Christmas Flyer '09

The case for the “human” Jesus in Luke

by Carlos Xavier

In his book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman identifies 3 main categories of theological emphasis that predominated and to some extent controlled the motivations and actions of early Christian communities in their Christological debates concerning the “person” of Jesus.

The first were those who belonged to an “Adoptionist” view, people who believed that Christ was a man who was “adopted” at his baptism by the God of Israel.

The second were those belonging to the “Docetic” movement who believed that Jesus was not really a human but some sort of “preexistent”, spirit-being who transformed [assumed] into the form of a man.

The third and last group were the “Seperatists” who thought that the “divine Christ” and the “human Jesus” were really two separate beings. These two “beings” at some point became “one” in the body of the man Jesus.

In this and many others of his books, Ehrman makes it a point to historically fix these various Christian communities to within 100-150 years after Christ. His main argument being that the various Christian movements of modern times are not some new event found within the last millennia or so, but an ever changing and evolving theology of ideas and beliefs that can be traced back to within the Apostles’ lifetime.

In Luke 22.43-44, he claims to have found one of the strongest evidences for an “Adoptionist” corruption that goes far beyond known textual and literary lines. The following quotes are from The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, Oxford, 1993, p 187-194.

“The manuscript alignments…show beyond reasonable doubt when the corruption—whichever reading is the corruption—must have been made. If the verses are secondary, they must have been interpolated into Luke by the middle of the second century, for they are attested by Fathers beginning with Justin and Irenaeus and by early Latin and Syriac witnesses. If they are original, they must have been deleted by roughly the same period, since they are absent from Clement at the end of the 2nd century and from Alexandrian witnesses of the early 3rd, witnesses that represent a stream of tradition that is itself much older.

The fact is that this account of Jesus’ heightened agony in the face of his passion…is theologically intrusive in Luke’s Gospel as a whole and literarily intrusive in its immediate context…Luke has gone to considerable lengths to counter precisely the view of Jesus that these verses embrace. Rather than entering his passion with fear and trembling, in anguish over his coming fate, the Jesus of Luke goes to his death calm and in control, confident of his Father’s will until the very end. It is a striking fact, of particular relevance to our textual problem, that Luke could produce this image of Jesus only by eliminating traditions offensive to it from his sources (e.g., the Gospel according to Mark). Only the longer text of 22.43-44 stands as anomalous.”

Ehrman goes on to make an incisive comparison with Mark and concludes that he had “his reasons for narrating the event” different than in Luke. “His portrayal of Jesus in agony and doubt [14.33-36, 41]…sets the stage for the salvinic events that transpire immediately upon his death…Why would Luke have totally eliminated the remnants of Jesus’ agony elsewhere if he meant to emphasize it here in yet stronger terms? Why remove compatible material from his source, both before and after the verses in question?

We do not need to hypothesize the usefulness of these verses for an anti-docetic polemic; we know that the verses were put to precisely this use during the period of our concern. 2nd century Heresiologists used Jesus’ ‘bloody sweat’ to attack Christians who denied his real humanity… [the story these verses portray] did not originate with the author of the Gospel of Luke. It was inserted into the Third Gospel sometime in the early 2nd century (prior to Justin) as part of the anti-docetic polemic of the orthodox Christian church.

“Thus, we see how gradually the text was altered to the detriment of truth and biblical accuracy. But understanding this well-established historical tendency in the development of the Christian faith goes a long way toward explaining how doctrinal error could not only arise, but become solidified and ‘substantiated’ by a corrupted text. The ‘expansion of piety’ arises from man’s sinful desire to elevate his own ideas above the Word of God.” Graeser, Lynn, Shoenheit, One God and One Lord, p 324.

But most importantly, it also explains how the human Jesus could have been “inflated” to become something other than what he truly was, “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” [Mat 16.16; cp. Matt 14:33; 26:63; Mark 3:11; 4.3; 5:7; Luke 1:35; 4:41; John 1:34, 49; Acts 9:20].

The Son of God Cannot Preexist His Own Mother!

Jesus, Son of God, is the son of Mary (Mark 6:3). Paul’s use of ginesthai in Galatians 4:4 (and Rom. 1:3) is very remarkable, as many have pointed out. Paul said that the Son of God came into existence (from ginesthai), using a special word, not just the usual word for being born (which he uses in the same letter for others who were normally conceived). The fact that the Son “came into existence” from Mary (Gal. 4:4) proves that the Son was not already in existence. If he had been, this would not have been a coming into existence as Son of God. It would have been some sort of transition from one form to another, about which Matthew and Luke know nothing at all.

