16:18). While it’s technically possible that Paul has a different command in mind, one that was revealed only to him, Ockham’s Razor militates against such a possibility. We shouldn’t postulate a second commandment when we know of an identical one from the gospel accounts.

    But didn’t Paul say that Jesus was “a minister of the circumcision” (Rom. 15:8)? Yes, but prooftexting this in favor of hyper-dispensationalism ignores the context. Paul says that “Christ received you... for [Gk: gar] Christ has become a servant of the circumcision, on behalf of the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the gentiles might glorify God” (15:7-9). He then goes on to cite many Scriptures that prove the gentiles would come to worship God through the Messiah (15:10-12). Paul’s point, therefore, is to show that Christ’s ministry did indeed have the secondary purpose of bringing in the gentiles, though he was primarily a servant of Israel.

    Two different ‘good news’?

    Any unbiased reader of the Scriptures should agree that there are differences between Paul and the other writers of the New Testament. For Jesus and the other apostles, works are a prerequisite of salvation along with faith (Matt. 5:17-20; 16:27; 23:1-3; John 14:15-24; 15:10-12; 2 Pet. 1:10f; 1 John 2:3-6; 5:1-4; Jas. 2:10-24), but for Paul, salvation is by grace through faith alone (Rom. 3:27-28; 4:5; 11:5-6; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8-9; Php. 3:9; 2 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 3:4-5), and works are a result of this (2 Cor. 9:8; Gal. 5:22-25; Eph. 2:10; Php. 1:6; 2:12-13; Tit. 2:11-14; 3:8). For John, the message through which one is saved is simply that Jesus is the Messiah (John 14:15-24; 15:10-12; 20:31; 1 John 2:3-11; 3:18-24; 4:7-5:5), but for Paul, the message through which one is saved is that the Messiah died for our sins and was raised on the third day (1 Cor. 15:1-5; cf. Rom. 10:9).

    Despite these differences, I’m no longer convinced that this requires two entirely separate “good news” or gospels (Gk: euangelion) for Paul and the other apostles. Yes, Paul spoke of “my good news” (Rom. 2:16; 16:25; Eph. 3:1-3; Col. 1:25-26; 2 Tim. 2:8), but he also spoke of “our good news” (2 Cor. 4:3; 1 Thess. 1:5; 2 Thess. 2:14), “the good news of God” (Rom. 1:1; 15:16; 1 Thess. 2:2, 8-9), and most often “the good news of Christ” (Rom. 15:19; 1 Cor. 9:12; 2 Cor. 4:4; 9:13; Gal. 1:7; Phil. 1:27; 1 Thess. 3:2; cf. 2 Thess. 1:8). “The good news of Jesus Christ” is what was also proclaimed by the gospel accounts (Mk. 1:1). Paul says that the same good news was proclaimed by him and the other apostles (1 Cor. 15:1-11). “The good news” is for “every believing-one, Jewish first and also Greek,” not just for some believing-ones (Rom. 1:16).

    Furthermore, hyper-dispensationalists claim that the other apostles must have never truly understood Paul’s gospel — otherwise they would’ve been part of “the body of Christ” and not “the Israel of God.” But Paul himself, though he emphasizes that his good news comes from Christ alone and no other human (Gal. 1:6-12), also says that he “laid before [the other apostles] the good news that I proclaim among the gentiles” to make sure that it wasn’t “for nothing” (2:2). This implies that the other apostles, even if they didn’t preach Paul’s gospel, certainly knew about it. In the same passage, he says that he preached the same faith that he used to persecute (1:22-24), and nowhere indicates that he ever changed what he preached. [2]

    Paul’s gospel is said to have been “a secret” in times past (Rom. 16:25; Eph. 3:3; Col. 1:26), which hyper-dispensationalists appeal to as proof that it can’t have been taught before him. Yet this “secret” is said to have been contained in the Old Testament prophets (Rom. 16:25-26; cf. Gal. 3:8); his “good news” is “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1-4). The good news that Paul proclaims was made manifest not by Paul himself, but by “the appearance of our Savior, Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:9-10; cf. 1 Pet. 1:20).

    How then can we explain the clear differences between Paul and the other apostles? One way is simply to reject absolute Biblical inerrancy; every Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching and moral instruction (2 Tim. 3:16-17), but never claims to be absolutely without error or human influence. Maybe the apostles simply disagreed on comparatively minor issues, like whether works come logically before or after salvation, while agreeing on the larger “good news.” [3] The other possible solution, which I favor, is the one I set forth in my recent post about dispensationalism: perhaps the writings of the other apostles are to God’s people as a whole, while Paul’s writings are to the subset of God’s people who understand the true meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection, who are therefore charged with “the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18-20).

    Conclusion

    Hyper-dispensationalists draw a severe distinction between Paul’s teachings and the teachings of Jesus (while he was on earth) and his disciples. This distinction, although supported by some clear differences between Paul and the other apostles, is contradicted in several places by Jesus and Paul themselves. Jesus’ teachings aren’t only for ethnic Jews, but were considered by Paul to be useful for his audience, as well. A sharp distinction between the “good news” preached by Paul and the other apostles can’t be drawn, and the evident differences between Paul and the other apostles can be explained in other ways. For these reasons, even though I used to strongly argue for hyper-dispensationalism, I don’t think it’s a sustainable view in light of the whole testimony of the Scriptures.

______________________________

[1] See my series of posts on the topic of “Pauline Dispensationalism.”

[2] This context suggests that the apparent distinction between a “good news of the uncircumcised” and “of the circumcised” at Gal. 2:7 should be understood as what Wallace calls the “Genitive of Direction” (for which he gives the example of Rom. 8:36, “sheep for slaughter”). Paul was given to preach the good news to the gentiles, while Peter was given to preach it to ethnic Jews. This is supported by the context: he goes on to say (2:8) that the same one (God) was working in Peter “for a commission to the circumcised” (Gk: eis apostolēn tēs peritomēs) and in himself “to the gentiles” (Gk: eis ta ethnē). In the next verse (2:9), he says that he and the other apostles agreed that he should go “to the gentiles” (Gk: eis ta ethnē) and them “to the circumcised” (Gk: eis tēn peritomēn). The emphasis is on the difference in direction, not in type, of the commission.

[3] It’s also possible that — in the case of works — there’s no contradiction at all. Paul may simply be emphasizing the divine point of view, by which our works are the result of God working in us, while the other apostles emphasize the human point of view. The other apostles do also say, in some places, that our works are the result of God and Christ in us (Heb. 8:10-11; 10:14-17; 1 John 4:10-12, 17-19; cf. Deut. 30:6; Jer. 24:7; 31:33-34; Ezek. 11:19-20; 36:26-28).

Warnings against non-universalism

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"Has God rejected his people?": an exegesis of Romans 11:1-36

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"Has God rejected his people?": an exegesis of Romans 9:30-10:21

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"Has God rejected his people?": an exegesis of Romans 9:1-29

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"That you may not grieve": an exegesis of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

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"How are the dead raised?": an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:29-58

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"How are the dead raised?": an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:1-28

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So Trump won. Again.

What does this mean about America?

I think it’s a huge mistake to write off all Trump voters as racist and misogynistic. This is the ‘lesson’ that many liberals are taking from the election. MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough suggested that Trump won because of racist Hispanics (against themselves??) and sexist Black men. This is absurd; support for Trump increased or stayed the same from 2020 to 2024 in nearly every demographic.

To be sure, racism and misogyny played a large role in getting Trump elected. Since 2016 his political campaign has been surrounded and propped up by the alt-right. But that doesn’t explain the motivation of everyone who voted for him or the apparent shift to the right across America. It’s a serious error to think that fascism* is simply when a nation goes collectively insane. That downplays its danger and makes regular people more susceptible to its rhetoric.

