Deconstructing Doctrine 4: Jesus

Arian Baptistry via photopin (license)

I am continuing in my deconstruction of the Salvation Army doctrines. Please see the first entries if this is your first foray into my blog!

Jesus:  Who was he?

Every time I think I get closer to an answer to this question, I get further away. Still, I try to examine what I know and what is verifiable. Then certain things collide with what I know to be scientifically true and these things clash hard with Scripture. That can lead to a crisis of faith for some. Others choose to ignore the science and focus solely on the faith, turning a blind eye to what they know is impossible.

So here is the Fourth Doctrine of The Salvation Army:

We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that He is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.

I do not dispute at all that Jesus lived on this Earth. He did. This extraordinary man started a movement and a way of life that reverberates to this day.

Was Jesus divine?

For most people, this is the crux of the question. They point to his virgin birth:  a birth that was based on a misinterpretation of Isaiah 7:14. Matthew (in Matthew 1:22-23) for some bizarre reason decides to quote from this scripture and say, "This was meant for Jesus," when, in its context, it clearly does not. If you look at the whole of Isaiah 7, Isaiah was speaking about a young woman (not a virgin) who was pregnant right then and there and the child was going to be a sign that King Ahaz's enemies would be destroyed. Matthew was more than likely quoting from the Septuagint, where this word (young woman) was rendered as virgin in Greek.

Let's go on with what we know about the ancients. Women were only viewed as the ground whereupon seed was sewn. That's why women were called "barren" when they weren't bearing children. Men had the "seed," the full human offspring. The Ancients didn't realize that the genetic material of both parents made up the offspring. So it only made sense, then, that Mary was "conceived by the Holy Spirit."

Even up until the Enlightenment, this view was called "preformationism."

Let's bring science into this. That just doesn't work. It's impossible. If there were no male genetic material to go into Mary's egg, then the baby would only have female genetic material. Would that make Jesus transgender?

So what do we have here?

Does being born of a virgin make someone divine? I don't think so, but then again that's probably missing the point of the story. Being born of a virgin wasn't even important at all to Mark or John. They ignore the birth of Jesus altogether.

If Jesus were truly divine, it had nothing to do with how he was conceived. In fact, perhaps we are taking the story too literally, as we often do in our culture, and we should be taking the story symbolically.

Was Jesus human?

This question might seem laughable, but one that early plagued Christians. It's easy to shoot off the answer, "yes," but are we prepared to accept those consequences of what it means for Jesus to be human?

Did Jesus eat? Sleep? Cry? Those are easy to answer. We know those answers. We see the Bible reporting about him eating, sleeping, crying.

Let's ask the harder questions.

Did Jesus make mistakes? After all, making mistakes is part of being human and more importantly is how we learn. I cannot learn how to walk without making mistakes. I cannot learn how to talk without making mistakes. 

If I may posit, even Jesus made mistakes. This one will be hard for most Christians to wrestle with. In fact, many will find some eisegetical reason to counter it. I think Jesus made a mistake when he first refused to heal the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman. Most people are uncomfortable with this story. First of all, it shows Jesus acting quite like a racist. I can understand that. It's always easier to identify with a group and to put people into an "other" category. We do it even in this day. Racism exists and is quite widespread. Is it any wonder that Jesus, a Jew, born in a society that hated non-Jews, especially Canaanites, would show contempt for this foreign woman?

However, Jesus learned from this mistake. He did the right thing. In so doing, he showed that his message was not meant only for the Jews, but for the whole world.

If Jesus were human, was he sexual? Absolutely he was! I'm not saying that he never had sex. The Bible is silent on that, but he was human and, in being human, was a sexual being. There is a possibility that he was Asexual, but I don't believe so. And if Jesus was truly human, then he experienced most human desires and feelings, which includes our sexual drive. So when Jesus hit puberty, he more than likely had the exact same emotions, hormones, and actions that most young men do his age.

That concept is so difficult for Christians to accept. In fact, there was an early movement of Christians who rejected this altogether, stating that Christ denied himself such pleasures. We call this Gnosticism. This thought basically denied everything pleasurable and states that only Spirit is good. The Early Church considered this a heresy, while still struggling with it to this day.

Are we ready to accept what it means for Jesus to have been human?

What did Jesus know about this?

Did Jesus believe he was divine? If he did? When? Did he know it from the moment of conception? If that were the case, how could a divine being ever be truly human? Paul in his letters to the Philippians states that Jesus emptied himself of all divinity (See Philippians 2:6-11.)

If Jesus emptied himself of all things divine, how could he be truly and properly God and truly and properly human when he was on Earth?

I think I'm coming up with more questions than answers.

And that's OK.

The fact is, I don't know for certainty that Jesus knew he was anything more than human. His preferred moniker for himself was "Son of Man," which is a euphemism for "Human One." He didn't call himself the Son of God. This praise came from other people. Friar Richard Rohr likes to postulate that Jesus did not know he was divine until his resurrection. I can accept that.

In the end, I probably have just as many questions as Andrew Lloyd Weber's portrayal of Judas Iscariot.

I believe that in the person of Jesus, his humanity and divinity are worthy mysteries to investigate.