The Person of Jesus Christ

1. The Quest of the Historical Jesus

(1)         The Old Quest of the Historical Jesus

(i) The Renaissance initiated a fundamental change in western mentality from theo-centricity to human-centricity, which resulted in the resurgence of the old epistemological principle of Greek philosophy that human being is the norm of truth. The anti-Christian Enlightenment Movement of Rationalism expanded this tendency to the Christian faith and theology.

 (ii) Autonomous reason emerged as the historical starting point for the inquiry into the historical Jesus with a critical doubt on the biblical witness. Hermann Reimarus pioneered this attempt in his posthumously published fragments of Apology in 1778. He distinguished teachings of Jesus himself and those of his disciples, and concluded that the Christian faith was founded on a deliberate fraud.

(iii) Liberal theologians and philosophers followed his method and even radicalized it. David Strauss devoted himself for the writing of Jesus biography and published Life of Jesus in 1835 with a question “Are we still Christians?” His answer was a flat “No.” Jesus became only a teacher of a purely moral religion. Ernst Renan presented a novel-like biography and Bruno Bauer even denied Jesus’ existence in history.

(iv) Albert Schweitzer emphasized the eschatological aspect of Jesus against his mere being a moral teacher. With The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede published in 1906, he closed the Old Quest of the Historical Jesus with concluding that “There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus” and “The abiding and eternal in Jesus is absolutely independent of historical knowledge and can only be understood by contact with His spirit which is still at work in the world.”; “Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from him and flows through our time also. This fact can neither be shaken nor confirmed by historical discovery. It is the solid foundation of Christianity.”

(2)         The New Quest of the Historical Jesus

(i) However, Schweitzer’s conclusion was based on the non-historical understanding of Jesus as spiritually incarnated into the humanity in general. Rudolf Bultmann also denied the necessity of the Quest because he preferred the existential present Christ than the Jesus of the past. Concerning the historical Jesus, he took a minimal position that satisfies simply with a fact that the historical Jesus is behind the kerygma in some way. In fact, he as a scientific modern man could not believe all the supernatural teachings or activities of Jesus and attempted demythologization of Jesus Christ, for the traditional beliefs like incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Christ are obsolete, senseless, impossible, and schizophrenic, so unintelligible and unacceptable to the modern world.

  (ii) Ernst Käsemann thought different than his teacher Bultmann and insisted the necessity and usefulness to quest the historical Jesus in his essay “The Problem of the Historical Jesus”(1954), with suggesting three reasons, i.e., the importance of the salvific event, God’s incarnation in space and time, and the continuity between Jesus and us.

  (iii) Many European theologians were engaged in this New Quest: Günther Bornkamm, Ernst Fuchs, Gerhard Ebeling, Hans Conzelmann, and Joachim Jeremias in Germany, Harald Riesenfeld, Birger Gerhardsson in Scandinavia, T. W. Manson, W. D. Davies, Vincent Taylor, and C. H. Dodd in England. But, due to some existentialistic and methodological problems, they all arrived in the ironical consensus that “The essential content of the kerygma was the resurrection of Jesus”, but “historical research cannot establish the factity of the resurrection.” Moreover, there arose inner-criticisms against one another, so survived no more. 

  (iv) In order to establish the historical foundation for the Christian faith, Wolfhart Pannenberg offered a new theology of history that “History is the most comprehensive horizon of Christian theology. All theological questions and answers are meaningful only within the framework of the history.” So, he developed his Christology on the resurrection of Jesus as an authentic historical fact. But his Christology from below was not successful for the historical scholarship as well as theological persuasion in general.

(3)         Third Wave of the Historical Jesus

  (i) In 1985, Robert W. Funk founded the Jesus Seminar with a plan to finalize the long Quest of the Historical Jesus, but it was a misguided and malicious attempt. He suggested a demotion of Jesus Christ with criticizing the biblical and traditional belief in Christ as subrational, subethical, monstrous and pernicious doctrine, an insult to modern intelligence. The Jesus Seminar held semi-annually voted in four colors for the credibility of each word and deed of Jesus and published the result in The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus(1993) and The Act of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds(1998).

  (ii) Marcus Borg distinguished and compared two portraits of Jesus. While the pre-Easter Jesus is human, finite, and Jewish peasant, the post-Easter Jesus is divine, infinite, and universal God, who is not historical but created by Christian experience and tradition. The Historical Jesus was Jewish mystic/spirit person, Jewish healer, Jewish wisdon teacher, Jewish social prophet, and Jewish movement initiator. Another representative, John Crossan have a similar understanding of Jesus that he was a Jewish cynic peasant with an alternative social vision. This Third Quest emphasizes purely the humanity and Jewishness of Jesus, and therefore appreciated by anti-Christian groups like Judaists and atheists.

