God Talk | Burkhardt

About God Talk (rev. 2013/06/28)

When we talk about God, we refer to entities that we do not understand. We use words that lend the talk, at first, credibility, and, later, notoriety. Our talk becomes notorious for not achieving a knowledge that satisfies our search for (or away from) God. In the best cases, we talk about God in a way that sounds as if we have overhead God talking to us. We are humbled and excited; confident of the value of the expression and yet reluctant to overgeneralize.

My interest is not to be doctrinally correct. While libelous heresy is of course to be rejected, so is the assumption that we can both understand and explain God in a codified, systematic manner. In my experience, the phrase "doctrinally correct," often belies an idol of the mind that thrives on gaining the approval of a subset of the body of Christ at the expense of intellectual humility.

My interest is in discovering meaning and beauty in, chiefly, the canonical writings about Jesus. If someone can show me a non-canonical writing that is different from and yet is as illuminating as the canonical writings (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), I'll be happy to read it. If anyone is concerned about being doctrinally correct instead of literarily accurate, please find a different page to read, because, I assure you, the internet and the presses are full of that kind of discourse.

Recognizing these things, we do the best we can . . . .

Return to home page; return to top of page.

Call the Son of Man "Christ" or Call Him "the Son of the Living God" (rev. 2017/11/13)

No sooner did Jesus appear than also did formulations of his identity. Before his birth, an angel (a non human messenger from God, no wings necessary) called him "God with us." About thirty years later, after he began preaching from town to town, Jesus asked his own disciples about the current theories:

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 16)

Here are the titles provided by this passage:

Son of man
Christ
Son of the living God

I'll return to these, but want to look forward in time to note that the question of identity was at the center of many debates, leading to careful formulation of creeds, along with some martyrdom and other violence that, however you label him, you can be sure Jesus eschews.

Many formulations maintain the paradoxical edges of Jesus' identity by pronouncing outright that he is perfect God and perfect Man. This is a paradox because we cannot imagine the perfection of the infinite and the perfection of a finite being contained in one person—an eternity that lasts exactly one hour, or something like. These paradoxical edges prevent us from ever being able to define him, which isn't a bad thing, the goal for a disciple being not to define Jesus but to be defined by him.

By contrast, definitions of Jesus that at times emphasize either his humanity or his divinity do so at the expense of the other. The wondrous aspect of a human who walks successfully by faith from his first breath to his last, who feels everything everyone else feels, who is vulnerable to the point of sweating beads of sweat like drops of blood—all this is lost when the humanity is overlooked. The hope and confidence that there is a spiritual door through which we can pass that takes us into the presence of God with a new identity for ourselves—all this is at risk of being lost when his divinity is overlooked.

The plea of this piece is to keep the paradoxical edges. Avoid the temptation of reducing him to something marketable, whose value is all on the surface. The authors of the gospels could have reduced his identity to the three-word sentence that is common today among evangelicals ("Jesus is God"), but they chose not to. In a few instances the phrase—which is certainly easy to write in Greek, "Θεóς Ιησους"—is almost used, but not quite.

Here is on example of a near equation (reduction) between Jesus and God. Note that it takes place in the mind of a man who has just experienced a miraculous event in the presence of Jesus. The gospel of Mark (chapter 5) has Jesus urging the man whom he had just delivered from numerous demons to "tell people what the Lord has done for you," and the man immediately tells people what "Jesus had done" for him. It's a nice passage. Jesus, as recorded from Aramaic into Greek, used the word ὁ κύριός, "the Lord," when he said "what the Lord has done for you."

This word (κύριός) applies to both humans (in positions of power) and God (in the position of power). The Jesus-is-God equation then can be loosely inferred from this passage. But equally well the Jesus-a-human-in-a-position-of-power can be inferred. However—and this is my main point—either interpretation is not sufficient to describe Jesus. He was not a magician, just as he was not a mini-God-the-father who was living both outside of time and inside of it. He was not pretending to be only a man. He was not pretending to be only God. He was being Jesus, the son of his earthly mother and the son of his heavenly father.

Another instance where the definition approaches a simple equation is in the beginning of the gospel of John. It states,

In the beginning was the Word [ὁ λόγος], and the Word [ὁ λόγος] was with God, and the Word [ὁ λόγος] was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

This is perhaps as close as the New Testament gets to the three-word sentence that sprinkles so many sermons these days. Most readers would agree that the logos refers to Jesus, before that name (Jesus) was given to him. And from that observation some would construe that it is the same as saying, "Jesus is God." The passage, however, complicates matters where it states, "The same was in the beginning with God." Put into contemporary phrasing, this second part would be similar to Christians saying, "God is Jesus." That's a phrase one doesn't often hear, because it sounds, even to those who do not respect nuances, reductive.

The fact that the equation doesn't work equally well in both directions suggests that it suffers from oversimplification. Looking again at the opening of John, we can see something else at work: being with and being. Being with suggests separateness (x is near y), while being suggests an equation (x is y). This paradox, I maintain, reveals a much more interesting arrangement, one that is happily relational and unpredictable (assuming we cannot predict things we do not understand).

The opening of John can be paraphrased something like this, "In the beginning was the expression of God. The expression was with God and the expression was God. And, conversely, in the beginning was God, and God was with the expression and God was the expression." Not being sure what this means, I imagine the "expression" or "logos" has to do with time and space. Expression, in a human language, occurs that way, at least. The system of meaning and the plenitude of thought might be in the divine mind all along, but only with the expression does it happen, does it become limited in that it is no longer potentially about everything but is actually about something.

The poet's pen, according to one of Shakespeare's characters, takes "forms of things unknown" and gives to "airy nothing a local habitation and a name." This might approximate the role of Jesus in bringing infinitude into what humans consider existence (within space and time), giving every known thing a local habitation and a name. Whether this is the difference between God and the logos (the logos being the intentional limitation of the infinite) or not, the difference clearly cannot be reduced to a simple equation.