*Yes, Trumpism is fascism. Actual scholars of fascism have been saying so for years, well before any Democrat politician was willing to come out and say it.

What this election reveals is a deep dissatisfaction with the way society is – whether that’s the rising cost of living, a feeling of alienation from power, or any number of other factors. The Democrats and establishment Republicans represent the status quo of useless neoliberalism, which is precisely what many Americans are trying to get away from. So when Trump bursts on the scene, telling them that he will solve their problems – by implementing nationalist economics, getting rid of immigrants, and taking vengeance on the establishment – they naturally flock to him. Sure, he has personal flaws, and there’s a chance his policies will only make things worse; but who else has recognized their problems and given them any solution at all?

Bernie Sanders was right when he recently stated, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black voters as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.” I would only add that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have ever really been for the working class.

Trump’s victory is disheartening, but it also shows an opportunity. Half the nation is so angry at the status quo that they are willing to vote for someone as noxious as Donald Trump. If the left can present them with a real solution to their problems, at least some of them will come over. Indeed, some of Trump’s supporters seem to be leftists who just don’t know it. This should be our attitude toward Trump voters:

When Trump era policies destroy your access to healthcare, education and clean water I will not be there to gloat, I will be there to help you organize.

When Trump era policies deport your friends or legally deny you healthcare I’m not going to stand over you and say “[see]”, I’m going to help you organize.

When Trump era policies defund public schools in your district and their vouchers aren’t enough for private school, we will not be there to gloat and point fingers, we will be there to help you organize. 

– Walter Masterson

Trump’s policies will inevitably fail to solve people’s problems, and will likely make them worse. When they do, we have to be there to help them pick up the pieces and build something new. And not in a paternalistic way, like authoritarians want to do through the state. We have to help organize them to solve their problems as a community.

As Christians, this is especially true of us. Despite how Christianity has been co-opted by some evil people to serve their own ends, we must rebuild the Christian legacy of serving the downtrodden and opposing unjust systems of power. Peter Thiel, the billionaire behind J. D. Vance’s rise to power, blamed Christianity for the rise of “wokeness” because it “always takes the side of the victim.” Let’s prove him right.

Yes. It will be harder to do this under another Trump administration. He’s repeatedly said that he wants to use violent force against the “enemy from within,” which for him includes even milquetoast liberals like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. But that only means we have to work harder. If we give up, nothing will ever get done.

So what lesson should we take away from this election? We need to fight like hell to build a better future. That’s our best chance of winning over the right.

Edit: Looks like Adam Conover came to pretty much the same conclusions as me: https://youtu.be/MAJafY-4at0

More on this topic:

https://jacobin.com/2024/11/trump-election-lessons-democrats-labor

https://c4ss.org/content/60042

https://crimethinc.com/2024/11/06/history-repeats-itself-first-as-farce-then-as-tragedy-why-the-democrats-are-responsible-for-donald-trumps-return-to-power

Contra annihilation

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Demons and satan revisited

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The history of Israelite religion (part 2)

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The history of Israelite religion

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The justice of God

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Joshua the Firefighter

30-year-old firefighter Joshua Messias tragically sacrificed his life today to save all 200 children from a burning school. Unfortunately, because he saved all the children and not just some of them, his sacrifice was completely meaningless. If only he had saved just a few of them, then his death would have really meant something.

Also, the fact that all the children were saved basically means that burning buildings aren’t dangerous. No one is going to learn to stop playing with matches if some children don’t die. It was quite irresponsible of Joshua to save all the children, as they will surely go burn down more buildings now. It’s almost like Joshua didn’t care about burning buildings at all.

One of the students that we reached for comment, Calvin, said, “I don’t understand why he saved all of us. It would have been more glorious if he had shown his power as a firefighter by letting most of the students burn to death.” Another student, Wesley, responded, “One of my classmates didn’t want to go with Joshua at first, but he stayed with her and insisted that she should go until she finally went with him. He’s so mean. It would have been much kinder if he had respected her free choice and respectfully left her to burn to death.”

Let this be a lesson to all firefighters. Only ever try to save some people from a burning building. If you save all of them, you’re nearly as bad as an arsonist yourself.

Does this story make any sense? Do these objections to Christian universalism make any sense?

“If everyone will be saved from sin, then Jesus’ death didn’t matter.”

“If everyone will be saved from sin, then sin doesn’t matter / God doesn’t care about sin.”

“God sends people to hell for his glory, to show his power.”

“God sends people to hell because he respects their free choice.”

“If God saves everyone from sin, it’s like he’s working with the sinners.”

Credit to Drew Costen for this concept

Edit: Some people have been confused about the analogy, thinking that the burning building is a metaphor for hell and rightly objecting that God saves us from sin, not hell. The burning building is a metaphor for sin. I thought this was fairly clear based on the way I phrased the questions (“If everyone will be saved from sin”), but it’s probably my fault for choosing a burning building rather than something less similar to traditional depictions of hell.

Past interpretations of John's prologue (part 3 of 3)

    In the last two posts, we’ve been looking at how early Christians interpreted the prologue to John’s gospel (John 1:1-18). So far, we’ve seen the Wisdom Christology view found in the Odes of Solomon and the Logos Christology view of the 2nd-century Christian apologists. They interpreted John’s prologue in very different ways, but, contrary to the common modern reading, didn’t interpret it as a proof-text of Jesus’ co-equal deity with the Father. In this post, we’ll look at the 4th-century readings of John 1, two views that were later deemed heretical and one which ultimately won out.

    Interpretation #3: Subordinationism

In the middle of the 4th century, shortly after the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), there was a debate between two bishops, Eusebius of Caesarea and Marcellus of Ancyra, over the meaning of John 1:1. [1] First we’ll consider Eusebius’ interpretation and then move on to Marcellus. Eusebius’ reading of John 1:1 is preserved in his Ecclesiastical Theology, written around AD 330.

    According to Eusebius, “the Word” obviously cannot be understood as a literal word like that which is spoken by a person (ET 2.9-13). It would be nonsense to interpret the Word as an attribute of the Father, because then we would have to read John 1:1 as saying, “In the beginning was God, and God was with God, and God was God” (ET 2.14.3-9)! The fact that the Word is “in the beginning” proves that it isn’t without beginning, but is generated by the Father (ET 2.14.3, 13). The Son is co-eternal with the Father, and is the same as the Word, so it’s possible to replace “Word” with “Son” in John 1:1 (ET 2.14.11-12). The fact that the Word was “with” God, not “in” God, proves that he was a person and not a mere attribute (ET 2.14.3). Finally, because John says that “the Word was God [theos]” without the article (i.e., not “the God,” ho theos), it proves that the Word was not “the God who is over all,” but is rather a divine being made to closely resemble the Father’s divinity (ET 2.17.1-3).

    Eusebius places the same emphasis on the lack of the article in John 1:1c elsewhere. For example, in his letter to Euphration, dating to ca. AD 320, he states, “he himself is Son of God, but not true, as God is. For there is but one true God... ‘and the Word was God,’ [John 1:1c] but not the one true God.” [2] In his oration to emperor Constantine, dating to AD 335, he assumes that the Word is the intermediary that connects God to creation, i.e., the Logos of Greek philosophy, not the Most High God, which would be “strangely confounding things most widely different” (Oratio 11.12, 16; 12.7).

    Eusebius’ interpretation of John 1, that the Logos is a divine being co-eternal with but second to God himself, was first held by the 3rd-century theologian Origen of Alexandria. Origen was the first to hold explicitly that the Logos was eternally generated by God (Peri Archon 1.2.1-4; 4.4.1). He said that, while there may be some Christians who believe the Logos to be just as divine as the Most High God, they are a “most obscure sect of heretics” who deny that the Father is greater in all ways than the Son (Contra Celsus 8.14-15; cf. Peri Archon 4.4.8). Origen believed that the lack of the article in John 1:1 was significant, and proved that the Logos is not “true God,” but is a god by participation in the Father’s divinity, because he is “with the God” and “unceasingly contemplates the depths of the Father” (Comm. on John 2.2).