  (iii) As Luke Timothy Johnson pointed out in The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels, if it purses a really critical scholarship. The Jesus Seminar had to be self-critical first. But, they failed in their uncritical attitude to heavily depend on the second-century Gospel of Thomas or non-existent Q hypothesis to be critical to the canonical Gospels. To be fair, Jesus of Gospels is far more probable to be the authentic and genuine Jesus than Jesus of non-canonical or later documents that the first-century witnesses of the historical Jesus dismissed as non-credible.

2. The Divinity of Jesus Christ

(1)   Biblical Descriptions of His Divinity

  (i) Even though some anti-Christian critics discredit the biblical description of Jesus Christ as the subjective writing of believers, it is true because it is the report of the first-hand witnesses who talked, listened, and touched Jesus and moreover because they really knew Him while unbelievers did not encounter His reality. Only the Gospels that were examined and proved as true by the numerous contemporary witnesses survived to be used in the Early Church and included in the New Testament. Though there is some minor diversity, a definite consensus on the divinity of Jesus is clearly found in the New Testament.

  (ii) According to the Gospels, Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God who has existed before Abraham(Jn 8.58) and even the beginning of the world(Jn 1.1-3). God the Father sent Him from heaven to the world, by incarnation through the Holy Spirit conception to Mary, with a mission to save the world and His people from sin and misery(Jn 3.16-17, 10.36). His exclusive relationship with God as the only Son is extremely intimate(Mt 11.27), and it was confirmed by His heavenly Father(Mt 17.5). Christ is the essence of God morfh qeou (Phil 2.6), the image of God eikwn tou qeou (2Cor 4.4, Col 1.15), the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His Being apaugasma thj doxhj kai carakthr thj u.postasewj autou (Heb 1.3), and all the fullness of Deity living in bodily form en autw| pan to plhrwma ths qeothtoj katoikei  swmatikwj (Col. 2.9).

  (iii) The self-consciousness of Jesus to be God was very clear in His words and deeds. He claimed to be the only-begotten Son of God, pre-existent and eternal, powerful to forgive sin and judge the world. He is the Lord of Sabbath and the fulfillment of all the Law and Prophets. Following the divine self-revelation of God as ‘Yahweh’, Jesus declared Himself with ‘I am’ egw eimi formula, like “I am the Way, Truth, and Life.” Jesus recognized that He is equal with God(Jn 5.18), saying that ‘I and the Father are one’(Jn 10.30).

  (iv) The first Christians unanimously believed the full divinity of Jesus Christ and called Him as God qeoj, neither human nor angel. He is “Immanuel, God with us’(Mt 1.23), ‘God the One and Only who is at the Father’s side’(Jn 1.18), ‘my God’(Jn 20.28), ‘God over all forever praise’(Rom 9.5), and ‘our God and Savior Jesus Christ’(2Pet 1.1). Also, he was called as Lord kurioj, the divine title that translated Yahweh and Adonai in LXX.

(2)   Early Misunderstandings of His Divinity

  (i) Christianity was founded upon the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, i.e., the incarnated God against the Jewish denial and condemnation. However, some Jewish Christians tended to Judaize Christianity as seen in some Pauline epistles and likewise to undermine His deity. Jewish sects like Ebionism followed the Jewish tradition of strong monotheism and believed only the divine presence on the man Jesus in a limited time, i.e., between His baptism and crucifixion. His sonship was recognized only as an adopted son. Therefore, these adoptionist Christology denied his incarnation and resurrection.

  (ii) Later in the Hellenistic tradition of diverse polytheism, Arianism arose with understanding that Jesus is the second-level deity in contrast to God the Father like Zeus and inferior deities in the Greek mythology. The Father is ‘the only true God’(Jn 17.3), while the Son is inferior(Jn 14.28) as ‘the first born of all creation’(Col 1.15). Jesus Christ was not begottengennaw but created/made poiew, and therefore non-eternal because there was a time when He did not exist.

(3)   Nicene Christology of Full Divinity

  In 324, the Roman Emperor Constantinus called for the first ecumenical council at Nicea in order to make a theological/Christological unity of the Christianity that he made the official religion of his empire. The council produced the Nicene Creed which confessed that Jesus Christ is ‘the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one essence with the Father’. Thereby, the full divinity of Jesus Christ became orthodox since this council until now. The doctrines of eternal generation of the Son and consubstantiality o.moousioj with God the Father were the key concepts to understand the divinity of Christ. Read carefully the text of the Nicene Creed in the separate sheet.

(4)   Post-Nicene Understanding of His Divinity

Nicene Christology became the denominator of orthodoxy through the history of Christianity, but adoptionistic views arose in the Middle Ages. Reformers reaffirmed the Nicene Christology as the authentic understanding of the biblical Christ, but the Liberalism followed by the Enlightenment denied the divinity of Christ as seen in the Old Quest of the Historical Jesus. Contemporary understandings like Process Christology and Liberation Christology also tend to deny the divinity of Christ.

