Christ as the Son of God (and just that)

For Christianity to survive into the next century, a new reformation may be needed, to repair fundamental flaws in christian theology. We outline here some possible steps. The first is to solve the trinity riddle. Maybe it is time to consider Christ as the one and only Son of God.***

BY GEORGE BORTEN

We try here to present a proposal for what Christianity should become in our days. As pointed in my previous papers, one of the biggest challenges is dropping the Trinitarian dogma, which just very few denominations have dared to do.

However, the real difficulties appear when we ponder about the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ. Without the Trinity dogma, the Sacrifice of Christ is hard to be understood. Without the “Adam and Eve” story, most likely a fable, the redemption is meaningless. Just dying at the cross is not enough to create a religion. The romans crucified tens of thousands, and just one became a hot topic. Christianity turned this crucifixion into a cosmic drama, a turning point for humanity in its relation to the God. Either that, or there is no Christianity.

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However, did the world change dramatically after that? It remained as cruel, violent and sinful as before. So what was the point? Christian theologians insist that the effect would be felt after death, meaning the doors of heaven, which were closed after Adam’s fall, were now open. If you had been righteous, now your soul could go to heaven after death. This was a good point, but was there a difference for those that led ordinary lives, even somewhat sinful, but had never heard of the bible? None whatsoever, it seems.

It looks like the promise that your soul is (maybe) going to heaven cannot be topped by anything, but it can. Beyond that there is a promise of resurrection when, after the end of days, after the Last Judgment, you would get your body back, in a glorious form, and live in a New Earth, where all evil would be gone, and everything would be so nice, the established Kingdom of God.

All this only available for the good people, the chosen ones, and of course it doesn’t mean you, who most likely would be frying in the deepest of Hell. Now, if your soul was in Heaven, what would you gain by having your body back, even in glorious form? So again, we come back to square one. From what did Christ’s death redeem us? It seems that it should only have added to humankind’s guilt.

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If you kill God’s son, you could expect fire and brimstone to rain down immediately on you. Remember that Adam got into serious trouble just by eating the forbidden fruit.

The End of Times may have been supposed to happen by provoking God’s action. Christ’s death would signal to God that humankind was not going to leave their sinful ways. Which may be exactly what the closest supporters of Christ may have intended, especially Judas. This is, of course, in line with the belief that the preaching of Christ was essentially apocalyptical.

The redemption then might have meant an action to deliver us from this evil world by rushing the onset of the New Era, the Kingdom of God. In this interpretation, Christ’s death at the cross and his resurrection could be the signal for the coming of the Kingdom of God, which was the real important message from Christ.

However, problems just do accumulate. If the intention was to promote the Kingdom of Heaven, well, after 2000 years it has not happened. Why did not Christ give his message and just left for Heaven without this agonizing crucifixion, since Christians insist that he had the power to escape, but chose not to do so. Moreover, why was his death necessary? Note that he resurrected three days later (in reality probably less than 36 hrs).

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It is difficult to talk about that “Death of Christ”, since he became alive again so quickly and remains very much so. Maybe the word “death” is not applicable in this context. People whose death we honor normally stay dead. Death for us is the end of life of a living being. In that, sense if you resurrect your death is cancelled. More correctly, one should speak of a “close to death situation” or “near death”. Maybe we could say, “close encounter with death, of the third kind” the one that can only be reverted by God.

When we talk about someone who gave his life for his country, we mean he surrendered his right to exist, to follow and influence circumstances. The real sacrifice is to be cut from the world you know. When we say Christ “died for our sins”, what was the sacrifice, since He knew He would resurrect. The suffering on the cross is a reality, but “his death” is not related to a definite separation from the things he cherished. In truth, He did not give away anything on the cross, so what was the “loss” given as sacrifice?

Now, to die is not a show of power. However, for the Christians “Christ died for our sins”. Resurrection, on the contrary, is a show of power. Then how did his death liberate us, considering death is just a common occurrence, while his resurrection is such a glorious event, the one that is said to have saved us?

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We should then say, “He redeemed us through his resurrection”, but that sounds odd. His death and subsequent resurrection did however establish his “God status” and launched Christianity. In that respect, to set up his divine credentials, he “had to die, and then undie”.