    Therefore, the interpretation of John 1 held by Eusebius of Caesarea and Origen of Alexandria was subordinationist. They believed that the Logos of John 1:1 was an eternal divine being (“God”), but a separate and lesser god, distinct from “the true God” who is the Father. This Logos became flesh in the man Jesus Christ.

    Interpretation #4: Modalism

Eusebius’ opponent, Marcellus of Ancyra, held a very different interpretation of John 1. Marcellus pointed out that in the Old Testament, God used singular pronouns to describe his unique divinity, so there can only be one divine person (Frag. 91, 92, 97). [3] Thus, he argued, the word of God cannot be a second god or Logos-demiurge, but is the literal reason and spoken word of God, similar to a human’s reason and spoken word (Frag. 67, 87-89, 99). It is a “power” (dynamis) of the Father, rather than a separate person (Frag. 70). Marcellus accuses Origen and the other Logos theorists of using unbiblical ideas from Platonic philosophy (Frag. 22), which was frankly not an incorrect accusation.

    Because the word was not a personal demiurge, Marcellus believed that it “was only the word” before it took on flesh (Frag. 5, 7, 8). Therefore, all of the names and titles which are applied to Jesus in the New Testament, including “Jesus” and “Messiah,” must only apply to the human flesh which the word of God inhabited (Frag. 7). However, Marcellus was emphatic that Jesus was not only a man, which he actually accuses Eusebius of implicitly believing (Frag. 126-128). On the contrary, he states that the spirit of Jesus is identical to God; God’s word is what animated the human flesh of Jesus, controlling it like a puppet, which is how “the word became flesh” (Frag. 5, 7, 73, 104-105).

    Marcellus was excommunicated by a council of Eastern bishops in 336, because of his modalist beliefs and his refusal to acknowledge their condemnation of Athanasius (a trinitarian). Four years later, he sent a letter to Julius I of Rome (the pope) appealing their decision. In this letter, he expressed his belief that, prior to his birth, Jesus was “the true and actual word of God” and “a power [dynamis] inseparable from God,” citing John 1:1-3 in support, and that “the Father’s power, the Son, is indistinguishable and inseparable” from him, citing John 10:30, 38 and 14:9 in support. This was considered orthodox in the West, and both he and Athanasius were reinstated the next year by a council of fifty Western bishops presided over by the pope.

    In summary, Marcellus’ interpretation of John’s prologue was modalist. He argued that the word in John 1:1 was God’s literal logos, an attribute of the Father, which he used to control the body of Jesus Christ. “The Word was God” (John 1:1c) means that the word was no different from God, the Father. The “word became flesh” (1:14) when God created a human flesh and puppeteered it using his word. There is therefore no personal distinction between the Father and Jesus.

    Interpretation #5: Trinitarianism

In the debate between Eusebius and Marcellus, the trinitarian interpretation of John’s prologue — that “the Word was God” (Gk: theos ēn ho logos) refers to a second person in the one God — doesn’t appear to have even crossed their minds. As far as I can tell, this interpretation first appears in the writings of Athanasius of Alexandria, in ca. AD 360. [4] In his fourth discourse against the Arians, he writes,

For the Word, being Son of the One God, is referred to Him of whom also He is; so that Father and Son are two, yet the Monad of the Godhood is indivisible and inseparable. And thus too we preserve One Beginning of Godhood and not two Beginnings, whence there is strictly a Monarchy. And of this very Beginning the Word is by nature Son, not as if another beginning, subsisting by Himself, nor having come into being externally to that Beginning, lest from that diversity a Dyarchy and Polyarchy should ensue; but of the one Beginning He is own Son, own Wisdom, own Word, existing from It.

For, according to John, “in” that “Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” for the Beginning was God; and since He is from It, therefore also “the Word was God.” And as there is one Beginning and therefore one God, so one is that Essence and Subsistence which indeed and truly and really is, and which said “I am that I am,” and not two, that there be not two Beginnings; and from the One, a Son in nature and truth, is Its own Word, Its Wisdom, Its Power, and inseparable from It. And as there is not another essence, lest there be two Beginnings, so the Word which is from that One Essence has no dissolution, nor is a sound significative, but is an essential Word and essential Wisdom, which is the true Son. (Discourse 4.1)

According to Athanasius, when John says that the Word was “in the Beginning,” he indicates that he was in the Father (who is the Beginning of all things). Thus, although “the Word was God” — in the highest possible sense of divinity — there is nevertheless still only one God, because there is one Beginning (the Father).

    Athanasius also brings up a second argument: the Son is called “Word,” and yet God is essentially reasonable, never having been without his rationality (logos), therefore the Son must essentially and always exist alongside the Father (Discourse 4.2-5). This argument was first brought up by Origen, as evidence of the eternality of the Son (Peri Archon 1.1.6; 2.1-4), and would have been a point of agreement between Athanasius and the 4th-century subordinationists. However, Athanasius believed that the Logos was divine in the highest possible sense, not just by participation in the Father’s divinity but by his very essence (Discourse 3.4, 6, 15), contrary to the subordinationists (Origen, Comm. on John 2.2; Eusebius, ET 1.2).

    According to Athanasius, “the Word became flesh” when he began to control a human body. In his book On the Incarnation, he refers to the human aspect of Jesus as the “human body” or “instrument,” and says that the Word controlled it as the mind controls the body (18.1; 42.7). This is also evident in his later letter to Epictetus, where he says that the body suffered, but the Word did not. In this way, his views were similar to Marcellus, who also denied that there was any really human soul within Jesus.

    For most of the 4th century, the three views of John 1 outlined above were considered to be within the realm of orthodoxy, at least in some part of the church. [5] All three factions insisted that they affirmed the Nicene Creed, and that they affirmed it in its original, intended sense. [6] This changed in AD 380, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I declared that only the trinitarian interpretation of the Nicene Creed would be considered orthodox, and all other views were outlawed (see the Edict of Thessalonica). The next year, this was confirmed at a council in Constantinople that only trinitarian bishops were able to attend. [7] From that point onward, the trinitarian interpretation of John’s prologue was unanimous in the church (basically, because it was the only legal view to hold).

    Conclusion

The common trinitarian interpretation of John’s prologue, that “the Word” refers to a second divine person within the one God, was not always believed by the early church. The earliest surviving interpretation of this passage, from the Odes of Solomon, was an exaltational, Wisdom Christology reading, which held that “the word” was the literal word of the Father that was embodied in Jesus. The most common 2nd-century interpretation among Christian theologians was based on two-stage Logos theory, which held that “the Word” was a personal being that was generated by God “in the beginning.” In the 3rd and 4th centuries, both subordinationist and modalist readings of John 1 coexisted, while the trinitarian reading was the latest to appear (in the mid-4th century). Thus, from a historical perspective, the trinitarian reading isn’t the most likely interpretation of John’s prologue; on the contrary, it’s an extreme anachronism.

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[1] Maurice Wiles, “Person or Personification? A Patristic Debate about Logos,” in The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 281-289; Samuel Fernández, “Marcellus and Eusebius on the Gospel of John in De ecclesiastica theologica” 35, no. 1 (2018): 107-120.

[2] https://www.fourthcentury.com/urkunde-3/.

[3] For a translation of the surviving fragments of Marcellus’ writings, see https://www.fourthcentury.com/marcellus-intro/.

[4] If anyone else knows of any earlier (pre-Athanasian) evidence of this interpretation, please share it! I’d be happy to add it to this post.

