god in one person: the case for non-incarnational christianity

GOD IN ONE PERSON

God in One Person

The Case for Non-Incarnational Christianity

A. RICHARD KINGSTON Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy and Politics,

University of Ulster

Jo Campling Consultant Editor

M

© A. Richard Kingston 1993

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993

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First published 1993 by THE MACMllLAN PRESS LID Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 978-1-349-13100-6 ISBN 978-1-349-13098-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-13098-6

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Copy-edited and typeset by Grahame & Grahame Editorial, Brighton

Contents

Preface viii

PARTI-INTRODUCTORY 1

1 The Narrow Choice 3 1. Orthodox or unitarian 3 2. Mythological Christology as unitarian 4 3. Functional Christology as unitarian 6

2 The Agreed Background 12 1. Not that theism needs no defence 12 2. Theism and the intelligibility of the universe 14 3. Religious experience and other considerations 18 4. A cumulative case 21 5. The procedure in Parts II and III 23

PART 11 - THE PRIOR IMPROBABILITY OF AN INCARNATION 25

3 Does God Intervene in History? 27 1. The onus of proof or persuasion 27 2. Does religious experience require intervention? 28 3. Does discovering God's will require intervention? 30 4. Do miracles require intervention? 34

4 Why Would God Become Incarnate? 38 1. Deliverance from tyranny or natural disaster 38 2. Disclosure of divine will and nature 39 3. Effecting the spiritual salvation of mankind 43 4. Identification with suffering humanity 50

5 How Could God Become Incarnate? 53 1. Defining the issues involved 53 2. Could a person be fully human and fully divine? 54 3. The kenotic explanation 56 4. Simultaneously possessing two natures 60

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5. Thomas Morris on two natures compatibility 64 6. Could there be two or more persons in one God? 67

6 How Could God Incarnate be Recognized? 72 1. Only by the mightiest miracles 72 2. Verdict of Part II and preface to Part III 75

PART III - INCARNA TlON AS A NEEDLESS EXPLANA TlON OF THE CHRIST EVENT 83

7 Does the Miraculous Indicate Divinity? 85 1. Introduction and birth stories 85 2. Healings, exorcisms and raising the dead 89 3. The nature miracles 92 4. Epiphanies 95

8 Do the Resurrection Reports Accredit Divinity? 98 1. Their centrality and hence need for good credentials 98 2. The evidence of the empty tomb 101 3. What would resurrection appearances really prove? 105 4. Unacceptable justifications of resurrection belief 111

9 Do Other Factors Point to Divinity? 118 1. Authority and intimacy with God 118 2. The Messiah and other titles 124 3. Sinlessness and example 129

10 Does All His Teaching Befit Divinity? 135 1. Magnificent but sometimes mistaken 135 2. False eschatological expectations 138 3. Improper reliance on providence, rewards and

punishments 144 4. Significant gaps in his teaching 146 5. The cumulative verdict of Parts II and III 148

PART IV - THE PLACE OF JESUS IN NON-INCARNATIONAL FAITH 151

11 Seeking to Understand the Real Jesus 153 1. As charismatic prophet 153 2. As profound teacher 156 3. But not as sacrificial Saviour 160

Contents vii

12 Why then the Special Focus on Jesus? 167 1. Pluralism and particularity 167 2. Why Jesus? - Heritage 172 3. Why Jesus? - Excellence 175

13 An Attractive and Viable Faith 178 1. Freedom and rationality of belief 178 2. Realistic worship and social commitment 181

Notes 186

Index of Names 199

Index of Subjects 202

Preface

The phrase 'non-incarnational Christianity', even if a contradiction in terms to those judging by orthodox standards, accurately describes the faith being defended in this book, on the one hand, upholding the centrality of Christ as the one who has made God most real for us, whilst, on the other hand, denying his divinity. More accurately, we should speak of the centrality of Jesus, as Christ, or Jthe Christ', is really a messianic title, but in practice the term has become a synonym for Jesus, if not virtually a surname, and correspondingly, the terms Christian and Christianity are wide enough to embrace all accepting his leadership, and not just those acclaiming him as God incarnate. Inevitably a book affirming the unity as distinct from the triunity of God will be primarily concerned to establish the implausibility of the arguments and evidence for the belief that Jesus really was God incarnate, on which the doctrine of the Trinity rests, and to that extent will be largely negative, but that certainly does not mean that the shorter positive sections of the book are less important; on the contrary, a basic contention is that Jesus is still supremely significant for a modern non-incarnational theistic faith.

The book has a biographical dimension in that it reflects the writer's own spiritual pilgrimage. Several years ago, after an agonizing period of wrestling with the credibility of trinitarian theology, I felt compelled, as a matter of personal integrity, to resign from the ministry of the Methodist Church, as I could no longer honestly affirm at each Spring Synod that 'I believe and preach our doctrines', and hence I moved into academic life. It was a step taken with great reluctance, having thoroughly enjoyed my years both in pastoral work and in ministerial training, but for me it was undoubtedly the right decision. I pay warm tribute to the helpfulness of those in whom I confided my grave doubts, and I value the continued friendship of so many who regretted my departure but nevertheless respected my reasons for resigning.

The following pages were in part stimulated by a suggestion from Professor John Hick to write justifying the stand I had taken in leaving the ministry, and rather belatedly I am responding to that challenge. More importantly, I write from a concerned awareness

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Preface ix

that many people become unsure about the faith is which they have been nurtured, and all too often assume that the only alternative to an unconvincing traditional faith in no faith at all. Part IV will hopefully indicate that there is a viable attractive alternative, and that serious doubts or disbelief regarding the doctrine of the incarnation need not entail that Jesus becomes irrelevant to our spiritual quest for God, or our service to mankind. More basically, I write to express my understanding of the truth about Jesus, hoping to deepen that understanding through critical responses to what I have written.

Although numerous radical books on Christology have appeared in the past twenty years or so the case for unitarian Christianity has been conspicuously absent, even if some writers have been accused by their critics of being virtual Unitarians - not meant as a compliment. The present volume, therefore, aims to fill a gap in the current debate, seeking to persuade its readers that the relatively simple creed that God is One, not Three-in-One, and that He has been significantly disclosed by Jesus, is worthy of further consideration.

None of the chapters of this book has previously been published, but a paper giving the essence of Part 11 was read at a philosophy of religion conference at Oxford in 1987. Biblical quotations are taken from the New English Bible, unless otherwise indicated.

I wish to express my gratitude to the Hibbert Trustees for their encouragement and support in publishing the book.

A. RICHARD KINGSTON

Part I Introductory

1 The Narrow Choice

1. Orthodox or Unitarian

The contention of this chapter is that, despite the multiplicity of modern Christologies, the only genuine choice for those whose understanding and service of God is supremely influenced by the life and teaching of Jesus is between traditional orthodoxy and unitarianism. To many if not most readers this may appear an outrageous oversimplification of the issue, but I believe there are cogent reasons for restricting the real options to these two, in effect, narrowing the debate to the credibility or otherwise of incarnation in what has variously been termed its literal, metaphysical, essential or ontological meaning, namely, that God, or more accurately a mode of God, the divine 'Word' or 'Logos', actually became flesh, became man; the startling implication of this belief being, as Ian Wilson put it, that 'a man who to all appearances was merely an obscure Jewish teacher of two thousand years ago, has in fact been co-creator and co-ruler of our multi-million galaxy universe throughout its entire existence '.1

The primary reason for confining attention to this ontological definition of incarnation is that this clearly is the meaning enshrined in the church's historic creeds, confessions, liturgies and evangelistic outreach, and also in the more developed (which does not mean the more correct) teaching of the New Testament. As Brian Hebblethwaite put it in an article entitled 'Incarnation - the essence of Christianity?': 'There can be no doubt that the doctrine of the Incarnation has been taken during the bulk of Christian history to constitute the very heart of Christianity. .. The human life lived and the death died have been held quite literally to be the human life and death of God himself in one of the modes of his own eternal being? and, accordingly, he does not hesitate elsewhere to describe current Christologies which are not incarnational in this strict sense

3

4 Part I - Introductory

as 'contemporary unitarianism'.3 On this, if on little else as regards Christology, I find myself in full agreement with Hebblethwaite. To what extent Christian churches or their individual members are morally committed to Chakedonian Christology is, of course, a highly contentious issue, and in numerous cases literal subscription to older creeds has been replaced by more liberal pledges to receive, adopt, be guided or instructed by such professions of faith; nevertheless, as long as formal statements about a metaphysical incarnation are held to define the doctrinal standpoint of all but a few Christian denominations, and, apart from this, are clearly reflected in their worship and public proclamation of the faith, as well as being accepted (or at least not openly quesconed) by the vast majority of their adherents, it is not improper to insist that this literal understanding of incarnation must be treated as the standard meaning of the concept, and that other usages, as when Geoffrey Lampe wrote of the 'continuous incarnation of God as Spirit in the spirits of men',4 must be regarded as non-standard or secondary, Lampe's Christology, in fact, being essentially inspirational rather than incarnational. Admittedly, it may be the case that when we demand a really detailed statement of the official belief, then, as John Hick and others have argued, 'there is nothing that can be called the Christian doctrine of the incarnation',5 but in the broader sense it still remains true that it is the ontological understanding of the dogma that is fundamental to trinitarian Christian belief.

2. Mythological Christology as Unitarian

A second and complementary reason for restricting this inquiry to the ontological meaning of incarnation is the conviction that modem mythological and functional interpretations of the Christ event really amount to a rejection rather than a re-interpretation of his divinity, and are therefore in essence unitarian anyway. This seems blatantly obvious as regards the mythological viewpoint, which, to quote the Preface to The Myth of God Incarnate,

involves a recognition that Jesus was (as he is presented in Acts 2.21) 'a man approved by God' for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, is a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us.6

The Narrow Choice 5

It adds that 'This recognition is called for in the interests of truth', as well as our relationship to other world religions. Assuming, for present purposes, that myth is a legitimate symbolic way of expressing the positive meaning of religious events, experiences and convictions (although I have in fact grave reservations about that), we must next inquire: exactly what spiritual claim or truth is symbolized by the myth of God incarnate? And if the reply is that given later in the same book by Maurice Wiles, that incarnation is 'a mythological account of a potential union of the divine and the human in the life of every man? or similar general descriptions given by others,s then clearly it is a myth that in no way entails a triune God. Charles Moule's verdict in Incarnation and Myth that 'The logical conclusion of the position occupied by the contributors to The Myth, is, it seems, Unitarianism',9 is surely inescapable. Against those, therefore, who deny the God-man doctrine of Christ, but want to continue using the term incarnation as a useful myth, I would argue that they could more consistently discard such language as a mistake, rather than retaining it with a completely different meaning, thereby giving some credence to the 'fundamentalist' protest about the 'weasel method of sucking the meaning out of words, and then presenting the empty shells in an attempt to palm them off as giving the Christian faith a new and another interpretation. '10

It must be recognized, of course, that other writers affirm the propriety and even the necessity of a mythical expression of Christology without thereby questioning Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Thus James Mackey in Jesus the Man and the Myth argues that myth is a vital and valid form of religious understanding, and is not to be contrasted with historical or scientific truth. In particular, the great founders of faith, in helping others to relate to God, themselves require the myth of a special relationship to divinity, the experience of Christians being such as to demand that 'God is in Jesus reconciling the world to himself. Not a lesser divinity, but very GOd',ll and in due time requiring the 'fullest development of the myth or confession of Jesus which our tradition has produced'.I2 The psychologist Carl Jung similarly maintained that

the fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth - quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. .. The life of


Christ is just what it had to be if it is the life of a god and a man at the same time,13

Refraining from any lengthy comment on the whole topic of religion and mythology, I would simply observe that the church has never regarded its Christological confessions as myths, however positively interpreted. There may be something to be said for John McKenzie's contention that 'the purpose of myth is not to explain reality but to enable man to live with it',14 but I would still suggest that a myth is meaningless unless it corresponds to some factual claim, and in the present context that is almost universally taken to mean that 'God the Son' literally became man in Jesus. In general, I remain totally unconvinced by the dogmatic glorification of myth and the alleged inevitability of the myth of God incarnate.

3. Functional Christology as Unitarian

Functional Christology, which overlaps extensively with the mythological approach just considered, interprets Christ basically, not in terms of substantial identity with God, as Chalcedon, but in terms of God's special action through this man because of his complete response to his Father, culminating in the claim that, functionally, Jesus is equivalent to God for us. He was an ordinary man whose extraordinary openness to God enabled God to act uniquely through him, so that for us God is essentially God-in-Christ. But provided this openness and responsiveness to God is not pressed too far, as when John Robinson claimed in Honest to God that 'It is in Jesus, and Jesus alone, that there is nothing of self to be seen, but solely the ultimate, unconditional love of God',1s this surely is something which Unitarians could concede without much difficulty, whilst being adamant that it in no way justifies calling Jesus divine; and yet, surprisingly, functional Christology wants to retain such language. Thus Norman Pittenger, having stressed the 'genuine, complete, normal manhood of Jesus', goes on to speak of his 'divinity' in the sense that 'the deity of Jesus ... is that which is act of God in him. .. God acting in and through him'.16 Similarly, John Knox argued that 'The "divinity" was not half of his nature or a second nature, but was that purpose and activity of God which made the event which happened around him, but also in him and through him, the saving event it was. The divinity of Jesus was the deed of God'.t7 More explicitly, John Robinson maintained that

The Narrow Choice 7

He is not a divine or semi-divine being who comes from the other side. He is a human figure raised up from among his brothers to be the instrument of God's decisive work and to stand in a relationship to him to which no other man is called. The issue is whether in seeing him men see the Father, whether, in mercy and judgment, he functions as God, whether he is God to and for them . .. The mythological and ontological stories of the Incarnation have used the image of the divine visitant, of the king who becomes a commoner ... but ... remains a being of completely other blood. But we can start from quite a different model of royalty ... the Swedish. Here the king is a commoner, who has royal office. He embodies royalty, he exercises it, discloses it, wears it ... Similarly, we may view the Christ as a man who embodies divinity, or what the gospels call the kingly rule of God, who exercises it, discloses it, wears it - rather than a divine being who takes on humanity. He is a completely ordinary human being, a 'common man', born and bred, who is nevertheless the carrier of the divine disclosure . . . 18

A casual reading of this may suggest a simple replacement of the God who became man by the man who became God, but in fact Robinson never goes further than making Jesus the man in whom supremely God acts, and who must therefore be seen as 'God for us '. As such, this whole approach still seems unmistakably unitarian, and in no way seems a genuine re-interpretation of confessional Christology or of New Testament references to a pre-existent Christ; more seriously, it depends on factual claims about Jesus for which there cannot be adequate empirical evidence.

On this last point it is surely obvious that if God acted uniquely through Jesus because of his alleged total response to God, total openness to his Father, total unselfishness, love, obedience, etc., so that he can truly be described as the 'perfect man' (Lampe), the 'human face of God' (Robinson), the 'Image of the invisible God' (A. Hanson), 'God-dimensional man' (Welbourn), the 'parable of God and paradigm of humanity' (Schillebeeckx),19 and so on -the list of titles seems endless, then we need a very detailed and reliable biography of Jesus to substantiate the strong probability, let alone the certainty, of such a perfect relationship to God and to his fellow men; but no such record is available, even for those who have abandoned Bultmann's extreme scepticism about the historical Jesus. The writers concerned are not, of course, unaware


of this problem. Geoffrey Lampe candidly put the question: 'Can we plausibly maintain that in this person, about whom our knowledge is so severely limited, there is the unsurpassable model and archetype for all future time of God's presence in man and man's inspired response to God?'.20 In reply he notes several good, but still, I believe, insufficient reasons for ascribing these superlatives to Jesus; the real source of the perfect portrait, one suspects, being the discarded model of the God-man. Actually, Dennis Nineham dealt very sensitively with this whole issue in the Epilogue to The Myth of God Incarnate, acknowledging not just the impossibility of establishing the sinlessness of Jesus, but also the fact that some scholars, whilst appreciative of his moral stature, have at the same time pointed to apparent deficiencies in his moral outlook. Nineham concludes that 'the certainty about the moral character of Jesus and his relation to God evinced by the authors quoted earlier cannot rest, or rest solely at any rate, on historical groundS'.21 This, in turn, must undermine any confident claim that because of his perfect relationship to his Father Jesus uniquely embodied the activity of God, making him 'God for us'.

Supposing, however, that the missing evidence was available, and that it provided satisfactory proof that a non-supernatural Jesus attained such moral and spiritual excellence that God was able to work uniquely through him, that still would not warrant describing such a person as God incarnate. Not least in theology there is a lot to be said for calling a spade a spade, and God's action through perfect manhood is certainly not what is basically meant by incarnation in its regular Christian usage. At most it could be defended as a metaphorical use of the term, comparable to eulogising a hero as the incarnation of courage, but that's hardly the essence of credal claims about Jesus. I might add that even when the functional standpoint is clothed, as by A. R. Peacocke,22 in the impressive terminology of God's transcendence being personally immanent in Jesus to a unique degree, so unique that new non-reducible categories are required to explain the phenomenon, the appropriate new category would surely be 'God-centred man', not 'God incarnate', and these are not synonyms. On this whole issue, therefore, I cannot agree with writers such as Anthony and Richard Hanson, who, having explicitly denied the God-man dogma, but underlined 'the decisive uniqueness of God's action in Christ'23 (which they think requires the concept of the divine 'Word', meaning 'God in his relation to his creatures',24 and hence some 'Trinitarian shape of doctrine'),25

The Narrow Choice 9

reply to the question: 'have you really elaborated a doctrine of incarnation? Are you entitled to use this word?' by conceding that 'in its traditional sense' the answer must be No, but then qualify this by claiming that the term is not 'inappropriate' to describe their version of the doctrine.26 The Hansons' acknowledged indebtedness to D. M. Baillie's God was in Christ recalls a very different verdict on that book by Colin Brown: 'Put bluntly, we are left with an incarnation of the Father. It is a form of unitarianism, evoking the ghost of Schleiermacher, but speaking with a Scottish accent',27 And on the following page he observes that 'The researches of Lampe, Dunn and others pose the question of whether contemporary scholarship is pushing us in the direction of a charismatic unitarianism', a trend he resists, suggesting that 'the Gospels are far more Trinitarian in their picture of Jesus than the experts give them credit for', but a trend I welcome.

On the issue of whether functional Christology is really faithful to the spirit of the credal statements of the patristic period I would again give a different answer to the Hansons' question: 'Are we not trying to maintain the wallpaper intact when the wall behind it has been removed?',28 to which they reply that 'We do not believe that this is so'. Admittedly, there's considerable force in Maurice Wiles' contention that 'True continuity with the age of the Fathers is to be sought not so much in the repetition of their doctrinal conclusions or even in the building upon them, but rather in the continuation of their doctrinal aims',29 but if pursuing those aims, within the all-embracing aim of seeking the truth, compels us to rethink the 'person of Christ' in line with our modem critical understanding of New Testament origins and historical development, our modem philosophical and psychological presuppositions, and so on, to such an extent that a literal incarnation is no longer considered viable, then the same integrity which forces us to recognize this should also force us to recognize that such a radical reappraisal of traditional Christology goes beyond the scope of permissible re-interpretation, and is more accurately described as a rejection of the doctrine. Of course there must be freedom to formulate new theological expressions of the special significance of Jesus, but there must also be limits to calling these legitimate reformulations of old beliefs. Nor is it commendable to avoid censure simply through a 'remarkable skill in using traditional language in an untraditional sense',30 as Anthony Hanson elsewhere refers to Karl Rahner's writings on Christology.


The fundamental criticism, then, is that any Christology which starts (and in my judgment rightly starts) from below rather than from above, as it is often expressed, starts from a fully and purely human Jesus rather than the divine Logos made flesh, and at no point sees Jesus as essentially or substantially divine, as different from us in kind rather than in degree (to cite a distinction Pittenger develops in Christology Reconsidered, Chapter 6), such a Christology is intelligible within a purely unitarian framework, and does not require binitarian or trinitarian categories to be comprehensible. And that remains true no matter how much Jesus towers above the rest of us morally and spiritually, no matter how exceptional his openness to God and in turn revelation of God, or manifestation of the New Being, as Tillich would put it. Even if it was a universal and profound impression that Jesus was unique in terms of disclosing God's nature and will for mankind, as well as winning mankind into fellowship with and service of God, such uniqueness would still not take us beyond unitarianism, although it would necessarily enrich the monotheism in which he himself was nurtured. Accordingly, I reiterate that functional as well as mythological interpretations of Christ are in essence unitarian, and hence the choice in Christology is indeed a narrow one - orthodox or unitarian.

Nor can we get round this verdict by claiming that in fact Christology must be approached both from below and from above, involving complementary movements of deification and incarnation, or inhumanization, as John Macquarrie has argued in his recent book Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, particularly when his answer to the question, 'How does God become man?' is expressed in terms of a unique degree of divine immanence, and, correspondingly, his answer to the question, 'How does a man become God?' is in terms of a unique degree of transcending one's humanity. This immediately raises the question as to how such a phenomenon (or phenomena, for why only one?) could be recognized, and it seems wholly inadequate to reply that we would do so intuitively through 'conscience at its deepest level', as he expounds William Porcher DuBose's phrase 'the instinct of a true humanity', and hence, as regards Jesus, affirms that 'We recognize him as the representative human being, the Word made flesh'.31 Quite frankly, I can see no reason why the difficulties already noted concerning the approach from below, and equally those in the following chapters concerning the approach from above, can be evaded when the two approaches are combined; on the contrary, this new standpoint must suffer

The Narrow Choice 11

from the weaknesses of both positions. More generally, I would judge that Macquarrie cannot concede as much as he does to the demands of 'modem thought', thereby ruling out traditional Christology, and still hope to retain the reformulated essence of credal orthodoxy.

2 The Agreed Background

1. Not that Theism Needs no Defence

Unlike the controversial claim in the last chapter concerning the very limited choice in Christology it is arguable that the present chapter is superfluous, in that everyone accepts that the debate about Jesus being God incarnate presupposes belief in the existence and unity of God. Of course it is recognized that the concept of incarnation is also found in some polytheistic faiths, notably within Hinduism, but this wider context is not strictly relevant to the issue before us. It is for rather different reasons that it seems insufficient at this stage merely to assume that 'there is one God', and that there is no need whatever to justify that conviction. In the first place, a book positively recommending unitarian Christianity hardly fulfils that intention if it is nothing or little more than a negative critique of trinitarian Christianity, especially in an age when it is the basic belief in God, not just in God as 'Three-in-One', which is widely questioned or rejected. Hence, despite the fact that the book is predominantly an attempted repudiation of the doctrine of God incarnate, it is appropriate, if not imperative, to preface this with a relatively short statement of the grounds for a positive theistic faith.