In a certain way, Christ died not “for our sins” but “because of our sins”, since humankind, due to its sinful condition, could only recognize God’s agent through his pain and agony, as they were blind otherwise to whom was in front of them.

It is somewhat odd to demonstrate that you are god by letting yourself into a horrific death. Destroying cities like Sodom and Gomorrah, or sending a flood would appear more to the point. Unless you want, to confirm to your particular audience that already believes (or suspects) that you are god or god’s representative and, in that case, your resurrection proves it. However, just to a small audience, your followers. In that sense you are not addressing the crowds, this all happens in a restricted social space, the very small early christian community.

Was there an insider way to understand Christ, only for the closest disciples, and a more general approach directed towards the wider audience? If that is so, we will have to deal

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with the conflict between “insider” and “outsider” texts in the Gospels that eventually got mixed together.

Christ and his disciples needed “Death and Resurrection”, as a way to transform his teachings into a full-fledged religion. Also to create empathy and move people towards the gentle, human-like, suffering God. That of course could not be the openly expressed view, which would seem too self-serving. Hence the need for the public explanation of “Redemption”.

What was exactly the mission of Christ? To redeem humanity of sin? This does not seem to have been very effective. It is at least debatable. Now, to create a new religious movement, it was and is most effective. Therefore, if we think about the results to try to understand what the mission was, the most obvious answer is “to launch a new religious movement”. So, again, we are faced with a high degree of ambiguity.

In a surprising twist, Christ, for all purposes, becomes the central character, replacing Jehovah. The resurrection becomes the crowning event and Jehovah looks in the New Testament like a deposed or retired king, while all the main action centers on Christ.

It is for Christ that people die, it is for Him they risk their lives, it is to Him they pray. The death and resurrection represents also a ceremony of transfer of power, since from that day on, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, effectively takes command,

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even if God the Father is still nominally at the top of the hierarchy.

We could say that Christ, the suffering/ love-thy-neighbor/ man-god, replaced Jehovah, the warrior/lawgiver/stern judge god. This started the transposition of the core religious values and history of Judaism, as an ethnically based religion, to a universal Roman-Greek inspired worldwide religion.

You can see here the roots of the Trinity doctrine as Christ, the Son, is made the second person of the trinity while the Father, the first person is unequivocally similar to Jehovah of the Old Testament. The Holy Ghost, the third person, is most likely a personification of God’s attributes, like the Wisdom of God, the Spirit of God (its holy breath, its action upon things).

By proclaiming the Trinitarians persons as co-equal, the succession is hidden. The transformation of a dissident Judaic movement into full-fledged Christianity required a new concept of god, but that, in itself, led to a “change of gods”.

However, to its wider audience, Christianity could not admit this change. For the hallmark of Christianity was to present itself as the “fulfillment” of Judaism, and not the birth of a new religion.

God the Father remains, but in the background. Confirming that, we are told that Christ will come again in the final days to be the Judge of all mankind. It is as if God the father, the 7

creator, has delegated the power of running his creation to his beloved son, the first born of all creation, Jesus Christ.

Within the proposal we are setting up here, we suggest that the Adam and Eve story be considered a metaphor, the concept of Original Sin be rejected, and the Trinity doctrine be dismissed as speculative. Christ is to be revered as the reigning, de facto God. His death and resurrection is to be seen as a demonstration of who He was, fulfilling the prophecies and showing his empathy with all mankind.

If you are God, you don’t need a human body after your life on earth. In that sense, his body was no longer necessary. Come to think about it, it would absolutely be cumbersome, and therefore may afterwards have been left behind, to be buried, while He ascended to Heaven.

At that time, it would be important to state that the body went up too, because the concept of Soul, as we understand it today, was not a common knowledge. The “soul” for the Middle Eastern cultures at the time of Christ was not a separate concept from the body and a person was thought to be essentially dependent of their bodies. Our understanding of “soul” was originally developed by the greeks and later adopted by the Christians.