[5] Although, due to the conflicts of the period, all three of them were excommunicated at one point or another by a council. Eusebius of Caesarea was excommunicated by a council of fifty-nine bishops at Antioch in 325 and reinstated by the Council of Nicaea in the same year.

Marcellus of Ancyra was excommunicated by a council of Eastern bishops at Constantinople in 336, reinstated by a council of more than fifty Western bishops at Rome in 341, excommunicated again by Eastern bishops at the councils of Antioch (341) and Serdica (343), reinstated by Western bishops at the same Council of Serdica, condemned by the Council of Milan in 345, finally deposed by the Roman emperor Constantius II in 347, and condemned again by Eastern bishops at Sirmium in 351.

Athanasius of Alexandria was excommunicated by a council of sixty Eastern bishops at Tyre in 335, reinstated by the Council of Alexandria and the Council of Rome in 341 (the same council that reinstated Marcellus), condemned by Eastern bishops at the Council of Serdica in 343 (the same council that excommunicated Marcellus), condemned again at Sirmium in 351 (the same council that condemned Marcellus), reinstated by the Council of Alexandria in 353, condemned at Arles (353) and the Easterners at the Council of Milan (355), and reinstated at Alexandria in 363.

The doctrinal turmoil of this period is often passed over by trinitarians in favor of a simplistic narrative where trinitarianism was affirmed once and for all by the Council of Nicaea in 325. This account forgets the fact that even Arius himself was reinstated as presbyter by a council of two hundred bishops at Jerusalem in AD 335.

[6] Eusebius of Caesarea was actually the one who formulated the original creed at the council, which was only substantially modified by the addition of the word homoousios (see here). Marcellus’ theology is also thought to have played a significant part in the Council of Nicaea, because of the anathema at the end of the Creed of 325 against “those who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or ousia”; he was the one who claimed that the Son was the same hypostasis as the Father. Athanasius of Alexandria obviously accepted the Nicene Creed, as his (trinitarian) interpretation of it eventually won out. The creed was originally intended to be ecumenical, excluding no Christology except for Arius'.

[7] Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 5.8.5-10; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 7.7.2-5.

Past interpretations of John's prologue (part 2 of 3)

    In this series of posts, we’re looking at how early Christians interpreted the prologue of John’s gospel. Last time, we saw how the Odes of Solomon, a late 1st- or early 2nd-century text closely related to the gospel of John, understood the prologue. Based on what the author of this text says, he would have interpreted John 1 as saying something like the following:

In the beginning was the Word, and it was both with God and was God the Father. God made all things through his word, and nothing that exists was made without it. God’s word brings life and enlightens all people with knowledge. This word came into the world, to God’s own people, but was rejected; those who didn’t reject it were made children of God. The Word became like us by being perfectly embodied in the human Messiah. He was exalted to become just like God, perfectly revealing God to us.

This exaltational, Wisdom Christology interpretation of John’s prologue appears is the earliest surviving reading of this text. In this post, we’ll look at another interpretation, the Logos Christology reading of John 1, which dates to the mid-2nd century AD.

    Interpretation #2: Logos Christology

The basis of Logos Christology was formed by Philo, a 1st-century Alexandrian Jew who was deeply influenced by Hellenism. Drawing on the Platonic concept of a world of Ideas beyond the physical world, and the Stoic concept of a logos, or rational power, that permeates all things, Philo believed that God’s logos was a bridge between the unknowable God and the physical creation. [1] Philo referred to the Logos as the power of God (Cher. 1.27-28), the first-begotten Son of God (Conf. 63, 146; Mos. 2.134), the mediator between God and the physical creation (Her. 205-206; Plant. 8-10, 18), the Wisdom and Image of God (Conf. 146; Fug. 137-138; LA 1.43), the Angel of the Lord (Fug. 5; Somn. 1.228-239), and even as a second god (QG 2.62; Somn. 1.229-230). According to Philo, the Logos is to be held in the second place after God himself (Fug. 50-52; LA 2.86).

    Philo’s view on the creation or generation of the Logos was somewhat complex. Just as there is a distinction between a word in one’s mind and the same word after it is spoken, he held, there is a distinction between the internal (endiathetos) and uttered (prophorikos) Logos. The Logos first existed in God’s mind, but was uttered by him, after which the physical world was created (Abr. 83; Migr. 70-71; Mos. 2.127). In this way, the Logos is “neither created nor uncreated” (Her. 205-206); although the uttered Logos is the most ancient of God’s creations (LA 3.175), it also existed eternally in God’s mind before it was uttered. Whether or not Philo viewed the Logos as a personal being or a personification (James Dunn argues cogently for the latter view [1]), it came to be seen by later philosophers as a person.

    One such philosopher, Justin Martyr, became a convert to Christianity and an apologist in the mid-2nd century. Justin made a connection between the Logos of Hellenism and the “Word” in John’s prologue. Prior to Justin, this passage (John 1:1-18) appears to have received very little attention — in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, Jesus is only referred to as “Word” once, in one of Ignatius’ contested epistles (Magn. 8.2). Justin, on the other hand, refers to Jesus as “Word” no less than twenty times in his First Apology (5; 10; 12; 14; 21; 22; 23; 32; 33; 36; 46; 63; 64; 66) and six times in his Second Apology (6; 8; 10; 13), bringing this title from John’s prologue (and Revelation 19:13) back out of obscurity.

    According to Justin, the Logos is a personal being who pre-existed Jesus’ birth, when he became man (e.g., 1 Apol. 5; 2 Apol. 6; 13). Justin Martyr refers to the Logos as “another god and lord, subject to the Maker of all things” (Dial. 56). However, Justin admitted that his belief in Jesus’ personal pre-existence was not held by most of his Christian contemporaries (Dial. 48.2-4). The Logos inspired not only the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, but also the Greek philosophers, including Plato (1 Apol. 46; 59-60; 2 Apol. 10; 13). Regarding the generation of the Logos, Justin states,

I shall give you another testimony, my friends, from the Scriptures, that God begot before all creatures a Beginning, who was a certain rational power proceeding from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, “the Glory of the Lord,” “the Son,” “Wisdom,” “an angel,” “god,” and “lord” and “Logos”... for he can be called by all those names, since he ministers to the Father’s will, and was begotten by an act of the Father’s will.

This is just as we see happening among ourselves; for when we speak some word [logos], we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the rational power [logos] within us, when we speak the word. And we also see this happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it kindles another, but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled. (Dial. 61.1-2)

Justin goes on to apply Proverbs 8:22 (“the Lord created me at the beginning of his way”) to the Logos (Dial. 61.3). Thus, like Philo, Justin had a two-stage theory of the Logos, in which it first existed in God’s mind and at some point (“the beginning”) was uttered to become a personal being. Justin uses the analogy of a fire lighting another fire to show that the Logos could be numerically distinct from God without lessening God’s own power (Dial. 128-129).

    Following Justin’s example, two-stage Logos theory became the primary lens through which John 1 was interpreted by 2nd-century Christian apologists. Theophilus of Antioch argues that the first words of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” refer to the internal (endiathetos) Logos in God’s own mind, whereas “and the Word was God” refers to the emission of the uttered (prophorikos) Logos to become a personal being (To Autolycus 2.10, 22). Athenagoras of Athens and Tatian of Adiabene also held that the Logos was brought forth from God’s mind in the beginning, making him “the first product of the Father” (Legatio 10) or “the first-begotten work of the Father” (Oratio 5; 7). Clement of Alexandria also clearly held to two-stage Logos theory, and thus interpreted John’s prologue:

Now an idea is a conception of God, and this the barbarians [non-Christians] have termed the Logos of God... Now the Logos, coming forth, was the cause of creation; then he also generated himself, when “the Word became flesh” [John 1:14] that he might be seen. (Stromata 7.3.15-16)

Now the Son is called the Logos, of the same name as the paternal Logos. But this [the paternal Logos] is not the Logos that became flesh, and not the Logos of the Father, but a certain power of God, as if it were an emanation of His Logos that has become mind and pervaded the hearts of men. (quoted in Photius, Bibliotheca 109)

Clement made a distinction between “the paternal Logos,” which is an impersonal power of God, and “the Logos” which is the Son; the latter came forth from the former to create the world, and eventually became flesh. Elsewhere, he refers to the Logos as “the first creation of God” (Strom. 5.14), “the first-created god” (Exc. ex Theo. 20), and together with the Spirit as “those primitive and first-created powers” (Comm. on 1 John 2.1).