A supplementary reason for devoting a chapter to the argument for God's existence is that many conservative Christians harbour a strong suspicion that those who deny the incarnation are likely to end up denying also their Creator, that the sort of reasoning which prompted The Myth of God Incarnate leads on all too easily to talk of the myth of God. The fact that two of the seven contributors to that book have since ceased to believe in a transcendent God could be taken as a clear indication that such radical questioning tends to put one on the slippery slope (Hebblethwaite's metaphor) 1

towards general agnosticism or atheism. Indeed Michael Goulder,

12

The Agreed Background 13

one of the ex-theists, confirms this tendency: 'I had dispensed with providence, with the resurrection and now with the incarnation; intellectually, therefore, dispensing with God was only one step further down the same road'.2 Even if that danger is grossly exaggerated, as 1 believe it is, it still deserves some response from any writer denying trinitarian whilst defending theistic belief, and so, for this further reason, I feel obliged at this point to try to justify retaining what some critics may regard as the mere remnant of my former faith.

In essence, I affirm my belief in a transcendent Creator-Spirit because, despite serious difficulties, that belief makes the universe more intelligible, makes more sense of man's mystical experience, and consequently makes human life more meaningful and purposeful. The order of these reasons is important. In other words, I am maintaining that the primary justification of theistic belief, whatever its historical origin or most compelling feature for the individual believer, is that it offers a persuasive explanation of the existence and the orderliness of this complex universe. I stress this because there are those who would make religious experience the self-justifying and sole source of 'our knowledge of God', any appeal to philosophical argument being promptly dismissed. In an amazing passage John Baillie wrote:

It is evident, then, that our real quarrel with the traditional argumentation for God's existence is of a very deep-going kind. We are rejecting logical argument of any kind as the first chapter of our theology ... We are holding that our knowledge of God rests rather on the revelation of His personal Presence as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. .. Of such a Presence it must be true that to those who have never been confronted with it argument is useless, while to those who have it is superfluous.3

If religious experience was clearly and exclusively of such a trinitarian nature perhaps something could be said for this approach, but in view of the tremendous variety of religious experience, Christian and non-Christian, Baillie's contention seems futile as well as arrogant. I am not questioning that religious experience has a proper and important place in apologetics, but am insisting that it is not obviously self-authenticating, and in fact only carries weight when interpreted in the light of a prior sustainable conviction of the likelihood of a Creator God.


2. Theism and the Intelligibility of the Universe

We start, then, by seeking to account for the ultimate origin of the universe, in essence, the cosmological argument. Rightly interpreted, this is not just concerned with arguing backwards in time from present events to a First Cause, or Prime Mover, or Noncontingent Being, on the model of the person who knocked over the first in a line of falling skittles, but is concerned rather with arguing upwards, as it were, in a hierarchy of ever more fundamental causal explanations of events, until we reach the basic known laws and the sheer givenness of the spatio-temporal universe. Many refuse to go beyond this, and are adamant that we must be content to accept the universe as an inexplicable brute fact, as it is frequently called, and not pose any metaphysical question - Why? To the religious person, however, such a non-self-explanatory universe - and it remains precisely that no matter how successfully scientists may account for its purely physical origins in a big bang or steady state or whatever - such a universe 'cries out for explanation', to borrow a phrase repeatedly used by Richard Swinburne in this context,4 and seems most intelligible as the creation of a personal all-powerful God. Admittedly, this involves a leap of faith, but that leap is surely warranted by the natural demand for a complete explanation, by the simplicity of its solution, and perhaps also by the greater satisfactoriness of an ultimate explanation in terms of personal will and power, although some reject this as a human prejudice rather than a proper ground for preference. The objection that any such 'Cosmos-Explaining-Being', to quote Ninian Smart's terminology,S must in turn also require explanation can be dismissed on the grounds that to postulate such a 'God-beyond-God' would in no way increase the intelligibility of the universe. We commence, then, with the reasonable surmise that the existence of this complex world is best explained in terms of a Creator-Spirit.

Reinforcing this faith conviction is the fact that the orderliness of the world also seems to demand a divine Designer. It must be conceded at once that older versions of the teleological argument, as when William Paley compared the eye to a telescope and the world itself to a watch, claiming that the former are as evidently designed as the latter, lost much of their persuasiveness with the emergence of Darwin's theory of evolution, but this is not to concede that we must now accept Jacques Monod's verdict that 'chance alone is the source of every innovation, of all creation in


the biosphere'6 as the last word. Several modem writers have argued convincingly that chance, or, more precisely, the combination of chance and law, as when in biology chance mutations occur within the context of fixed patterns of growth, survival and heredity, far from being the antithesis of purpose, can be seen as bringing out the potentiality already inherent in creation. As A. R. Peacocke puts it: 'These potentialities are written into creation by the Creator himself and they are unveiled by chance exploring their gamut? It has further been claimed that over vast periods of time the emergence of intelligent life was virtually inevitable. In his book significantly entitled God of Chance, D. J. Bartholomew writes that 'there is good reason for believing that in spite of the random path which evolution takes, the ends may be determinate. In particular, that the emergence of intelligent life capable of writing and reading books like this may have been virtually certain'.s He speculates that God may have had positive reasons for introducing an element of chance into the universe, for example, producing a sufficient variety of forms of life to ensure survival in different or changing environments, and, as regards man, he notes that 'Chance in our environment provides both the stimulus and the testing to promote our spiritual evolution'.9 Overall, he believes that 'there are good reasons for expecting a God of the kind envisaged by Christian theology to create just such a world'.IO And it is a world, we might add, in which chance at the heart of physics equally gives no cause to fear widespread uncertainty or chaos, for randomness at the microscopic level in fact produces statistical regularity at the macroscopic level, giving us reliable laws of nature.

An apparently overwhelming case for a designed universe has been presented by several writers claiming that the emergence of life, let alone intelligent life, in the universe presupposes a whole series of remarkable coincidences, and also very delicately balanced physical conditions over a vast period of time, the estimated probability of this happening on a purely random basis being infinitessimal, and leading therefore to the almost inescapable conclusion that the living world must be the outcome of purpose, not chance. I hesitate to press this argument, however, because statisticians have questioned not just the precise calculations of probability being quoted but the propriety or meaningfulness of talking about probability at all in this context, also cautioning against a too simple dichotomy of chance or God. ll Despite this, the argument undeniably retains a certain persuasiveness, nor does


it seem discredited by needless speculation about a possible infinity of universes, one of which was bound to have the right conditions for life to evolve, nor again by the so-called 'anthropic principle', that if specific complex conditions were necessary for man to appear it is not surprising that, having evolved, he can only observe these particular conjunctions etc. It is thus understandable that Hugh Montefiore, although aware of such objections, lays considerable stress in The Probability of God on 'some very remarkable coincidences in the constitution of the universe which have made it hospitable to life',12 together with equally remarkable 'constants' in climate, atmosphere etc., in supporting his verdict that 'In my judgment the convergence of all these factors makes it far, far more probable that God does exist than that he does not',13 On the other hand, John Hick totally rejects such arguments, claiming that 'we have no reason to think of all this as being a priori either probable or improbable except in relation to our own preferences and prejudices'.H He correctly points out that 'rather than using the image of tunings and adjustments occurring during the history of the universe we should think of the original fireball as so constituted that it was going to expand into the universe that exists today ',15 but in my estimation this amendment in no way precludes a rational overall judgment on the greater likelihood of an ultimate Designer.

In more general terms, others have stressed that when we consider the whole sweep of evolution, culminating in the emergence of beings capable of pursuing intellectual truth and moral excellence, coupled with aesthetic appreciation and spiritual sensitivity, then the impression seems unavoidable that the whole process is the outcome of divine purpose.16 Richard Swinbume's presentation of the teleological argument also merits special attention. He too takes a broader perspective, arguing not from particular instances of apparent design, but from the basic laws which determine the general orderliness of nature and of the world, giving us 'regularities of succession', and contends that since these fundamental laws are 'too big' for science to explain further, yet, like the world itself, they cry out for explanation, and in fact can be given a simple explanation in terms of benevolent divine intention, then this further helps to confirm the existence of God. If such a Designer-Creator exists the pervasive orderliness of the world is likely to follow, but would seem unlikely to occur unless He exists. Interestingly, Swinbume devotes a separate chapter to the claim that the world is a providential place, in the sense of normally giving to man and


to animals the opportunity to provide for themselves, and also to provide for others, thus satisfying basic biological and psychological needs, and again consistent with what we would expect from a good GodP

If this was the whole story we could claim with considerable confidence that the orderliness of the world points towards a DesignerCreator, and in doing so definitely increases the intelligibility of the universe, but of course there is another side to the story which cannot be overlooked - the problem of evil, the apparent absence of providential design. This will always remain a disturbing fact, and must be taken with the utmost seriousness, but there are considerations which greatly reduce its impact. In Part 11 I shall be arguing for a non-interventionist understanding of God, which, if valid, removes any question of God deliberately sending particular diseases or disasters to particular people. As regards moral evil, that is, man's inhumanity to man and to animals, or, more exactly, the problem of why God allows this to happen, I'm convinced that what is called the free-will defence still effectively answers this question, emphasizing that God's gift of genuine freedom to man both in relation to his fellow creatures and to his Creator, and which is vital not just to human dignity and happiness but to man's moral and spiritual development, is inseparable from the possibility of tragically abusing that freedom. This has recently been challenged by a number of writers contending that God could and should have made us all moral angels, enjoying true freedom yet being morally incapable of maliciously hurting others, but however attractive that utopian prospect it still appears to involve the obvious contradiction of mankind allegedly possessing real freedom whilst at the same time being programmed, as it were, towards saintliness. At most, one may wonder whether man could not have evolved with greater benevolence without diminishing his true freedom!

Turning to natural or non-man-made evil it again seems essential to our moral and spiritual development, not to mention our personal fulfilment and our demand for challenging and worthwhile activity, that we live in a world where there are real problems to be solved and discoveries to be made, real difficulties to be overcome and dangers to be faced, real risks of failure, injury or death as well as hopes of achievement and victory. In brief, man's environment needs to be what John Hick, taking a phrase from the poet Keats, has called 'a vale of soul-making', expanding on this theme and contrasting it with other theodicies in his book Evil and the God of


Love.I8 But whilst these considerations go a long way in mitigating the problem of evil they still leave grave doubts as to whether they justify the extent of natural evil in the world - widespread suffering and death through droughts, hurricanes, diseases etc., and hence the theist can never be complacent. On balance, however, I submit that the extent of serious inexplicable evil in the world is far outweighed by indications of providential orderliness, the overall picture thus strongly supporting the presumption of a divine Designer, or rather Designer-Creator.

3. Religious Experience and Other Considerations

Further reinforcing the case for theism, although hardly in the decisive manner assumed by some writers, is the evidence of religious experience. That such experience is at the heart of theistic faith, and a proper ground for defending it, is a relatively modem emphasis, but is now widely accepted. Thus in reaction to an over-intellectualized definition of religion as 'the discovery of a rhyme and reason in things', William Temple retorted that, whilst it may include this, 'in its essence it is an experience - the experience of a presence and power which we can only understand if we call it the presence and power of God'.19 Although questioning the word 'only', and insisting that we must also include human response and theological conviction within the essence of religion, I would nevertheless underline the phrase 'the experience of a presence and power', but how cogently can we conclude that this should be identified as 'the presence and power of God'?

Those rejecting any such conclusion point not just to the bewildering variety of such experiences, but more seriously to the fact that they are found in, and thus apparently authenticate, a wide range of conflicting religious traditions. It is further charged that these experiences are not infrequently subject to psychological manipulation, if not mass hysteria, and that even when such extremes are avoided it is still notable that they tend to conform to the beliefs and expectations of the groups or traditions to which the individuals belong, 'speaking with tongues' occurring in charismatic movements and emotional conversions in evangelistic crusades. The fact that some drug-induced experiences seem to parallel those reported in religious contexts has also been regarded as discrediting the latter.

Responding to these charges many theists are fully prepared to


accept that the actual form and content of religious experience is to a large extent culturally conditioned, and that God may apparently be experienced in different ways in different religions. Consequently, it is the common underlying sense of divine presence which we are concerned to defend, and not necessarily the details or interpretations of these experiences. It is equally important, in my judgment, to put the emphasis firmly on non-manipulated religious experience, on the typically less dramatic but more solemn consciousness of being in the presence of a great environing yet personal Reality, for it is the origin of this type of experience which the criticisms just mentioned manifestly fail to explain away as psychologically induced or as purely subjective. Such experience, therefore, clearly retains the prima facie status of possibly being an awareness of a supernatural Presence and Power, and it is when that experience is subsequently understood in the light of the theistic leap of faith hopefully justified in the previous paragraphs, that is, faith in a Creator-Designer whom one would expect to be knowable in some manner to spiritually sensitive persons, without overwhelming them by his awesome nearness, that the 'possibly' becomes, at the very least, 'very plausibly' an objective awareness of God.

Many, no doubt, will severely criticize this verdict is being unduly cautious, but there are good reasons, I believe, for not adopting the stronger claims for religious experience currently advocated by some writers. Mfirming as a 'principle of credulity' that, in the absence of special considerations, 'what one seems to perceive is probably so', Richard Swinburne concludes that, with this proviso,

all religious experiences ought to be taken by their subjects as genuine, and hence as substantial grounds for belief in the existence of their apparent object - God, or Mary, or Ultimate Reality, or Poseidon.20

Whilst this does not necessarily entail polytheism, for he later concedes that 'God may be known under different names to different cultures' ,21 it would certainly entail that those believing they had experienced 'evil spirits' should believe in demons. On the other hand, the inclusion of Mary is a forcible reminder that religious experience by itself does not necessarily imply divinity. Other writers suggest a fairly strong analogy between religious and ordinary perceptual experience, as through sight or hearing.


Now, admittedly, all our experiences are similar in that they involve some interpretive understanding of what is 'given', but surely the huge qualitative difference between the straightforward interpretive recognition of everyday objects and events and the necessarily more speculative interpretation of religious experiences drastically weakens that analogy, being further weakened by the fact that a significant proportion of mankind claim no religious experiences whatever. It must be emphasized, however, that this questioning of a strict parallel between the religious person's consciousness of God and everyone's consciousness of the external world aims, not to deny, but only to avoid overstating and thereby diluting the evidential force of religious experience as helping to confirm the more philosophical arguments for God's existence. And, needless to say, it is this sense of the pervasive presence of God, harmonizing with their other convictions, which makes real for most people their spiritual response in worship and service.

There are, of course, other arguments, such as those from morality or the emergence of consciousness, which also buttress a belief in God, but it is those just considered which are foundational. Equally, there are other arguments against this belief, for instance, claims that religion can be explained in purely psychological or sociological terms, or the charge that theism is logically meaningless because neither strictly verifiable nor falsifiable, even in principle, but these need not be examined here as they have been ably answered by several writers. Suffice it to say that a full recognition of psychological and sociological influences on religious experience and commitment still does not adequately account for the non-manipulated 'sense of a presence and power' to which so many testify, nor does it lessen theism's credibility in making the universe more intelligible. As for the verification principle, already abandoned by its proponents in its stronger form as ruling out history etc. as logically meaningless, it is simply untrue that there are no facts or potential facts which would be accepted as counting against theism, and, apart from that, it is far from clear that we can determine what exactly is verifiable or falsifiable 'in principle'.

As a sort of bonus rather than a supplementary argument for theism (lest it seem vulnerable to a Freudian dismissal of religion as a form of wishful thinking) I might add that faith in God gives life a deeper meaning. To begin with, the conviction that we live in the constant presence of a loving God is in itself an enrichment of life. The further conviction, deriving primarily from belief in a


Father-God, that this life is but a prelude to a more God-centred life hereafter also increases the significance of our 'earthly pilgrimage', apart from reducing the moral enormity of justice in this world being so often incommensurate with virtue, when it is frequently the wicked who prosper and the righteous who suffer. As for service to society, belief in the Fatherhood of God is by no means irrelevant to recognizing our duty to the brotherhood of man. And so we could continue, but it is not necessary to do so.

4. A Cumulative Case

We must now face the question of how all this adds up. How do we estimate the conclusiveness or otherwise of the main theistic arguments and counter arguments taken together? In former ages this issue was neatly resolved by referring to the various 'proofs' of God's existence, but few today would presumptuously use that label. The next best thing would seem to be to reach a strict probability verdict, but, regretfully, 1 cannot endorse Richard Swinburne's fascinating attempt to demonstrate that, collectively, the theistic arguments go well past the half way mark on the probability scale of 0-1, mainly because, as already indicated, I'm convinced that he overestimates the force of the argument from religious experience. We turn instead, therefore, to the more informal type of probability argument, as employed and defended by Basil Mitchell and others,22 aiming to establish a cumulative case for theism. This is not simply a matter of listing the various grounds for and against a belief in God, claiming that the former outweigh the latter, but rather of comparing two overall pictures of reality, the theistic and atheistic, and judging which is the more persuasive. In doing so, as Caroline Franks Davis reminds us, we 'must remember that different pieces of evidence interact in cumulative arguments, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts '.23 The fact that our final verdict, unless it happens to be a purely open one, inevitably reflects a subjective impression of the greater viability of one of the rival standpoints does not mean for one moment that it must be arbitrary, nor does the fact that some are predisposed or even strongly prejudiced towards a particular solution imply that for others it cannot be reasonably impartial. Nor is that impartiality necessarily compromised by one's own religious experience, or the lack of it; it is just one of the factors to be taken into consideration.


Very briefly summarizing the case for theism, I uphold its probability in that it convincingly meets the demand for a satisfactory explanation of the existence and orderliness of this complex universe; it is compatible with the role of chance in evolution, in which, at the same time, there seems to be an inherent bias towards the emergence of man as a rational being, and it is also compatible with the existence of evil, whether moral or natural, as essential to man's 'vale of soul-making' environment, although admittedly the nature and extent of some forms of evil remain very disquieting. More positively, the expectation that a personal God would be knowable seems confirmed in religious experience. Various implications of theism, as belief in a life hereafter and in moral integrity and service being a duty to God, also increase the meaningfulness and purposefulness of life. Theism thus provides a coherent understanding of our world and of man's place and experience within it, and as such justifies a rational and enriching leap of religious faith.

Against all this it may be insisted that the universe neither requires nor seems capable of an ultimate non-scientific explanation, but must simply be accepted as a 'brute fact', that the beginning of life and the whole course of evolution could be due entirely to chance, that the amount of apparently purposeless evil in the world precludes any affirmation of a good Creator, and that religious experience can be interpreted in purely psychological terms. It may further be suggested that God is no more than a projection of the human mind, reflecting man's insecurity and wishful thinking, and that belief in the supernatural is superfluous for 'man come of age'.

In feeling compelled to choose the former or theistic alternative I submit that this is only partly because it seems emotionally more satisfying, although morally more demanding, and primarily because it impresses one as being intellectually more credible, a comprehensive and deeply meaningful worldview linking nature, man and God. In brief, it makes greater sense of our universe and our pilgrimage within it, and hence seems the best or more probable ultimate explanation. As for the nature of the Creator God thus affirmed we need go no further than Ockham's razor, the principle that entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity, to specify that the object of our faith must be One God. Belief in a personal Creator further demands that we think of him as 'the sum of all perfections', or, in the language of St Anselm, a Being than whom no more perfect can be conceived, and towards whom


faith is not just an intellectual conviction but a life commitment. It is, then, within this monotheistic context that we seek to understand the 'person of Christ'.

S. The Procedure in Parts 11 and III

To assess the plausibility of the Christian doctrine of incarnation (and except where the context indicates a different meaning that term is henceforth being used in its ontological sense) we must regard it as a way of interpreting what happened during and following the life of Jesus, and as such it is really a theory or hypothesis to be tested in terms of its prior probability and explanatory power. These two factors will be considered in Parts 11 and III respectively.

Basically, the prior probability of a theory refers to its probability before taking into account the particular facts or events it is held to explain, ie the 'evidence'. As regards our present inquiry this means that, ignoring the Christ event, we must consider the general likelihood or unlikelihood of God becoming incarnate, judging this mainly in terms of whether such an occurrence would fit in with background theistic belief, what, if any, essential purpose it would serve, and whether the whole notion is internally coherent. By 'background theistic belief' we are not referring to current thinking about God at the time of Jesus, although, in passing, we may note James Dunn's conclusion in Christoiogy in the Making that there is 'little or no good evidence from the period prior to Christianity's beginnings that the Ancient Near East seriously entertained the idea of a god or son of god descending from heaven to become a human being in order to bring man salvation, except perhaps at the level of popular pagan superstition';24 we are concerned rather with the question of whether the idea of incarnation fits into our twentiethcentury understanding of the nature of God. Some aspects of that understanding are, admittedly, highly controversial, and especially the first question we must face - does God intervene in human history? - but even if my arguments against divine intervention are judged ineffective, permitting an open verdict, that still leaves us with fundamental questions as to why God might become incarnate, and whether an incarnation is consistent with belief in the unity of God, a topic examined under the heading: 'How could God become incarnate?' Rounding off Part II we glance briefly at the problem of how an incarnate God could be recognized.


The explanatory power of a theory is estimated not merely by the extent to which it accounts for the events in question, so that if the theory is true they must or are at least very likely to happen, but also by the extent to which such an explanation is dearly preferable to any rival explanation in terms of simplicity, adequacy, coherence etc. In seeking to account for the religious impact of Jesus and for the emergence of the Christian church we cannot avoid having to choose between competing explanations, the crucial issue being whether such events, when understood in the light of critical biblical and historical scholarship, really require such an astounding hypothesis as that of God having become incarnate. Investigating this issue in Part III we shall examine the various grounds which have been held to indicate, if not prove, the divinity of Jesus, judging that neither separately nor cumulatively do they establish a dear case for that conviction.

The exact relationship between prior probability and explanatory power in determining the overall probability of a theory is disputed, but, fortunately, need not be considered here, as we are not seeking to estimate the precise or even approximate probability value of the incarnation hypothesis. For present purposes it is sufficient to stress that whether or not Karl Popper is correct in claiming that even high prior probability does not positively contribute towards posterior probability, the opposite verdict of prior improbability would, if substantiated, impose additional demands on the explanatory power of a theory. In other words, it would imply that whilst the theory should not be ruled out entirely, it could only be retained if it very fully and impressively explained the relevant events, which otherwise remain totally, or almost totally, inexplicable. The combined force of a theory being judged as having prior improbability and not being required as an explanation would obviously, if valid, make it untenable, and that, in essence, is the thesis of this book regarding the Christian doctrine of incarnation.

Part 11 The Prior Improbability

of an Incarnation

3 Does God Intervene in

History?