The importance of this subject is, of course, that we are to believe in the Messiah Jesus, the man. A pre-human person is not really human! You cannot be before you are. We have to be on guard against “Jesuses” who are not really the real Jesus (2 Cor. 11:1-4). A “Michael the Archangel Jesus” is not the human Messiah of the Bible. Nor is a God-Jesus.

Distinguished exegete James Dunn gives a lucid account of Luke’s view of Jesus: He says, “Luke 1:35 speaks of a begetting; [it is] a becoming which is in view, the coming into existence of one who will be called, and will in fact be the Son of God, not the transition of a preexistent being to become the soul of a human baby or the metamorphosis of a divine being into a human fetus...Luke’s intention is clearly to describe the creative process of begetting...Similarly in Acts there is no sign of any Christology of preexistence” (Christology in the Making, p. 51).

Rather curiously a recent book (1998) by the systematician at the seminary of the Free Church of Scotland seems to be trying to get rid of this evidence by saying (surely quite inaccurately) that “Luke uses the language of creation and not of generation” (The Person of Christ, p. 33).

In fact Luke 1:35 makes it clear that “the holy one to be generated will be the Son of God,” and it is precisely (dio kai) as a result of that miracle in Mary that the child will be the Son of God. The Bible in fact offers no alternative or contradicting reason for Jesus being the unique Son of God other than the miracle performed by God. This portrait of the Son is powerful, and it stems from a recent miracle by God closer to us in time than the creation in Genesis.

Luke 1:35 allows for no Son before the Son! So 1 John 5:18 (not KJV) confirms the begetting of the Son in line with Matthew 1:20 and Luke 1:35. Jesus “came to be” some two thousand years ago. There is no prehistoric Son of God in the Bible, other than in the counsels of God. One can only come into existence once, unless we are talking about death and a subsequent resurrection — which is another issue.

Did God Have to Die to Save Humanity?

by Charles Hunting

The widely held belief in Jesus as preexistent, eternal, coequal Son of God has carried with it the idea that a single human person, in this case Jesus, would not, if only human, have the value necessary to atone for the sins of the world. The reason offered is that a single person’s sacrifice could only atone for the sins of one other man. Hence Jesus had to be God Himself to be the Savior of all mankind. No Scripture is cited for this fundamental proposition; nevertheless the logic is supposed to be unassailable. It has long satisfied its many advocates.

Can human reason legitimately determine the value of a sacrifice? Peter’s inspired sermon on the day of Pentecost was quite explicit in its designation of Jesus the man as God’s appointed offering for humanity. “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man accredited to you by God…just as you know — this man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death” (Acts 2:22, 23). Jude supports God’s accreditation of the man Jesus, contrasting God and man, with these words: “to the only God our Savior [the One God of Jewish unitary monotheism], through Jesus Christ our Lord [the human lord adoni of Psalm 110:1], be glory, majesty…before all time and to all the ages” (Jude 25).

“Before all time” he was the Lamb designated for sacrifice “from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8, NIV) in order to bring about the reconciliation of a rebellious creation. Adam, the son of God created from the dust of the ground (Luke 3:38), could have gained immortality but failed. Eve, a special creation from Adam’s body, joined Satan in opposition to God.
Then followed the rest of human creation through Adam and Eve until God created through the Virgin Mary the prophesied seed who was to crush the serpent’s head. Jesus, referred to as the second Adam by Paul, during his historical life, divested himself of all the royal prerogatives, and “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). This was after having lived a sinless existence entitling him to freedom from the death penalty and the reward of eternal life offered to the first Adam.

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus, though now exalted and sitting at the right hand of his Father, was still referred to as a “man” (Acts 2:22). Was it, as some allege, because of the disciples’ strict monotheism that they were not ready to hear that God had died to save the world? Or is the “death of God” a completely unbiblical concept? God only has immortality: He cannot die.

Surely somewhere along the line the omission of the (contradictory!) notion that God Himself had died would have to be rectified. But we note Luke years later recording Paul’s continued proclamation of the human Jesus: “God who made the world and all things in it… and made from one, every nation…He Himself gives to all life breath and…determined their appointed times…and set the boundaries of their habitation.” This same God, “having overlooked the times of ignorance,” now declares to men everywhere to repent, “because he has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:24 ff.).