Two final examples of near-equations between Jesus and God occur in Paul's letters to the Colossians and the Philippians. We should remember, these are written by a person who clearly distinguished between the Son and the Father, a distinction that prevents simple equations. I cannot be my father, because in that case I cannot be myself. I derive my sonship from my father, and my father derives fatherhood from me. With this admission of difference, we can appreciate the unique role Jesus possesses. Paul writes:

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1)

Here is "the image of the invisible God" who is part of a race (first born) that he created and sustains, who is clearly divine, and yet who is never confused with the invisible God, the God who, earlier in the same passage, is the Father who places us in the kingdom of his dear Son.

The passage in Philippians, using different terminology, refers to a "form" (μορφῇ—external appearance) instead of an "image" (εἰκὼν—portrait), both words suggesting that when one sees Jesus, one sees God:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name . . . . (Philippians 2)

This Jesus can claim equality with God in some sense, but chooses not to and instead submits himself to the conditions that an infinite being would never be able to experience. As a result, this Jesus is exalted, not by himself, but by "God" who gives him a name which is above every name. It is that "name" that the paradoxical edges protect; it is a name that is unique, neither a simple equation with "God," nor a name that puts him in competition with the Father.

That "name" is neither a secret nor dependent upon a particular sound or spelling. It is a functional name. It includes "Jesus" (which derives from the Hebrew for "deliverer") and "Christ" (which is Greek for "messiah," the anointed one). It is a unique name that has no equivalent, on earth or in heaven. We could use the name that Jesus applied to himself, "son of man," which reminds us that less is more and that humbler is higher. Or we can imitate Peter, who was having an extraordinary moment, with "son of the living God." Peter's phrase is less ironic and more triumphant than "son of man." Any one of these names confers importance and uniqueness on this person from Galilee.

The final aspect of the unique, functional name of Jesus is that we cannot obtain the significance by pure intellection or training or any human effort. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." More revelation and less equivocation is what we all need.

God bless you with eyes to see and ears to hear. May you be filled with his spirit, and experience the hope of glory—Christ in you.

Return to home page; return to top of page.

Praying to the Father, Praying to the Son (rev. 2013/03/24)

Jesus taught that we were to pray to the Father in his name. By contrast, if one listens to public prayers in un-scripted Christian gatherings, one often hears things such as,

God, we thank you for today. Oh, Spirit, please guide us. Father please have mercy on us. Jesus thank you for your mercy. Jesus we love you and we pray for these things inJesus' name, amen.

First God, then the Spirit, then the Father, then Jesus, and then the prayer is offered in Jesus' name. If I understand doing something in someone's name means acting on that person's behalf. If so, to pray to Jesus in Jesus' name is tantamount to Jesus speaking to himself. Clearly some role confusion is occurring.

These prayers are common among Christians (at least among evangelical ones). Anyone wondering who is being addressed in this prayer is welcome to conclude that it is the Pseudonymous Being, who goes by different names without reason—except perhaps that the address usually begins giving attention to the Father but soon shifts to the Son and stays there.

It is not that I think God incapable of—or unwilling to—translate these utterances and respond to them. Accurate wording alone doesn't effect a miraculous change. Conversely, some of the worst wording may convey reality-changing faith. No doubt, some outbursts of swearing have come closer to God's heart than many perfectly worded prayers.

But name shifting mid-sentence is sloppy. It might belie something about our perceptions of the distant Father vesus the understanding Son. It may also bring to the surface the difficulty of talking to an invisible being. If addressing one name doesn't establish a feeling of reality perhaps addressing a different name will. In other words, it may be a case of crying out, "Is anyone listening?"

I think it is all these things. And—getting back to "sloppy"—I think it is often a matter of inattentivity. A few formulaic phrases construct our prayers instead of a true knowledge of whom we are addressing and how. The most striking example of inattentivity occurred for me when praying with a friend in high school, when we would rebuke the devil frequently in our prayers. As soon as he prayed, he looked up embarrassed, and we laughed. I cannot remember whether he said, "I rebuke you Jesus," or concluded with "we pray in Satan's name." Either way, we inwardly had the assurance that many of our prayers seemed to go unanswered and that, statistically, this one had a good chance of being ignored, too.

If prayer helps us appreciate the roles of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, it is worth while. I recall reading something like the following in C. S. Lewis (perhaps in a couple of places): when a Christian kneels to pray, it is Christ within him or her, praying through the Spirit, to the Father.

Finally, there must be a way for us to talk to Jesus, and to talk to Jesus in a way that knows we are borrowing his life to do so, but that only with his life could we do so in any meaningful way (since our life/nature tends to distort reality to easily). So whatever the role confusion may be in many of our prayers, the ability to talk to Jesus should never be doubted.

Return to home page; return to top of page.

Crucified: Who Sacrifices Jesus for Whom? (rev. 2018/03/14)

Jump to...
Crucified Section 2: Why Die if Not to Satisfy God's Justice?
Crucified Section 3: Clarifications

Crucified Section 1: the Origins of Human Sacrifice

It was Jesus who told the religious leaders, "go and learn what this means, 'I have desired mercy and not sacrifice.'"

My concern—Who Sacrifices Jesus for Whom?—arises from the assumption that human sacrifice is a specifically human behavior that is practiced to meet specifically human needs. The problem is that many times the sacrifice of Jesus is attributed to something God needed to assuage his wrath instead of its being attributed to, once more, a group of humans singling out another human for a collective killing.

Apart from the murder of Jesus, most moderns, even religious moderns, have no problem seeing the specifically human origins of human sacrifice. Consider ancient civilizations and tribes who sacrificed humans, including children, kings, and strangers. Frequently, it is assumed that the community believed a god or other divinity required the sacrifice. Accordingly, those who carried out the killing were, in the minds of the community, doing the will of god(s). Nearly everyone walked away with a clear (religious) conscience. Most moderns, however, do not agree with the community's perception. Rather, they feel outraged that the participants thought they were doing the god a favor.

Why the god needed a sacrifice in the first place isn't necessarily discussed. Perhaps because it happened so often in primitive societies (think of the Aztecs, among others) it has become just a given, an axiom that cannot be questioned. But a question of such importance (the question of why a divinity needs human blood) should seek an answer.

