photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash
One of my recent struggles with scripture has been the question of what to do with the instances where Jesus seems to teach or communicate punishment, condemnation, exclusion, or other concepts that grate against a worldview built on transformation, restoration, and inclusion.
It feels like my options here are:
the scriptures aren’t a reliable record of Jesus’ teachings. Something got mistranslated, mistransmitted, misedited, etc.
he said those things but meant something different
he was wrong about those things. His theology was, perhaps, underdeveloped
I have always been a high christology boi—believing that Jesus was and is God incarnate and therefore (so I thought, at least) the theological ideas he espoused came from the mouth of God godself.
But how could God incarnate have wrong, or even underdeveloped, theology?
On the other hand, how can a human being living in a human society not have at least some wrong or underdeveloped ideas about God, humanity, society, etc.? So, was not even Jesus limited in knowledge in some respects? How can one be human without having limitations, including in knowledge and ethics?
I don’t think anyone would argue that one-month old Jesus, for example, was divinely self-conscious and functionally all-knowing. Right? Luke wouldn’t either— “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (2:52).
So either we believe that Jesus “developed” in those respects, in some way, or we don’t really see him as even remotely realistically human.
When I consider this, I’m led to conclude that I implicitly believed that Jesus developed typically up unto a certain point (say, age 12 with the temple story, or perhaps age 30 at the beginning of his ministry), but then reached a “plateau” or some minimum competency level for divinity, and from then on all of his words and actions reflected a fully realized divine knowledge and wisdom. But that’s not really how being human works, is it? In general, we continue learning and developing and changing throughout our entire lives.
It’s really hard for me to conceive of Jesus as God incarnate and yet not invariably and perfectly wise and loving in what he says in scripture. But, with the above in mind, it’s almost equally hard to conceive of him as human and not developing in wisdom, compassion, love, etc. throughout his earthly life.
Well, I asked google and it led me to the “Incarnation” article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which told me about something called the kenotic approach (from the Greek keneo, “to empty”).
Paul, quoting an early church “Christ hymn,” says about Jesus that “though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited (NRSV) / used to his own advantage (NIV) / cling to (NLT), but instead emptied himself (most translations) / gave up his divine privileges (NLT)” in order to take on human likeness (Phil 2:6-7, paraphrase).
In light of this, in the kenotic approach,
…It is reasonable to suppose that God the Son Incarnate relinquished properties such as omnipotence and omniscience…
[But] if properties like omnipotence and omniscience are not essential divine properties, one might well ask: in what sense are power and knowledge essential to divinity? The kenotic response is that, it is not omnipotence but omnipotence unless freely given up [for the sake of reconciliation], not omniscience but omniscience unless freely given up [for the sake of reconciliation], that are essential properties of divinity. On the kenotic view, God the Son gives up the “omni properties” in order to become incarnate, while retaining the “unless properties…”
However, kenosis and incarnation are not co-extensive for, while God the Son’s kenosis ends at his glorification, his incarnation does not. C. Stephan Evans suggests that “Christ’s Incarnation in an ordinary body may have required a kenosis, but the kind of body he possesses in his glorified state may be compatible with the reassumption of all of the traditional theistic properties.”
And I’m cool with that! When I think of present-day Jesus still being incarnate, I think of him as God with a body and with the experience of being human. I don’t need Jesus to still be limited in any way in order to believe that he’s still “human.” He’s a God who fully gets me and has taken the experience of humanity into his own being. He is united with us and fully understands us.
Maybe this means that present-moment Jesus would disagree with some of the things that earthly life Jesus said or did, or would say or do them differently today. In becoming human, earthly Jesus had emptied himself of the perfect divine wisdom that he would later reassume, and therefore had to learn and develop in his ethics over the course of his earthly life. Along the way, he was of course affected by, and in some cases could not help but internalize, what many people around him believed, at least until he received some impetus to construct different theologies. Which, again, would be true of any human being.
I don’t think that divine wisdom was being fully expressed in moments where Jesus said or did things that were punitive, judgmental, or exclusionary. And that’s okay. When I praise Jesus, I praise a living God as he/they are now.
To worship Jesus or believe in the incarnation is not so much to rubber stamp everything Jesus said in the gospels so much as it is to see the gospels as one of many ways to come to know the Jesus that is alive today—ways which also include living anarchically, given that God is love and anarchy is the the art of relating freely and lovingly as equals (to borrow a definition from Vishwam Heckert).
These are the kinds of reflections that I love to work through. When I was becoming an anarchist, my reaction was, “Well, I now believe X, Y, and Z—does that mean I can’t be a Christian anymore?” And my gut answer was no, but the task was to work that out theologically. And it’s the same here—working out a theology that coheres with my ever-deepening belief that punishment, judgment, and rejection are not the best way to engage with people, relationships, or groups.
*red is a traditional color of socialism and communism, but I, like some anarchists, see anarchism as a kind of socialism (in the sense of a society designed for human flourishing as opposed to profit or rulership) and as requiring communism (in the sense of the people controlling the means of production & distribution—that is, everything we need to live). :)
Terry, glad to see you’re back with a new post. I enjoyed some of your other post. You have a unique perspective as far as I’m concerned.
I have to ask, since you suggest post-resurrection Jesus and pre-crucifixion Jesus may have different theological views: if Jesus returns and the red letters DO rock with him, what then?
Hope this question makes since. Thanks for posting.