This same promised seed of Eve was to be a prophet of whom Moses said, “I will raise up a prophet from among their brothers like you [Moses], and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (see Deut. 18:15-18) These early statements attest to a being whose boundaries are existence within the human family. This precious identity of Jesus as the “Man Messiah” (I Tim. 2:5) was central to the first-century church’s understanding of the faith. Both Peter and Stephen quoted and applied to Jesus this passage from Deuteronomy 18:15 in Acts 3:22 and 7:37.

The stinging accusation of Israel and call to repentance sounded by Peter did strike home, with no record of a protest as to the inadequacy of a human savior, born of a human mother in an earthly location with the rather common Jewish name Jesus.

Hebrews states that Jesus shared in flesh and blood with the rest of us. “He had to be made like his brethren in all things” (Heb. 2:17) that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest, tempted in all things just as we are. Even in his rulership of all nations, as future judge and high priest of the earth, Jesus is kept inside the boundaries of the human family. After carefully detailing his human existence the writer to the Hebrews claims “Jesus Messiah is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Heb. 13:8), sealing his status for all time as a member of the human family, the second Adam and the image of the invisible (One) God, the Father (I Cor. 8:4-6).

Where did the idea originate that Jesus was fully God in addition to being fully man? As others have observed, such a God/man would have little in common with the flesh and blood constitution of ordinary men, the status which the Scriptures claim for him. “He was tested in all points as we are.” It took over four hundred years to formalize the innovative doctrine of the “two natures.” It was not finally settled until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Officially Jesus became God with “impersonal human nature.” Such a person is hardly a human being as so many distinguished scholars have complained.

Viewing Jesus’ final days on earth, would we see anything that would indicate more than the reactions of a completely overwhelmed human being? Facing a monumental battle, without the support of friends and family, bereft of angelic help, he pleaded with his Father to let this cup pass from him and allow a different means of atonement.

His reactions to the thought of the impending terror awaiting him on the cross were those of a very disturbed and distressed human person. He asked his Father to be relieved of the final agony. Where was the calm faith of one who knew he was the eternal God and who could easily handle the ordeal? Why the sweat like great drops of blood? Abandoned at the time of greatest need, without the protection of the cool mental assurance of his Divinity, he left his life in God’s hands. He asked that he be spared the bitter cup of those final moments of torment, moments when even his hope was gone and he paid the final price with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). He died as a hopeless sinner. He suffered the abyss of the blackness of doomed humanity that drives men to suicide and asked “Why?” This was a human reaction. Does this sound like the question of one who shared absolute Godhead with God the Father? Or was Jesus after all mortal man?

Other humans have faced equally cruel physical fates. Michael Servetus, slowly roasted over a fire of green sticks, cried out in screaming agony, “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!” But he had hope. Jesus, bereft of strength, physical or spiritual, as he carried the burden of the life and salvation of all mankind, was left hopelessly alone. And at the moment of his greatest need it appeared to him as if his Father had turned His back on him. “He became sin,” and bore that penalty for all of us. Here was the drama of the ages.

The word “awesome” loses its triviality when it describes the deed this tortured human faced in horrifying agony. He accomplished where Adam had failed. His was a trust to the point of death after a perfect life in which all conditions for eternal life had been met. Why did it have to be this way? Jesus did not know the why, and we can only speculate as to why one man had to face this ordeal as payment for our sins.

We can know that our acceptance of his sacrifice, along with our belief in his Gospel of the Kingdom, provides the way to eternal life and rulership with him in the Kingdom of the future. It is this final human battle at the cross that demands our admiration, respect and love. It is through Jesus’ supreme deed that we find our peace and security with God even in death. Jesus was not given this option. He faced the abyss, as it seemed, without God, so that we would not have to. All debts were paid and the world was reconciled through the one man.

The New English Bible translation captures the humanity of Jesus as Paul relates the world drama in Romans 5: “Let us exalt in the hope of the divine splendor that is to be ours…For at the very time when we were still powerless, then Christ died for the wicked…Death held sway from Adam to Moses…and Adam foreshadows the Man who was to come. But God’s act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ. For if by the wrongdoing of that one man death established its reign, through a single sinner, much more shall those receive in far greater measure God’s grace and his gift of righteousness, live and reign through the one Man, Jesus Christ…For as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of the one Man the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:2ff.).Surely in view of the complete absence of biblical evidence for a “God-Man” we should hesitate before we abandon the Hebrew Bible’s picture, confirmed by the New Testament, of the Messiah as the human descendant of David, qualified to be the Son of God not by some imagined “eternal begetting” but by God’s staggering creative event in the womb of Mary. The Father’s miraculous production of His unique Son provides, according to Gabriel, the basis and cause of Jesus’ title, Son of God (Luke 1:35). Gabriel and the inspired canon know nothing of the creedal definitions of Jesus which belong to later centuries and which so many today unconsciously canonize and believe, as though they existed in Bible times. Luke 1:35 defines, against traditional creeds, the reason why Jesus is entitled to be called Son of God. The begetting (coming into existence) of that Son was at a historical moment, not in eternity.