1. The Onus of Proof or Persuasion

A quotation from David Brown's The Divine Trinity neatly pinpoints the issue facing us in this chapter:

unless one is prepared to endorse an interventionist view of God (that over and above his general ordering of the world there are certain specific actions which he performs within our historical, temporal framework), then the very idea of an Incarnation will inevitably seem such a startling exception to the uniform pattern of God's relation to the world as to be, quite literally, incredible.1

Explicitly applying this to the ontological meaning of incarnation some pages later he reiterates that 'any incarnational claim in the strict sense of the term must involve an interventionist God'.2

In considering this topic it must be acknowledged at once that the biblical presentation of God - a God who divided the Red Sea and demolished the walls of Jericho, who sent manna in the wilderness and fire to consume Elijah's sacrifice, who cured Naaman's leprosy and even restored a child to life - is undeniably interventionist. So too has been the frequent understanding of God in post-biblical history - a God who when Constantine and Licinius attacked Rome in 312 'proved their ally in the most wonderful manner? and when the Spanish Armada reached the English Channel in 1588 'blew with his winds and they were scattered' (as inscribed on medals struck by Queen Elizabeth J); and no less today it is such a God who is presupposed in much intercessory prayer - for miraculous healing, changed weather, national and personal security and other favours.

27

28 Part II - The Prior Improbability of an Incarnation

On top of all this there is the suspicion, and indeed specific charges, that any denial of divine intervention would make God virtually redundant, and, in fact, reduce theism to deism, if not atheism -'The God who no longer plays an active role in the world is in the final analysis a dead God', writes Walter Kasper,4 whilst Michael Goulder, for good measure, links Unitarians with deists in this context as tending 'to lose strength and become atheists'.s In view of this background I fully accept that the onus of proof, or rather of persuasion, for we are not dealing with an issue which admits of a clear-cut verdict, must inescapably rest on those who would dispute the traditional interventionist portrait of God, but, in fact, there are strong grounds for doing just that.

For many people what initially prompts such questioning is when they come across frankly incredible and sometimes abhorrent claims of divine intervention, as Mark Chapman's insistence that God ordered him to kill John Lennon,6 or John Wesley's 'Serious Thoughts occasioned by the late Earthquake at Lisbon', including also his explanation of a geological disturbance at Whitson Cliffs in Yorkshire: 'What, then, could be the cause? What indeed, but God, who arose "to shake terribly the earth"'? The more positive reasons for doubting, if not denying, such intervention are, first and foremost, that it intensifies the problem of evil, and, further, that it conflicts with modem man's deepening appreciation that God has placed us in a law-governed universe, and that his relationship with man is characterized by constancy and not arbitrariness. Instead of spelling out these reasons straight away it may be more helpful to apply them, where appropriate, to three different levels of possible divine intervention, namely, the experience of God's presence, the discovery of his will, and finally, the occurrence of apparently supernatural physical events.

2. Does Religious Experience Require Intervention?

As regards the first of these levels I see no problem whatever in recognizing that the perpetual pervasive presence of a noninterventionist God can be known in religious experience, depending on our human response, yet it is this personal experiential dimension which David Brown seemingly regards as minimized, if not excluded, if we posit a non-interventionist God. Like several other writers he describes those who defend this viewpoint as deists, a label which in some of its usages has unavoidable overtones of

Does God Interoene in History? 29

belief in an absentee Creator who is not personally interested in or experienced by man. But it is Brown's account of personal religious experience which I find suspect. Insisting that a personal relationship involves reciprocity, dialogue, 'one individual acting, the other responding, the first reacting',S and so on, he argues that this is precluded by the so-called deist model, but surely it is his all-too-human concept of reciprocity which is totally inappropriate to characterize religious awareness. It may fit the story of Abraham pleading with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18, and other retrospectively dramatized experiences, but is far removed from the normal religious consciousness of God's presence, which is a matter of sensing his nearness, not conducting a conversation with him. Hence the charge that man cannot have a personal relationship with a non-interventionist God is unwarranted, to put it mildly. Nor, incidentally, did the deists all play down the role of religious experience; it was one of the most prominent of them, Rousseau, who wrote, albeit somewhat simplistically: 'The more I strive to prove the infinite Being of God the less do I understand it. But I feel that He is. That is enough for me'.9

The more pertinent question, however, is whether religious experience should be seen as initiated by God or as arising when we tune in, as it were, to his constant environing presence? The suddenness or forcibleness of some experiences may seem to demand the former explanation, but, making due allowance for both internal and external influences or pressures in preparing us to sense and respond to the nearness of God, it does not seem improper to describe the situation in terms of becoming especially sensitive to, and in turn acutely aware of, God's perpetual presence, rather than being directly visited, let alone being emotionally manipulated, by God in a one-to-one encounter. Granted, it may seem to some like being invaded from 'beyond', but the more accurate account, I suggest, is that they simply become more keenly conscious of the 'Beyond' who is always in our midst,tO the great advantage of this interpretation being that God is not pictured as arbitrarily making himself known to some but not to others, a God who favours the few but neglects the many. I would therefore urge that at the level of religious experience a non-interventionist understanding of God is fully adequate and clearly preferable, especially on grounds of fairness and impartiality, thus avoiding any charge that God deliberately and selectively chooses to 'warm the hearts' of particular persons at particular times, leaving others unencountered and unmoved. On


the contrary, we are constrained to envisage his universal presence as equally available to all, but in fact only realized by those who through personal devotion, social conditioning or even accidental circumstances are moved to respond in openness and reverence.

3. Does Discovering God's Will Require Intervention?

I suspect that many who may find the argument concerning religious experience persuasive would nevertheless recoil from any suggestion that similar reasoning should apply to the concept of revelation, implying that God does not personally intervene to disclose his will on specific occasions, and yet some of us feel driven to accept this further and more drastic re-interpretation of traditional belief. For those naively equating revelation with Scripture any question of non-intervention is ruled out from the start, and it may well require the shock of some arresting incident (such as a Dublin mother's letter to the Irish Censorship and Publications Board in 1988 urging that the Bible be withdrawn from public sale because it glorifies violence and sexual abuse -quoting, amongst other things, the commands in Deuteronomy to stone to death uncontrollable sons or brides who are not virgins)ll to shake their dogmatic assumptions, and start them thinking. The more relevant fact, however, is that most of those who have long abandoned a dictation theory of revelation as inconsistent with our modem understanding of how the books of the Bible came to be written and canonized, and still more as inconsistent with the frankly satanic portrait of God sometimes presented in its pages (a God who demanded the total extermination of many of Israel's enemies,12 who instituted the barbarity of animal sacrifice13 and ordained the frequent application of the death penalty),14 still tend to retain some element of divine intervention in their accounts of revelation. Thus WiIliam Temple, whilst adamant that 'there is no such thing as revealed truth. There are truths of revelation, that is to say, propositions which express the results of correct thinking concerning revelation; but they are not themselves directly revealed',15 was equally adamant that 'He guides the process; He guides the minds of men; the interaction of the process and the minds which are alike guided by Him is the essence of revelation',16 even if this entails that 'the message is ... so inextricably human and divine in one, that no single sentence can be quoted as having the authority of an authentic utterance of the All-Holy God',17

Does God Intervene in History? 31

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether' He guides the process', is it a credible conviction that God intervenes to stimulate the minds of certain people to see the deeper meaning of events, or is Michael Goulder correct in branding all such guidance as 'psychological intervention', which is 'just as crude' as mechanical intervention, asking with reference to some dubious statements about God and the Falklands war: 'what is the difference between God interfering with the electronics of the Exocet, and his interfering with Mrs Thatcher's brain circuits?'18

In trying to resolve this dilemma about 'the secret whispering of God in the ear', as Henry Drummond put it,19 and assuming, needless to say, that it would be for wholly reputable purposes (for we must reject as utterly blasphemous the blatantly immoral manipulation of minds ascribed to God in parts of the Old Testament, as in making Pharoah obstinate (Ex. 4.21; 9.12 etc.) or Sihon, King of Heshbon, stubborn (Deut. 2.30) and then punishing them and their subjects for not complying with his commands), we begin with the positive conviction already defended of God's universal presence in the world, that presence normally proving also a source of power to those who respond to it in loving commitment. Beyond this, those who before God honestly wrestle with moral, personal or theological problems, seeking to reach and implement decisions which will harmonize with what they believe to be the will of a holy and loving Creator, are very likely to gain fresh insights as regards their duty and their faith, just as in everyday life we often find it helpful to analyze problems in the presence of an understanding friend who just listens sympathetically, and does not want to interfere with our tentative conclusions. Now this, I suggest, would adequately account for those experiences of enlightenment in which the way ahead becomes clearer following periods of meditation or prayer. 'The players in the improvised drama of the world's creation', writes Maurice Wiles, 'through whom the agency of the author finds truest expression, are not ones to whom he has given some special information or advice, but those who have best grasped his intention and developed it'.20 Almost inevitably, however, piety tends to interpret such experiences as direct divine guidance. And what, it may be asked, is wrong with that interpretation? Surely it best fits the analogy of a personal relationship between God and man! Nor would such guidance violate human freedom or dignity when granted to those urgently seeking it! The force of these objections must be fully conceded, and


they clearly imply that the idea of divine interventionist guidance is not obviously implausible, but there are still difficulties which lead many of us to favour the non-interventionist account just given.

The lesser difficulty is that one could never be sure that the enlightenment was not just the result of hard thinking or sudden intuition, and still less could one convince others that it came from God. Indeed, unless the decisions or solutions reached are defensible on purely moral, theological or other rational grounds, they are almost certain to be dismissed by those disagreeing with them as illusions. Some may recall the harsh reaction in 1987 to claims by the Chief Constable of Manchester to be guided by God in taking a rigid stand on certain moral issues, especially AIDS, one critic urging that he was not a fit person to hold such a post 'if he is going to hide behind a shield of divine inspiration'.21 If the only explanation being offered for one's convictions or campaigns is that 'God spoke to me', this is not merely an intellectual short-cut, but a dangerous presumption. ' Insight in any field of understanding may come at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. To ascribe such knowledge to a direct divine source, with the implication that it is therefore exempt from critical scrutiny, is to open the floodgates to fanaticism', to quote Wiles again.22

The greater difficulty about divine guidance, still thinking of it as confined to those personally praying for it, is that even in this restricted sense it begins to exacerbate the problem of evil, raising uncomfortable questions as to why, if God positively directs some of those seeking his guidance for their own or the public welfare, he does not equally direct others no less fervently and far more urgently seeking such guidance, for example, by prompting those pleading desperately to escape a deadly epidemic to move away from the sources of infection or contamination? Hence it is not cynicism but a concern for a more worthy and consistent theism which forbids one to believe in a God who answers prayers for guidance on relatively trivial matters, but apparently remains deaf to millions beseeching guidance for their very survival.

If the sphere of guidance is extended to include third parties not personally seeking it, this, in turn, extends the problem for theodicy, apart from raising the further problem of whether such uninvited inspiration fits in with God's respect for human autonomy and responsibility. Leaving this latter objection aside, it is evident that if in response to petitionary prayer God not only guides those praying, but also influences, if not determines, the decisions taken


by named non-praying persons, then such divine action, however commendable it may seem initially, inevitably evokes the agonizing query as to why the profound prayers of countless others to make their oppressors more merciful have apparently been unheeded. If it was really because of Nehemiah's prayer to 'put it into this man's heart to show me kindness' that 'The King granted my requests [to return to Jerusalem], for the gracious hand of our God was upon me' (Nehemiah 1.11 and 2.8), and, moreover, if God can control the minds of even his opponents to the extent of deluding them into thinking they heard an approaching army, and thus fleeing in panic from the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 7.6), then it is difficult to see why such interventionist influence to restrain evil is not far more extensive, in response to universal prayer to end strife and exploitation.

On the whole question of divine guidance I would therefore commend John Hick's statement that

God has shown us the way, not by a psychological miracle but through our own intense desire for light and our readiness to follow it. With this powerful motivation we work out our doubts and perplexities until at last we arrive at a morally lucid awareness of our duty. Such illumination is not less truly divine guidance because it comes through the moral nature which God has given us within his continuous creative action.23

Before moving on to the question of divine intervention in the physical realm something more needs to be added regarding the revelatory status of Scripture. In essence, we must face up to the question posed by C. H. Dodd, who, having stressed that it is not words, as in automatic writing, but persons who are inspired, and that there is a definite development in both men's ideas about God and in the forms of religious life associated with these ideas within the Bible, then asked: I How are we to think of this development? Is it ... a "progressive revelation" . .. [or] is it not progressive discovery of which we are speaking, rather than revelation?'24 Dodd defended the use of the term 'revelation' on the grounds that, in a sense, all discovery involves things revealing themselves, and in particular, discovering persons involves their self-revelation, this being true also of coming to know God, although the resultant apprehension of the divine is necessarily limited by man's capacity to understand. If the phrase 'progressive revelation' was widely

34 Part Il - The Prior Improbability of an Incarnation

interpreted in this sense, as really signifying man's gradual realization of the nature and purposes of God as he responds to his presence and critically reflects on current moral and theological convictions and their implications, perhaps modifying and deepening them through 'some spontaneous power of insight', to quote Dodd again,25 then I would be very happy to retain the term 'revelation'; but since for most people the concept has the fixed connotation of God intervening to disclose his will on specific occasions, I feel it may be best to avoid the word, and think instead of the Bible and other sacred literature as the story of man's emerging understanding or 'progressive discovery' of his Creator, an understanding which at all stages must be tested by the highest moral and spiritual ideals of which we are capable.

4. Do Miracles Require Intervention?

Finally, what of divine intervention in the world of nature and history to effect miraculous cures, deliverances and other benefits? The mere fact that this notion has constantly been abused by those egotistically seeing the 'hand of God' in some fortunate accident which saved them from a calamity which engulfed others is in itself no reason for rejecting it, although it does point to the shallowness of their faith. There are, however, more positive reasons which explain the extreme reluctance of many theists to invoke an interventionist God to account for apparently miraculous occurrences.

Summarizing these briefly, for in the main they repeat, only more forcibly, many of the objections made against psychological intervention, we start with the fact that there is today a far greater appreciation that we live in a world governed by natural laws. Indeed it has been precisely because men have refused to resort to purely religious explanations of specific events that scientific progress has been made possible. Some would press this point even further. Thus Gordon Kaufman emphasized that

Our experience is of a unified and orderly world; in such a world acts of God (in the traditional sense) are not merely improbable or difficult to believe: they are literally inconceivable. It is not a question of whether talk about such acts is true or false; it is, in a literal sense, meaningless; one cannot make the concept hang together consistently.26


Personally I'm not convinced that all talk about acts of God is literally meaningless, but I will not digress to review this debate here. I would, however, endorse Kaufman's regret that

Christian piety has too long been nurtured largely on those psalms and other biblical materials which portray God as a kind of genie who will extricate the faithful from the difficulties into which they fall; it is this erratic and fickle God who cannot be reconciled with the modem understanding of the order in nature and history.27

Complementary to this, there is today a greater appreciation by many that God has placed us in the world to mature through responsible behaviour and the pursuit of truth and excellence, and this surely presupposes an orderly universe with reliable laws not subject to occasional divine interruption. Of course strange unexpected things do sometimes happen, such as sudden and even dramatic recovery from illness or disability, but apart from the fact that Hume's celebrated attack on the credibility of miracle stories makes us cautious about such reports, unless very reliably attested, we must still allow for possible scientific-type explanations in terms of, for example, the as yet little understood power of mind over matter. Allowance must also be made for our still imperfect grasp of scientific laws, and for startling events being due to sheer coincidence, as in the often quoted illustration of the driver fainting and, in consequence, activating the automatic brakes of a train, which stopped yards from a child playing on the tracks. Thus, amazing and apparently inexplicable events do not necessarily point towards an interventionist God.

Yet again, and this time in its most acute form, an interventionist theology indirectly intensifies the problem of evil, if it does not make it unbearable, for if God has sometimes intervened in our physical world for good reasons, then why? why no intervention to save literally millions from the agonies of the Black Death, the Irish famine or the Nazi holocaust? 'How can God be forgiven?' - that stark exclamation, recalled (I hope correctly!) from the TV screening of 'Escape from Sobibor' (a concentration camp in Poland), is harder to answer for those who believe that God did intervene at the Red Sea and elsewhere. If justified on those occasions, why not on others when limitless love would surely demand it, as in preventing over 1,200 people dying from an eruption of poisonous gas in Cameroon


in August 1986? The suffering of those surviving such tragedies may be dreadful, but at least those not believing in an interventionist God are spared the added bewilderment of wondering why God allowed it to happen.

An obvious objection to this non-interventionist argument is that it would make nonsense of petitionary prayer, and, indeed, would rule it out entirely. We would contend, however, that it should be retained but transformed as expressing a threefold purpose; firstly, as remembering before God our own and especially other people's needs; secondly, as seeking to discover what God's will would be in such situations; and thirdly, as willing the ideal or Godly answer to our prayerful concerns. It may well be that fervent prayer in this sense could be efficacious in some psychological manner, apart from the comfort and encouragement people experience on learning that others are remembering their needs before God, but even if the worst happens the appropriateness and importance of such prayer is not undermined.

Are we then to abandon the whole notion of God acting in the world? In the sense of special events which would not otherwise have happened but for divine initiative I believe the answer must be Yes. As Kaufman puts it: 'This is no God who "walks with me and talks with me" in close interpersonal communion, giving his full attention to my complaints, miraculously extracting me from difficulties into which I have gotten myself by invading nature and history with ad hoc rescue operations from on high. '28 However, this does not mean that all talk of divine activity is obsolete. On the contrary, we should think of God's action, not in terms of isolated incidents within the world, but as the whole continuing process of creating and sustaining the universe, a process that allows for an element of chance, and in particular for human freedom, and hence must not be misinterpreted as divine determinism. One of the clearest expositions of this standpoint is given by Maurice Wiles in God's Action in the World, suggesting that

we should see the gradual emergence of our world as a single divine act ... a purposeful occurrence, whose disparate features are held together by a unity of intention. We cannot claim to grasp that purpose fully, but we ... may perhaps speak of it provisionally as maximizing the growth of personal freedom and creativity within relationships of love both at the human level and between human beings and God.29

Does God Interoene in History? 37

Through prayer, worship, meditation and service we associate ourselves with God's intention. Responding to the charge that an inactive God is a dead God, Wiles insists that I He is the living God, the source of all life and the source of that authentic life which his worshippers seek to realize in grateful awareness of his all-pervasive and sustaining presence'.30

AIl this, I must acknowledge, does not positively disprove an interventionist theology, but it does place a huge question mark against it, and by implication there is also a huge question mark against an alleged supreme intervention by way of incarnation. Nor can we evade this issue by describing incarnation in terms of immanence instead of intervention, as Brian Hebblethwaite does in criticizing AIan Race:

He sees it as involving divine intervention from outside, failing entirely to appreciate that God's own personal self-presentation in Jesus Christ takes immanence to its furthest point - not just universal presence within the created world, but particular presence in person. There immanence is focused in an individual who actually is the divine Son.31

However if Jesus simply represents the ultimate degree of divine immanence in man that does not make him different in kind from others, someone I who actually is the divine Son'.

I reiterate, then, that an interventionist theology seems highly implausible, but supposing, for the sake of argument, that the whole issue, including the possibility of an incarnation, is still completely open, we must next inquire why God would become incarnate?

4 Why Would God Become

Incarnate?

1. Deliverance From Tyranny or Natural Disaster

At a basic level there are just four grounds on which it might initially seem plausible for an interventionist God to become incarnate, but, on examination, it appears that none of these provides a strong, let alone a compelling reason to do so; at most, some of them could give rise to a certain constraint on God to become man, but only on the strict presupposition that he is readily and indisputably recognizable as God-man, a condition no reputed historical incarnation could meet. These grounds are, firstly, to rescue mankind, or perhaps more specifically God's faithful people, from some natural calamity or from tyranny; secondly, to make a decisive revelation of his will and nature, or of urgently needed facts about the world; thirdly, to effect some great spiritual deliverance, an act of cosmic salvation or atonement; and finally, to identify himself personally with man in his spiritual pilgrimage and in his struggle against evil and misfortune. Admittedly, there is considerable overlap between these various motivations, but it is still best to examine them separately.

One's immediate reaction to the first of these grounds - to save people from some crushing catastrophe or injustice - may well be that this looks a more than adequate reason for an incarnation, but it does not take long to realize that a God already credited with specific and stupendous acts within history has no need whatever to take this dramatic step in order to secure deliverance from physical disaster or military oppression. Why, for instance, should the interventionist God portrayed in the Old Testament become man to free his worshippers from danger or hardship when, strictly as God, he is represented as forewarning of flood

38

Why Would God Become Incarnate? 39

and famine (Gen. 6 and 41), facilitating an escape from Egyptian slavery by directing the wind to divide the Red Sea (Ex. 14.21), ensuring victory against the Amorites by raining huge hailstones upon them (Jos. 10~11), and even relieving a siege of Jerusalem by sending an angel to slay 185,000 men in one night (2 Kings 19.35)! At most, he might need the presence of an efficient leader or prophet, but certainly would not need to take direct visible command as a God-man. Correspondingly, we must judge that whilst the divine intention expressed in the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita is undeniably a most laudable one, it is at the same time completely unnecessary: 'For whensoever the law fails and lawlessness uprises, then do I bring myself to bodied birth. To guard righteousness, to destroy evildoers, to establish the law, I come into birth age after age'.1

We conclude, therefore, that this first ground for becoming incarnate is totally unpersuasive, and, in any case, no one today seriously upholds the doctrine on these terms.

2. Disclosure of Divine Will and Nature

What, however, of the claim that an incarnation is necessary for purposes of divine revelation, understood in its basic sense of God imparting knowledge about himself, or about man, or the universe? Actually in this respect one could, on first thoughts, make an apparently strong case for an interventionist God becoming incarnate, namely, to reveal urgently needed life-saving, pain-saving or poverty-saving knowledge about the world, yet knowledge beyond the capacity of people in the current state of medical or scientific development to grasp unless it was somehow demonstrated to them by a supernatural visitant. Such intervention would indeed seem a moral imperative to avoid the horrific alternative of man having to grope to such knowledge through observing the agonies and deaths of millions of human sufferers, not to mention the tortures of millions of animals in research laboratories. On second thoughts, however, it dawns on us that we have no reason whatever for supposing that the supernatural visitant must be a God-man, and not just an angel, angelic messengers being an integral part of interventionist theology. Hence this initially promising rationale for an incarnation quickly collapses, and perhaps not surprisingly has never formed part of the apologetic defence of the doctrine. That defence, insofar as it relies on revelation, has rather been that an incarnation is indispensable to a really full or religiously adequate


disclosure of God's nature and purposes, the emphasis necessarily being on the supreme quality of such a unique unveiling of divine truth, so as not to undermine other accredited revelations. But is this a cogent argument?

