The Humanity of Jesus

January 4, 1959
Akron

Jesus the man stirs greater hope than Christ the God. The human Jesus is a greater challenge to enduring religion than the supernatural savior. Because most Christians belong to ecclesiastical organizations which insist that Christ was God in a special way, the Universalist affirmation of the humanity of Jesus is scandalous heresy to the orthodox. We are charged with a negative position, -- disbelieving the deity of Christ. My claim is, that rather than being negative, the liberal position is hopefully positive. The humanity of Jesus is an assertion that the human race was capable of producing Jesus.

In the first place, the belief that Jesus is God has far greater complexity and a much longer history of disagreement than is ever conceded by those who insist upon his unique deity.

The evidence for this claim that Christ is God is usually supported by the testimony that this was disclosed by revelation. However, an impartial review of the historical realities supplies evidence for the reasonable declaration that Jesus was promoted to the god-head by way of a process of theological accommodation. The growth of the idea of deity along history's highway would be marked with such distinctive positions as (1), the Jewish hope of a Messiah, (2), the life of Jesus in that setting, (3) the growth of the gospels, (4), Paul, (5) the church of the catacombs, (6), the divine emperors, and (7), the bitter struggles against "heresy."

(1) Jesus was born in an age of Messianic hope. The Messiah would appear and overthrow the foreign conquerors. That was the great hope. Then there would be freedom for the Jews, food for their families, and triumphant fulfillment for the dream of the chosen people of the Covenant. There is no indication that the Jews expected the Messiah to be God himself.

It is probable that the Messianic period covered about three hundred years, from 200 bc to about 132 a.d. During that period the successful revolt of the Maccabees occurred. The times of trouble and tension saw the development of the apocalyptic literature, which, in the language of vivid dreams, purported to have been written by past heroes, such as Daniel, and containing a revelation of things to come. Then the Jews were crushed by Herod. In 70 a.d. came the final destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Jews from their homeland.

Within a lesser segment of those centuries, at least fifty men claimed to be the Messiah and acquired followers and disciples. How natural then that the followers of Jesus believed him to be the expected deliverer.

(2) The one point of agreement among all Bible scholars is the difficulty, even the impossibility, of any assurance about the actual historical events in the life of Jesus. All estimates of the real happenings in his life, as well as any assurance that he actually did say this or that, depend on the commentator's selection and judgment. Every student, whether a professor in a theological seminary, or a naive Bible worshipper, creates his own image of Jesus.

Nevertheless, we know that Jesus lived in this age of Messianic expectation. Any leader of people, -- and surely he was a leader of dynamic, moral power, would be the object of eager speculation, "Can he be the Messiah?"

Jesus seems to have first appeared as a teacher and healer. The story of the temptation would indicate that he rejected the possibility of acquiring political and religious power through any assertion of Messianic claims.

But one also feels that as his brief answer moved from one fateful event to another, that Jesus acquired a strong messianic consciousness. A Jewish scholar (S. Sandmel) notes that Jesus seemed to possess an affinity for rabbinical attitudes and used similar teaching methods. Unquestionably others saw him as a political rebel. Others believed him to be in the line of the ethical prophets, perhaps the greatest in notable company.

(3) But there is no clear evidence that any of the disciples believed Jesus to be God. It is well-known that the Gospels did not appear essentially in their present form until long after Jesus lived. The early Church produced the conversations, put together the isolated biographical traditions about Jesus and attempted to reconcile later problems in the literary setting of earlier times. There were inspiring memories and startling reminiscences about Jesus. Theology and dogma were products of this interplay between memory, and difficulties then current. The scholars have a well-known, almost universally accepted assumption, Christianity produced the New Testament, -- the New Testament did not produce Christianity, -- and the process did not end for centuries.

(4) Paul, whose writings are earlier than the Gospels, is the appropriate illustration of Josiah Royce's comment (THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY, Vol. I, pg. 25), "Historically speaking, Christianity has never appeared simply as the religion taught by the Master. It has always been an interpretation of the Master and his religion in light of some doctrine concerning his mission, and also, concerning God, man, and man's salvation, -- a doctrine, which, even in its simplest expression has always gone beyond what the master himself is traditionally reported to have taught while he lived."

The dream of Jesus' Messiahship must have been rudely crushed when he was ignominiously crucified. One can sense the readiness with which the early followers of Jesus would respond to the idea that he was coming again. But the years passed, there was no return, and Paul, the convert who never met Jesus in the flesh, became the great interpreter.

Paul, writing his letters thirty to forty-five years after Jesus died, frequently expressed his hope and expectation that Jesus would come again speedily. He also tries to find an explanation for the delay.

Even though Paul was the author of such important Christian references as "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself," there is just neither support for a belief that Paul believed Jesus to be God, nor warrant for claiming that Paul had any fully developed doctrine of the Trinity. Both of these developments in the History of Christian thought were to take form in later centuries.

Paul did believe Jesus to be divine. Perhaps to justify himself in the eyes of colleagues who remembered a human Jesus, Paul testifies to Jesus as a spiritual presence, at the right hand of God, -- but not identified completely with God, an identification present-day theologians insist is a necessary creedal requirement for admission to Christian councils.

(5) During the latter years of Paul's career, and in the decades following, the Christian churches faced continuing disappointment when Jesus still failed to re-appear. "Why dost thou tarry, Lord?" was the plaintive cry. In addition, the Roman persecutions threw additional burdens on the struggling religious communities. In the midst of these difficulties the Church had grown, and with the growth, contradictory interpretations of Jesus' life and mission threatened to disrupt small groups.

