In the first chapter, Macchia stated his Christological method. In brief, he understands Christology from the vantage point of Pentecost. Pentecost, not the cross, is the moment when the Spirit Baptizer fulfilled his ultimate purpose. Pentecost is the moment of “culmination and clarity” (64). Although this is a Christology from below, Macchia does not dodge the ontological questions that high Christology seeks to answer. He addresses the metaphysical, along with other challenges, in chapter two.

Part I. The Task of Christology
Chapter 2. Challenges to Christology

Summary

In this chapter, Macchia explains how his Christological method illuminates classical understandings of the incarnation.

The Metaphysical Challenge

How can an utterly transcendent God unite with the limitations of creaturely existence? This is the metaphysical challenge of Christology. This challenge assumes a negative view of transcendence—asking what a transcendent being could not do. Scripture presents a transcendent God in positive terms (see Philippians 2:5–11 for example). In the words of Bonhoeffer, “God is not free of man but for man” (In Macchia 66). The Lordship of Jesus is revealed on the road from the cross to Pentecost.

The love emptied out in the journey to the cross, poured out like a sacred offering through the spilled blood and broken body of Jesus, overflows the barriers of sin and death at the cross (abolishing them) in order to be poured forth through the risen Christ onto all flesh (69).

This understanding of transcendence is difficult to reconcile with traditional doctrines of immutability and impassibility (which have their roots deep in Greek thought). It is easier to emphasize the radical otherness of God. “God is infinite while creation is finite; God is immortal while creation is mortal; . . . God is incorporeal while creation is material,” and on it goes (70–71). That said, any religious view of existence must connect God with creation. There are two ways to do this:

1. The mediator is internal to the life of God. (i.e. Jesus and the Father share the same essence.)
2. The mediator is external to the life of God. (i.e. Jesus and the Father have two different essences.)

While these two options look simple enough, ancient thinkers often confused the two. Here are some of the metaphysical challenges of dealing with these two options:

1. The source of anything is typically considered superior (and even separate) from what comes from it. Does this mean Jesus is inferior to the Father?
2. The relational distinction between Father and Son led some to deny their common essence. Did the divine essence divide split in the incarnation?
3. If crucifixion is the goal of the incarnation, how do we understand the full deity of Christ?

Perhaps there is a paradox at play here: it is simply impossible to affirm divine transcendence and creaturely existence at the same time. While the concept of paradox is helpful, it is not just a problem with the incarnation. This paradox is found “everywhere God’s gracious presence is given to creation” (76).

Radical kenotic theory—the idea that Jesus emptied himself of divine attributes—creates as many problems as it solves by separating Jesus’ natures. Macchia presents two constructive ways to conceive of the transcendent divine nature uniting with created human nature:

1. “If the eternal Son was transcendent . . . While at the same time working fully in and through the limitations of human flesh as the incarnate Christ . . ., there is no need to speak of the Son’s relinquishing certain divine attributes in becoming incarnate” (77). The metaphor that comes to my mind (not Macchia’s) here is bandwidth. The data (divine nature) was infinite but the device (human nature) had limited bandwidth.
2. Thomas Morris suggests the analogy of human consciousness. The human unconscious is far more expansive than our conscious thoughts. In the same way, Jesus’ divine nature was analogous to his subconscious dimensions.

Many ancient thinkers wrestled with this problem. Non-Christian philosophers like Plato and Philo were ambivalent in their understanding of mediation between God and creation. Early church Fathers like Justin Martyr and Origen came up short of the orthodoxy that would be arrived at during future ecumenical councils.

This brings us back to paradox. While paradox is a helpful way of understanding the incarnation from a human perspective, we must add that there is no contradiction or paradox in God.

God shows that divine love is capable of identification with those alien others so as to redeem them. God is one with Godself by loving with such freedom. Such is the God of the incarnation, the cross, and Pentecost (84).

A Christology from below, rooted in Pentecost, gives us resources for understanding the transcendence/creature paradox. The metaphysical arguments leave the seeker with an “abstract and impersonal” (84) God. Macchia’s view enables us to view transcendence positively. God’s limitlessness allows him to participate in our nature in order to redeem it. Or, back to Bonhoeffer, “God is not free of man but for man” (85).

This divine love not only overcomes the barriers of sin and death but also the limits of creation and history (87).

The Scriptural Challenge

The unity of the transcendent and creaturely in Christ is not only a metaphysical problem, it is also a Scriptural challenge. This tension is found throughout the New Testament as “there are texts that identify Christ with the true God and texts that distinguish Christ from God and in ways that imply a dependence on God” (88). Macchia clarifies this tension at four different points:

1. “[T]he Son’s appointment by the Father to sonship . . . Does not cancel out an eternal unity of essence between the Father and the Son” (89). Rather, Jesus’ appointment as Son is making real in the flesh what is already a reality in eternity.
2. “Christ’s references to God alone as the source of life, glory, or moral goodness are not intended to refer to Christ’s essential inferiority to the Father” (90). That the incarnate Son draws these things from the Father is the proper way to understand his unity of essence.
3. “Christ’s finite limitations do not preclude his essential unity with the Father” (92). Though the incarnate Son was clearly limited in knowledge, for example, this only demonstrates the depths of his condescension.
4. “[T]he dependence of the Son on the Father and the Spirit as revealed in his embodied life must be balanced by a recognition of an analogous “dependence” of the Father and the Spirit on him as the incarnate mediator of divine life to others” (93). The Father and Spirit actually depend on the Son for what they reveal to humanity.