    Finally, another early adherent to Logos Christology was Tertullian of Carthage, a Christian apologist of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries. Like the other two-stage Logos theorists, Tertullian used the analogy of a human first considering a word in his mind, and then bringing it forth by speaking it. God existed alone before the beginning, but in the beginning, he brought the Logos forth, making it “second to Himself by agitating it within Himself” (Against Praxeas 5-6). Regarding the creation of the Son, he states,

[God] has not always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. (Against Hermogenes 3)

Thus, like other 2nd-century Christian philosophers, Tertullian believed that the Logos, a personal being, was brought into existence a finite time ago. This creation of the uttered Logos is “the beginning” spoken of in both Proverbs 8:22 and John 1:1 (Against Hermogenes 20).

    In summary, the prologue of John fell into relative obscurity in the time of the Apostolic Fathers (apart from the Odes of Solomon, which we saw in the previous post). It was brought out of obscurity by Justin Martyr, who made a connection between the “Word” of John 1 and the Logos of Hellenistic philosophy. This interpretation quickly spread to other 2nd-century Christian apologists, who were likewise extremely influenced by Platonism and Greek philosophy. [2] They believed that the Logos, as a personal being, was brought into existence at “the beginning,” and later became human as Jesus. They interpreted John 1 as saying something like the following:

In the beginning was the internal Logos, and this was with God (in his mind). It was then uttered to become the Logos, a second god. God made all things through the Logos, and nothing that exists was made apart from him. In him is the light which brings knowledge and life to humanity. The Logos came into the world, to his own people, but was rejected; those who didn’t reject him were made children of God. The Logos was born as a human, Jesus, who, as the Logos, always perfectly reveals God.

    In the next post, we’ll finish by examining how John 1 was interpreted into the 4th century AD, when there were major conflicts over Christology in the church.

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[1] James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (2nd ed.; London: SCM Press, 1989), 220-230.

[2] Thomas E. Gaston, “The Influence of Platonism on the Early Apologists,” The Heythrop Journal 50, no. 4 (2009), 573-580.

Past interpretations of John's prologue (part 1 of 3)

    “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2) Today, these verses are considered by many Christians to be the proof-text par excellence for the deity of Christ. After all, the author goes on to say that “the Word became flesh” in Jesus (1:14). This is supposed to prove not only that Jesus pre-existed his birth as a divine being, but that this divine being was both a different person and the same god as the Father, demonstrating the existence of at least two persons (the Father and the Son) in the one God.

    I’ve challenged this interpretation elsewhere on exegetical grounds. [1] But has this binitarian view of John’s prologue always been the interpretation of most Christians? If so, this would greatly boost the credibility of the modern binitarian and trinitarian interpretation of John 1. In this short series of posts, we’ll be looking back through church history to find out how the earliest Christians, closest in time and culture to the milieu of John’s gospel, interpreted this passage.

    Interpretation #1: Wisdom Christology

The earliest surviving interpretation of John’s prologue can be found in the early Christian Odes of Solomon. These odes are widely recognized to have a very close relationship with the gospel of John; in the early 20th century, when the Odes were wrongly believed to be pre-Christian, it was thought that they had influenced John’s gospel. Charlesworth, one of the foremost authorities on the Odes, argues that they were written by members of the same community that produced John’s gospel and epistles. [2] For an overview of scholarly views of the relationship between the Odes and John, see footnote 3. [3] Whatever their exact relationship, even if there’s no direct literary dependence between the Odes and John, they’re still very closely related and are an invaluable resource for determining what John meant. The Odes of Solomon date to the late 1st or early 2nd century AD. [4]

    Charlesworth identifies at least four odes which parallel John’s prologue. [5] The first one is Ode 7, which clearly has the incarnation in view, as it states,

the Lord... became like me, that I might receive Him. In form He was considered like me, that I might put Him on... Like my nature He became, that I might understand Him. And like my form, that I might not turn away from Him. (7:3-6)

The author immediately goes on to identify the Word with God, but not with a separate person in the one God. He says, “The Father of knowledge is the Word [logos] of knowledge. He who created wisdom is wiser than his works” (7:7-8). Thus, the logos is God the Father, namely his attribute of word/wisdom. The Father “appear[ed] to them that are His own” (7:11-12; cf. John 1:11). The author states that “He was resting in the Son” (7:17), which indicates that the logos became like us by being embodied in Jesus; ultimately, “the Most High shall be known in His Saints” as well (7:18).

    The next ode that Charlesworth identifies as related to John 1 is Ode 12, which repeatedly mentions the logos. However, the Word here isn’t a separate person from the Father, but is the literal word from the mouth of God which brings knowledge to humans (12:3-4, 11-12). The Word is personified as a swiftly moving being, but in context is clearly the literal word/wisdom of God (12:5; cf. Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-16). Humans “were stimulated by the Word, and knew Him who made them” (12:10; cf. John 1:9-10). Ultimately, “the dwelling-place of the Word is man” (12:12; cf. John 1:14).

    The third ode which parallels John’s prologue is Ode 16. Once again, the logos in this ode doesn’t refer to a personal being, but to God’s literal word. The author says, “the worlds are by His Word, and by the thought of His heart” (16:19; cf. John 1:3), equating the logos with God’s thoughts by parallelism. The logos reveals God’s inner thoughts to humankind (16:8). All things continue to stand in existence by his word (16:12-14).

    The final ode that Charlesworth identifies as paralleling John’s prologue is Ode 41, an explicitly Christological hymn. This ode refers to the Messiah as “His Word [which] is with us in all our way, the Savior who gives life and does not reject ourselves... light dawned from the Word that was before time in Him” (41:11-14; cf. John 1:1-2, 4-5, 9). However, the author also refers to the Messiah as “the man who humbled himself, but was exalted because of his own righteousness” (41:12), suggesting a human Christology. The author says that the Messiah “was known before the foundations of the world” (41:15; cf. John 17:5), but also says of himself that the Father “possessed me from the beginning” (41:9). This reflects the author’s belief that God set all things in order from the beginning (4:14-15).

    Odes 7, 12, 16, and 41 together imply that the Word (logos) refers to the literal word/wisdom of the Father, rather than a separate personal being. The word was both in the beginning with God and was God the Father (cf. John 1:1-2); all things were created and stand in existence by God’s word (cf. John 1:3); light and life come to humans via God’s word (cf. John 1:4-5, 9); this word came to those that were God’s own (cf. John 1:10-11); it was embodied in God’s Messiah (cf. John 1:14); ultimately, it will be possessed by all God’s people (cf. John 5:37-38; 14:23-24; 15:7; 17:8, 14). The other odes share this non-personal conception of the Word. For example, “the Word of truth” is equated with “the knowledge of the Most High” (Ode 8:8). In another ode, “the Word of the Lord” is equated with “the holy thought which He has thought concerning His Messiah” (Ode 9:3).