It is fortunate that the work of René Girard hypothesizes the actual mechanism from which this sacrificial impulse arises. Simply put, the community finds itself in a state of escalated tension (rivalries, greed, vengeance—conflict that creates disorder, then, even as it does now). At a certain point where the contagious violence is reaching a crescendo, turning all against all, a new organizing pattern emerges: the group identifies an individual or an individual group as the underlying source of disorder. Once identified, the source becomes the target of the community's wrath. The tension and violence that seemed uncontrollable have found a solution: remove the individual and remove the underlying threat.

The source is either killed or expelled. This transference of blame toward the source has united the community that was formerly in a state of disorder. A coalition of allies is formed as the alleged source is identified and isolated from the group. This is the first transference, to demonize the victim.

A second transference occurs when the source (dead or expelled) is credited with having healed the community. The causality seems clear: after the killing, tension receded and order was restored, implying that the victim was somehow an agent of the divine. This second transference, over hundreds of occurrences, increasingly associates divine characteristics with the sacrificial victim. The victim begins to represent a divine plan, whereby a need that seems larger than the community is met through the offering of a victim. Although all the conditions for the sacrifice are immanent in the human condition, they appear to be transcendent (i.e. god's will). This is the second transference, to divinize the victim.

Double Transference: This mechanism of double transference that I have sketched highlights the specifically human impulses that are behind human sacrifice. Even though primitive or pagan explanations refer to gods in whom very few of us believe, we let them stand in the stories as givens instead of as a creation of the violence itself. The mechanism starts on the human plane, with angry humans. It then extends to the mythological plane of angry gods. Understanding the mechanism allows us to reverse the terms: instead of an angry god demanding a sacrifice, it is the sacrifice that demands an angry god.

Most of us agree that human sacrifice meets a set of human needs arising from the human condition, instead of meeting a divine need arising from a menagerie of blood-demanding divinities. Examples gross as earth exhort us that human sacrifice has been performed time and time again to placate the alleged anger of the perceived god, all the while functioning as a kind of pressure-relief valve for an unstable community with an unstable mentality. We can recognize that the process is self-validating: shift all the blame to one person and the rest of the community will feel divinely forgiven or acquitted.

Christianity, keeping at its core the story of a human sacrifice, may interpret Jesus' death in one of two morally opposite ways: either

depraved humans exercised the poorest judgement in history by selecting the most innocent man as the object of their blame, hostility, and need for a victim, or
God, like primitive gods, needed to find a suitable object upon whom to vent wrath in order to protect the rest of humanity from God's punishment.

The first interpretation is perfectly moral regarding God's role. It allows us to see God in terms of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount." Here, Jesus portrays his Father as perfectly good, causing the sun to shine on both the wicked and the righteous—a god free from the need of a victim, and overflowing with forgiveness and love by nature. The second interpretation is inconsistent with "Christian" morality in that it portrays God as behaving in ways Jesus taught against in his exhortations to refuse to return evil for evil. Far from advocating for the peace of the mob, Jesus advocated for the singled out individual, such as the woman caught in adultery. The second interpretation portrays God acting on an impulse that most legal systems prohibit and most psychologists would seek to cure.

Christians, one might think, have historically sided with the perfectly moral God, the one who is free from the need of a victim. But one would be (half) wrong. Christians usually combine the two morally opposed interpretations. Their God is a god of love who normally offers forgiveness (making God better than humans), but who, in order to fully execute this forgiveness, must satisfy an additional requirement of justice that involves expressing wrath and punishment. This wrath can be poured out on humanity or on a single (but perfect) living being.

Their God is both alarmingly moral in the forgiveness he offers and morally alarming in the wrath he needed to express on someone. Only unquestioned acceptance that sacrifice is necessary allows the believer to be happy with these terms. In other words, as long as the sacrificial enterprise remains unquestioned, the need to express wrath remains acceptable.

What feeds these contradictory currents? For one, the scriptures themselves provide a basis for both views of God.

The alarmingly moral aspect of their God is supported by many portions of Judeo-Christian teachings. These present God as being full of light, wisdom, love, and truth. Like the Sermon on the Mount, Psalm 23 provides a good example. God is good: he is illustrated as the best, most courageous and caring shepherd. In light of many passages such as this, of course God is perfectly righteous, full of truth, light, and loving kindness. The best indicator of God's character is revealed in Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God. It is Jesus' refusal to return evil for evil that challenges all murkier representations of God's character.

The morally alarming aspect of their God is also supported by some unforgettable scriptures, mostly but not exclusively from what Christians call the old (or first) testament. It is often these earlier representations of God that help create the morally ambiguous God that many Christians espouse. In some passages God is represented as the author of what today would qualify as genocide, where the elimination of women and children along with the warriors is commanded.^[1] To the extent these passages are accepted as accurate representations of God—to that extent it is likely that the sacrifice of one person in exchange for millions may seem acceptable. (It did to one of Jesus' executioners.^[2])

If, however, a Christian admits that some scriptures act as a corrective to others,^[3] then there must be an additional reason for the view that God needs to punish his son in order to satisfy a sense of justice. Put differently, every believer plays down certain scriptures in favor of others—why are those concerning the sacrificial nature of God so popular? The God who desires sacrifice and not mercy may derive from several elements, including,

tradition (sermons, hymns, songs, sayings, and assumptions passed within and between communities of believers),
the hidden sacrificial impulse in each of us that is relieved to find out that even God has such an impulse and that therefore it must not be such a terribly dark impulse,
the unfolding role of sacrifice and the passover in Jewish tradition,
the portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment and completion of the sacrificial tradition within early Christian scriptures (including the Epistle to the Hebrews),
the engrained sentiment that fighting violence with violence works when it's God's violence at work, and, perhaps most importantly,
the inability to appreciate the death of Jesus if it wasn't to satisfy God's sense of justice.^[4]

The advantage of combining the two interpretations is that the received, sacrificial interpretation of the scriptures remains intact (allowing one to be orthodox or free from raising troubling questions) while the moral difference between God and primitive gods remains demonstrable. However, this effort to combine the God of "justice" with the God of love remains a juggling act. The more one focuses on the need for a violent expression of wrath (sin being so damaging to humanity), the more difficult it is to focus on the God of love, "the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" (James 1:17, NKJV).