In considering such a claim we must distinguish between those holding propositional and non-propositional views of revelation. From the former standpoint there is absolutely no need for an incarnation for revelatory purposes, for if the prophetic 'Thus saith the Lord' means precisely what it says, then any further and fuller revelation clearly requires nothing more than a further and fuller inspiration of some prophetic figure. In this context A. J. Pringle-Pattison's objection to the alleged necessity of Christ's incarnation seems final: 'in order to give us authentic tidings of the character of God, Jesus did not require actually to be God'.2

Dismissing this quotation as implying an intellectualist conception of truth, and insisting that 'What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific Revelation is not truth concerning God but the living God Himself', revelation being essentially 'the appreciation by divinely enlightened minds of divinely directed occurrences', William Temple went on to argue that 'for fullness of Revelation the occurrence should take the form of personal life of such sort as to be intelligible to, and elicit sympathy from, those persons to whom the revelation is given; it must be no mere theophany, but an Incarnation'.3 Ignoring the fact that the first statement just quoted really describes religious experience in general rather than revelation, what is to be said for this thesis that non-propositional revelation must climax in incarnation?

In its favour we could cite the fact that all of us reveal our true natures more by our deeds and personalities than by our words, and, recognizing this, it might seem sheer perversity to question that a God who came amongst us as a God-man could be known more fully than a God of whom we are merely aware through mystical experience; but in fact this is true only on one crucial condition - that the incarnate deity is immediately and unmistakably identifiable as such. Without such clear identification it is nonsensical to emphasize, as do various apologists, an alleged sharp contrast between God's indirect communication with man through prophets and his direct personal dialogue with man through incarnation. Thus Brian Hebblethwaite is adamant that 'the Incarnation represents a new and much more direct, face-to-face way of personal encounter this side of the divide between infinite and finite than is envisaged in


the modes of inspiration or illumination' 4 In theory that sounds impressive, but in practice the difference fades into insignificance once it has to be conceded, as he does elsewhere,S that in the light of modem critical biblical scholarship it is 'highly implausible' that Jesus ever thought of himself as divine. But in that case, what is left of 'a new and much more direct, face-to-face way of personal encounter'? At best, it could only be a retrospective, and by no means unquestionable interpretation of events, and that applies no less to other alleged incarnations.

Nevertheless, the assumption that revelation must be incomplete without incarnation is firmly entrenched. Illustrating this further from the Christian tradition we find David Brown taking issue with Maurice Wiles over the latter's assertion that 'the revelation of God in Jesus Christ points to a God whose love knows no limits'. Brown comments that 'With revelation understood in its traditional significance and something like the orthodox notion of Incarnation accepted, there would be no problem', 6 but he questions if Wiles, having rejected an interventionist incarnation, can really affirm the limitless love of God, although he surprisingly concedes 'the possibility of knowing through natural theology the perfect goodness of God? which for most people would surely entail his limitless love. Leaving that aside, Brown's criticisms might be understandable if the incarnation itself, and its presumed motivation, were near certainties, but when, on the contrary, the occurrence of an incarnation is widely disputed amongst theists, and can only be accepted by an additional leap of faith, then that conviction hardly provides the basis for a more confident affirmation about the immeasurable depths of divine love. Frankly, if the teaching of Jesus on the fatherhood of God - and I cannot see that there is a missing dimension in that portrait - doesn't authenticate itself as being inherently probable, and as reconcilable with the problem of evil, then that teaching is unlikely to appear more credible and more complete if only we accept a miraculous incarnation.

It is worth noting, in passing, that it is precisely those theologians who place the greatest emphasis on the personality of Jesus as 'perfect man', 'the human face of God',s etc., who, as defenders of the functional meaning of incarnation, explicity deny that God, or 'God the Son', literally became man in Jesus. In other words, not even a supreme instance of revealing 'truth through personality' would require an ontological incarnation: not that we can assume, incidentally, that such an instance, if it happened, must be unique,


for surely the revelation of God through the total openness, obedience and loving service of a truly God-centred person would be far greater if it happened repeatedly, and not just as an isolated example!

Still on the revelatory motive for incarnation we must allow for the possibility that this is expressed primarily or almost exclusively in one specific, costly and heroic action of the God-man, just as ordinary men best reveal their true natures through their response to some particular crisis demanding resolution and courage. To be a really impressive revelation it must involve the God-man not just overcoming deeply wounded feelings, but reaching out in love to the extent of accepting a high risk of physical suffering and even of death itself. And that, many will insist, is precisely what is exemplified in Christ's incarnation, where the primary focus must be on the tragic event of his crucifixion, so much so that for most traditional believers 'Christianity was Crosstianity',9 as Gerald Priestland puts it. Furthermore, the real motivation for his dying on the cross, according to the moral influence theory, was to disclose in the most moving manner the forgiving love of God. But it could only do that, if, yet again, it is reasonably evident to all that such an amazing exhibition of suffering and forgiving love is in fact that of a God-man, and not just of a supreme saint; otherwise it fails to fulfil the revelatory purpose of becoming incarnate. (Actually, it will be argued in Chapter 11 that the crucifixion is readily explicable on purely historical grounds, with no need to see it as part of any divine plan, but at this point we are only thinking of the general principle of revelatory self-sacrifice as a motive for incarnation.) Apart from this identification requirement, it must be objected that a revelatory motive for any heroic action is, of necessity, secondary to a more basic aim to help or save the person or persons in need or in danger. It is love itself, not a concern to publicize that love, that compels one to dive into a swollen river or dash into a burning building to rescue another human being or even an animal, whereas risking, let alone losing one's life for no good cause, other than to prove one's love, proves only one's obsession to the accepted, loved and respected. I submit, therefore, that any moral influence theory, explaining incarnation and its presumed climax solely in revelatory terms, is insufficient, being parasitic on some more direct motivation for God becoming man.

But even if there were no doubts about the identity of the God-man or the revelatory purpose of allowing himself to be put


to death, that act still would not rank as the ultimate unveiling of self-giving love, for, as John Hick has argued, a moving story about martyrdom which 'makes perfectly good sense when told about a good human being, loses its point when the victim is said to be God himself. For whilst a human being can make the supreme sacrifice by giving his life for others, God cannot. God incarnate would know that his "death" could only be temporary'.IO Those stressing kenoticism might deny that the divine victim had such foreknowledge, but I find the notion of God incarnate dying in ignorance of his destiny even harder to swallow. To summarize, we have found that revelation, depending on how it is interpreted, either gives no justification at all for an incarnation, or else a very limited justification strictly conditional on the God-man being readily identifiable.

3. Effecting the Spiritual Salvation of Mankind

We turn next to the more common if not classical defence of incarnation as allegedly vital to man's spiritual salvation - 'who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven ... and was incarnate', to quote the familiar words of the Nicene creed. This notion will only have prima Jacie plausibility if salvation is understood as necessarily entailing some dramatic redemptive event, some sort of metaphysical or quasi-legal transaction - but does it?

'Salvation', as Geoffrey Lampe reminds us in God as Spirit, 'is a word which can be used at many different levels of meaning', including 'physical wholeness, or good health ... national liberation and social justice', but, he adds later, it 'is essentially a relationship to God, and it can be received only by way of repentance, in the full and proper sense of a reorientation of human personality so as to become open to God's 10ve'.11 Except for the minor qualification that what is 'received' is forgiveness and love, thus creating or restoring a living personal relationship to God, I would firmly endorse that description, and would join with many others in making the further claim that this process of salvation, for it is a process rather than a single act, although it may include certain decisive moments, is exemplified in the parable of the Prodigal Son, that moving portrait of an ever-loving father forgiving and re-establishing a personal friendship with his truly penitent child. Why is it, I ask, that this simple yet profound analogy of God's relationship with man has to be dismissed as inadequate, if not


simplistic, because it contains no reference to an incarnate mediator playing some vital role in bringing about this restored fellowship between father and son?

Replying to this type of question, and having just quoted Paul Wemle: 'How miserably all those finely constructed theories of sacrifice and vicarious atonement crumble to pieces before this faith in the love of God our Father, who so gladly pardons! The one parable of the Prodigal Son wipes them all off the slate', Donald Baillie posed another question: 'Is there no difference between a good-natured indulgence and a costly reconciliation? . .. Is His forgiveness facile and cheap?'; and assuming forthwith that Wemle and others must be guilty of misrepresenting God as a kindly over-indulgent parent, he adds: 'The classical expression of this is the oft-quoted words of the dying Heine: "God will forgive me: that is His business "'.12

Replying, in turn, to Baillie's charges we would simply observe that they are utterly irrelevant to the parable just cited - the prodigal did not arrogantly assume that his father would light-heartedly condone his misdeeds, nor did he seek to escape the natural consequences of squandering his fortune. What he sought and received was not fresh capital but forgiveness and reconciliation. As for his father, any suggestion that because he ran out to welcome his son home, and ordered a feast to celebrate his return, he must therefore have been making light of his sins, and not taking them seriously, is an obvious perversion of the parable. Real forgiveness, especially when the betrayal and disloyalty has been deeply hurtful, is always costly, never cheap, and that is true even where there is no question of releasing the offender from repaying debts or making reparations. I reiterate, therefore, that if, as in this parable, the relationship of God to man is modelled on the ideal human father's relationship to his family, then there seems no reason why salvation requires some further transaction such as an incarnation.

Although tempted to let the case rest at this point, we must nevertheless look at possible reasons why this model may not, after all, be sufficient, but in doing so there is no need to review every conceivable theory of atonement, or mixture of such theories, for in some respects they overlap extensively. Thinking in general terms, and excluding the moral influence theory already considered, we can in fact reduce the supposed necessary links between salvation and incarnation to three main, although by no means absolutely distinct, types, namely, those holding (I), that either human nature


as such, or else all human beings collectively, have become so depraved as to be beyond redemption unless a God-man represents them and reconciles them to their Maker; or (2), that only a God-man could rescue us from the dreadful consequences of sin; or (3), that only a God-man could meet the reputedly essential conditions of divine forgiveness in terms of 'satisfaction' or perfect sacrifice.

If the first of these rested solely on the traditional notion of human nature being totally corrupted by the 'fall' of a literal Adam, but somehow magically restored by a 'second Adam', who for this purpose had to become man, because 'what is not assumed is not healed',13 then it would not deserve serious attention by anyone accepting the Genesis story as a myth or parable, and also accepting man's evolutionary origins; but in fact this type of rationale for an incarnation can and has been presented without any reference to Adam. Thus Richard Swinburne argues, somewhat tentatively, that if 'the human race gets into a really bad mess', then God

might conclude that things had gone so wrong that an atonement was needed; that the human race ought by sacrificial action to show to its creator and to itself its contrition. Yet he might also conclude that it was not within the capacity of a fallen race to make this kind of atonement. .. God could insist on the sacrifice of none other but himself. So God has a reason to bring about an incarnation of some kind of himself as man in order that atonement might be made.14

Leaving aside until later the question of sacrifice, and concentrating on the reference to the human race being unable to express its contrition adequately, and its consequent need of a God-man to do so on its behalf, I believe that this rests on two extremely dubious assumptions, namely, that we can speak meaningfully of the whole human race in the context of repentance and forgiveness, and, quite separate from this, that our penitence needs to be perfect, and hence we must rely on the vicarious perfect penitence of an incarnate being to be acceptable to God.

On the former issue, admittedly, there could be contexts in which we tend to speak holistically of the human race being guilty and punishable, as in discussing the prospects of mankind becoming extinct through culpable neglect of environmental pollution and exploitation, or through suicidal nuclear confrontation, thus destroying the heritage of the past as well as present and future


fulfilment. But whilst such talk is intelligible, it is, strictly speaking, inaccurate, for the guilt attaches, not to mankind as such, but only to recent generations, and indeed only to some sections of these generations, and correspondingly, it could only be the present or a future generation which would be punished. The impropriety of thinking in terms of our guilt as a species is still more glaring when considered in relation to God, for a firm belief in his love and justice must inevitably imply that he deals with us as individuals and not as nations or races, still less as the human race. It must imply nothing less than Jeremiah's vision of children no longer suffering for the sins of their fathers, although that cannot be excluded here on earth; rather, 'every one shall die for his own sin; each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge' (Jer. 31.30 RSV). Hence any notion of human solidarity ever since homo sapiens evolved as somehow entailing corporate culpability for sin just does not seem to make sense, philosophically or religiously. This, of course, is in no way to question the appropriateness of public, even worldwide, expressions of contrition before God, but merely to insist that they have value only insofar as they reflect and help to articulate the individual penitence of those participating in them.

On the second assumption, I would argue that, except for those who still believe that because of Adam's sin we all suffer from 'blindness of mind, a reprobate sense ... hardness of heart, horror of conscience', as the answer to Question 28 in the Presbyterian Larger Catechism puts it, there is no apparent reason why people should be regarded as inherently incapable of realizing their sinfulness, being truly remorseful, and honestly confessing those sins to God. Such penitence will almost inevitably be imperfect - even the greatest saints can have blind spots, in spite of their constant soul-searching, stimulated by what they read, hear or witness; but then, surely what God requires of us in seeking his forgiveness is not total self-understanding, and consequent total contrition, but an openness to correction and self-appraisal, and a sincere regret for our perceived failures, coupled with a renewed commitment to his service. With clear evidence of these qualities a loving human father would unhesitatingly forgive his erring child, even if it had taken harsh criticism or experiencing the harsh consequences of wrong attitudes or actions to prompt a real repentance, and it seems monstrous to suggest that a loving Heavenly Father would react differently, as if he was an austere sovereign only approachable through an accredited intermediary,


or else a harsh judge before whom man needs a skilled celestial lawyer to plead his case. Consequently, I can see no justification whatever for speculating that the incompleteness of our penitence must make it so ineffective that it needs to be supplemented by the perfect vicarious penitence of a God-man. Quite frankly, the whole notion of vicarious penitence, as developed by writers such as McLeod Campbell and R. C. Moberly,lS seems suspect, and is certainly very limited; a person's unfeigned apology may be fully acceptable on behalf of a child, but not on behalf of a competent adult who cannot be bothered to apologize personally, or has only done so in a casual manner. The concept of vicarious penitence in fact undermines man's direct filial relationship to God.

Turning next to the theory that only a God-man could rescue us from the dreadful consequences of sin, partly in this but mainly in the next world, we begin as before with a positive statement affirming that the primary consequence of sin is alienation from God, and only in a secondary sense is it punishment. Correspondingly, our primary concern should be to restore that broken fellowship and not to escape any discipline, even severe discipline, which a loving God knows to be necessary for our continuing growth towards full spiritual maturity. If this sounds idealistic we need only recall that in everyday life those who become really sensitive to having inflicted a grave injury on family or colleagues desire above everything else their forgiveness and renewed friendship, and not to 'get away with' their crime or misconduct; on the contrary, they fully accept and may even welcome the appropriate punishment, such as paying damages or making restitution, and of course there are more personal and social punishments, the awful feelings of remorse and the loss of public esteem, which cannot be avoided anyway. If, therefore, what man needs above all is to be rescued from a state of alienation from God, then it seems evident that the only vital condition for ending this estrangement or primary consequence of sin is heartfelt penitence, including a readiness to forgive others and redress the wrongs committed. There certainly appears to be no reason why a God-man must play any part in re-establishing a positive relationship between penitent man and his Father-God.

It is only, I suggest, when the consequences of sin are interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, almost exclUSively in terms of damnation and punishmpnt, (lno, correspondingly, salvation is principally understood as escaping such punishment, that the idea of a Godman performing some crucial role in the drama can be given a


certain pre-critical credibility. Thus on the assumption that because of sin mankind needs to be ransomed from enslavement to a real and near-omnipotent devil it is arguable that only a divine, and most definitely no mere human, hostage or hostages could fit that demand, and God therefore had to become an incarnate victim to secure man's release. Apart, however, from earlier criticism about speaking holistically of sin and salvation, and apart also from the fact that many of us de mythologize the devil as involving an unwarranted dualism of spiritual powers, the whole notion of God paying a ransom to anyone, and in particular to Satan, strikes us as crude and incredible, and as employed within the Christian tradition it really amounted to emancipation through trickery, the death of the divine hostage being less than a two-day tragedy.

Again, the idea of an incarnate being heroically taking upon himself the just punishment of mankind by offering to suffer and die in our place (and only an incarnate being, it is assumed, could do this) can have tremendous emotive appeal, especially when illustrated by true stories such as that of an innocent young man volunteering to substitute himself for one of ten suspected guerrilla sympathizers about to face a firing squad, because he wanted to save an older man who had a large family to support, but, on reflection, the whole penal substitution theory of atonement is simply incredible. Its popularity largely depends on exaggerating the appropriate punishment, commonly envisaged as prolonged torture in hell, and then personalizing the issue - 'He died for me' - as if one individual's sins demanded such a drastic remedy. The fundamental objection, however, is to the underlying premise, namely, that in some objective sense all sins must receive their full punishment, that irrespective of whether the sinner is still unrepentant or is now wholly reformed, somebody, either the evildoer or another person, must pay the full price. Keeping in mind that we are not thinking about the natural consequences of our sins, which in some instances can be very severe for others as well as ourselves, but about their proper and personal punishment, and remembering also that the aim of human punishment at its best is to reform the evildoer and not just to deter others or satisfy some principle of retribution, we must surely conclude that the purpose of divine punishment can be no less remedial in character, urgently seeking through punitive discipline in a life hereafter to reform and perfect each soul in its ongoing spiritual pilgrimage, rather than meeting out punitive suffering in strict proportion to sin. A vital


implication of this view is that divine punishment must be borne by the offender, even if others sympathetically share it with him, and it rules out any notion of human sin collectively piling up like mountains of bad debts before God, which can only be cleared by some collosal repayment beyond the scope of human beings, and allegedly requiring the sacrificial death of God incarnate.

The third type of theory postulating a vital connection between salvation and incarnation stresses that only a God-man could meet the necessary conditions of divine forgiveness, apart, that is, from human penitence. We note two basic versions of this standpoint, one making God's pardon depend on the satisfaction of his honour, and the other on the offering of blood sacrifice. According to the former, God's honour is outraged by human disobedience, but, rather than destroy the human race because of its wickedness, God is graciously willing to accept satisfaction in place of punishment, 'satisfaction' here meaning an equivalent compensation for the injury sustained. However, because man's sin is an infinite offence against God it correspondingly requires an infinite satisfaction, but no finite being or beings could provide this; only a God-man, by surrendering himself to a cruel death, could pay such a price, and hence God in his mercy had to become incarnate to save mankind. Like the last theory, this one also can evoke strong emotional approval, but at the intellectual level it is not just far from self-evident but apparently self-contradictory, in that it would seem impossible for finite beings, individually or collectively, to commit an infinite sin, not that any of us can have a clear idea of what that might involve. Furthermore, 1 would claim that the basic notion of forgiveness being contingent on receiving satisfaction, in the sense of the divine honour being vindicated by the voluntary death of a God-man identifying with sinners, is simply incomprehensible. Going back to the parable of the Prodigal Son, the only 'satisfaction' we can imagine the father demanding was his son's true penitence, or, at most, behaviour confirming this, but any further demands in order to satisfy his honour would seem inconsistent and improper, convincing us that God the rigorous judge had replaced God the loving Father.

The contention that salvation necessarily presupposes sacrifice, and moreover a sinless sacrifice for which the only possible candidate would be a God-man, leaves many of us even more bewildered. Historically, it may have been accepted that 'under [Old Testament] law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins' (Hebrews 9.22


RSV), but that strikes the critical modern mind as not only totally untrue but morally revolting. Nor do attempts to spiritualize and moralize the idea of sacrifice make it more acceptable and meaningful. Admittedly, self-sacrifice can sometimes lead to forgiveness and reconciliation, as when, for instance, the leader of an alienated minority gives his life to rescue someone from the rival majority community, thereby ending hostility towards the smaller group because of some previous offence, but whilst this is psychologically understandable, no humane and rational leader would desire such sacrifice as the price of pardon and renewed fellowship. To make the illustration more relevant to incarnation we would have to suppose that the heroic minority leader was in fact the son of the majority leader, but that does not make the alleged necessity of blood sacrifice as a condition of forgiveness any more plausible.

Looking back over the various theories affirming that incarnation is essential to salvation I have to conclude that, when evaluated, none of them impresses me as having any persuasive force, and judging by the rather hesitant and often perplexed reactions to this whole issue as recorded by Gerald Priestland in Chapter 5, 'Jesus Saves - or Does He?', of his book Priestland's Progress I am by no means alone. Perhaps it is no wonder that John A. T. Robinson conceded in Honest to God that 'the whole schema of a supernatural Being coming down from heaven to "save" mankind from sin, in the way that a man might put his finger into a glass of water to rescue a struggling insect, is frankly incredible to man "come of age", who no longer believes in such a deus ex machina'.16 These pages have at least tried to spell out the reasons for such disbelief, and in doing so I would echo Geoffrey Lampe's verdict that 'it is hard to see how the salvation of man, understood in any but a very superficial sense, can be effected in a single act of God in history'.17

4. Identification with Suffering Humanity

Like the first, the fourth reason why it might seem a divine duty to become incarnate requires only brief consideration, for whilst identification with suffering humanity is always commendable, that on its own, and especially if the complete explanation of a one-off event, can hardly be judged an adequate motivation.

Actually, the attractiveness of the whole idea would appear to stem largely from a number of inappropriate models, such as that of a great and good king condescending to live for a while


amongst ordinary people in order to learn through direct experience about their harsh living conditions, so that he can subsequently improve them, or, alternatively, a king courageously visiting the battlefront to encourage his troops, bringing direct counsel and leadership instead of merely communicating through emissaries. These models, however, are very misleading. In the first place there must be no insinuation that a loving omniscient God needs to go on some sort of fact-finding mission, discovering for himself what our human predicament is like (despite numerous allusions in devotional and even in theological literature to his understanding our needs and limitations because for a time he was one of us), and hence the sole aim of identification could only be to assure man of his sympathetic concern by 'standing beside' him in his trials and troubles. Surprisingly, it was John Hick, writing several years before he edited The Myth of God Incarnate, who expressed this point most tellingly. Following a reference to the life of Christ, he adds: 'For there we see the Love which has ordained the long, costly soulmaking process entering into it and sharing with us its inevitable pains and suffering ')8 More forcefully, Brian Hebblethwaite writes: 'No doubt it is possible to express sympathy and sorrow indirectly through someone else. But there is all the difference in the world between the sending of condolences and actually bearing the brunt of the suffering oneself'.19 Now, unquestionably, one's natural reaction to this tends to be one of approval. It certainly seems the sort of thing a good God would do. But that approval, I suggest, rests on a further assumption that it would happen, not as an isolated social visit during a period of relative peace, but repeatedly during the darkest hours of human history, in times of enslavement, genocide, famine and other major tragedies, and may reasonably be expected to happen again and again in the future if man continues to pass through periods of horrific suffering. As noted at the beginning of the Chapter, Hinduism, but not Christianity, allows for this. There is also the uncomfortable thought that if an interventionist omnipotent God can thus, even once, enter human history to share man's sorrows, yet does nothing to remove the source of those sorrows, the value of such sympathetic sharing is drastically diminished. In brief, for such a God identification without physical deliverance is not enough.