3. The Humanity of Jesus Christ

 (1)   Biblical Descriptions of His Humanity

  (i) According to the Gospels, Jesus Christ is the incarnated man. When ‘the Word became flesh o. logoj sarx egeneto  (Jn 1.14), the Son’s mode of being changed fundamentally and permanently from incorporeal to bodily mode of being. Here, egevneto is the aorist form of ginwmai signifying that it happened once for all. Now, He became a man like one of us through this assumptio carnis. For this incarnation was the prerequisite of human redemption that is the very reason of His coming, the denial of his humanity was regarded as the mark of the antichrist(1Jn 4.2-3). Even after the resurrection, His incarnated existence did not change to be a purely spiritual being again(Lk 24.39).

  (ii) His body was formed and grew just like any human being, and it has some limitation in power and ability with human  weakness asqeneia and suffering sumpaqhsai, easy to be tired, hungry and thirsty. His wisdom and learning also experienced a process of growth. Christ had not only human body but human soul including human intellect, emotion and will also. He felt sad, joyful, embarrassed, surprised and cried with tears, i.e., he had rich human emotions. In Gethsemane, he showed the weakness of human will.

  (iii) Jesus lived an ordinary human life before the public life, as he was known as a carpenter or a son of carpenter(Mt 13.55, Mk 6.3) by the people who know him. When he claimed to be the divine being, his brothers could not believe it(Jn 7.5). In such a perfect way, Christ became a man.

  (iv) However, He was sinless though tempted like us, so perfectly fulfilled the requirements of the Law to be righteous(Heb 4.15, 1Jn 3.5, 2Cor 5.21), while ‘God is not tempted by any evil’(James 1.13). The experience of being tempted but overcoming helped Him to help us who are being constantly tempeted(Heb 2.18). His extraordinary immaculate conception by the Holy Spirit made exemption from original sin possible and therefore he could not sin posse non peccare.

(2)   Early Misunderstandings of His Humanity

  (i) The impossibility of God’s real becoming man was maintained both in Judaism and Hellenism. Docetism and docetic teachings like Gnosticism and Marcionism denied his real humanity and simply understood his appearance in human form as a kind of theophany or anthropomorphism. Its name was derived from the word dokew meaning ‘it seems’. Jesus only seemed to be human, i.e., his human appearance was but an illusion, not reality.

  (ii) This docetic Christology was welcomed by Greek philosophy of Platonism, for it distinguished spirit and physical as higher and lower grade of being and therefore God cannot assume body. Incarnation is contradictory to the divine nature such as immutability and impassibility. Therefore, if Jesus is God, He should not have the real body. Body and sin are inseparably relayed.

(3)   Post-Nicene Understanding of His Humanity

  The Nicene Creed confessed also the full humanity of Christ: ‘…for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man homo factus est’. However, some docetic tendency has continued to exist in the Christian churches, and the orthodox reactions against humanity-emphasizing movements resulted in the relative denial of His humanity for the sake of emphasizing His divinity.

4. Hypostatic Union of Two Natures in One Person

  (1)   Early Misunderstandings of the Hypostatic Union

  (i) The hypostatic union of two full natures in one person troubled the early theologians in uderstanding the way of union. Apollinarius(c.310-90) offered a solution to this problem that Jesus is the combination of human body/consciousness and divine spirit. But, it meant the denial of full humanity.

  (ii) Eutyches(c.378-454) offered another solution that two natures of Jesus was perfectly mixed to produce one nature, tertium quid. But, it meant the denial of both divinity and humanity, neither God nor man but a third kind of being, so typical monophysitism.

  (iii) Nestorius(d.c.451) is known to offer the other solution that Jesus had two natures and two persons. But, it meant the denial of one person, so two persons living in Jesus like multi-personality sickness.

(2)   Chalcedon Christology

  To solve this problem and controversy, another ecumenical council was convened at Chacedon and produced the Chalcedon Creed in 451, which confessed two full natures in one united person ‘inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably’. Read carefully the text of the Nicene Creed in the separate sheet.

(3)   Post-Chalcedon Understanding of Hypostatic Union

  (i) John of Damascus(675-749) explained the hypostatic union with the concepts of anhypostatsis and enhypostasis. As the pre-existent second person of the Trinity later assumed humanity, the divine personhood was maintained in the process of incarnation. Therefore, humanity is only an added nature, not person anu.postasij. The personhood was not created in the moment of incarnation. So, the humanity of Christ was united into the person enu.postasij of the Son.

  (ii) The Reformers had different understandings of Eucharist based on the different understandings of hypostatic union. Zwingli taught alloiwsij, i.e. interchangeable expression between divinity and humanity. Luther insisted communicatio idiomatum, violating Chalcedon prohibition, to teach the omnipresence of the risen Christ. Calvin rejected such possibility because of His physical limitation because Finitum non capax infiniti (extra Calvinisticum).

  (iii) Modern theologians like Thomasius, Gess and Gore offered Kenotic Christologies. It is based on Phil 2.6-7: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself empty ekenwse, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness”. The Son laid aside his distinctly divine attributes like omnipotence or omnipresence and took the human quality instead for the real incarnation and non-contradictory union of two natures in one person. But, it violates the presence of two full nature principle. He suppress or preserve for purpose rather than gave up or lost permanently.