One of my favorite Christian teachers performs this juggling act spectacularly. So good a job he does that, were I not convinced that human sacrifice is a purely human practice arising from a need to contain and transfer blame, I would subscribe to his view. Teaching on the passage that "God set forth [Jesus Christ] as a propitiation by His blood" (Romans 3:25, NKJV),^[5] Mr. Cook states:

This is what we cling to, this wonderful good news of how the heavenly Father has taken up our cause, has taken all the wrath and the judgment for us, has taken even the wrath of Satan and the wrath of the world, and his own wrath upon himself [in the person of Jesus].^[6]

What is spectacular is how "wrath" multiplies in this quotation:

general ("the wrath and judgment"),
Satanic ("the wrath of Satan"),
worldly ("the wrath of the world"), and
divine ("his own wrath").

However (characteristically) faithful Mr. Cook attempts to be to the passage, he is compelled to bring in two or three types of wrath not mentioned by Paul (Satanic, worldly, and perhaps general).

It's "the wrath of Satan" that points to the true nature of sacrifice. If he had felt the liberty to do so, Mr. Cook could have made his point by focusing exclusively on the wrath of Satan. Also called "the accuser" in the New Testament, Satan is the one who first blames unjustly the victim, and then directs wrath against that victim. Finally, the "father of lies" (another name for Satan) distorts the reason for the violence, keeping in place a misunderstanding of God's character that persists today.

Instead of multiplying types of wrath, we should interpret the "wrath of God" as biblical shorthand for the concept that humans will always suffer at the hands of humans so long at they disobey the God of love, that this suffering, standing in opposition to their plans, will seem to humans like God's anger, and that, in order to extinguish the wrath that their own nature brought about, humans will, at times, find a sacrificial victim that helps them both lessen the strife within them and obtain a clear conscience about their role in that strife.

The "wrath of God" is the "wrath of the absence of God" and occurs whenever humans run with their impulses unhindered by restraint. God is involved in the violent outcomes, but not as executioner. God is involved as the source of light that exposes the lies that so often dominate human thinking. The involvement is God refusing to bruise a bent reed or quench a smoldering flax, much to the resentment of humans who want and don't want God's involvement. Refuse his kindness and all that's left is human competition, fueled by greed and masked by one transference of blame after another.

Not only could believers interpret wrath as biblical shorthand, but often believers do, with statements such as, "We are not punished for our sins, but by our sins." Many pieces of the puzzle of biblical coherence fall in place when we allow for such shorthand. The phrase, "wrath of God," understood as the inevitable self-destructive consequences of immorality has great value. It helps us recognize both the consequences of immorality (scapegoating being among them) and the grandeur of a loving God.

The reason for the shorthand is likely that it takes time, hundreds or thousands of years, for the divine light to dispel lies that have both created and maintained cultures. The shorthand has the advantage of getting one's attention concerning his or her responsibility in this world. If one is in a theater and smells poisonous gas, one may likely cry "fire!" (instead of "I'm smelling poisonous gas") to save lives, only to explain later that urgency and the need for widespread comprehension outweighed accuracy at the time.

Mr. Cook's muliple types of wrath illustrate how hard it is to align the morality of Jesus's Father (illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount) with the theory of atonement as an exercise in divine wrath. What Mr. Cook avoids—much to his credit—is glibly accepting a thin version of the crucifixion whereby a perfect God must, for legal reasons, punish somebody, charitably killing his son to spare all the guilty parties. Mr. Cook's version requires wrestling with the cost of Jesus' life.

As long as Christians view God as being sacrificial (well-intentioned but nevertheless sacrificial), they will be in a situation similar to what Mark Twain ascribed to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where "a sound heart & a deformed conscience come into collision." Applied to the crucifixion, the sound heart arises from the life of Jesus and his portrayal of his Father in the Sermon on the Mount. The deformed conscience arises from the received tradition that God must punish someone in order to express forgiveness to everyone.

One expression of sacrificial theology is this: "God is so holy that he cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, he must sacrifice his son to make us sinners acceptable in his presence." The obvious flaw to this statement lies in the fact that Jesus, Holy Jesus, was at home spending time with sinners, and often the more "sinful" the person, the more time he invested. This is the same Jesus who did only what he saw his father do. If there's a shred of truth in the concept of a holy God, it is that we cannot enjoy being with holiness, not the reverse. It was Peter who said to Jesus, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man." It was not Jesus who said, "Depart from me for you are a sinful man."

The goal of the rest of this message (and perhaps of my life) is to assert and hopefully explain how Jesus' death reconciles humans to a God who never needed and never will need a victim to satisfy his sense of justice. It will apply the rest of Mark Twain's quotation to the Christian's dilemma, with the result that "conscience suffers a defeat": Jim the slave is befriended in spite of the received tradition of slavery, and God is recognized as the Misunderstood One who always sided with the victim, who always saw the need to deliver this race from its misdeeds, including its projection of its own sense of justice on God.

Crucified Section 2: Why Die?

If Jesus did not die to appease his Father's anger or to satisfy his Father's sense of justice, then why was it so important and inevitable for him to die? Put differently, what was achieved by the death of Jesus?

Many passages, notably in the Gospel of John and in Paul's letters, claim that the death of Jesus is a most important event for the redemption of humanity.^[7] The benefits of that death include:

the introduction of forgiveness on a large, unambiguous, scale
- this is not the same as freeing God the Father to be forgiving; it is freeing the human race to have a picture of forgiveness that is so clear as to prevent rejection on the basis of a confused conscience
the separation of humans from their moral and spiritual imperfections (aka, sins)
- the human race descending from Adam (whether Adam is a type or an individual) is diseased, only to be cured by dying and rising again as a new race
the reconciliation of humans with God
- the positive side of being freed from a lineage of alienation from God, the resurrection of Christ started a new race (making him the "firstborn among many brothers and sisters" [Romans 8])

The death of Jesus (along with the resurrection) is the event that transformed Jesus from a local phenomenon in first century Israel to a life that provides individuals from all parts of the world, across history, the opportunity to obtain a new identity.