As for today, we are familiar with the concept of an immaterial, ghost-like, interactive and all-performing soul; we don’t need

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this awkward bodily ascension to heaven. This is an important point because if someone pretends to have found the bones of Christ, Christianity will then be able to just shrug it off.

We reject the “fully man-fully god, at the same time” dogma about Christ. We understand that He began to exist before the beginning of time as the first created being, the Son of God. He surrendered his godly powers to incarnate, began to live as a man, with very little memory of his former being, but of course kept some of his powers. After the Ascension, he returned to his full powers and froze the development of his former human character. And now the time sequence reads as “god-human-god again”.

After his resurrection, why did He not simply stay on earth and just fix things up, staying with us up till now? There would not have been theological controversies, dissident’s churches or religious wars. For him who had become so physically involved with humanity that seems quite a detached attitude. That is why the “god-human-god again” comes in handy. He had to resume his godly powers and that meant leaving aside his all-too-human persona, except by the brief visits to chosen ones, in their dreams and trances.

In the “fully man-fully god, at the same time” concept it becomes very hard to explain why his human interface did not stay with us. He may not be dead, but to all effects, He has

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“disappeared” from earthly life, ceased to be a personal actor in it. However, is it not what death means?

One usual way to explain Christ absence is that He had to stay in Heaven to prepare his return. If the Universe was created in six days, do you really need 2000 years to prepare a return?

Early christians insisted that Jesus had no human father, because they tried to emphasize His godlike origin. But they should have known the old Rabbinical saying:”There are three partners in conception, Man, Woman and God”. They had no detailed knowledge of human conception, and the “virgin conception” was the best they could think of. Probably influenced by the greek stories of virgins giving birth to gods.

There are other points, too. Jesus Christ, the man, could have been, at least, a partial biological offspring of Joseph and Mary, since he had to have genetic material from both a man and a woman, to be operationally human, with possibly some added special components from his godlike origin. In this manner, we attribute a mixed “three way origin” to Him.

This could sound “adoptionist” but it is more a “fusion” of a pre-existent divine person with a pre-ordained, specially created human person. It is of note that he lived thirty-three years as a human, like an average Jew of his time. Christ’s 10

followers and relatives did not notice, during his early life, anything unusual in his looks and behavior.

We must conclude that he functioned normally in his life acts and conditions, so we presume a normal genetic load. He was a newborn, a small child then a teenager and after that became an adult, having gone through all the development phases. It is of course possible that if he had stayed longer on earth, for a few years more, he would have shown the effects of ageing. What if he had chosen to stay on earth for three hundred years? What kind of movement would have developed? Certainly not Christianity as we know it.

He was for so many years involved with people in a direct way, in a thirty years, “24/7” full contact mode. So why, after ascension to Heaven, just some rare ghost like appearances to a chosen few (which are hard to distinguish from visions or dreams) are considered adequate enough? That is much less than could be expected of a Divine Person who, as a human, chased the moneylenders from the temple, and was so physically involved with earthly affairs. Much lesser persons, have appeared in likewise manner after death. In fact, the Virgin Mary has much more reports of appearances than Christ himself, from whom guidance was so needed.

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What that tells us is that Christ has been upgraded to a whole new role, which does not require his continuous bodily presence, and direct action among humans. He is now in full contact with God and has no more his limitations as an earth dweller.

Is him a fully human and fully god after ascension to heaven? We could hardly say that in Heaven he is fully human. That would not even make sense. So he returns to his previous, pre-birth condition as Son of God. And although with a history of dwelling in a human body, he takes his place as Son of God, under God the Father. His position is so close to God that humankind is allowed to call him God too. The heir apparent of ancient middle eastern kingdoms, received all honours as the King proper, including the authority to speak in name of the King. For no other reason is Christ addressed as “My Lord and my God”.

This updating of Christianity would make it far more resilient to attacks than it is now. It would make easier to incorporate the new archaeological findings that will surely come. It would even make possible to accommodate the idea that he had a wife. Even if not supporting that idea here and now, we could handle it, following the principles we exposed here. By adopting these changes, Christianity could face thousand years more with no serious challenge. The awkwardness will

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have been removed, making room for a neat, simpler, tightly knit religion.

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