On 1 John 2:18

“Someone might assume that ‘many’ antichrists implies there is no personal, individual Antichrist. But this was not John’s thought. His readers had been taught that the Antichrist is coming. This is what they heard. To show that this was no vague generality, John adds ‘even now many antichrists have come.’ He looks at the plurality of antichrists — those who deny that Jesus is the Messiah and thereby put themselves unequivocally against Christ — as proof of the eventual emergence of one supreme foe of Christ. The Antichrist who was already present and who was the liar was in his day much like the later model except that the latter will have greater power and destructiveness. In attitude they share the same outlook” (A. Berkeley Mickelsen, Interpreting the Bible, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984, p. 373).

A considerable confusion has been introduced into the study of the Bible’s prophecies by the theory that John (above) discounted the idea of a single, future antichrist and wanted his readers to understand “antichrist” to mean only a present, ongoing threat. John said: “You have heard that antichrist is coming.” He then went on to speak of the spirit of antichrist already active in advance. We misunderstand John’s intention if we attempt to make him say: “You have heard that antichrist is coming, but there will be no such final individual tyrant.” John did not contradict the many passages in Daniel and elsewhere which speak with brilliant clarity of a future, ultimate exponent of evil in the form of a single personality. It is a question of “both…and” not “either…or.”

On the Chronology of Prophecy

“There are many other numbers which the Bible student can study carefully: one, three, four, seven, ten, forty, seventy, etc. The apocalyptic expressions ‘time, times and half a time,’ ‘1260 days,’ and ‘forty-two months’ all designate a period of three and one half years. This expression has both a temporal as well as a symbolic import” (A. Berkeley Mickelsen, Interpreting the Bible, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984, p. 274).

The study of biblical prophecy has often been seriously derouted by the introduction of a 1260 year period of time. Daniel and Revelation are largely concerned with the famous 1260 DAY period. Hunting through the history books for periods of 1260 years is not profitable from the biblical point of view. What Scripture reveals is a critical period of 1260 days, just before the future return of Jesus in power and glory to gather the elect of all nations and appoint them to rule with him in the coming Messianic Kingdom (Rev. 5:10).

v.1 n.4. FRIEDRICH LOOFS

Professor of Systematic Theology and historian of doctrinal development, 1858-1928, brilliantly put his finger on the early Christian defection from the simple monotheism of the Bible. He pinpoints the “problem” of post-biblical mis-development in regard to who God and Jesus are.

“The Apologists [‘church fathers’ like Justin Martyr, mid-2nd century] laid the foundation for the perversion (Verkehrung) of Christianity into a revealed [philosophical] teaching. Specifically, their Christology affected the later development disastrously. By taking for granted the transfer of the concept of Son of God onto the preexisting Christ, they were the cause of the Christological problem of the 4th century. They caused a shift in the point of departure of Christological thinking — away from the historical Christ and onto the issue of preexistence. They thus shifted attention away from the historical life of Jesus, putting it into the shadow and promoting instead the Incarnation. They tied Christology to cosmology and could not tie it to soteriology. The Logos teaching is not a “higher” Christology than the customary one. It lags in fact far behind the genuine appreciation of Christ. According to their teaching it is no longer God who reveals Himself in Christ, but the Logos, the inferior God, a God who as God is subordinated to the Highest God (inferiorism or subordinationism).

In addition the suppression of economic-trinitarian ideas by metaphysical-pluralistic concepts of the divine triad (trias) can be traced to the Apologists” (Friedrich Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium des Dogmengeschichte [manual for the study of the history of dogma] (1890), part 1 ch. 2, section 18: “Christianity as a Revealed Philosophy. The Greek Apologists,” Niemeyer Verlag, 1951, p. 97. Translation from the German is ours).

This disastrous development is reflected exactly in modern popular evangelism. D. James Kennedy says: “Many people today think the essence of Christianity is Jesus’ teachings, but that is not so… Christianity centers not in the teachings of Jesus, but in the person of Jesus as Incarnate God who came into the world to take upon Himself our guilt and die in our place” (“How I Know Jesus Is God,” Truths that Transform, 11/17/1989).