The reason Jesus died is because people chose to kill him for various reasons—fear and envy being among them. The gospel narratives of the betrayal, arrest, trial, and sentencing of Jesus place the responsibility squarely at the feet of some (but not all) of the Jewish leaders. The rest—the mob who shout "crucify him" and the Romans who execute the business—are accessories to the crime.

God knew what would would inevitably happen to a truth-telling emissary. Not only from his omniscience but from the history of the treatment of prophets, God knew the messenger would be mistreated. What happens to the emissary is a violent reaction by those threatened by the truth. A violent episode could work out for the good—the greatest good—in spite of the fact that this God takes no pleasure in sacrifice.

It was Jesus who told the religious leaders, "go and learn what this means, 'I have desired mercy and not sacrifice'" (Matthew 9:13). He was quoting an old testament prophet (Hosea 6:6), and he knew that the sacrificial urge would soon shift its attention from tax collectors, prostitutes, and Roman occupiers to himself. He would be the new sacrifice, one that placated the fears of the Jewish leaders, one that lent significance to the mobs who wanted to shift the blame outside themselves, and one that proved convenient to the Romans who wanted amicable relations with the lands they occupied if these relations could be obtained through the loss of a few individuals.

This fate of Jesus would have been anticipated by God, who lives outside time, and it would serve the need to put an effective end to the perpetuation of a violent and disbelieving humanity. In this light, Paul's statement makes perfect sense, whether one interprets "princes" as worldly rulers or as fallen angels: "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (I Corinthians 2:7-8). What an extraordinary statement! If the agents of Jesus' death had known the ultimate outcome—the spiritual beginning of a new race—they would have sought to keep him alive.

The result of the death of Jesus is that one way or another he was the representative human being (the last Adam and the second man, according to Paul). In dying he put the human race to death. In rising from the dead he provided a new identity for humanity. This identity consists of his righteousness, and it allows those who believe in him to be his brothers and sisters. The death is therefore efficacious, not in pacifying his Father but in giving humanity a way out of the world and a way into the kingdom of heaven. All this of course is a matter of faith, and is not realized physically in the present. What counts for those who want to be free from a deformed conscience, though, is that it is moral, consisting of an extraordinary individual placing himself in harm's way and then sharing the reward of that obedience with those who need the benefits of that obedience.

The gospel that is based on the death of Jesus often takes the form of a promise. It can be summarized in this way: if you are willing to put your confidence in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—if you are willing to let those experiences count in place of your own—then you are, truly, a part of Christ. You are what he is: righteous, new, one with God. You need only to allow his life to be the starting and ending point of your thoughts and decisions, and as you do, your daily, earthly self will be imbued with his spirit.

All of the above is truly good news for those who are discontent with their earthly life. It is perhaps all one needs to know and think about to experience peace, love and joy in this life and the life to come. It is a good stopping place for the discussion.

Crucified Section 3: Clarifications

Earlier in this article, I listed the following as reasons that many Christians entertain a sacrificial theology:

tradition (sermons, hymns, songs, sayings, and assumptions passed down and around communities),
the hidden sacrificial impulse in each of us that is relieved to find out that even God has such an impulse and that therefore it must not be such a terribly dark impulse,
the unfolding role of sacrifice and the passover in Jewish tradition,
the portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment and completion of the sacrificial tradition within early Christian scriptures (including the Epistle to the Hebrews),
the engrained sentiment that fighting violence with violence works when it's God's violence at work, and, perhaps most importantly,
the inability to appreciate the death of Jesus if it wasn't to satisfy God's sense of justice.

The non-sacrificial responses would be:

By tradition, I refer to Christian traditions, which are as susceptible to corruption as are Christians, perhaps more so since traditions are enlisted for the survival of organizations, with the result that any tradition that promises the survival of an organization is likely to be protected at all costs. In Christianity, we have a glaring contradiction: the message (also known as the "gospel" or "good news") that was intended to free people from guilt has, historically, been converted into an instrument of guilt. One reinforcement to this guilt is the image of God who is sacrificial and, because of our wayward nature, turned his wrath on Jesus. This image imbues our existence with danger: (1) we all went astray (true), (2) we forced God's hand, causing him to act out of character and kill the least deserving human (false), and (3) we repeatedly go astray by not trusting this God who, obviously, is, one way or another, capable of choosing a victim to keep the machinery of the universe running (twisted).
There are, of course, many other reasons Christians do not trust in God, many of them needing ownership and renunciation—my only point is that we will do better not to weigh ourselves down with images that lessen the character of God as Jesus revealed it (saying, "if you see me, you see my Father").
That we all have a sacrificial impulse is not in question. Whether we fight it or not, we all know that we are relieved to find out that we are not being blamed for something, that the blame has gone elsewhere (justly or unjustly). However, the extent to which this impulse cultivates in us a sacrificial interpretation of God is hard to examine. It may not occur, or it may be so deeply hidden that we simply canot see it. If misery likes company, divine misery likes divine company. So it is logical, but not demonstrable, that our own sacrificial impulse is what causes us to tenaciously hold onto the idea that God's justice requires the destruction of a living being. One could argue that while we hate the idea of human sacrifice, we, against our temperament, feel compelled by our conscience to embrace the validity of that concept at least once in history. And that concession is understandable until we start suspecting that we've been mistaken about God's role in the crucifixion.
The Jewish tradition of sacrificing animals was preceded by Abraham's experience on Mount Moriah where the Lord provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in order to spare Abraham's son; the Jewish tradition that thus focused on animals shuttled humanity away from human sacrifice, a first major step toward understanding the Father of Jesus.
As a consequence of God's weaning humanity away from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice, Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice in Hebrews in this way: his death unmasked the kind of agents who kill victims and in unmasking them, his death declared that the human approach to pleasing God was wrong all along. It was less wrong when animals were substituted for humans, but it was wrong, nevertheless. Coming late in the tradition of Hebraic animal sacrifice, Jesus' death, once more a human sacrifice, was what could highlight the injustice once and for all of the sacrificial implulse. In this respect, the Father supported the crucifixion, not as something to satisfy his wrath but as something needed to demonstrate once and for all the difference between human and divine justice, the difference between the great "I am" and all the manufactured gods of this world.
Only time will remove the engrained sentiment that fighting violence with violence works when it's God's violence—this article being one more attempt to free us from that misconception.
The death of Jesus gains more value, not less, when the sacrificial veil is pushed aside; love and justice no longer compete with each other but conspire together to give the human race a second chance at achieving the peace and unity that human sacrifice only hinted at.