Coming back to the model of the king visiting the battlefront, this is also misleading in that it suggests a theophany rather than an incarnation, and so must be amended to tell of a king sending


his only son on such a mission, but surely there would be no point in sending him unless he carried proper credentials, so that his royal (or for an incarnate being his divine) status could readily be recognized! To put it bluntly, if Cod's purpose is to demonstrate his identification with man through incarnation, then that necessarily depends on man's identification of a fellow man as Cod incarnate, and where the vast majority of mankind dispute or deny that Jesus, or Cotama, or any other, was such a God-man, it would seem that either the reputed aim of incarnation has signally failed, or else the whole plan did not exist in the first place. Anyway, those firmly believing that God is fundamentally a loving Father are already assured that he constantly shares their joys and sorrows, and understands their trials and tribulations, and hence there is no need for an incarnation to conveyor reinforce that assurance.

I judge therefore that none of the four theories we have examined, nor indeed all of them together, constitute an effective reply to the ancient question: Cur Deus homo? But supposing once more that I have misjudged the evidence, or overlooked some decisive motivation for God becoming man, the likelihood of such an event would further depend on being able to give a credible reply to the question 'How could God become incarnate?'.

5 How Could God Become

Incarnate?

1. Defining the Issues Involved

One cannot ask this question without being acutely aware that it sounds arrogantly presumptuous, as if man is claiming complete knowledge of his Maker and can readily determine the scope of divine action; nevertheless the question is unavoidable. The affinnation that God became man cannot simply be accepted by faith as an unquestionable fact or incomprehensible mystery, neither requiring nor admitting of any rational investigation. Hence, whilst we may admire the candour of H. D. Lewis, we cannot agree with his conclusion: 'if I am pressed to say how we can possibly make any sense of the Christian idea of incarnation I must reply at once that I cannot and that it is a great mistake of many theologians today to try'.1 He hastens to add, however, that he does not 'believe blindly', yet surely it is this non-blindness which demands that some explanation be attempted as to how God could become incarnate, that being all the more imperative in view of widespread charges that the whole concept of incarnation is incoherent, that in 'speaking of God being a part of his own creation or a part of that creation being God. Primn facie this does seem ... to involve a logical self-contradiction. '2

In order to examine this complex issue and appreciate its inherent problems we must try to specify more precisely what is meant by incarnation in its ontological sense, being mindful that even its staunchest defenders concede that 'it is by no means a clear-cut, easily comprehensible and fully articulated concept. We do not grasp the essence of incarnation any more than we grasp the essence of God'.3 For present purposes, however, it is sufficient to indicate that any such phenomenon would entail the twin paradoxes of how

53


an incarnate person could have two natures and how two divine persons could be one God.

Unlike a theophany or mere transient appearance of God in human (although not necessarily human) form, an ontological incarnation implies that God, or a mode of God, actually becomes a historical person who is both fully human and fully divine, as exponents of the doctrine insist, and not just God in the guise of a man, and hence the two natures problem to be considered presently. Furthermore, insofar as the incarnate being is understood to be conscious of his (or her) distinct personhood in relation to a transcendent 'Father God', yet at the same time is not regarded as a completely separate deity, we have, secondly, the enigma of how two divine persons could essentially be one. Nor is this problem confined to the incarnation period, for the incarnate person, simply because he (or she) is divine, cannot have come into existence in time, more exactly at the moment of conception when human nature was assumed, but must have existed from all time, and thus we have the question of an eternal binity (or trinity, if three persons are involved). For convenience we will refer to this pre-existing subject as the pre-incarnate, although strictly speaking post-incarnate existence is also entailed.4 In traditional Christian theology this explains why the subject of the incarnation is not God simpliciter, but the eternal Logos, or Word, or Son. But can one consistently maintain (1), that a historical person could be vere deus et vere homo, and (2), that there can be two persons in one God, or does this mean 'in effect the abandonment of monotheism, for such a relation between God the Son and God the Father is incompatible with the requirement of monotheism that we predicate of God one mind, one will, and one single operation?'5

2. Could a Person be Fully Human and Fully Divine?

I shall argue that whilst such a God-man concept cannot be shown to be a blatant impossibility, its coherence is so extremely dubious that any factual claim embodying it must be treated as highly suspect, and hence as initially very implausible. Many, of course, have pressed the stronger charge of total absurdity. Writing about the two natures formula in The Myth of God Incarnate John Hick declared that 'orthodoxy has never been able to give this idea any content. It remains a form of words without any assignable meaning ... as devoid of meaning as to say that this circle drawn with a pencil on

How Cauld God Become Incarnate? 55

paper is also a square'.6 This view was reiterated in Incarnation and Myth, affirming that modern Christological debates still have not succeeded in 'squaring the circle by making intelligible the claim that one who was genuinely and unambiguously a man was also genuinely and unambiguously God? Against this I would endorse Michael Goulder's criticism that Hick is going too far in 'comparing the doctrine to a square circle, i.e. to transparent nonsense: but that it is apparent nonsense seems evident'.s The reason why Hick and others must be judged to go too far is that God and man are not simple concepts like square and circle, making a square circle a clear contradiction. In particular, God's nature is not something man fully comprehends. There is therefore some weight in Brian Hebblethwaite's protest: 'Who are we to say that the essence of God is such as to rule out the possibility of his making himself present in the created world as a human being, while in no way ceasing to be the God he ever is?'9 Replying to this, Hick makes the obvious point that our limited grasp of God's nature cuts both ways, and should equally forbid any confident assertions that God can and has become incarnate, but whilst this is true, and needs to be emphasized, it still does not justify the square circle allegation.

The real issue to be faced is whether an incarnation would be compatible with man's partial understanding of the divine nature, as discerned through thought and experience, and also with the generally accepted understanding of human nature. To be more explicit, it is a question of whether a particular person could consistently combine what are believed to be the essential properties or attributes of God and the essential properties of man, and this immediately seems unlikely the moment one lists some of the main properties traditionally ascribed to God - omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality and necessity (i.e. not depending for his existence on other beings), for in each respect man is characterized by the negation of that property, being inherently limited in power, knowledge, location and time, as well as being contingent - owing his existence to others. That anyone could exhibit both sets of properties certainly appears at first sight to be impossible, yet it has not only been affirmed as a fact but as a coherent fact, so we must now examine the strategies involved in what looks like a defence of the indefensible. What definitely is indefensible is the attitude of those who do not just concede the irrationality of the God-man concept from the standpoint of human reasoning but exalt this into a virtue, treating the whole doctrine


as a divine paradox beyond the power of human comprehension, as H. M. Relton: 'It postulates a logical impossibility. .. But the Person of Ouist is the bankruptcy of human logic',lo a modem echo of Tertullian's 'Credo quia absurdum est '.

Basically, there are two ways of trying to explain how an incarnate deity could be fully human and fully divine, although there are in fact several versions of each approach, and numerous writers combine elements from both of them. One alternative seeks to specify a sense in which the essentially divine and human properties can be possessed by the same person at the same time, whilst the other alternative, the kenotic theory, holds that the pre-incarnate must temporally divest himself of those divine attributes which are incompatible with human nature, reassuming these again in his post-incarnate state. The difference between the two strategies is highlighted if kenosis is interpreted in the rather extreme form attacked by Donald Baillie but recently defended by David Brown, implying that in the Christian incarnation Christ was 'God and Man, not simultaneously ... but successively - first divine, then human, then God again'.l1 Brown writes of 'the divine nature literally abandoning its characteristic divine powers and thus experiencing a kenosis or self-emptying which reduces it to a human nature', and to underline the contrast between the two views he claims, somewhat questionably, that whilst the first 'thinks of Christ as God-man, the Kenotic model conceives of Ouist as the God who became man'.l2

3. The Kenotic Explanation

We look first at the kenotic theory, commencing with what we may term the total kenosis version, involving the renunciation not only of the metaphysical but also of the moral attributes of divinity, although deliberately relinquishing the latter in itself seems highly immoral, except insofar as entailed by the suspension of omniscience and related attributes. Upholding this total version, David Brown criticizes Thomasius, one of the early exponents of kenosis, because he 'exempts the divine ethical attributes from the process of kenosis, a supposition of doubtful coherence in so far as it undermines Christ's full humanity')3 But if all the distinctively divine attributes are set aside, it is surely the alleged full divinity of the incarnate person that is being ruled out! In what sense could divinity still be predicated? Brown's answer is that 'he is nonetheless divine because of the continuity that exists between

How Could God Become Incarnate? 57

this purely human nature and his pre-existent divine nature',14 and he defends the coherence of this notion as being no different from that of 'the reincarnation of a human being as some inferior animal nature'.15 Assuming, for present purposes, that such reincarnation is feasible, and that there are reasonable grounds for believing that it had actually happened, the point is that no one would seriously describe the 'inferior animal' as fully or authentically human, not even if there was apparent recognition of persons and places relating to a former human existence, implying a non-total amnesia or kenosis of memory. Correspondingly, if 'God incarnate' merely meant that a historical person secretly possessed a divine soul, let alone a soul emptied of all divine attributes, there is no way in which such a person could properly be described as truly divine, or in any sense divine if kenosis is complete. Hence there seems no reason to disagree with Baillie's verdict that if 'He has divested Himself of the distinctively divine attributes' this 'would imply, if language means anything, that in becoming human He ceased to be divine',16 or Ritschl's similar conclusion that, for the strong kenoticist, 'Christ, at least in His earthly existence, has no Godhead at all',17 These criticisms are mild compared with the sarcasm of Biedermann on the ultra kenoticism of Gess, that it required a 'kenosis of the understanding' IS to believe it.

Kenosis, however, does not have to be total, though neither does it have to be totally insignificant, as in the popular Kierkegaard illustration of the prince who discards his royal robes to woo a lowly maiden as an ordinary man, and in fact early advocates of the theory held that the incarnate being only emptied himself of the divine attributes relating to his cosmic functions, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, and retained such attributes as absolute love, holiness and justice. Clarifying this non-total form of kenoticism, Stephen Davis describes the pre-incarnate as temporally giving up those divine attributes which are incompatible with humanity and assuming those human attributes which are compatible with divinity, the essential divine properties retained being 'sufficient to make him truly God', and the essential human properties assumed being 'sufficient to make him truly man'.19 This, of course, still leaves us with the crucial question: which divine attributes, if any, are suspendable without negating one's d· . 'ty? IVlOl •

As regards the metaphysical attributes, some would insist that everyone of them is essential of being divine. 'Since the divine

58 Part 11 - The Prior Improbability of an Incarnation

attributes belong to God not contingently but analytically', argues Don Cupitt, 'it is logically impossible for the deity to doff one like a superfluous piece of clothing'.20 Even Thomas Morris, whilst firmly asserting the coherence of incamationallanguage, acknowledges as 'a standard theistic view' that omnipotence, omniscience and other attributes believed to be constitutive of deity are essential to being God, and hence cannot be temporally given up, and he admits that personally he has a strong sympathy with this view but does not fully endorse it. Nor is he impressed with the qualification that what is indispensable to deity is not, for example, omniscience, but 'the property of being omniscient-unless-freely-and-temporallychoosing-to-be-otherwise',21 countering this with the observation that 'there can be Anselmian intuitions that it is better to be absolutely immune to states of avoidable ignorance than to be capable of such states, and thus that it is omniscience simpliciter which is a requisite of deity, as well as a property any particular divine being must have essentially'.22 Although these general arguments against suspending any divine attributes appear conclusive, a more definite verdict must depend on examining the attributes individually, or at least the main metaphysical ones traditionally ascribed to God, to see if they are really capable of kenosis.

The most plausible candidate for voluntary self-emptying is clearly omnipotence, as the notion of a powerful person limiting his power for a certain period can be readily understood; yet even here there can be a question mark, for if superhuman powers remain available to, although unused by, an incarnate being, it is doubtful if that being can be regarded as authentically human, and that would still seem to be the case even if the available powers were not known to be available. That aside, however, a kenosis of omnipotence is not obviously incoherent. Omniscience, on the other hand, does not seem a legitimate candidate for self-emptying, despite Morris' analogy of Shorty, a spy given a 'limited-amnesia producing pill'23 to ensure that no secrets are betrayed, even under torture, on a dangerous mission (the miracle pill being presumably highly selective in its effects, rubbing out only classified information without impairing other memories or mental abilities!). Since we can only think of divine 'limited-amnesia', if conceivable at all, as occurring by a conscious decision, and since we ourselves cannot consciously choose not to know what we do know, unlike consciously choosing not to exercise powers we possess, it must be extremely doubtful if even God is capable of a kenosis of knowledge, or, in his case,


omniscience. Hastings Rashdall noted a further difficulty. On the supposition that up to the moment of incarnation the divine being 'knew everything - all history, all modern science' etc., he observes that 'it is surely a difficult doctrine to maintain that such a colossal loss of memory, such a profound change of intellectual outlook, such a complete breach of continuity in the consciousness of the Son, was consistent with what we commonly call personal identity'.24 Thirdly, we must ask if an essentially omnipresent deity could become purely localized and still retain his divinity? Such a self-reduction certainly appears contradictory, and continues to be so even when clarified as meaning a self-reduction from being unlimited by space to being temporally limited within it. I, for one, cannot separate the notions of divinity and spiritual availability to all people at all times, without interruption. Hence whilst many may confidently express this aspect of a traditional faith in the lines of Charles Wesley:

Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man

1 would stress that incomprehensibility is not a measure of truth. Although discussions of kenotic theory are often confined to the

three 'O's just considered, there are, of course, other metaphysical attributes, and of these four in particular demand some attention. They can, in fact, be taken in pairs, the first pair being judged incapable of kenosis, and the second pair being improperly attributed to God, except in a very modified or non-metaphysical form. Eternality and necessity definitely seem to be beyond the possibility of kenosis. As Thomas Morris insists: 'An everlasting being cannot lay aside his eternity and begin to exist. A necessary being cannot become contingent. These are logical impossibilities not available even to a God with the most extraordinary powers of self-limitation'.25 His own radical solution, that 'any divine attributes which do not allow of kenosis do not require it either',26 will be considered later. The attributes of immutability, that God cannot change, and impassibility, that he cannot suffer, have figured quite prominently in two natures controversy, but in their literal meanings they are here being deliberately rejected as genuine attributes of God. If God's nature is supremely characterized as compassionate love, then he cannot be totally impassible, and if he is in living relationship with an ever-changing world then he cannot be totally immutable. If the


latter term is to be retained it must be understood as 'more like the steadfastness of a good man than the unalterable properties of a triangle', as W. R. Matthews put it,27 or simply that God 'cannot change in character', the 'weaker' sense of the term defended by Richard Swinburne.28 Hence the question whether immutability and impassibility, when taken literally, are amenable to kenosis is simply irrelevant to the present debate.

I conclude that the keno tic theory does not really provide a viable account of how an incarnate being could be both fully human and fully divine, and still less so when it is further weakened to mean the mere concealment rather than the renunciation of divine attributes. Its attractiveness derives from the over-simplified and, admittedly, coherent mental picture of the saviour-king who sets aside his power and privilege to win men's hearts, if not rescue them from some danger, but when we move from this picture to examine the theory in more detail we find that such self-emptying of divine attributes seems in most instances to be impossible, and even in the case of omnipotence to be very dubious, and hence it cannot cogently explain how a truly historical person could also be God incarnate.

4. Simultaneously Possessing Two Natures

We turn now to the other way of trying to explain how an incarnate being could be truly human and divine, this time assuming the full and simultaneous possession of all properties essential to both natures. As with kenoticism, there are different versions of this approach, but all of them involve serious if not insuperable problems regarding the personal unity of the incarnate being. Besides this, most of them are incompatible with the incarnate's true humanity, whilst some, in openly recognizing that humanity, leave virtually no empirical grounds for postulating a hidden divinity.

Historically, one of the strongest expressions of the view was given by Pope Leo I in his Tome of 499 AD, affirming not only that 'Each nature preserves its own characteristics without diminution', but that 'Each nature performs its proper functions in communion with the other; the Word performs what pertains to the Word, the flesh what pertains to the flesh. The one is resplendent with miracles, the other submits to insults '.29 Such functional dualism, the incarnate being sometimes behaving as God and sometimes as man, is blatantly irreconcilable with Leo's equal insistence on


the 'one person of God and man', as well as conflicting with the inherent limitations of being genuinely human; and the same fundamental difficulties would seem to vitiate all attempts to distinguish between the knowledge, experience and powers appropriate to each nature. Nor can we overcome these difficulties by insisting that it is not the case that 'Jesus, qua God, could do this, and, qua man, could do that', but rather that 'God qua God' has unlimited power and knowledge, but 'God, qua man (i.e. as Jesus)' has all the limitations of a historical person, and that this precludes 'any question of sundering the natures'.30 Against this I would contend that only the use, but not the possession of knowledge or abilities could vary with different roles, and that this applies to both man and God.

The difficulty becomes even more acute when the incarnate being is said to have two consciousnesses, or two minds, as Thomas Morris puts it, although the human consciousness is regarded as somehow contained within the divine consciousness, and not fully aware, if aware at all, of its divine counterpart. Admittedly, this is a minority viewpoint, but it merely explicates the logic of the two natures tradition, especially when this is understood, as in orthodox Christology, to involve two wills, it being virtually impossible to think of a full rational nature and will without a corresponding self-consciousness. (Actually the kenotic theory equally requires a second consciousness if the pre-incarnate is supposed to continue with some uninterruptable cosmic role during the incarnation.)

Those trying to justify the coherence of speaking of one person with two natures or consciousnesses frequently offer little by way of direct argument, but appeal instead to various partial analogies, sometimes coupled with warnings that we must not think too anthropomorphically about the divine nature (as if this excuses any and every departure from the logic of personal concepts), or alleging that our inability to know what it would be like to be a two-natures God-man is no more an objection to that dogma than our inability to know what sonar consciousness is like is an objection to the nature of bats (a dubious parallel, for sonar consciousness, unlike double consciousness, does not contain the least hint of internal contradiction). But do these analogies really vindicate the two natures hypothesis?

To begin with, some analogies must be ruled out as improper because they lie entirely outside the realm of consciousness and personal nature, for example, references to one computer programme or information system containing another, or speculation on the


possibilities of artificial intelligence. Granted, there may be a special sense in which computers may be said to 'think' and 'communicate' and 'share memories', but this seems remote from self-conscious unity at a personal and spiritual level. Almost equally unimpressive are appeals to dreams in which the dreamer is aware that he is one of the characters in the dream, supposedly implying some sort of twofold consciousness combined as one - but does it? The plain fact is that there are practically no limits to what is logically conceivable if dreams and imagination are our criteria of credibility. A more pertinent but still very inadequate analogy is that between the conscious and sub-conscious levels of the human mind, but in fact the force of this analogy relies on surreptitiously upgrading the subconscious mind to a conscious self, as in talk of 'our own internal dialogue between our conscious and subconscious selves '.31

Hence the recognition that normal human nature or consciousness may be subdivided into two levels in itself provides no grounds for legitimizing talk of an abnormal double nature or consciousness.

A related argument is that the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between divine and human attributes, as between divine impassibility and human susceptibility to pain, poses no more of a problem than that of uniting mental and physical attributes in man, something readily achieved, it is alleged, when the mind so triumphs over physical pain that the person can speak of 'suffering gladly'; and likewise, it is urged, the divine perspective on pain can so triumph over the human perspective in the God-man as to justify the term 'impassible'. In reality, however, the phrase 'suffering gladly' only means that the pain, whilst real, is believed to be outweighed by the benefits deriving from it, and it cannot possibly be stretched to mean that physically the person is suffering, but mentally he cannot do so. Nor, more generally, does an integrated response to diverse human experiences justify claims that different natures may be unified in one person.

Finally we must examine the appeal to various factors such as schizophrenia, hypnosis and commissurotomy (surgically dividing the brain and noting how it causes a divided mentality) which suggest that the same individual may have two personalities or ranges of experience, thus apparently providing a simple analogy with the two natures dogma. But the reputed simple analogy is nothing of the sort, for if the patient's divergent responses and behaviour patterns are so marked as to demand that we speak of two natures or personalities (and some are even prepared to speak of


two persons), then what we have seems more accurately described as two personalities in one body, rather than two natures in one person. To avoid having to recognize two distinct personalities (as Jekyll and Hyde!) the argument promptly moves from abnormal and experimental psychology to the ideal situation where there is complete co-operation and no dissonance between the two centres of consciousness, this, together with the analogy between our conscious and subconscious selves, allegedly vindicating the propriety of speaking of one person having two natures.32 In reality, the scene just depicted is one in which it would be nonsensical to postulate a split mentality in the first place, but if for dogmatic reasons we have to acknowledge the presence of two natures, their harmonious interaction at most illustrates the unity of a team or devoted couple, and falls a long way short of self-conscious personal unity, a point we must repeat in the next section.

In an article entitled 'Could God Become Man?'33 Richard Swinburne presents a defence of the Chalcedonian doctrine along similar lines. Having stressed that personal identity depends on the soul, he argues that God could ensure that the soul in a particular embryo, which derived its genes from one or two human parents, 'was his own soul', and he would thus become man, 'one individual with both a divine and human nature '.34 Responding to the difficulty that several New Testament references to Jesus do not seem to fit the picture of an incarnate God, portraying him as growing in wisdom, ignorant of the hour of God's final visitation, unable on one occasion to perform miracles, and even feeling forsaken by God on the cross, Swinburne suggests that all this can be reconciled with orthodoxy 'with the aid of the divided mind', for example, a mother refusing to accept that her son is dead, yet at other times acting in a way which shows that she does accept it, thus having two belief systems. In a not dissimilar fashion, it is claimed, an incarnate God would have two belief or knowledge systems, the divine induding but separate from the human, and so 'God in becoming incarnate will not have limited his powers, but he will have taken on a way of operating which is limited and feels limited'.35 He further maintains that whilst God could not allow himself in becoming incarnate to be liable to wrongdoing, he could allow inadequate human beliefs to make him liable to choose the 'lesser good', and in this sense be tempted.