    What about the Christology of the Odes? The author makes some statements which appear modalistic, such as, “I believed in the Lord’s Messiah, and considered that He is the Lord” (29:6). However, he also makes a distinction between the Son and the Father (Ode 19). This apparent contradiction makes more sense in light of Ode 36:

I rested on the Spirit of the Lord, and She lifted me up to heaven; and caused me to stand on my feet in the Lord’s high place, before His perfection and His glory, where I continued glorifying Him by the composition of His Odes. The Spirit brought me forth before the Lord’s face, and because I was the Son of Man, I was named the Light, the Son of God; because I was the most glorified among the glorious ones, and the greatest among the great ones. For according to the greatness of the Most High, so She made me; and according to His newness He renewed me. And He anointed me with His perfection; and I became one of those who are near Him. (36:1-6)

This ode is Christological, even though it’s written from a first-person perspective. It’s also explicitly adoptionist, stating that Jesus was named “the Son of God” when he rested on the Spirit and was brought before God. Jesus was remade “according to the greatness of the Most High... according to His newness... with His perfection” (36:5-6). This explains how the author of the Odes can say that “the Lord’s Messiah... is the Lord” (29:6) and yet also distinguish him from the Lord. It also squares well with John’s gospel, which says that John testified about the Word becoming flesh, and yet a few verses later tells us that what John testified about was Jesus’ baptism, when the Spirit rested upon him (John 1:14-15, 32-34).

    In conclusion, the Odes of Solomon strongly imply a Wisdom Christology reading of John’s prologue, in which “the Word” refers to the literal word/wisdom of the Father. These odes also have an adoptionist or exaltational Christology, in which Jesus is a man who embodies God’s word, and was exalted because of his humility and obedience to God, being remade according to God’s perfection (cf. Phil. 2:6-11). Unlike some other adoptionist groups in early Christianity (e.g., the Ebionites), the author of the Odes of Solomon believed in the virgin birth (Ode 19:6-10). As the earliest commentary on John’s prologue, written in the same temporal and cultural milieu as John’s gospel (perhaps even the same community), the Odes strongly support an exaltational, Wisdom Christology reading of John 1 itself.

    In the next post, we’ll consider another early interpretation of John’s prologue, which is first attested in the second century AD.

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[1] See my blog post “The low Christology of John (part 1 of 2).”

[2] J. H. Charlesworth and R. A. Culpepper, “The Odes of Solomon and the Gospel of John,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1973), 298-322; J. H. Charlesworth, Critical Reflections on the Odes of Solomon (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 232-259.

[3] Jacob J. Prahlow, “Odes and John: Perspectives on Relationship,” Pursuing Veritas (blog), 17 December 2019, https://pursuingveritas.com/2019/12/17/odes-and-john-perspectives-on-relationship/.

[4] Michael Lattke, “Dating the Odes of Solomon,” Antichthon 27 (1993), 45-59.

[5] J. H. Charlesworth and R. A. Culpepper, “The Odes of Solomon and the Gospel of John,” 303-311.

The Restoration of All: Universalism in Early Christianity (part 3)

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The Restoration of All: Universalism in Early Christianity (part 2)

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The Restoration of All: Universalism in Early Christianity (part 1)

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The Incoherence of the Incarnation

    In an earlier post on this blog, I argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately incoherent; all of the existing interpretations of this doctrine are contradictory, so it has no determinate meaning. But what about the doctrine of the Incarnation — that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine? This doctrine was developed throughout the 5th century AD, and centers around the claim that Jesus has two natures (physeis), a human one and a divine one. Many unitarians argue that the Incarnation, like the Trinity, is contradictory and incoherent. Is that right?

    The incoherence of Christ’s two natures

According to ‘orthodox’ Christology, the single person Jesus is both fully divine and fully human at the same time. On its face, this seems to imply multiple contradictions, because fully divine persons have certain attributes (such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence) that are incompatible with the limited attributes of fully human persons. This was recognized in the early church; for example, the Council of Nicaea II in 787 declared, “the one and same Christ [is] both invisible and visible lord, incomprehensible and comprehensible, unlimited and limited, incapable and capable of suffering, inexpressible and expressible in writing.” Thus, every orthodox theologian must affirm at least five apparent contradictions:

1. The one and same Christ is both invisible and visible.
2. The one and same Christ is both incomprehensible and comprehensible.
3. The one and same Christ is both unlimited and limited.
4. The one and same Christ is both incapable and capable of suffering.
5. The one and same Christ is both inexpressible and expressible in writing.

Is this as contradictory as it appears? It’s tempting for unitarians like myself to just stop here and claim that the Incarnation is incoherent, but that would be intellectually lazy. When reading a text, it’s generally considered charitable to avoid attributing contradiction to the author(s) at all costs, so we should see if there’s any way to make these claims internally consistent.

    Historically, this apparent contradiction has been explained by the idea that Jesus has two natures (Gk: physeis), a fully divine nature and a human nature. His divine attributes are held qua his divine nature, and his human attributes are held qua his human nature. This is how Christ’s attributes are explained, for example, in the Tome of Leo, a fifth-century document written by Pope Leo I, which was affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 as the correct basis of the two-natures doctrine. Leo’s Tome says that it was Jesus’ human nature which wept, hung on the cross, was pierced, and said, “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), while his divine nature resurrected Lazarus, turned day into night, opened the gates of paradise, and said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

    What exactly is a “nature” (physis)? This has been understood in one of two ways: either as an abstract set of attributes held by a thing, or as a concrete thing which exists by itself. If the abstract interpretation of “nature” is correct, then to say that Jesus has a fully divine nature and a fully human nature simply means that he, as a person, has a full set of divine attributes and a full set of human attributes. This clearly doesn’t solve the contradiction between divine and human attributes, it just restates it in different terms.

    For this reason, the concrete interpretation of “nature” has been used more by orthodox theologians. This can be seen in the Tome of Leo itself; only a concrete, existing thing can weep, hang on a cross, raise the dead, and speak. Timothy Pawl has defended orthodox Christology along this very line of reasoning — the apparent contradiction between “unchangeable” and “changeable,” for example, can be reconciled if the term “unchangeable” is interpreted to mean “has a concrete nature that is unchangeable” (and the same for “changeable”). [1] Christ, as the only person with two concrete natures, can therefore have two conflicting attributes that would only be contradictory if applied to a person with only one concrete nature.

    However, a problem with this account arises if we consider other attributes. God is necessarily omniscient, and the man Jesus did not know all things (cf. Mark 13:32; Luke 2:40; John 8:40); God can’t be tempted, and Jesus was tempted in every way like us (cf. Matt. 4:1-11; Heb. 2:18; 4:15; Jas. 1:13). Knowledge and temptation aren’t had by impersonal concrete natures, but by persons (what would it mean for an impersonal nature to “know” or be “tempted” by something?). If both of Jesus’ natures have such attributes, it seems that Jesus is two persons, which is the ‘heresy’ of Nestorianism, incompatible with ‘orthodox’ Christology. Pawl argues that Jesus’ human nature would have been limited in knowledge and temptable if it were a separate person, which resolves the problem. [2] However, this fails to grapple with the Scriptural data, which say that Jesus was really unaware of certain facts and was really tempted like us (Mark 13:32; Heb. 2:18; 4:15).

    In summary, the idea that Christ (a single person) has two natures, because of which he can have inconsistent attributes without contradiction, appears to be incoherent. If we interpret “nature” as an abstract set of attributes, then it does nothing to resolve the apparent contradictions. On the other hand, if we interpret “nature” as a concrete, existing thing with its own attributes, then it seems that we have two persons in Christ, because the two natures differ in knowledge and temptability (attributes that are held by persons rather than impersonal natures).