Summarized in different words, the non-sacrificial gospel can be worded this way:

The biggest problem in Christianity is the transference of blame for the death of Jesus onto God himself. From its inception, Christianity had to work with a language colored by sacrificial thinking, and it had as its original audience a people whose survival and coherence had depended upon sacrifice. The "divine" desire for sacrifice and not mercy was hard to escape. As a result, an ambiguous version of God was adopted among Christians: God could never forgive people apart from having someone to punish. The death of Jesus is appreciable only to the extent that he is being punished by his Father in place of our being punished by his Father.

The misconstructions placed on God would include the following:

God desires sacrifice
God is violent
God's wrath—righteous indignation—resolves itself by putting someone to death
the Father acted in a way that is contrary to the Sermon on the Mount (i.e. acted contrary to passages such as "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets").

The claim that God needed to punish humanity but punished his Son instead misconstrues the nature of God as being like ours—a nature inclined toward retribution. These sort of claims license humans to do ungodly things in the name of Christ, spanning from engaging in wars based on religious differences to forming groups that honor God by discriminating against a selected group of victims, the Ku Klux Klan being exemplary of this kind of theology.

The "wrath of God" taken in light of Jesus as a representative of God must mean God's willingness to allow humans to refuse his spirit and to go their own wretched way, destroying each other in the process. When human violence expresses itself without restraint, it takes on characteristics that seem superhuman: it is inescapable, irresistible, easier to join than to denounce. It does seem divine. If Jesus came to show any one thing, it may have been to expose the delusion that the wrath of God emanates from God. It reveals the wrath of God as the dangerous state of allowing humans to rule over each other, selfishly, compulsively, religiously.

Similar to the "wrath of God" is the concept of the "blood" of Christ in the New Testament. The shedding of Jesus' blood is inextricably linked to our salvation. Because it points so clearly to the scapegoat and the sacrifice of Passover (the weekend Jesus died), I still wrestle with it. At this point, I can only say I don't understand its significance nearly enough, and having said that, I add that whatever the significance is, it does not cause me to doubt that God is above any secret law or compulsion to shed blood in order to forgive.

We need Jesus to save us from our versions of God. Because Jesus said, "I do only what I see my father do," we must allow his life to re-define his father fully. Otherwise, we will continue to ascribe to God the same characteristics that myths ascribe to their gods, who are satisfied when a victim is either expelled or put to death. It is ironic and also unavoidable that the greatest misunderstanding about God has been re-applied to God's greatest effort to dislodge that misunderstanding.

If we refuse to explain things about the death of Jesus that we do not understand, we will be walking away from sacrificial theology.^[8] We can believe the death of Jesus somehow worked for our benefit, without thinking for a minute that the Father to whom that death unites us has anything but love and mercy for all involved.

____Footnotes____

^[1] For a single example, see 1 Samuel 15:1-3..."Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

^[2] "Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, 'You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.' (John 11:49-50)"

^[3] Hebrews 1 lends itself to the notion that the scriptures can correct themselves. It makes clear that Jesus, "the heir of all things, by whom also God made the worlds," provides the clearest representation of God. The exaltation of Jesus in that chapter concludes at the beginning of chapter 2 with the warning, "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip." According to the non-sacrificial gospel, to "give the more earnest heed" means to give the representation provided by Jesus the final say in matters concerning God's character.

^[4] In brief response to these reasons,
(1) tradition takes the sacrificial interpretation and disperses it in the fabric of the Christian experience, making it difficult to see where essential elements of faith stop and optional elements begin, with the result that only a concerted effort, a kind of reformation, can dislodge the sacrificial thinking.
(2) The hidden desire for sacrifice is, in myself at least, fully hidden, and only noticeable by how convincing the sacrificial interpretation seemed in spite of the fact that the gospels offer an alternate explanation, one that any open-minded reader cannot miss ("He's been set up and murdered...").
(3) The role of sacrifice in the Jewish tradition can be understood as a weaning process during which the Lord first exchanges animal for human sacrifice and later begins to move the religious community away from animal sacrifice to the sacrifice of praise, the one wholly moral form of sacrifice.
(4) Thus, when Jesus is figured as the perfect sacrifice, the intention in Hebrews is to show that he brought an end to sacrifice, but Hebrews does not dwell on how that can be, leaving it to the reader to choose between (a) perfect satisfaction of a sin offering or (b) perfect demystification of the role of sacrifice in the human economy of violence.
(5)Any engrained sentiment is by definition difficult to dislodge, being a sub-conscious response, including the circular argument that if God does something it is right. Of course if God is perfect, everything God does is perfect. What the sentiment does not allow for is the possibility that on a fundamental level, God did not do what it is assumes he did (vent his wrath).
(6)Finally, our inability to appreciate the death of Jesus non-sacrificially is the chief concern of the next section, because it is the absence of purely moral reasons for Jesus' death that allows sacrificial theories to occupy our thoughts.

^[5] It appears inevitable to slip into sacrificial language when referring to the death of Jesus. That language has "significance" written all over it. Paul goes in both directions in his writings. He uses sacrificial language, but he is able to discourse at length about the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, and about Jesus' role as the last Adam and the second man, which expresses the value of the crucifixion more clearly to me than anything.