I submit, however, that the idea of incarnate Perfection wrestling with temptation to do the lesser good is a contradiction, and that it is simply not true that 'there is nothing wrong in putting oneself in


a position where one is liable not to do the best action'.36 A further serious implication of this explanation for orthodox Christians is that words and actions issuing from Jesus' human belief system will not have divine authority. It also seems odd that this ideal of human manhood is not an integrated personality, in that one belief system, the human, is presumably unaware of, and may even conflict with, its divine counterpart. As for the article as a whole, I hope I am not unfair in contrasting the necessary complexity of his thesis with his repeated emphasis in The Existence of God that the simple is a sign of the true; the simple truth about Jesus, as I see it, being that he was totally human, but spiritually God-centred. It would seem, therefore, that reliance on divided minds and related phenomena, apart from being none too complimentary to the incarnate being, does little to advance the intelligibility of the idea of two natures in one person, nor have any of the analogies we have reviewed helped to make it really meaningful.

s. Thomas Morris on Two Natures Compatibility

In The Logic of God Incarnate Thomas Morris propounds the novel thesis that divine and human natures can co-exist in the God-man because those human attributes which are incompatible with divinity, e.g. being contingent (depending on others for our existence), or commencing and ceasing to exist in time, are not really essential, or 'kind-essential', to being human and hence would not have to be assumed in an incarnation. At most, they may be essential to being 'merely human', but not to being 'fully human', no matter how common they may be amongst mankind. Putting it another way, those divine attributes such as necessity and eternality 'which do not allow of kenosis', a strategy he finds unattractive and implausible in any case and only retains as a fall-back position, 'do not require it either, in order to be compatible with incarnation'.37 The radical nature of this proposal becomes more evident if we look at other essential attributes of divinity, for he is actually claiming that an incarnate deity could retain his omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, and still be 'fully human', because 'Such properties as being restricted in knowledge, limited in power, localized in presence, and contingent in existence will be held to be at most essential for being merely human'.38

To assess this strange solution of the two natures problem we must look in more detail at the underlying distinctions, what Morris


calls 'a couple of fairly simple metaphysical distinctions', using which 'we can begin to see how the doctrine of the Incarnation can possibly be true'.39 The distinction between common human properties, i.e. those possessed by most or possibly all human beings, and essential ones, or between commonality and essence as he sometimes puts it, raises no problems. Even properties common to all human beings so far, like being born on the earth's surface, or exceptionally just above it in aeroplanes, are clearly not essential to mankind; babies born in a moon station or in an interplanetary spaceship would be no less human. That an incarnate being need not have all common human properties may therefore be readily conceded.

The crucial distinction is that between being merely and fully human, and it is his interpretation of this contrast which I would definitely reject. Elaborating on the distinction he asks us first to consider a diamond, which is fully physical, but also merely physical. Next, consider an alligator; this again is fully physical, but not merely physical, for it also has properties of animation, being thus fully animate as well as fully physical, but still merely animate. In turn, man is fully physical and fully animate, but not merely physical or merely animate, for in addition he has human rational, aesthetic, moral and spiritual qualities. He is thus fully human, but also merely human. Jesus, however, is said to have been fully but not merely human, being also fully divine, for 'To be merely human is ... to exemplify humanity without also exemplifying any ontologically higher kind, such as divinity'.40

The basic defect in this argument is that it violates the standard meaning of the phrase 'fully human' as established by normallinguistic usage, but, apart from this, it prompts some awkward questions. Taking his four-stage hierarchy - physical, animate, human and divine - are we to conclude that God (not Jesus) is fully physical, animate and human, but merely none of these? Panentheists and Neo-Platonists might see no difficulty here, but most of us certainly do. However, we must concentrate on the primary objection that in its proper meaning the phrase 'fully human' is restrictive in its connotation and exclusive of 'fully divine'.

Before developing that point we must comment briefly on the complementary phrase, 'merely human', maintaining that this normally implies a contrast, not with divinity or other supernatural kinds, but with ideal or above-average humanity. Describing a person as 'merely human', or 'only human', is almost invariably a


way of excusing his or her failure to exhibit some high but attainable ideal of moral integrity, heroism, endurance or practical understanding, and only in jest, or in protest against utterly unreasonable demands or expectations, would there be an implied reference to not possessing supernatural powers or virtues. In brief, the phrase 'merely human', except on rare occasions, is not a disparagement for not being divine but for not being commendably human. To single out the odd occasion when it may refer to divinity as its true meaning is unacceptable.

More importantly, the phrase 'fully human', affirming that a person has all the essential human properties, is not open-ended towards God, so that one could be 'fully human' and at the same time omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, necessary and eternal. Morris does not spell out this 'suggestion' in detail, but in discussing a related distinction between properties which are kind-essential to man and those which are part of his individual essence (a distinction we can leave aside, for it cannot save his argument if our present criticisms are correct), he resorts to science fiction to plead the point that normal human origins are not essential to being human, speculating that if future scientists 'were to accomplish the astounding task of concocting from scratch (from basic chemicals, etc.) a being with the constitution, organs, appearance, mannerisms, and cognitive abilities of a normal human adult male', who also behaves as a normal man, then it would be 'most reasonable' to call such a creature human, although he admits that 'lntuitions may possibly vary on this '.41 By a similar use of science fiction I hope to show that long before an evolving super-human being acquired the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, eternality etc., intuition would cease to describe him as 'fully human'. Granted, there may be stages where we may hesitatingly judge that he could be one of us, though far more than any of us, but there comes a point, even if it cannot be specified precisely, where the 'more' makes him no longer one of us. In brief, basic human limitations are not superfluous to being 'fully human'.

Let us imagine, then, that, starting from a human embryo, genetic engineering leads eventually to the birth of a human-type creature capable of breathing like a fish under water, out-pacing a gazelle on land, and flying like a bird (or an angel!) in the air, even doing so safely in the dark by sonar perception like a bat, and also crossing oceans with the navigational powers of a homing pigeon. Would intuition still call this creature 'fully human' because in all


other respects he acts and reacts like an ordinary man? It is quite probable, although more probable that intuitions would vary. As further powers evolve, however, such as X-ray vision, the ability to disappear or materialize at will, the conquest of the ageing process or secret of perpetual youth, the phrase 'fully human' simply becomes nonsensical, and there is still a long way to go before developing the divine attributes of necessity, omnipresence and so on. In a nutshell, there must be a limit to transcending human limitations and still being 'fully human', and a God-man blatantly exceeds that limit. If so, he cannot be vere deus et vere homo.

To sum up, the idea of a divine agent becoming incarnate through simultaneously possessing two full natures seems irreconcilable with the requirements of personal unity or true humanity, and the more the latter characteristic of the presumed incarnate person is openly recognized, as increasingly in current Ouistology,42 the less can be the grounds for alleging a full, if hidden, divinity.

6. Could There be Two or More Persons in One God?

This, we noted earlier, was the second inescapable question involved in any incarnational claim when interpreted ontologically, and even if it is true, as many have insisted, that the tenn 'person' must not be given its full modem sense of 'personality', we still face the question of how two distinct centres of consciousness, two separate divine beings, each with all the defining attributes of divinity, could be one God? More precisely, the crucial inquiry is whether monotheism can consistently be modified to permit some sort of acceptable binity, or whether any notion of a divine dyad involves an unacceptable dualism. Because the controversy on this issue has taken place primarily, if not exclUSively, in relation to Christian claims about three persons in one God there will inevitably be numerous references to a trinity rather than a binity, but the underlying problem is basically the same. As in the two natures debate, those arguing for the non-absurdity of two or three persons being one God rely heavily on various analogies of multiplicity in unity, but, before examining these, we must first consider the claim that, quite apart from an incarnation, there are reasons for positing a necessary differentiation of persons within the divine unity, so that rigid monotheism needs to be amended anyway.

Most of these arguments are variations on the thesis that personal life requires a social context and is therefore impossible for a solitary

68 Part 11 - The Prior Improbability of an Incarnation

being, even if that being is God. The most common form of the argument is that if God is love, then he must always, i.e. from eternity, have had a proper object for that love, another personal being. Brian Hebblethwaite goes to the extreme of asserting that 'The conviction that God is love is a major casualty of unitarian theism. Of course it cuts corners to say, with Hans Urs von Balthasar, "God is Love and therefore Trinity." The argument should run: God is Love and therefore in himself relational, the perfection of love given and love received.'43 This, however, not only rests on an excessively anthropomorphic conception of the limitations of divine love, it actually denigrates that love by making it dependent on being loved by another. A more decisive objection is that even if it was true that prior to the creation of the physical universe and the emergence of intelligent life there must have been a personal object of divine love, that requirement could surely be met through the immediate creation of angelic beings, or through the loving contemplation of future created persons, without resorting to the drastic solution of splitting the divine consciousness into two or three; and since, in any case, the two or three are paradoxically held to be essentially one the 'love given and love received' is little more than self-love, not selfless love for others. Against the notion of angelic company, and more specifically against Lampe's argument that God, being immanent in all creation, enjoys and participates in the reciprocal personal relationships of his creatures, Hebblethwaite quotes Aquinas:

Although angels and the souls of the blessed are always with God, nevertheless it would follow that God was alone or solitary if there were not several divine persons. For the company of something of a quite different nature does not end solitude, and so we may say that a man is alone in the garden although there are in it many plants and animals.44

This surely only underlines the incredibly anthropomorphic conception of the divine mentality being employed, something totally at variance with the fundamental understanding of God as a maximally perfect being. Indeed, if it was true, as Alan Richardson charged, that 'Unitarianism creates more problems than it solves; e.g. what was a lonely God doing in infinite ages before he created a world to love?'45 the ideal solution to the 'problem' would surely be a thoroughgoing polytheism!


A different and bewildering claim is that divine self-knowledge, unlike human self-knowledge where the 'I' can never fully know the 'me', implies a perfect self-awareness, and hence, allegedly, a second active subjective 'me'. 'God's thought of Himself ... must be a completely adequate thought. We have no difficulty then in approving the proposition "In the beginning was the Thought". God's thought of Himself is coaeval with God's existence. In thinking Himself he "begets" the Son'.46 No less baffling is the further claim that because God 'knows Himself fully and in one immediate act of apprehension', whereas human self-knowledge depends on two kinds of knowing, intuitive and discursive, 'It follows ... that the "me", the thought of God, is not passive object but active correlated subject - the perfect Image of the Father'.47 Despite the apparent allusion to the prologue of John's Gospel, the present writer remains totally mystified as to how God's thought of himself "'begets" the Son', or how the divine 'me' becomes the 'Image of the Father', and there's more than a strong suspicion that my predicament points less to my mental blindness than to the desperation of those seeking on a priori grounds to establish inherent divisions in the Godhead.

We turn now to the various analogies of multiplicity in unity cited to demonstrate that the recognition of two or more persons in the Godhead could be consistent with monotheism, that, in the words of the Athanasian creed, 'there are not three Gods: but one God'. Two types of analogy have commonly been used to justify this contention, first, the presumed plurality in unity of the human mind, and secondly, that of an integrated society, but to these it must be objected that the former does not illustrate a genuine plurality, nor the latter a substantial unity. Various impersonal analogies, such as the multi-coloured rainbow, have also been used but do not merit serious attention.

So long as traditional faculty psychology prevailed, with its representation of the mind as made up of discrete faculties of will, judgment, imagination, memory, etc., it was almost inevitable that trinitarian apologists would cite this as a parallel somehow authenticating their belief that God was three in one, yet in doing so they were not merely arbitrarily restricting the number of faculties to three, as in Augustine's reference to memory, understanding and will, but were personifying each faculty as if it was a mini-mind on its own; otherwise the parallel would not hold. In these respects their use of the analogy was discredited long


before faculty psychology was abandoned as a totally unjustified compartmentalization of the human mind. Admittedly, faculty language may still be employed, but only as a functional convenience, and with no insinuation that faculties are distinct entities within a mental unity. The individual mind, therefore, not being multipersonal, is in no sense a model for a binitarian/trinitarian interpretation of God, and in no way supports the alleged intelligibility of such a belief.

Everything, then, would seem to depend on the social analogy, seen as its strongest in the oneness of a devoted like-minded couple or family group, this analogy being particularly relevant to a renewed interest within Christian theology in 'social trinitarianism', emphasizing the distinct self-consciousness of each of the persons. The analogy clearly allows for this emphasis, but apparently at the cost of tritheism, or bitheism if only two divine persons, and, accordingly, the key question is whether there is any meaningful sense in which three or two ontologically distinct beings could be substantially one?

Initially it may appear that there just could not be two contemporaneous omnipotent beings, for each would necessarily limit the power of the other, but if each is also omniscient and omnibenevolent, and hence knowing and desiring only what is right and good, and able to achieve it, it is conceivable that there might never be a clash of wills but rather complete unity of thought and action. Being of one mind is still a very long way, however, from being 'of one substance'. No matter how profound and perpetual their harmony of understanding, affection and caring concern, it no more makes two or three persons one God than the single-minded determination of male duettists to co-operate in giving a perfect performance makes them, even for those few minutes, one man. The notion of two or more distinct but socially integrated divine beings gives us at most a perfect pantheon, but by no stretch of the imagination pure monotheism.

Recent exponents of the social analogy, needless to say, reach a very different conclusion. Thomas Morris affirms that' As long as we recognize the conceptual requirement of necessary harmony in will, a belief in multiple divine persons, in particular three, will be far from any obviously unacceptable sort of tritheism', having in the previous sentence described it as 'a far cry from any sort of pagan polytheism, whose gods were in continual conflict'.48 For the reasons given above I would have to add that it is also a far cry

How Could God Become IncartUlte? 71

from traditional monotheism, going nowhere near establishing substantial unity, and that his final verdict on p. 218: 'recognizing three distinct persons or centres of consciousness or ultimate subjects as divine will not clearly involve ... a flouting of logic' is valid only for a tritheistic logic.

David Brown dismisses the 'spectre of tritheism' as 'little more than a hollow war cry' on the grounds that the divine persons 'are so intimately related to one another that not only does it make sense to talk of a single reality, the Godhead, but also it is the ultimate reality, in that their unity is such that, though they have separate powers, to know the mind and will of one is to know that of all three'.49 A few pages later he at least raises the question: 'Will not the fact that the three Persons always agree and cooperate in what they do argue only for a shared enterprise rather than a common identity in one substance?'SO but he only answers this to the extent of claiming that their unity of rule must reflect a unity in the internal divine life. But such reasoning is blatantly inadequate, as indeed indicated by his subsequent reference to marriage as being 'the sort of situation in which individual personalities can be transcended into a higher unity',St for even the best marriage is undeniably a duality, no matter how often each spouse refers to the other as 'my better half'.

It thus seems that the social analogy does not vindicate the coherence of speaking of two or three divine persons being substantially one God. The only consistent conclusion, if we begin with a plurality of such persons, would appear to be polytheism, not binity or trinity; and the only reason for not expressing this conclusion in stronger terms is, as stated above, to allow for our limited apprehension of the divine nature, and of what is possible for God. That, however, does not exempt us from thinking as clearly and cogently as we can, even when it means abandoning long-held convictions.

I submit, therefore, that our answer to the question: 'How could God become incarnate?' must be that from the standpoint of human rationality we cannot see how he could do so and still be described as 'the Lord ... our God, one Lord' (Deut. 6.4)

6 How Could God Incarnate

be Recognized?

1. Only by the Mightiest Miracles

Although contrasting sharply with the last topic in length of required treatment, the question of how an incarnate being could be recognized is by no means unimportant, and especially so, if, as considered in Chapter 4, the primary reason for becoming incarnate is to disclose truth through personality, or else to identify with man in his hour of need. Equally, if it is the case, not only that an incarnation is crucial to man's salvation in general, but that each individual's response to that incarnation is crucial to his or her personal salvation, then once more the question of identifying the God-man assumes supreme significance, it being intolerable that something allegedly essential to our eternal well-being should be obscure or hidden, a sort of messianic secret to be discerned only by those with special insight. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to claim that the logic of God incarnate must include his ready identification by man.

Against this it could be objected that since the more fundamental issue of God's existence is not indisputably clear, but requires a reasonable leap of faith, it is surely inconsistent to demand that the existence of an incarnate deity must be unmistakably evident to everyone. After all, if it is arguable that in order to ensure genuine human freedom God must be at an epistemic distance from man, and not undeniably or overwhelmingly present, then it may seem no less fitting that a God-man should not be immediately and obviously identifiable. There is, however, a decisive difference between affirming the existence of God and of a God-man, at least for those upholding the non-interventionist understanding of God defended in Chapter 3, because, from that standpoint, it

72

How Could God Incarnate be Recognized? 73

can only be on the basis of general theistic arguments and the related interpretation of religious experience that we reach a very convincing but not totally conclusive belief in God, and it would be improper to demand an interventionist demonstration by God to settle the issue finally. If, on the other hand, God has radically intervened by way of incarnation in human history to facilitate man's ultimate salvation, and more especially if it is held to be an unrepeatable type of intervention requiring each man's response, then it is quite proper to insist that the incarnate being must be clearly identifiable as such. The question cannot be evaded.

Assuming, then, the feasibility and vital importance of an incarnation, and the urgency of recognizing it, how could this happen? Quite obviously there would have to be something very striking about the life of the God-man, or the events surrounding his life, in order to prompt the initial feeling that he must be more than an ordinary man, more than an outstanding prophet, saint, hero or genius. Frances Young's well-known conundrum regarding Jesus would apply equally to any alleged instance of incarnation:

If Jesus was an entirely normal human being, no evidence can be produced for the incarnation.

If no evidence can be produced, there can be no basis on which to claim that an incarnation took place.1

Our primary expectation would be that the incarnate being would verbally or otherwise reveal his true identity, but by itself such an astounding claim is patently not self-authenticating, and would rarely be taken seriously. Those who are only aware of one such claim may perhaps be partly excused for taking its truth for granted, but in fact there have been numerous claims to be God incarnate. In Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity Daniel E. Bassuk reminds us of various instances even within Christianity, such as Ann Lee (1736-84), who

claimed to be the second appearance of Christ, and the incarnation of the Heavenly Father and the Divine Mother. In the 1930s, Father Divine (born George Baker) claimed to be God, and was so regarded by members of the Divine Peace Mission movement. In the 1970s, the founder of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, Reverend Sun Myung Moon,


was regarded by Unification Church members as the Lord of the Second Coming.2

A clearer reference to Mr Moon's assumed status was given in a cutting I once took from Time Magazine:3 'He [God] is living in me and I am the incarnation of Himself'. To put it very very mildly, merely claiming to be God incarnate is not enough.

Nor would such claims be sufficient even if accompanied by such characteristics as utter saintliness, great spiritual authority and tremendous powers of prophetic oratory, inspiring and captivating a large following of dedicated disciples. The announcement that 'God is living in me and I am the incarnation of Himself' is not straightforwardly acceptable as the secret of great charismatic gifts and public acclaim, but more likely as indicating that the gifts and acclaim have 'gone to his head', thereby undermining the impression of saintliness, or alternatively creating an impression of serious, if sincere, delusion. Hence this further alleged evidence for an incarnation would still not be enough.

It would appear that, in addition to these features, nothing short of the truly and stunningly miraculous would be adequate to warrant a realistic acknowledgement that the performer must surely be God incarnate. The adjectives 'truly' and 'stunningly' in this description are indispensable, for we would need to be fully satisfied that we are not the victims of any form of deception, or over-reacting in our ignorance and amazement to events which, at most, would only justify a verdict (by an interventionist) that the miracle-worker must be 'a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs' (Acts 2.22 RSV) - and even that must be very suspect today, when, as is well known, many exercising gifts of healing or psychokinetic powers do not relate their activity directly to God.4

If, therefore, we are to go legitimately beyond a thesis like Morton Smith's, that the miracles of Jesus only led most people to see him as a magician,S and if in this sceptical and scientific age we are to avoid any suspicion of mere credulity, like that of Paul's audience at Lystra on witnessing the sudden healing of a Cripple: 'The gods have come down to us in human form' (Acts 14.11), then any miracle recognized as authenticating an incarnation must clearly exhibit strong traces of the distinctively divine attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience, as for example in saying to a mountain: 'Move from here to there' (Matt. 17.20), and it promptly moves,


or restoring to life those long dead, or visibly summoning legions of angels. Many may object that this is far too demanding a test, but anything less, especially when there are rival claimants to be God incarnate, and even warnings about false Messiahs producing such great wonders as to deceive even the elect,6 would seem wholly incapable of providing a rational assurance that the historic person involved could be none other than 'God the Son'. We might add that unless the fufilment of prophecy equally involved major miracles it would not reinforce any claim to divinity. I conclude, therefore, that only by the mightiest miracles could God incarnate be recognised.

2. Verdict of Part 11 and Preface to Part III

Except for the last mentioned, each of the conclusions of Part II -the implausibility of divine intervention in general, the absence of any compelling reason why God should become incarnate, and the apparent contradictions involved in all attempts to explain how this could happen - each of these on its own would, if valid, make an incarnation an unlikely event, and cumulatively must make it extremely unlikely, even if we cannot give a precise measurement for this on any probability scale. Together they undoubtedly justify a sceptical attitude towards any and every incarnational claim, however hallowed by tradition, and also justify, I submit, the title of Part II, although some may prefer to restrict such titles to issues open to statistical calculation. In brief, I affirm the prior improbability of an incarnation.

A seemingly justified scepticism on this topic, however, does not mean that no reputed incarnation, and in particular that of Christ, need be taken seriously, for in assessing the prior probability of such an event one cannot be absolutely confident, despite one's best intentions to be fair and objective, that every factor has been correctly weighed and that no relevant consideration has been overlooked. More importantly, it is sometimes the case that a hypothesis which is very reasonably judged to have low prior probability is nevertheless vindicated as the only, or at least the best way to account for the evidence, especially where that evidence is of a startling or unusual nature. This has happened repeatedly in scientific revolutions, and even in theology it is conceivable that the evidence, or a deeper appreciation of the evidence, may demand a Copernican revolution in our thinking. Hence we must next inquire if the Christ event (the evidence) may after all require


an incarnational explanation, as trinitarian Christianity firmly maintains it does. 'The doctrine of the Trinity' wrote Leonard Hodgson,

is the product of rational reflection on those particular manifestations of the divine activity which centre in the birth, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church ... it could not have been discovered without the occurrence of those events, which drove human reason to see that they required a trinitarian God for their cause?

That, however, is not the conclusion, but the basic question which we must now face. More precisely, we are asking if a more-than-human interpretation of Jesus is demanded by the New Testament records of his life, death and resurrection when these are assessed in the light of modem critical scholarship, in which it is now widely recognized that all four Gospels, and not just the Fourth, were written 'that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ' (John 20.21 RSV), and in fact present us with later Christological readings of what Jesus said and did, frequently altering accounts of his sayings and deeds to serve the preaching purposes or other needs of the church, and even creating new sayings or narratives to claim the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies thought to refer to him. Thus Norman Perrin in his book Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus states that even the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) contain a 'great deal of teaching material ascribed to Jesus, and it turns out to be precisely that; teaching ascribed to Jesus and yet, in fact, stemming from the early Church'.s

Explaining why the Christian community took such remarkable (and to us improper) liberty with the oral or written traditions about Jesus, Perrin adds that the ancient world did not think as we do, employing our criteria of factual accuracy and historicity, and moreover they absolutely identified their experience of 'the risen Lord' with the historical Jesus.