Historical study also contributes to the scriptural tension. For example, the title “Christ,” is now recognized as not an indication of divinity. Still, the New Testament authors granted a wider range of meaning to Old Testament texts that spoke of the Messiah. The reason for this is because they had experienced the universal promise of the Spirit and recognized its implications.

[T]itles such as “Son of God” or “Word of God,” whose meanings were ambiguous in ancient Jewish and Greek settings, are taken up and clarified in the life of Jesus as the Spirit Baptizer in a way that causes them to imply his unity with God (97).

It is impossible for a being to become “one with God” (98). If God is eternal, then that unity also had to exist from all eternity. Such is the case with the Spirit Baptizer.

Functional or Ontological?

Many assume that the scriptural evidence leads to a functional rather than an ontological unity of God and Jesus. While there is no talk of “essence” in scripture, the evidence does suggest ontological unity precisely at Pentecost where Jesus gives of himself when he gives the Spirit. Who but God can give God? “Who else except the Lord can impart the Spirit” (119)? Since only God can save, and his salvation is more than a work, it is his very presence, it is clear that there is an ontological unity between God and Jesus.

The Anthropological Challenge

The focus on metaphysics has shifted to anthropology in the modern era. Ludwig Feuerbach has created a theology in which God was merely self-projection. He eliminated God by misunderstanding the story of Christ to be the story of God emptying himself and becoming merely human. “Christians can come to view the birth of Christ as the laying aside of deity for the sake of elevating humanity” (104). Pentecost shows the opposite. Rather than humans projecting themselves as God, the incarnation in light of Pentecost means “God has actually imaged Godself in human form” (105). This reveals Feuerbach’s view to be idolatry.

Rudolph Bultmann’s existentialist hermeneutic was an attempt to move beyond Feuerbach’s self-projection theology. Research into Jesus should “involve existential openness to the faith that he offers us as the Word of the Father” (107). While this is a helpful point, Bultmann ends up collapsing the risen Christ into the proclaimed word of God.

Dorothée Soelle expanded Bultmann’s existentialist position into the political realm, finding in Jesus a figure of social liberation. Still, the value of social liberation cannot be reduced from Jesus’ unity with God. “It is Jesus’s unity with the inauguration and fulfillment of God’s reign for the sake of ultimate mercy, justice, and liberation that proves his unity with God and humanity (110).

Christology must first be interpreted according to the gospel of the self-giving God and according to the correspondingly liberated human person. The Christ who became flesh in order to pour forth the Spirit of life upon all flesh implies an understanding of humanity that lives from the Word of the Father’s love and the liberation of the Spirit’s witness, rather than from its own resources apart from God (111).

The Pluralist Challenge

A Christology which understands Jesus as God can be difficult to receive today since we are more aware than ever of the global diversity of cultures and faiths. It is important to note that in his incarnation-as-it-leads-to-Pentecost, the exclusive nature of Christ is actually very inclusive.

Starting with the incarnation, we are told that in Christ “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Then, at Pentecost, the one in whom all things find their being pours himself out on all flesh. The Son has “opened his life to an expansive diversity of voices so as to grant them a share in his anointing, his baptism in the Spirit” (116).

The uniqueness of Christ should not lead us to triumphalism (i.e. our culture and religion is better than yours), but to “an open table, a crossing of social barriers, and a challenging message of grace” (117).

Reflection

Macchia’s thoughts on kenosis really got me thinking. The idea that Jesus set aside or emptied himself of his divine prerogatives—leaving them in the safe-keeping of the Father and the Spirit—has always made sense to me. I’m now starting to rethink this.

I think Macchia’s dismissal of kenotic theory as something that divides the natures of Christ is too simplistic a criticism. However, his idea of the transcendent working in and through the limits of human flesh (what I call the bandwidth perspective) makes a lot of sense. Morris’ metaphor of the human unconscious is also compelling. Perhaps these two similar metaphors could work alongside the idea of kenosis. After all, no one perspective will ever limn an infinite God. (Neither will two or three, but it might help!)

Macchia also struck a wise balance in his discussion of the pluralist challenge. The election of one for the sake of many seems to be God’s modus operandi—just ask Noah or Abram or Israel or . . . well, you get the point. Macchia affirmed classic exclusivism without being exclusionary!

Most Inspiring Quote

Christ’s baptism of all flesh in the Spirit will not be marked distinctively by judgment, as John implied, for the Messiah will himself bear and overcome the fire of alienation and death so that we can be sanctified by it (95).

← Chapter 1: Christological Method
Chapter 3: Christ’s Incarnation →