It is perhaps Paul's use of ἱλαστήριον (hilasterion) that provides the strongest inclination for Christians to view the crucifixion as a propitiation—the English term referring to placating or appeasing an angry god. Hilasterion occurs in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5. It is translated as propitiation or atonement (in Romans), and mercy seat (in Hebrews).

The emphasis in "propitiation" is on God's need for appeasement, while the emphasis of both "atonement" and "mercy seat" is on the human need for purging (expiation) or mercy. In light of the specifically human origin of human sacrifice, my argument leans heavily toward the need for mercy, not appeasement.

My argument interprets the death of Jesus as being like a man throwing himself in front of a motorcycle to stop it from running over a child (instead of the man offering himself to be killed by the motorcycle driver to prevent the driver from being angry at the child). The difference between propitiation and an offering of mercy may be characterized as the difference between Jesus entering the human race to take punishment and Jesus entering the human race to first be contaminated by its disease and then to be able to offer a vaccine.

^[6] From the first minute of this talk by Colin Cook: http://www.faithquestradio.com/radio/E073_HIH_021113.mp3 (Rom. 3:21-25 "The Epicenter Of The Gospel").

Mr. Cook understands the pagan and therefore unholy history of propitiation. He devotes an entire talk to the subject, http://www.faithquestradio.com/radio/E069_HIH_020513.mp3 (Rom. 3:25 "Jesus Isn't Trying To Convince God"). He claims the 19th century promoted a "horrible, horrible caricature of God" wherein the Father was angry with the world and only the peaceful and charitable Jesus prevented judgment by presenting himself to receive the brunt of God's wrath.

Mr. Cook's resolution to the caricature is to say that Jesus is one with God so God is appeasing his own wrath, "taking all the full brunt and punishment and judgment of sin upon himself" (8:45). The Father is outraged, not at humans, but at sin and its damages. This anger cannot be concealed and so is directed to himself through the incarnation and the crucifixion. "The difference between a pagan propitiation and this propitiation is that we, in the pagan propitiation, try to appease god by animal or human sacrifices. We try to quieten god down. And the Christian propitiation is that God offers the sacrifice. He quietens himself down. He appeases his own wrath. That is the difference." (12:00)

From Mr. Cook's point of view, the God-sacrifices-only-God theory allows Mr. Cook to emphasize the devastatingly destructive acts of humans, while representing God as being passionately in love with mankind, ready to do anything need for redemption. And, I admit, this is as well said and as significant as any version of sacrificial theology I've encountered. From my point of view, this re-direction of wrath nevertheless provides a different caricature, that of an angry, frustrated teenager who, refusing to hurt others, cuts him- or herself. Violence must be expressed, but not against others.

Finally, Mr. Cook admits, "I do and I don't" follow this, "it being beyond our comprehension." While I disagree with the need of God to appease God's wrath, I appreciate the passion and honesty Mr. Cook exercises here and elsewhere.

^[7] For example:
John 3:14-15 - Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.
John 10:17 - The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.
Romans 5:6-8 - You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

No question about it: the death of Jesus changed everything, according to the gospel. The only question is whether that death was another instance—the backfiring instance—of humans finding and killing a victim, or whether it was a unique instance of God violating his character and insisting on retribution.

^[8] "Sacrificial theology," a phrase reminiscent of René Girard's Things Hidden from the Foundation, Book 2, where he explicates the four gospels according to a non-sacrificial theology. This is the book that showed me a way out of sacrificial thinking.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard, Translated by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer, Stanford Press, 1987.

Return to home page; return to top of page; return to top of this article.

"In The Flesh" Means What? (rev. 2008/11/27)

The phrase "in the flesh" is bound to be misunderstood if we expect language to say only one thing—that is, if we expect language to be univocal.

Unfortunately, the New Testament, depending on the translation, uses the phrase in three senses. Maybe not altogether unfortunately, but also provokingly. Life is like that: more than meets the eye and the I, it urges us beyond both the visible and the individual.

In the Flesh means Failure

We can start with the least attractive meaning. To be "in the flesh" is frequently contrasted to being in the spirit. The flesh isn't the body so much as it's the self that develops apart from the love of God. The flesh is selfish, obsessional, destroying either others or itself, either actively or passively. This is the self that we grow up considering the real "me," the person who is shaped by family, culture, and its own psychology; the person who is a mixture of evil and good, and whose good (and sometimes evil) is often an attempt to please or appease others. The person who is trying to be good, but in the process relies on the isolated self—this person is in the flesh... the harder she/he tries, the greater the frustration.

The worser half, as Hamlet might say, are those who are so comfortable in the flesh that they don't even realize their shortcomings. Among these are those who plotted for the death of Jesus... just as he mentioned to his disciples, these thought they were doing God a favor when their behavior sought to destroy a part of God.

A person can never get out of the flesh of his/her own accord. Like being caught in quicksand, being in the flesh is only worsened by attempting to not be in the flesh... the focus becomes increasingly misdirected. The spirit isn't even a consideration.

In the Flesh means Pleasure

By pleasure I mean the beauty of this life being experienced through the senses, the highest pleasure perhaps that being shared between two people on a physical plane. The capacity for pleasure, of course, entails the capacity for pain. That's all part of being sentient, of having complex nerves.

To live in the flesh in this sense is to live in a body, to be embodied—to have skin, hair, a heart, eyes, the works. And this allows you to know someone in the flesh, to become one with another person through the miracle of the sexual union. In the New Testament, nobody ever has casual sex. Every mating is a meeting of minds and spirits no matter how effaced or disparate they are. To be in the flesh is to know someone in the flesh, with an emphasis on "know" and "flesh," the invisible and the visible.

Flesh in this sense is good. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, whereas Buddha said only "seek first the kingdom of heaven," Jesus said "seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these things [clothing, food, shelter] will be added to you." Similarly, C S Lewis wrote, "God likes matter; he made it." The incarnation is the in-fleshness of the son of God. When Jesus spoke of flesh and blood, he noted that it was not equal to the life of the spirit, and at the same time, when he touched flesh and blood, he always healed it.