The early Church made no attempt to distinguish between the words the earthly Jesus had spoken and those spoken by the risen Lord through a prophet in the community, nor between the original teaching of Jesus and the new understanding and reformulation of that teaching reached in the catechesis or parenesis of the Church under the guidance of the Lord of the Church.


Or as he puts it a little later:

The almost cavalier manner in which sayings are modified, interpreted and re-written in the service of the theology of a particular evangelist or editor is quite without parallel in Judaism, and is only possible in Christianity because of the basic Christian conviction that the Jesus who spoke is the Jesus who speaks , , , 9

All this, however, does not entail abandoning all prospects of getting back to the historical Jesus and simply accepting Bultmann's pessimistic verdict: 'I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary ',to On the contrary, the meticulous application of form criticism and other techniques to the analysis of the Gospel records, using various tests of authenticity such as multiple attestation, coherence and dissimilarity from characteristic emphases in Judaism or the early church, together with fresh archaeological discoveries relating to first century Palestine, and not least the significant contributions of sympathetic Jewish scholars throwing new light on the religious context in which Christianity emerged - all of these enable us with considerable confidence to reconstruct many details of the life and teaching of Jesus, so much so that some writers have claimed that 'our chances today of finding out about the real Jesus are better than they have been since the beginnings of Christianity, , , ',11

That said, it must be emphasized that it is to the Synoptic Gospels, and not to St John, that we turn for the most reliable record of what Jesus said and did, because, as Anthony Hanson reminds us:

the great majority of competent scholars today have the gravest doubts about the historical accuracy of the picture of Jesus which we meet in the Fourth Gospel. The position is not, , , that the whole gospel is regarded as a work of sheer fiction , , , some elements, , , are based on genuine historical tradition, , , But it is precisely those elements on which the doctrine of the hypostatic union is based that are historically most suspect,12

In the preceding paragraph he admits that 'If we only had the first three gospels, it is very doubtful indeed whether we would be inclined to think of Jesus as presenting a divine personality', and


he further observes that whilst scholars have been aware of all this for at least fifty years, it is 'only just beginning to affect deeply the work of Christian theologians'. This reluctance to face up to the implications of biblical scholarship is perfectly understandable, but is nevertheless indefensible, and it will at least be our aim in Part III to accept the most credible portrait of Jesus deriving from historical and biblical research, and to judge whether particular aspects of that portrait decree, or at least forcefully suggest, that he be seen as God incamate.

A clear presupposition in this inquiry, and one fully accepted by the vast majority of both believers and disbelievers in traditional Christianity, is that a faith acceptance of Jesus as the historical incamation of God must rest on strong historical foundations, and, correspondingly, be open to historical investigation. This, however, has been challenged by various writers, claiming that the individual's or the church's commitment to 'the Christ of faith' does not depend on a justifying knowledge of 'the Jesus of history', an attitude which goes back to Martin Kahler's The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ (1892), if not much earlier to J. E. Kuhn's distinction between history and sacred history, and clearly it is an attitude which demands some comment at this point.

Reacting against the English deists and their continental counterparts in portraying Jesus as a supreme example of rational humanity and moral excellence, and also against their claim that faith must be built on reason and not on any historical revelation, since 'The accidental truths of history can never become the necessary proofs of reason' - to quote Lessing's famous dictum,13 and, apart from this, being uncomfortably aware of Strauss 's demonstration that the Gospels are not purely historical, but contain a significant element of myth, convictions expressed in the form of narratives, Kahler sharply distinguished between the historical Jesus and the historic Christ, maintaining that Christian faith is really only concemed with the latter. In the present century this standpoint has been primarily associated with Rudolf Bultmann, who insisted that the Christian kerygma or proclamation is necessarily independent of the historical facts about Jesus, other than the basic facts that he lived and was crucified, the cross itself involving a 'paradoxical identity' of history and eschatology. That God was uniquely active in Jesus is not, however, a matter for historical research but is grasped by faith alone.

This is not the place for an extensive review of Bultmann's


existentialist theology or of the varieties of neo-orthodoxy; we merely observe that all of them dogmatically divorce theology from history, philosophy, science and culture, and instead centre the Christian faith solely on 'the Word of God', not meaning Scripture or historical revelation, but something coming directly through divine encounter, and which man must simply accept and believe, being neither in need of, nor capable of, further substantiation. Apart from thus conveniently evading unpalatable historical or other research findings, this whole approach seems only to create confusion, for example, as to whether the Christ event was historical, non-historical or in some sense 'supra-historical'. With many others, I'm just baffled, not enlightened, when I read that 'the advent of Christ was not an event in that temporal process which we mean by history today. It was an event in the history of salvation, in the realm of eternity, an eschatological moment in which rather this profane history of the world came to its end'.14 Indeed I would fully endorse James McLeman's harsh verdict on this whole movement: 'Theology ... is useless even as theology if it does not strive to be as unambiguous as possible, as honest as possible. Too often in this period it has been debased by being used as a highly sophisticated means of propagating obscurantism. . .. The dogmatic theologian who feels free to insult scientists, philosophers and historians in the confidence that his is the only ear into which God whispers His truth, is a ludicrous anachronism, a 20th-century Simon Magus'.I5

Rephrasing the terminology in this whole debate, Norman Perrin writes about three different kinds of knowledge (although we would dispute that term for the third type) regarding Jesus, the first, historical knowledge, as based on a critical examination of the Gospels etc., the second, historic knowledge, where aspects of the historical knowledge of Jesus are significant for us today, e.g. his noble attitude to death (and equally the attitudes of Socrates or Captain Oates to their deaths could be historic in this sense), and the third, faith-knowledge, which indicates the special, indeed unique significance ascribed to one figure 'in terms of revelation, religious experience, religious belief',16 and because of what God is believed to have done through that person. Expressed in these terms, Bultmann's contention is that we have all three types of knowledge of Jesus (even if the first is very limited), and that the third, the distinctively Christian faith-knowledge, does not rely on the other two. Calling this view the central position, Perrin notes that it has been attacked from both the right and the left, the right


(especially Jeremias) objecting that faith knowledge depends to a considerable extent on historical knowledge, the left (e.g. Jaspers and Ogden) in effect treating faith knowledge as no more than a special fonn or variant of historic knowledge. At any rate, he regards these right, left and centre positions as three ultimate standpoints concerning the nature of faith and its relation to history; one simply adopts one of them as a basic presupposition. I would strongly contest this, however, arguing that our natural critical attitude to rival 'faith-knowledge' claims embodying historical persons or events indicates an almost universal assumption that the historical basis of any such leap of faith must be open to rational and historical investigation, and would only be justifiable if it arises from a very critical yet still commanding understanding of that remarkable person or event, making a purely 'natural' explanation totally inadequate.17 To assume otherwise is to reduce faith to mere mysticism, akin to the appeal by Mormon missionaries on one's doorstep, in response to expressions of incredulity about the story of angelic visits and missing gold plates behind the Book of Mormon: 'Have faith, and you will know it is true'. In brief, any religion affirming a decisive divine intervention in history, thereby establishing the true faith relationship to God, cannot isolate a subsequent faith response from its alleged historical foundations, but must be prepared to defend its account of what it claims actually happened and what it properly implies. One does not need to be a logical positivist to suspect an element of meaninglessness about claims concerning the unique divine status of a historical figure whose supreme significance is only falsifiable by proving that he did not exist or was not executed. Perrin himself, incidentally, opts for a qualified central position, allowing that our historical knowledge of Jesus can positively contribute to the content of faith, and negatively can correct false faith-images, but surely one cannot stop at that point, but must further allow that it could justify the adoption or else the abandonment of an incarnational faith.

In seeking to substantiate the title of Part III it will obviously be necessary to spell out the reasons for this negative verdict fairly fully, and not just quote the general conclusions of leading New Testament scholars, and yet, at the same time, we must aim at conciseness, and avoid any undue elaboration of the various issues. In line with the judgment reached earlier in this chapter, we first examine the reputed miraculous aspects of the life of Jesus, before turning to the crucial issue of the resurrection, finally considering a


number of less prominent factors which have frequently been cited as pointers to divinity. Our thesis is that none of these arguments, when critically assessed, truly justifies a belief in Jesus as the 'Word of God incarnate', nor can their cumulative force compensate for their individual inadequacy in this respect.

Part III Incarnation as a Needless

Explanation of the Christ Event

7 Does the Miraculous

Indicate Divinity?

1. Introduction and Birth Stories

We are concerned in this chapter with the Gospel records of both the miracles Jesus performed and those which characterized his own life, excluding the resurrection. For present purposes it is sufficient to understand by the term miracle a very extraordinary event having religious significance, leaving it an open question as to whether this necessarily involves a divine intervention or a violation of a law of nature. More specifically, we are asking if the reported miracles in Jesus' life story, when critically assessed, really compel, or even mildy constrain us to acknowledge him as a God-man.

Against such an inquiry it will immediately be objected by those claiming to expound the biblical view of miracles that these events were never intended to act as objective evidence for the divinity of Jesus. This is dismissed as a modem approach, and not that of the New Testament, where the miracles performed by Jesus should be seen as signs of the messianic age, rather than as proofs of his divinity; and moreover, they only act as signs to those gifted with special insight, or sharing the resurrection faith. Thus Alan Richardson wrote in The Miracle Stories of the Gospels that

the attitude of Jesus would seem to have been, on the one hand, the refusal to work wonders to compel belief or to satisfy curiosity, and, on the other hand, the insistence that His miracles were truly signs to those who had eyes to see. .. The truth would seem to be that the early Church regarded the miracles as ... signs to those to whom it was given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God (Mark iv.l1f.). To the 'outsider' the miracles were mere

85

86 Part III - Incarnation as Explanation of the Christ Event

portents, the acts of one wonder-worker amongst many; to the believer they were unique - not so much in outward form or action, as in their inner spiritual significance as Gesta Christi.1

As for their positive evidential value, he is adamant that 'At most the miraculous element in the Gospel story could prove only that Jesus was a good man',2 and even this seems suspect, having rejected Vincent Taylor's argument that 'The miracles are primarily works of compassion and of power'.3 R. H. Fuller went even further maintaining that if compassion sometimes motivated miracles, it was 'Messianic, not humanitarian compassion',4 almost making Jesus sub-human.

A more recent treatment along similar lines is given by Herman Hendrickx who describes biblical miracles as 'remarkable events which believers understand to be signs of God's saving activity',5 such an understanding requiring 'a certain form of intuition', and in the case of miracles of Jesus, also requiring faith in the resurrection: 'Jesus' signs ... cannot be understood except in the light of the resurrection . .. the sign par excellence which gives meaning to all Jesus' signs'.6 By themselves, however, the miracles do not prove anything, and certainly not that Jesus was 'God in person'. Consequently, the 'informed preacher' will not use the miracles for apologetic purposes, but will seek to discover and proclaim the theological truths which the evangelists wished to convey through them.

Where such preaching takes place in the context of a shared resurrection faith this approach may be acceptable, but when the very foundations of that faith are being seriously questioned a radically different approach is commanded, one which seeks more objectively to assess the probable historicity and possible God-man implications of the Gospel miracles, this being all the more imperative because, implicitly if not explicitly, these miracles continue to be seen by most Christians as supporting credal claims about Jesus as the Son of God. Irrespective, therefore, of whether modem biblical theology truly reflects or partially distorts the attitude of New Testament writers on this issue, and irrespective also of what Jesus himself believed about the true meaning of his miracles (and in view of his open reference to them in reply to John the Baptist's question: 'Are you the one who is come ... ?'7 I cannot accept that their significance was believed to depend on some kind of esoteric insight!) it must be clearly affirmed that there is no impropriety

Does the Miraculous Indicate Divinity? 87

whatever in inquiring, indeed it would be improper not to inquire, if the reported miraculous performances and life circumstances of someone widely acclaimed as God incarnate really demand, or, at the very least, indicate some need for that type of explanation of his person.

Before embarking on this inquiry we must also consider the charge that since we do not have independent and totally reliable reports of such events we can never know what actually happened. In the strictest sense, that, of course, is true; we cannot claim complete certainty about the details of any miraculous incident; nevertheless, the miracle stories are open to critical appraisal, and in many if not most instances there are sufficient non-subjective considerations to enable us to reach a fairly confident judgment about the credibility of such reports, even if in other instances we have to be content with reasonable conjectures. Nor is it just liberal theologians who stress this openness to historical assessment; even AIan Richardson, despite his fideistic claim that at a basic level 'the answer to the question, Did the miracles happen? is always a personal answer', and for the Christian 'the "Yes" of faith',Slater acknowledged that 'we must exercise our critical and historical faculties in respect of the detail of each particular miracle-story'.9 More specifically, R. H. Fuller, having rejected both the conservative total acceptance and rationalist total denial of all biblical miracles on purely a priori grounds, insists that 'the genuineness of the recorded miracles ... is a historical question, and can only be answered by the canons of historical criticism'. to I need only add that this applies not just to the records of individual miracles but almost equally to some types of miracles.

The miraculous elements in the recorded life of Jesus commence with the nativity stories, which, if they were to be taken literally, would undoubtedly raise some presumption in favour of his divinity, but there are strong reasons for rejecting them as factual reports. It is not just that the earliest New Testament writers, Paul and Mark, apparently knew nothing about such events, judging by their complete silence on the issue, and suggesting that the narratives did not form part of the primitive gospel, but that the only two accounts we have in Matthew and Luke display not only striking differences but also serious discrepancies. Amongst other differences we note that Matthew says nothing about the birth of John, the angelic announcement to the shepherds or the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, whilst Luke says nothing about the Magi, the massacre of


the innocents or the flight into Egypt. Beyond this, both accounts are internally inconsistent in that they affirm the 'virgin birth' of Jesus, yet trace his ancestry back to Abraham (Matthew) or Adam (Luke) through Joseph. Admittedly, they do not say that Joseph fathered Jesus, but elsewhere he is referred to as 'your father' (Luke 2.48). As for discrepancies between the two accounts, they differ extensively in their genealogies, not even agreeing about the name of Jesus' grandfather. They also disagree as to whether the news of the virgin conception was conveyed directly to Mary by the angel Gabriel (Luke) or to Joseph in a dream (Matthew), Matthew's claim that it was the fulfilment of prophecy being based on a misreading of Isaiah 7.14, which in Hebrew refers only to a young woman, not a virgin,1l Again, Luke affirms that Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth and only went to Bethlehem because of the Roman census, but Matthew gives the impression that they lived there already' but had to leave because of Herod's massacre of all children under two years of age, a crime uncorroborated by any other historian, and which, if true, would make God partly responsible, for if he warned the wise men not to return to Herod after locating the baby, he should have warned them not to visit that tyrant in the first place. In any case, Matthew's account of Herod's initial reaction to the news of the birth, and of how all Jerusalem was 'perturbed' by it, seems inherently improbable. In defending the reliability of the Lucan account attention is sometimes drawn to his specific claim in the prologue to his Gospel to have 'gone over the whole course of these events in detail ... so as to give you authentic knowledge about the matters of which you have been informed' (1.4), and also the fact that he often gives precise dates of the events reported. It has been noted, however, that the double claim that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great and during the census ordered by Caesar Augustus just could not be true, because that census did not take place until 6 AD, some ten years after Herod had died, and hence, 'To put it bluntly, Luke has resorted to invention', to quote Ian Wilson's verdict.l2

More positively, we should regard the birth stories, not as sober history, but as expressing in a dramatic way the special significance of Jesus for the early Christians; they 'belong more to the poetry of worship than to the prose of the annalist', as C. B. Caird put it in the Pelican commentary on 5t Luke;l3 whilst J. C. Fenton, in the corresponding commentary on 5t Matthew, wrote that 'we should read these chapters to find out what Matthew believed


about Jesus, rather than for information concerning the early life of Jesus '.14 In the preceding paragraph Fenton raised the question: 'Would Matthew have composed these chapters without historical evidence?' and replied that

we must realize that this question would not have meant anything to him as stated in this way; he would have said that the historical evidence for these two chapters lay in the Old Testament, and that he was describing what must have happened, because this is what the prophets had said would happen.

Herman Hendrickx explains that the literary form of Matthew 1-2 is that of 'haggadic midrash . .. a free form of narration, in which picturesque details are not necessarily historical and the insertion of legendary elements is permissible. In fact such additions are rather expected, to accentuate the religious and theological meaning of the real facts'.15

We must conclude, then, that the miraculous elements in the nativity stories, such as the virginal conception, angelic choir and guiding star, provide no ground whatever for seeing Jesus as more than human.

2. Healings, Exorcisms and Raising the Dead

If the treatment of the first two of these topics seems disproportionately brief, in view of the numerous references in the Gospels to Jesus curing those who were ill in body and mind, it is not because there is any doubt that he possessed extraordinary powers of healing, but rather that these cannot support any claim to uniqueness, since others have possessed similar and in some cases possibly equal powers.

Looking first at the non-medical treatment of physical illness and disability it would be superfluous to start quoting arresting instances from historical and contemporary sources to establish that faith healing, as it is usually called (although some healers deliberately avoid that label), has frequently and sometimes spectacularly taken place, an excellent critical survey of such healing methods being Leslie Weatherhead's Psychology, Religion and Healing.16 In general terms, therefore, there need be no hesitation about accepting that Jesus exercised a particularly effective healing ministry, even if


we remain somewhat sceptical about the details of a few incidents, such as the healing of MaIchus' ear (Luke 22.49-51). To what extent the reports of Jesus' healing miracles may have been heightened during the oral period, or the stories amended to serve preaching purposes, are issues we need not consider here, but it is relevant to note that there are near-contemporary parallels to some of his most remarkable healing miracles, for instance, curing people at a distance. Geza Vermes draws our attention to Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, believed to have lived in Arab, ten miles from Nazareth, in the first century AD, and of whom he writes:

Setting aside various secondary accretions according to which he was a wholesale wonder-worker, the primary rabbinic tradition represents Hanina as a man of extraordinary devotion and miraculous healing talents.

The principal source of renown won by this Galilean Hasid was his ability to heal from a distance and to announce from there an immediate cure.17

Illustrating this he cites the healing of Gamaliel's son, which strikingly resembles the story of Jesus curing the centurion's servant. IS

Before leaving this topic it is also pertinent to note that on one occasion, because of the rather disparaging attitude of those in his home town, it is recorded that Jesus 'could work no miracle there' (Mark 6.5). Like others he could fail.

Turning to exorcism, and curbing the temptation to speculate at some length on the real nature of such events - whether they are to be explained entirely in terms of mental illness cured by hypnotic suggestion, or whether we should be prepared to give some credence to the notions of demon possession and expulsion,19 the crucial point is that however we try to explain the reports of casting out devils Jesus was by no means alone in performing such feats, as is evident from his reply to the charge that 'It is only by Beelzebub prince of devils that this man drives the devils out', to which Jesus retorted: 'And if it is by Beelzebub that I cast out devils, by whom do your own people drive them out?' (Matt. 12.24 and 27). We note also that it is recorded that Jesus gave his twelve disciples 'authority to cast out unclean spirits and to cure every type of ailment and disease' (Matt. 10.1). In a word, there is nothing distinctive about such activity.


Several indisputable instances of raising the dead would, however, suggest that the person exercising such amazing power must stand in some unique relationship to God, and hence we must examine the Gospel reports of three incidents of this type in more detail, beginning with the most dramatic - the raising of Lazarus. This is found only in the Fourth Gospel, and is almost certainly without historical foundation. As G. H. C. Macgregor wrote: 'It is inconceivable that the greatest of all recorded miracles, performed during the last critical week, and in the presence of crowds of people, should have been simply omitted by the first three Evangelists'.2o It is further suspect in that the whole episode is made to serve theological ends, the fatal illness occurring 'to bring glory to the Son of God' (11.4), and providing the setting for the claim: 'I am the resurrection and 1 am life. If a man has faith in me, even though he die, he shall come to life' (11.25). It has also been contended that, having switched the cleansing of the Temple from the end of Jesus' ministry, as in the Synoptics, to the beginning, John needed to substitute an equally provocative incident to explain the arrest of Jesus, inventing and using the story of Lazarus to do just that. Others suggest that the event may be a deliberate heightening of the other two stories of raising the dead, which John omits, or that it was developed from the parable of Dives and Lazarus in Luke 16.19-31. Whatever the true explanation, it clearly affords no solid basis for any belief in Jesus as 'the Messiah, the Son of God' (11.27).

The story of the raising of Jairus' daughter appears in all three Synoptic Gospels, and we have no reason to question that the girl was indeed restored to health - but from what? Those emphasizing the didactic motive behind all miracle stories in the Gospels, in this case to teach the Christian attitude to death as sleep from which we will be awakened, insist that the words of Jesus 'The child is not dead: she is asleep' (Mark 5.39) must be taken metaphorically and not literally, but, with a great many others, 1 find this totally unconvincing. Sharing, as we must to some extent, a modem healthy questioning (but not dogmatic rejection) of all reputed miraculous events, and being aware that despite presentday medical skills and knowledge we still occasionally read of persons mistakenly certified as dead regaining consciousness in mortuaries, it is hard to avoid a strong suspicion that the raising of Jairus' daughter, and equally that of the widow of Nain's son (reported only in Luke's Gospel), were in fact miracles of resuscitation rather than of restoration of life, as at least suggested by


some commentators. Thus William Barclay wrote concerning these two incidents that

In both these cases the raising from the dead followed immediately after death. It would be quite possible to believe that in both these miracles the person raised was in a coma or trance. We have seen how burial had to follow hard upon death in the climate of Palestine; and we know from the evidence of the graves in Palestine that people were not infrequently buried alive, because of the haste with which they were buried. It could well be that these two miracles were miracles of diagnosis in which Jesus saved two young people from a dreadful death.21

A more radical possibility, and some claim probability, is that Luke's account of the raising at Nain has no historical foundation whatever, and is rather a Christological version of the story of the raising of the widow's son by Elijah at Zarephath (1 Kings 17.17-24). This interpretation rests partly on the fact that the story belongs to the literary genre of healing accounts or 'raisings-on-the-way',ll but primarily on the observation that Luke 7.11-17 seems to borrow extensively from 1 Kings 17.17-24, apparently reflecting the early Christian conviction that Jesus was the new Elijah, and expressing this by Christologizing various episodes from the prophet's life.