    The incoherence of Christ’s consciousness

We’ve now seen how the idea of “two natures” in Christ leads to incoherence. However, this isn’t the only problem with ‘orthodox’ Christology. If we consider how Christ experiences the world, the Christology of the creeds appears to affirm an inconsistent triad. In logic, an inconsistent tetrad is a set of four propositions that lead to a logical contradiction if taken together; therefore, one or more of the propositions must be denied. The inconsistent tetrad implied by the Incarnation is:

1. God is necessarily omnipresent and omniscient.
2. Jesus is only one person (i.e., has one first-person perspective).
3. Jesus has a human first-person perspective.
4. Jesus is God (i.e., has a nature that is divine in the same way as the Father).

First, let’s see why all these propositions are inconsistent. To briefly define our terms, a “first-person perspective” is a way that an entity experiences the world, and a “person” is something that has a first-person perspective. The way that a human experiences the world is through one’s senses (some combination of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste) mediated through one’s body. Based on all our experience, it appears that the human first-person perspective is necessarily limited; although it’s plausible that God could allow someone to have an ‘out-of-body experience’ where they perceive things outside of the range of their body (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:1-4), such OBEs are still seen from a single point of view. If, for the sake of argument, every human has a soul that can exist apart from their body (contra Genesis 2:7), the human first-person perspective is still a single, limited POV.

    In contrast, God, because he is necessarily omnipresent and omniscient (according to Claim 1), experiences everything in the universe all at once. The divine first-person perspective, therefore, is incompatible with the human first-person perspective; the former has an infinite and unlimited POV, whereas the latter has a single, limited POV. One person (i.e., an entity with a single first-person perspective) cannot have both a divine and human first-person perspective. Therefore, if Jesus was one person (Claim 2), he cannot have a human first-person perspective (Claim 3) in addition to a fully divine first-person perspective (Claim 4). The tetrad of claims is inconsistent; logically, all four cannot be true at the same time, because they entail a contradiction.

    How can Incarnation Christology get around this inconsistent tetrad? Anyone who adheres to orthodox Christology must deny one or more of these claims for their position to be logically coherent. Claim 1 can’t be denied by any monotheist, because it follows from the fact that the God of monotheism is the ground of all being who sustains all existence. Nothing can live or exist apart from him, as confirmed in the Scriptures (e.g., Job 12:7-10; 34:13-15; Ps. 104:29-30; Acts 17:25-28), and assumed by all the early church theologians. Because nothing can exist apart from God, he must exist where anything else exists (omnipresence), and must have maximal knowledge about everything (omniscience).

    Claim 2 could be denied by an orthodox theologian, though not without some difficulty. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 explicitly affirmed that Jesus is only one person and not two persons (“our Lord Jesus Christ... [is] one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son”). There’s some ambiguity here, as the later Council of Constantinople III in 681 declared that Jesus has two wills (divine and human), the latter of which perfectly submits to the former. This could be taken to mean that Jesus has two centers of consciousness, as argued by Richard Swinburne and Thomas Morris. However, this view is only consistent with the creeds in a “restricted” form, where Jesus has one stream of consciousness, one first-person perspective, shared by two minds (a modified affirmation of Claim 2). [3] The fact that Jesus is only one person (i.e., has one first-person perspective) should also be self-evident from the Scriptures, which consistently portray Jesus as a single person with singular pronouns.

    Claim 3 has been denied by some orthodox theologians, such as Athanasius, who claimed that Jesus’ consciousness was fully omnipresent and omniscient even while “existing in a human body, to which he himself gives life” (On the Incarnation 17). But it’s not clear how this can be distinguished from Docetism, the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be a man, which was explicitly denied by the authors of the New Testament (e.g., John 1:14; 8:40; Rom. 5:15-19; 1 Cor. 15:20-22, 45-49; 1 Tim. 2:5; 1 John 4:2; 2 John 7; Heb. 2:6-9, 14-17). If Jesus was omnipresent and omniscient, not experiencing the world through his body but merely puppeteering that body, then in what sense did he “become man,” as the creeds require every orthodox theologian to affirm? And if that is “becoming man,” how did God not “become man” when he previously manifested in a human body (e.g., in Exodus 24:9-11)? Furthermore, the 381 Council of Constantinople and 431 Council of Ephesus affirmed that Jesus’ human nature includes a “human rational soul,” against the Apollinarians who claimed otherwise.

    Finally, as should be obvious, no ‘orthodox’ theologian can deny Claim 4. The claim that Jesus has a fully divine nature, to the same extent as the Father is divine, is implied by the trinitarian interpretation of homoousios (“same essence”) that was asserted about Jesus and the Father at the 381 Council of Constantinople and every ecumenical council afterward. Unlike the claim that Jesus is a man (Claim 3), this claim is not made anywhere in the Scriptures; at most, this claim is barely implicit in the Bible, and was only decided after three hundred years of debate in the proto-orthodox church. [4]

    Thus, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to deny any of the claims of the inconsistent tetrad and remain within the bounds of ‘orthodoxy.’ The only claims that could potentially be denied are Claim 2 and Claim 3. The denial of the former is nearly or fully Nestorian, as it means that Jesus had two first-person perspectives (which implies that he/they was/were two persons). [5] The denial of the latter is nearly or fully Docetic and/or Apollinarian, as it means that Jesus was merely puppeteering his body, without adding anything to God’s first-person perspective, like in the theophanies of the Old Testament (e.g., Exodus 24:9-11). [6]

    But what if the tetrad of claims isn’t inconsistent after all? Some orthodox theologians insist that Jesus had one (human) first-person perspective, and his divine ‘mind’ was merely in his subconscious, although his (human) conscious mind may or may not have been able to access it at will. [7] This might seem to resolve the inconsistent tetrad, but in reality it amounts to a denial of either Claim 1 or 4. As the ground of all being, God actively sustains the existence of all things (Acts 17:25-28); he’s not merely potentially omnipresent and omniscient (which would be a denial of Claim 1), but actually so. The orthodox theologian may object that the Father continues to sustain all things while Jesus is incarnated as human; however, this means that Jesus is not fully divine in the same way as the Father (denial of Claim 4). The tetrad of claims continues to be inconsistent. In order to affirm Claims 1, 3, and 4, it must be said that Jesus actively has two streams of consciousness, which amounts to a denial of Claim 2 (that Jesus is one person).

    The incoherence of Christ’s death

We’ve already seen that orthodox Christology implies a contradiction about Christ’s consciousness. Jesus, who is one person, cannot have both a fully human and fully divine first-person perspective, as the two are incompatible. In fact, another set of inconsistent claims about Christ is implied by orthodox Christology, this time about his death:

1. God cannot die.
2. Jesus died.
3. Jesus is God.

This is simple enough, but let’s define our terms just to make sure there’s no equivocation. By “God,” I mean any person with a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father. No such person can die (Claim 1), and Jesus is such a person (Claim 3). By “Jesus,” I mean the composite person made up of an unmixed fully divine and human nature (according to ‘orthodox’ Christology). That person died (Claim 2), and that person has a fully divine nature (Claim 3). By “die,” I mean the cessation of normal life functions. [8] This cannot happen to a person with a fully divine nature (Claim 1), and it did happen to Jesus (Claim 2). Now that we’ve confirmed this triad of claims has no equivocation, it’s easy to see how it implies a contradiction — Jesus cannot die (from Claims 1 and 3), yet Jesus did die (Claim 2).

    Claim 1 shouldn’t be denied by any monotheist, because it follows from the belief that God is the ground of all being who sustains all existence. This view of God is confirmed throughout the Scriptures (e.g., Job 12:7-10; 34:13-15; Ps. 104:29-30; Acts 17:25-28). God can’t cease to exist, nor can his normal life functions (i.e., sustaining all things, having all knowledge, being all-powerful) cease, because then everything else would stop existing. God’s experience of omnipresence and omniscience didn’t change, even for the three days that Christ was dead, because everything continued to exist — if God’s experience doesn’t change, this can’t be called “death” without making the term utterly meaningless. Finally, the claim that God cannot die is explicitly stated in the Bible (e.g., Job 9:32; 10:5; 33:12; 34:14-15; Ps. 90:2; 102:25-27; 1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16; Rev. 1:4, 8; 4:8).