In the Flesh means the Highest Life

The most wonderful aspect of being "in the flesh" is the story of the incarnation (which is another word for in the flesh).

The spirit from whom all material and energy proceeds—all life, all rocks, all frogs, all photons, all things great and small—this spirit becomes flesh and lives in this world. Living under the same conditions of the creation, this part of the creator fully weds himself to humanity. This is a mystery.

The spirit (from whom both sexes come) takes the body of a man, but takes no wife, no woman. That would have to wait for a new relation altogether, a relation as surprising as the incarnation itself. In rising from the dead, having become a regular human, his resurrection raises humanity to a new height. He is a groom, pursuing not a woman but a race, entering into that world to know that world and lead it to a new home. Humanity is a bride. The romance is on for eternity.

Return to home page; return to top of page.

The Gospel and Feminism (rev. 2008/11/30)

For those who have studied both feminism and the gospels, the role of the gospels is recognizably complex.

On the congenial side:

The protagonist of the gospels treated women far better than did his culture as a whole.
On many occasions, the women treated the protagonist far better than most of the men, and this beneficence shown most clearly at the most desperate hour of the crucifixion.
The portrayals of both the mother, Mary, and the friend, Mary Magdalene, illustrate a depth of appreciation for women and womanhood that cannot be ignored.

On the disconnected side:

The language of the gospels and the New Testament is at times sexist (patriarchal), referring to sons even when women are among those being described.
The language of feminism at times (but not always) assumes that difference = inequality, with the corollary that inequality necessarily invokes a relationship of dominance (master-slave, oppressor-oppressed). In places the New Testament recognizes the dangers of difference creating hierarchy, stating that in Christ there is neither male nor female. But in other places, it accepts difference as natural and acceptable, even in its hierarchical form (husbands submit to Christ, wives to husbands).

The alliances and differences between the gospels and various feminist theories are incredibly consequential.

The disconnect between traditional Christianity and feminism is so deep and wide that it is hard for me to imagine anything short of the end of the world and the coming of a new world to bring about a shared vision. Those Christians who unquestioningly adhere to patriarchal values at any cost are not following their Master who clearly broke with such values whenever they conflicted with the rule of love. Those feminists^[1] who categorically pit their beliefs against the gospels are engaging in an argument with straw men and are exempting one piece of human history and culture (the life of Jesus and his followers) from the proposed narrative that celebrates diversity, that invokes love and not power, freedom and not exclusion.

There is nothing simple about the relation between Christianity and Feminism, both terms representing a vast array of beliefs and practices, both groups being divided among themselves as well as often being divided from each other, no matter the shared values at the heart of the best expressions of each.

____Footnotes____

^[1] Mary Daly exemplifies the reductive reading of the gospels that replicates, instead of corrects, the chauvinism she rejects. She remarks that no essential differences exist between God the Father and the godfather. The phonetic resemblances are convenient (and witty), and no doubt the historical resemblances between appropriations of the gospel and the gospel of appropriating power are worth noting. But no close study of the gospels would support the likeness her phrase implies.

Return to home page; return to top of page.

Our Mother-Father in Heaven (rev. 2008/12/01)

With the medieval Thomas Aquinas, I assume the ground of all existence can be spoken of by analogy only.^[1]

Even my phrase "ground of all existence" is probably an analogy drawn from logic or philosophy instead of from religion (which has its own term, "God"). Over "ground of all existence" and "God," I prefer like "Creator" because it escapes both the abstractness of "ground" and the glib usage which "God" often undergoes. "Creator" also encourages the discussion to glance at the magnificent realm of nature, which is a good start. But all terms are drawn from the human experiences of finite entities whether they be fathers, mothers, artists, or energetic forces. It's all analogy. That's not good or bad. That's that.

If each analogical name for God brings out a particular likeness between God and the visible world, then both God the Father and God the Mother should express something unique. And, more significantly, if we do speak and think about the most important aspects of life through analogy, then we should feel free to experiment with language and bend our habits of thinking.

God as a mother conveys a sense of warmth and safety that arises out of an eternal womb that protects its offspring long before they realize a need for protection. Near that womb, accordingly, is that heart—that source of concern—that beats before the birth of the world, during, and long after.

It is in the best interests of Jesus' believers to listen to alternate names and descriptions of the one Jesus called his Father. Jesus died in part for calling this being his Father. He obviously wasn't upholding any sacred beliefs at the time. His murderers were the ones with the sacred beliefs. He instead had a relationship and an unpopular way of expressing that relationship. Translated into current practice, I will listen to those who want to talk about mother god, or Mother God, or even the supreme godmother (which does sound better than the supreme godfather). I can learn from these analogies, even if, like the word "God," these expressions do not enter much into my vocabulary.

There is one threshold, however, where gender is not entirely arbitrary. When the Creator placed itself into the creation—into finitude, time, and humanity—the Creator necessarily committed itself to some biological and, inevitably, some cultural lines of sexuality. In overshadowing Mary with its procreative power, the spirit of the Creator cast itself necessarily into the role of father. And in allowing this "holy thing," this child to become representative of humanity with eternal consequences, the role of father in one aspect goes beyond analogy. It can go beyond analogy is because it is one role that involves the divine in human affairs—instead of the usual involvement of the human mind in divine attributes.

Sometimes I wonder about the outcome of the incarnation had there been two X chromosomes, giving birth to a woman. This is where the "cultural lines of sexuality" referred to above has bearing. Anyone who reads the gospels should see that a male messiah was ultimately intolerable to the system; a female messiah would have been immediately intolerable and may have been silenced before even speaking. This may not be the only reason for the son, but it is certainly a practical one. Those who follow messianic prophesies from the Old-First Testament probably have independent arguments for the sonship.

____Footnotes____

^[1]"Therefore it must be said that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, i.e. according to proportion." Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 13 (The Names of God). Index of online source.

Return to home page; return to top of page.