(6) The church in the catacombs experienced perhaps eighty years of unsettled theology in an atmosphere of constant physical danger. Although there are but remnants of manuscripts from this period, in this Christian underground theological thinking plainly became more complex. Affinity with Greek philosophy was sought and reconciliation attempted. Thus in the gospel of John, which presents Jesus as a spiritual Lord of Life, greatly differed from Paul's theology. Jesus is identified with the "Word", (Logos), Divine Wisdom, uncreated, eternally co-existent with God.

We will fall short of understanding the framework in which all this speculation seethed, unless recognition is granted to the practice of deifying the Roman Emperors. The idea that a man who was god would be neither strange nor unbelievable to a civilization which crowned each Roman emperor as God. The Caesars were man-gods, gods in human form. Miracles were credited to Vespasian. When Tiberius journeyed among the Germanic tribes, a barbarian peeked at the Caesar and his ornately-dressed aides, and shouted, "Today I have seen the gods."

(7) Centuries of dispute and speculation about Jesus marked the growth of the young Christian church. Volumes are required to begin to discuss the numerous opinions and theologies. The extremely minute discriminations in the speculations seem trivial to us, but were the cause of enormous division, uproar, and bitterness between the various centers of Christian thought, particularly Asia Minor and North Africa, with Rome acting somewhat in an umpire's role.

In 312 a.d., after Constantine believed that the Christian's God had granted him victory at the momentous battle, near Rome, of Mulvain Bridge, he became a nominal Christian. Constantine, like most Caesars, was determined to secure unity in the Empire. Any divisiveness, such as theological speculation among Christians, had to be stopped. Constantine called a council of the entire Church to settle the question of Jesus' relationship to God. This famous "Arian Controversy" was the subject at the Council of Nicea, 325 a.d., -- one of the pivotal dates in the history of the Christian Church. This too, is a long and intricate story of speculation, debate, political log-rolling, and hierarchical manoeuvers.

Arius, sometimes looked upon as the founder of Unitarian thought within Christianity, proposed that if Christ was God's son, he must be younger than the Father, therefore, dependent. A famous phrase of Arius has been the digest of one side of the controversy, "There was when the son did not exist."

Athanasius, one of Christian history's most notable figures, led the group that maintained that Christ was eternal, co-existent, that "Christ is Very God, of Very God."

Emperor Constantine, a good politician, but a theologian of doubtful proficiency, influenced the decision in favor of the Athanasians, "Christ was Very God of Very God." Arius was banished and his doctrine became official heresy.

These Christian centuries of controversies make church history one of the more fascinating scholarly pursuits, but man's knowledge has widened and deepened. In every-day life these ancient theological speculations are not the great movers of life and times. Of course not all the truths of human existence have been discovered. The mystery of cosmic creation should strike us with not less wonder than the wheeling stars caused the Zoroastrian astrologers to wonder and predict.

Nevertheless, there have been discoveries about man and his past of enormous significance. Our civilization has accepted, almost without exception the idea of evolution as proposed by Spencer and others, verified by Darwin's immense contribution to human knowledge, and refined by later biologists and other scientists. Julian Huxley states the case for evolution in a sentence, "(Man) is the highest form of life produced by the evolutionary process on this planet, the latest dominant type and the only organism capable of further major advance or progress."

Jesus was a man. Man was not miraculously and specially created, but human consciousness, human values, human spirituality emerged from other species of life. All persons were produced by one Creative Process, most of us call God. All persons are children of that One Creation. That one Creation and Process produced the human Jesus, too.

It is somewhat slanderous to argue, then, that Jesus was "only human."

The parent knows the glorious feeling of love, responsibility, and pride as he cradles the infant. Is the miracle of human life and love, the marvelous potential of every child, "only" human?

Every purposeful educator has known the thrill of seeing young and old persons transformed by the experience of knowledge and new skills. I covet for every teacher the joy of seeing a pupil's life transfigured as he is captured by a great truth set before him, as he is voluntarily enlisted in the cause of a noble ideal.

"Only" human? Is not the human cause motive for high allegiance and complete respect? The human family has consistently produced humans who capture our affection and awe. Joseph Wood Krutch, professor emeritus of literature at Columbia University, (MEASURE OF MAN, p. 238), has remarked, "(We tend to forget) that when we reject the theology associated with the canonization of Joan of Arc that behind the term 'Saint' lies the important fact that some human individuals really are capable of insights and deeds beyond the capacity of the usual human being, and that if we have no modern name for them, then we had still better call them saints than forget the reality behind the concept of sainthood."

Because Jesus was human, he calls for our allegiance to high religion. A god is no mark for our aim, for we humans have no supernatural magical powers. But the human Jesus calls for exertion of our human capacity to begin to achieve a more ethical, more useful, more wonder-full religion.

All men are worth saving and can be saved. Narrow nationalisms are outgrown in the light of a God who must be by nature, universal, loving, forgiving.

Salvation is achieved by redemption in this world. Jesus placed little emphasis on the world to come. Right human conduct is the test of religion. Laws are for human welfare. The "sabbath" was made for man, not man for the sabbath.

Jesus is a stirring example because he was human. He was human in his acceptance of persons, his friendships which paid no attention to class-lines or social barriers. He sought to understand and comfort people in their mistakes and vices. He was not condemnatory. All these qualities, as well as his high principles, we can seek to emulate because he was human.

Matthew Arnold said it so well,

"Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us try
If we then, too, can be such a man as he."