    Claim 2 can’t be denied by any Christian, because the belief that “Christ died for our sins” is essential to the gospel (1 Cor. 15:3). It would be pointless to cite every time the New Testament says that Christ died for us, because that message is found all across its pages.

    Most orthodox theologians will attempt to get around Claim 1 or 2 by appealing to the idea that the one person, Christ, has both a fully divine and a fully human nature. It’s said that he died according to his human nature, while his divine nature remained essentially immortal. For example, Cyril of Alexandria wrote to Nestorius,

...by nature the Word of God is of itself immortal and incorruptible and life and life-giving, but since on the other hand his own body by God’s grace, as the apostle says, tasted death for all, the Word is said to have suffered death for us, not as if he himself had experienced death as far as his own nature was concerned (it would be sheer lunacy to say or to think that), but because, as I have just said, his flesh tasted death.

Likewise, the Tome of Leo, affirmed at the 451 Council of Chalcedon, states:

To pay off the debt of our state, invulnerable nature was united to a nature that could suffer; so that in a way that corresponded to the remedies we needed, one and the same mediator between God and humanity the man Christ Jesus, could both on the one hand die and on the other be incapable of death.

Once again, this runs into the problem of what it means to say that two contradictory attributes can be held qua two different natures.

    If the two natures are understood as abstract sets of attributes that are held by a single person, then this simply mean that Jesus (as divine) could not die and (as human) died, which is an obvious contradiction. If the two natures are understood as concrete things, one of which could not die and one of which died, it seems that we have two persons here, because “death” is something that happens to a person, not an impersonal nature. If they are understood as two different types of attributes, such that Jesus ‘human-died’ but did not ‘divine-die,’ what does this mean? Does it just mean that his bodily functions ceased, while his conscious experience (omnipresent and omniscient) remained exactly the same? If so, this can’t be understood as “death” without making the term meaningless. This latter view is hard to distinguish from Docetism, as it means that Jesus was only ‘human’ insofar as he puppeteered a human body.

    Finally, what if we deny Claim 3, that Jesus has a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father? Ironically, this is the only one of the three claims that can’t be denied by any orthodox theologian (because it’s explicitly affirmed by the creeds), as well as the only claim that isn’t explicitly affirmed in the Scriptures (at best, it’s an inference which took three hundred years to discover). The orthodox theologian is therefore faced with a trilemma. They must either affirm the creeds and deny Claim 1 and/or 2 (which are explicitly affirmed by the Scriptures), affirm Claims 1 and 2 in agreement with the Scriptures and deny the creeds, or show how the triad of claims is somehow consistent (which so far has proved fruitless).

    The mysterian objection

What if, as some orthodox theologians do, we simply say that the Incarnation is a mystery that can’t be understood by humans? Of course, there are some things that we can never understand about God, because his ways are far above ours (Isa. 40:28; 55:8-9; Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 2:11). This is much different than the claim that our faith may include true contradictions. Most people will agree that contradictions, by definition, cannot be true, and with good reason: we know from classical logic that a contradiction, if true, would entail the truth of every single proposition (known as the “principle of explosion”). [9] Even if it were possible for God to create a contradiction, such as a square circle or a married bachelor, this would break reality in a way that we know from experience has never happened.

    For this reason, mysterian theologians typically shy away from the claim that the Incarnation implies a true contradiction. (For a mysterian account which does argue that the Incarnation is truly contradictory, and that contradictions can be both true and false, by applying a non-classical system of logic, see Jc Beall’s The Contradictory Christ.) Instead, they argue that even though the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation haven’t yet been interpreted in a way that’s non-contradictory, there may be a non-contradictory interpretation out there that we simply don’t yet (or can’t) understand. [10] Therefore, unitarians and other detractors of these doctrines aren’t justified in claiming that they’re contradictory.

    However, as I argued in my article on the incoherence of the Trinity, this approach ends up destroying the very doctrine that it seeks to save. If the doctrine of the Incarnation can’t be understood by anyone, then those who affirm it are merely repeating a shibboleth that has no determinable meaning, just because the church says that they must, and ‘heretics’ like unitarians are shut out just for the crime of failing to believe a meaningless statement! We can’t even know whether this doctrine is taught in the Scriptures, because we don’t know what it means! Thus, the measure of true faith becomes one’s willingness to blindly follow authority and repeat a statement that is utterly void of determinate meaning. I have a hard time believing that God expects this of us.

    Conclusion

The doctrine of the Incarnation, as described in the ecumenical councils of ‘orthodox’ Christianity, is incoherent in several ways. First, it explicitly attributes at least five pairs of contradictory attributes to Christ, and tries to reconcile this via the idea of Christ’s ‘two natures.’ However, if we interpret each nature as an abstract set of properties, it fails to resolve the contradiction, and if we interpret them as concrete things instead, it implies that there are two persons in Christ. Second, it also implies a contradiction about Christ’s consciousness, by requiring us to affirm an inconsistent tetrad of claims about how Jesus experiences the world. Finally, it also requires us to affirm the inconsistent triad that (1) God cannot die, (2) Jesus died, and (3) Jesus is God.

    Rather than accepting an incoherent and meaningless doctrine solely on the basis of church authority, it would be better for Protestants, if not also Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, to return to the Scriptures and see if it really requires us to affirm this doctrine. Fortunately, it doesn’t. The New Testament never explicitly says that Christ has a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father — this view took centuries for the early church to develop after the NT was written. On the contrary, it presents Jesus as “a man attested by God” who was “made Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:22, 36); the perfect, sinless, human Lamb who was exalted to become Lord of the universe because of his obedience to his God. [11]

______________________________

[1] Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: OUP, 2016); note that although Pawl’s account isn’t strictly contradictory, I believe he is (unintentionally) changing the subject, as the councils state that it’s “the one and same Christ” who has these attributes, rather than one or another of his concrete natures.

[2] Dale Tuggy, interview with Timothy Pawl, Dr. Timothy Pawl’s In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology – Part 2, Trinities, podcast audio, 14 October 2019, 22:10.

[3] Tim Bayne, “The inclusion model of the Incarnation: problems and prospects,” Religious Studies 37 (2001): 125-141.

[4] For the history of development of Christian theology in the 1st through 4th centuries, see my blog post series about “The evolution of early Christian theology.” See also R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1988) for a great scholarly treatment of how trinitarianism emerged from the theological upheavals of the 4th century AD.

[5] Nestorianism is the belief that Jesus is two persons, which was officially condemned by the catholic church at the 451 Council of Chalcedon.

[6] Docetism is the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be human, which was condemned by the creedal declaration that Jesus “became man.” Apollinarianism is the belief that Jesus was merely a divine soul within a human body, completely replacing the human soul, which was condemned by the catholic church at the 381 Council of Constantinople.

[7] For an explanation and defense of this view, see Andrew Loke, “The Incarnation and Jesus’ Apparent Limitation in Knowledge,” New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 583-602.

[8] Although I believe that death is the cessation of existence, this is supposed to be an inconsistent triad implied by ‘orthodox’ theology, and ‘orthodox’ theology believes that the soul continues to exist after death. On the other hand, everyone agrees that death is the cessation of normal life functions, otherwise death is literally meaningless.

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

[10] Dale Tuggy, “Trinity [4.1],” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 20 November 2020, accessed 5 May 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/#NegMys.

[11] To see what the Scriptures actually teach about the nature of God and Jesus, see my blog post, “The Biblical Case for Unitarianism.”