In view of these uncertainties I submit that the evidence that Jesus truly raised anyone from the dead is too slender to bear the weight of any inference as regards his person, and what is more, even if he did raise just one or two persons it would not have conveyed anything more to his contemporaries than that 'A great prophet has arisen among us' (Luke 7.16) - to quote the reported reaction of the people at Nain; in other words, Jesus is being ranked with Elijah and Elisha, both of whom were accredited with raising the dead.23

3. The Nature Miracles

Whilst fully prepared to accept that various psychosomatic illnesses may respond to the 'miracle' of faith healing, and whilst baffled but nevertheless conceding that some rare individuals can apparently move small objects by psycho kinetic power, modern man still finds it particularly difficult to accept that anyone can mentally effect


major changes in the natural world, as in the so-called nature miracles in the Gospels - not that the evangelists would have placed these in a separate category from the other miracles, but we rightly do so, as they pose special problems, and if fully authentic would inevitably raise queries about the miracle-worker being purely human. Once more, however, we have to acknowledge that we cannot be really sure what actual incidents, if any, lie behind these miracle stories, and indeed there are good reasons for placing them in a 'historical suspense account', as H. E. W. Turner recommends, and in support of which R. H. Fuller adds: 'What really gives us grounds for doubt is their theological colouring and the absence of any allusion to nature miracles in Q [a putative document used by Matthew and Luke listing sayings of Jesus] and indeed, anywhere in the recorded sayings of our Lord'.24

The theological motivation behind telling (and in most cases embellishing, if not occasionally inventing) such stories is widely recognized. Thus Hoskyns and Davey, with reference to 'the great signs which Jesus is supposed to have worked in the natural as opposed to the human world' explain that

the Stilling of the Storm supplies, in terms of Old Testament prophecy, an answer to the question, 'Who is this, that the wind and the sea obey him?' ... Similarly, the Walking on the Sea may have reference to the God who alone, 'treadeth upon the high places (waves) of the sea'. The Feeding of the Five Thousand and of the Four Thousand, carefully set in each case 'in a desert place', recall, first the miraculous feeding of the Israelites in the desert, and then the constant expectation ... of a great feast in the messianic age, when all should be filled, and when 'the meek should eat and be satisfied'.25

Equally, it is surmised that the story of the miraculous draught of fishes was told to illustrate the saying: 'from now on you will be catching men' (Luke 5.10), and that the turning of water into wine (John 2.1-11) symbolizes the offer of a new life through Christ.

Looking in more detail at the stilling of the storm, to which Hendrickx devotes a whole chapter, analysing the three Synoptic accounts and the various red actions by the evangelists, we note particularly his explanation that the statement 'he ... rebuked the wind' uses a technical term regularly employed elsewhere for Jesus rebuking demons, making it clear that in this story the wind and


the sea are seen as demonic powers, as widely believed in the ancient world.26 This helps to clarify his subsequent description of the purpose of the story:

Its intention is ... to raise the decisive Christological question and at the same time to enable the listeners/readers to give the answer. On the one hand, the early Church utilizes the familiar theme of rescue from distress at sea by gods and divine men, while, on the other hand, it constructs the story in such a way that the uniqueness of the One who performs the rescue in this particular case becomes clear . .. In him the liberation from the demonic powers of chaos is present in a way in which the worshippers of the Old Testament found it only in God. Who then is he? Only one answer is acceptable: Jesus is the Lord. However, he does not compete with God, but acts on his behalf, as his 'Son' . . . 27

The fact that the miracle stories in the Gospels primarily serve theological purposes, and were apparently edited to highlight their effectiveness as signs of the messianic age, in itself creates deep suspicion as to their historical accuracy, and beyond this, it seems very likely that some nature miracles are really dramatized parables, and that others may have developed from religious interpretations of natural events. Thus the embarrassing incident of Jesus cursing the fig tree because it had no fruit out-of-season (Mark 11.12-14 and 20-24) is widely held to have evolved from the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13.6ff.), but signifying in a more striking way the rejection of Israel because of its unfruitfulness. Another embarrassing miracle, the fate of the Gadarine swine (Mark 5.10-13), is regarded by some as a later addition to the story of the healing of the demoniac, and taken to symbolize that Jesus not only heals but destroys all uncleanness - pigs being essentially unclean to Jews.28

As for the possibility of miracle stories arising from a special reading or re-reading of natural events, we simply note some speculative but by no means implausible suggestions offered by Leslie Weatherhead in The Christian Agnostic, where he stresses not just the legitimacy but the duty to seek and accept natural explanations wherever these satisfactorily account for phenomena:

When I crossed the Sea of Galilee myself in a motor-boat in 1934 a terrifying storm arose and as quickly subsided. The


occurrence is still common. It would have been very easy to ascribe the sudden calm to a wonderful person on board who spoke, not to waves - which do not understand Aramaic! - but to men ... saying 'Peace be still', since their infectious fear was spreading panic . .. What more likely than that Jesus, standing on the shore, saw a shoal of fish gathering where warm water enters the lake (1 have seen the place myself) and directed His disciples to haul in what was later called a miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5.4ff.)?29

He also wonders if the feeding of the multitude was not really a miracle of sharing, following the example of a boy who offered Jesus his loaves and fishes, evoking a response such as 'If you all are willing to share as this lad has done there is enough for all'. Strictly speaking, of course, we cannot get back to the original events (assuming there was some event in most cases) behind the nature miracle reports, but in view of the various factors we have considered 1 would rate the likelihood that Jesus mentally influenced natural processes in a major way as very low on a probability scale, and, consequently, as affording no real justification for seeing him as an incarnation of God.

4. Epiphanies

To complete this chapter we must glance briefly at accounts of two incidents concerning Jesus, which may not normally be classed as miracles, but which, as recorded in the Gospels, are clearly of a miraculous nature, namely, the epiphany stories of his baptism and transfiguration. Both involved a divine manifestation of who Jesus is, and indeed in Matthew's Gospel both included the same words by a 'voice from heaven' or 'from the cloud': 'This is my Son, my Beloved, on whom my favour rests' (3.17 and 17.5). Taken at their face value, as by most readers and listeners, these stories unquestionably lend some support to incamational theology, but rather less so once it is realized that similar epiphany stories about holy men were quite common in ancient times, and that in Jewish writings the phrase 'my son' had no unique significance. According to Geza Vermes

it was a firmly held rabbinic conviction that saints and teachers were commended in public by a heavenly Voice. Furthermore,


when such a commendation is directly accredited to God, the person in whose favour it is made is alluded to as 'my son'.30

Illustrating this, he cites references to 'my son Hanina' and to Rabbi 'Meir my son'.

Further problems emerge when we examine both incidents in more detail. Thus the earliest Gospel, Mark, represents the baptismal epiphany as seen only, and presumably heard only, by Jesus, the voice from heaven declaring: 'Thou are my Son, my Beloved' (1.11), whereas Matthew and Luke make it a public event and pronouncement. As for the transfiguration, Matthew quotes Jesus describing it as a 'vision', suggesting something subjective, although seen by all three diSciples. Passing over such difficulties as how the disciples identified Moses and Elijah, especially if they 'were heavy with sleep but kept awake' (Luke 9.32 RSV), or why the command to tell no one 'until the Son of Man had been raised from the dead' (Matt. 17.9) apparently led to no expectation of the resurrection, we simply observe that, once more, we are dealing with reports which clearly seem to be theologically motivated, the presence of Moses and Elijah symbolizing that the Law and the Prophets, i.e. that the whole of Scripture, testifies to Jesus as the Christ, and accordingly raising doubts about the historicity of the event. Not suprisingly, therefore, some have speculated that it may be purely legendary, or else a variant of a resurrection story, but C. B. Caird suggests that it could have a factual basis in that Luke tells us that Jesus was praying and 'the researches of Evelyn Underhill and others ... have shown that the intense devotions of saint and mystic are often accompanied by physical transformation and luminous gloW'.31

Whatever the origins of these epiphany stories, I suggest that as reported in the Synoptic Gospels they express rather than confirm the claim that Jesus is 'my Son, my Beloved', in the sense in which those words came to be understood in later Christianity.

In rejecting the view that the miraculous aspects of the life of Jesus as presented in the New Testament authenticate any claims of divinity it is not, of course, being denied that the miracles played a prominent part in his ministry, although not the supreme or almost sole part as argued by Morton Smith in Jesus the Magician. We would, in fact, endorse E. P. Sanders' verdict that

While the miracles themselves do not dictate their own meaning, it is entirely reasonable to assume that Jesus' following, and


perhaps Jesus himself, saw them as evidencing his status as true spokesman for God, since that sort of inference was common in the Mediterranean.32

It is not, however, an inference which is common or credible in our modem world, and even in the ancient world it only meant that Jesus was la man singled out by God and made known to you through miracles, portents and signs, which God worked among you through him, as you well know' (Acts 2.22).

8 Do the Resurrection Reports

Accredit Divinity?

1. Their Centrality and Hence Need for Good Credentials

The crucial importance of the resurrection for the early church, as for later trinitarian Christianity, cannot be put more clearly than in the frequently quoted words of St Paul: 'If Christ was not raised, then our Gospel is null and void, and so is your faith' (1 Cor. 15.14). Or as a modem writer has put it: 'Christianity stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God. In the New Testament there is no faith that does not start with the resurrection of Jesus.'! Thus, historically, it was the Easter conviction that Jesus is alive, and that his dying and rising again were somehow vital to man's salvation, that led to the emergence of the church, and, in time, to its full-blooded doctrine of the incarnation. Not surprisingly, B. F. Westcott described it as 'the historical seal of the Incarnation'.2

It would seem a very reasonable implication of this centrality of the resurrection for 'true faith' that its historicity should not be subject to serious doubt. One can hardly insist that this miraculous event is a vital part of God's scheme of salvation unless the evidence that Jesus really was raised from the dead is strong, if not indisputable, giving 'ample proof that he was alive', as stated in Acts 1.3. Indeed the wording in the Authorised Version of 1611, 'showed himself alive ... by many infallible proofs', however unsustainable as a translation, could be seen as expressing a legitimate demand of faith. If, on the contrary, it can be shown that the resurrection is extremely suspect, as will be claimed in this chapter, then the assured proclamation of the Easter story, and of the incarnational theology grounded upon it, are no longer tenable.

As already intimated, however, there are those who resolutely

98

Do the Resurrection Reports Accredit Divinity? 99

reject the claim that Christian faith, and more specifically resurrection faith, must rest on firm historical foundations. This rejection is based on the dogmatic insistence that the resurrection is much more than, if in any sense at all, an historical event (Barth held that it is 'seen to be history only by the eye of faith',3 whilst Brunner wrote that 'Easter is not an "historical event" which can be reported'4), and hence it is allegedly unassailable through historical investigation. Others tend to minimize rather than eliminate a reliance on history. Thus Peter Camley argues that 'the multidimensional richness of the Easter event, its uniqueness and transcendence, will simply not permit it to be handled with critical-historical methods alone ... The transcendence of the Raised One is not amenable to such man-handling.'s Later in the same page he adds: 'The raised Christ was revealed rather than simply inspected or viewed, and revealed precisely in some transformed and glorified mode, so as to allow him to be experienced as God'. Actually, Camley is very sceptical about the biblical accounts of the resurrection, and hence the emphasis is placed almost entirely on religious experience, past and present. I will comment more fully on this basis of belief in the final section of the chapter, merely noting at this point that without the scriptural accounts of what allegedly happened at the first Easter it would seem incredible that later generations would have concluded, solely on the grounds of religious experience or assumed revelations, that Jesus had uniquely conquered death and must be divine. If that is true, then it follows that we simply cannot avoid asking why the early church believed that Jesus alone had been raised from the dead to exalted life, and whether they were justified in that belief. The resurrection, in other words, cannot claim immunity from radical questioning as to the adequacy of its historical foundations, and in fact most apologists fully agree with their critics on that score, both sides accepting Pannenberg's contention that 'Whether or not Jesus was raised from the dead is a historical question insofar as it is an enquiry into what did or did not happen at a certain time. '6 The main task before us, therefore, is to examine the credibility of the New Testament accounts of the empty tomb and of the post-crucifixion appearances, after which we must attempt to assess various modem justifications of resurrection belief, judging them totally inadequate to support such an astounding claim.

Before embarking on this inquiry we must face the awkward question of the meaning of the resurrection, for it is by no means


a simple concept, or one used in the same standard sense by every writer. Even within the New Testament it is apparently understood in different ways, the Gospels portraying it as the restoration, or rather transformation, of the bodily life of Jesus, some accounts involving a very physical presence of the 'risen Lord', who can be touched or share meals with his followers, whilst Paul, on the other hand, evidently understood it in non-material or spiritual terms. At least there was the common conviction that Jesus was alive and had manifested his presence in various post-mortem events. Several modem interpretations of the resurrection, however, do not envisage it as an event of any sort, but as expressing the post-crucifixion realization of the true messianic identity of Jesus, the stories of the empty tomb and the various appearances being the dramatization of this theological conviction. We will consider this approach later, but at this stage we are merely noting the complexity of the whole issue, or what Camley has called 'the irreconcilably diverse and confused nature of Christian thought on the subject? Perhaps it is no wonder that those defending or attacking the more traditional understanding of the resurrection, and feeling confident that they are about to score a decisive point, suddenly get the impression that the goal posts have been moved. Anyway, as a minimum working definition, consistent with, although in no sense exhaustive of New Testament and credal usage, I propose that we take the resurrection to mean that Jesus has uniquely been raised from the dead, and of this the Achilles' heel, I contend, is the word 'uniquely'. Others may want to add the words 'and exalted to transcendent life', but I regard this as an implication rather than a part of our minimum definition. On the other hand, the definition clearly rules out various contemporary reductionist interpretations of the resurrection, such as Don Cupitt's view that it refers to the continued moral influence of the historical Jesus.s Our concern here is with the resurrection affirmed as an historical fact, not as an inappropriate symbol for something entirely different.

In the next two sections we shall look separately at the biblical accounts of the empty tomb and of the resurrection appearances, but by way of preface to both sections it should be noted that whilst the serious discrepancies between the New Testament records of the events do not automatically prove that they did not happen, neither can these discrepancies be cited, as by some apologists, as guaranteeing the basic core of the various accounts, although not of every recorded detail, because some disparity in eyewitness


reports is always to be expected, and is fully understandable. The fact, however, is that the evangelists are not writing as independent eyewitnesses, if eyewitnesses in any sense (and of course no one, ignoring the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, claims to have witnessed the resurrection itself), but are rather editing and adapting traditions they have received, and in the case of Matthew and Luke it is primarily the tradition as recorded by Mark.

2. The Evidence of the Empty Tomb

Despite the fact that we can read about the empty tomb in all four Gospels there are strong reasons for suspecting that it was not the source of the resurrection faith but more likely a dramatization of that faith. The primary ground for this suspicion is that there is no mention of it in the earliest account we have of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, written in 55-56 AD. Even this is almost a quarter century after the crucifixion, but it reflects a much older tradition, as Paul claims to be reminding his readers of the gospel he has previously preached to them, that gospel in tum telling of 'the facts which had been imparted to me' (15.3). Paul's silence is particularly significant in that he is arguing against those denying the resurrection of the dead and countering this with the claim that 'Christ was raised', yet, in substantiation of this, he merely states that it was in accordance with the Scriptures, and then lists six appearances of Jesus. It seems certain that had he known of the empty tomb tradition he would have cited that as further evidence. It is also noteworthy that there is no mention of the empty tomb in the first preaching of the resurrection, judging by the sermons reported in Acts 2-5, 10 and 13.

The earliest account we possess of the empty tomb is in Mark 16.1-8, dating from around 70 AD, the rest of that final chapter being a later addition not found in the older manuscripts. The fact that many details of the story serve symbolic purposes9 tends to make one initially cautious, being aware of a definite tendency in the Markan tradition to embellish reports in order to bring out their assumed Christological meaning. Thus in the previous chapter there are two highly symbolic but frankly incredible claims that at the time of the crucifixion there was a three-hours' darkness from noon, and that the temple curtain was tom in two. The former, which Luke explicitly equates with an eclipse of the sun, must be rejected as an astronomical impossibility at Passover time, which


always coincided with full moon, but was meant to be interpreted as a divine portent of the cosmic tragedy of the crucifixion. The latter must be judged unfactual because, if true, it would not have been overlooked by Jewish historians, its inclusion in Mark being presumably to signify that the cross removes a veil between man and God. Quite apart from this, however, there are other factors which make Mark's account of the empty tomb very questionable. Herman Hendrickx notes that Mark's report of three women going to the tomb on Sunday morning to anoint the body presents several difficulties:

Firstly, the embalming of a body was apparently not in accordance with contemporary custom ... Secondly, the completion of funeral rites on a Sunday morning after burial on Friday night seems inconceivable in the Palestinian climate, in which decomposition would already have set in. .. Thirdly, the intention of the women seems to be inconsistent with Mark 15.46, according to which Joseph of Arimathea had carefully buried the body, and had apparently done whatever was required by Jewish law and custom. 10

Actually, John 19.40 explicitly refers to the anointing of his body after removing it from the cross, but whether or not that is historical (and I cannot digress here to consider the exegetical problems regarding his hasty burial) 11 it is fairly widely accepted that the reason given by Mark for the women's visit is inherently implausible. Their worry about moving the stone also seems odd, as normally one man could do so, and certainly three women.

For many commentators and other critics it is, above all, the reputed role of an angel or angels which strongly suggests the legendary nature of the whole incident, at least for those who accept that the introduction of angels into ancient texts was an apocalyptic literary device extensively used in Jewish literature to claim that the real meaning of an event has been directly disclosed by God. It is not, however, something to be taken literally, yet if we remove the angelic messages from the Synoptic accounts of the empty tomb, and especially from Mark's account, there's little of any significance left.

One further peculiarity of Mark's report which evokes sheer disbelief is the amazing statement that, having received a specific message to tell the diSCiples, the women 'said nothing to anybody,


for they were afraid' (16.8). The fear would be understandable, but not the silence; indeed that verse has seemed to many to be Mark's way of explaining why the story of the empty tomb was unknown in the early church. 'The fact that the women do not pass the message on', wrote Geoffrey Lampe, 'may suggest that the evangelist, or his source, knew that the story of the tomb and the angel was not part of the original Easter proclamation and had only developed at a relatively late stage in the tradition' .12

The extensive liberty which the other evangelists take in remodelling Mark's account of the empty tomb, so that it is impossible to harmonize the four Gospels on this issue, further lessens the credibility of the whole episode. Thus as regards the women, Luke agrees with Mark that there were three of them, although one name is different, but Matthew reduces the number to two and John to just one, Mary of Magdala, the only name common to all four writers, yet hardly the most balanced witness, as she had earlier to be cured of 'seven devils'. As for angels, it is Matthew who agrees with Mark in reporting only one, but, instead of sitting inside the tomb, he descends from heaven after an earthquake and rolls back the stone. Both Luke and John write of two angels, Luke describing their sudden and frightening appearance while the women were in the tomb, John portraying them as sitting where the head and feet of Jesus had lain, but only there when Mary of Magdala looked into the tomb, and not when it had previously been inspected by Peter and John. The messages given by the angels also differ significantly, most notably in that Matthew and Mark record their instructions that the disciples proceed at once to Galilee, but Luke and John are silent on this. Finally, we observe that Matthew heightens the whole drama by inserting the story of how the Jewish authorities prevailed on Pilate to set a guard on the tomb to prevent the disciples stealing the body before the third day and then claiming that Jesus was risen. Apart, however, from the strange presumption that the Pharisees, but clearly none of the disciples, were aware of such a prophecy, the whole incident blatantly reflects a post-Easter faith, and further reveals its inherent improbability in that the guards report back, following the angelic opening of the tomb, not to their Roman superiors but to the chief priests, allegedly taking bribes to spread the lie that the body was stolen. All in all, these serious discrepancies and the other odd features of the stories convince not just sceptics but many staunch believers in the resurrection, as earlier defined, that the Gospel accounts of the empty tomb are not understandably


diverse reports of an historical event, but are more accurately to be seen as mythical or symbolic representations of the Easter kerygma. Such a development is credible because contemporary Jewish or at least Pharisaic belief envisaged resurrection in bodily terms, and also because the obsession with claiming that the resurrection was according to Scripture, and the consequent frantic search for presumed Old Testament allusions to it, could give rise to the conviction that verses such as Psalm 16.10; 'thou wilt not abandon my soul to death, nor let thy loyal servant suffer corruption' (as cited in Acts 2.27 - see also Acts 13.35), or Hosea 6.2; 'After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him' (RSV), must have been fulfilled by Jesus. Some scholars suggest that the phrase 'the third day' was a conventional Hebrew expression for a short but indefinite period, and not a precise timing of an event.

Against this whole approach it has been argued that there are other factors which substantiate the basic historicity of the stories, in particular, the fact that Jewish opponents of the infant church were unable to point to any tomb containing the body of Jesus. One forceful advocate of this view has written that the resurrection 'could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned: 13 This assumes, however, that the story of the empty tomb and its exact location were widely known from shortly after the death of Jesus, indeed sufficiently early for any rival claim regarding the location of Jesus' decomposing body to be positively falsified, in which case the silence of Scripture concerning any such dispute would have evidential value. But that silence is equally compatible with the surmise that the Easter faith emerged following visual or visionary experiences in Galilee, that at first, and for perhaps a considerable time, it had nothing to do with belief in an empty tomb, and that by the time the resurrection tradition became dramatized as in Mark's Gospel the precise location of the tomb was unknown. I certainly regard this as a more plausible reconstruction of what probably happened than alternative explanations in terms of the women visiting the wrong tomb, some unknown persons removing the body, or,least credible of all, that Jesus wasn't really dead and was resuscitated.

Another argument for the basic historicity of the empty tomb tradition is that if the whole story was a later creation for apologetic purposes then women would not have been portrayed as the first


witnesses of such an event, since the testimony of women was not treated as reliable in Jewish law. In reply to this it has been urged that 'if the disciples had fled to GaIilee where they claimed to have had experiences of the raised Lord, then any subsequently generated story of the empty tomb would have no alternative than to draw upon the women as witnesses ',14

Whilst agreeing that the departure of the disciples to GaIilee immediately after the crucifixion is extremely likely, this doesn't help to explain their absence as witnesses in the empty tomb stories, for all these stories represent the disciples as still at Jerusalem when the women visited the tomb. The role of the women more probably reflects their prominence in the early church, and also the prominence of many women in the Old Testament, so that the objection is by no means as strong as it seems. Yet it may have been a sensitivity to this issue that led the author of the Fourth Gospel to make Peter and John equal witnesses of the empty tomb. These counter-arguments therefore fail to shake the deep impression that the Gospel accounts of the empty tomb are of a parabolic rather than a factual nature, and, if so, can't truly count as evidence that Jesus was raised from the dead.

3. What Would Resurrection Appearances Really Prove?

Although many regard the appearance stories as equally suspect the argument in this section is concerned not so much with their occurrence as with their supposed unique signficance. Before developing this further we must first briefly summarize the conflicting New Testament reports of these events, noting various features and problems relating to them.

As previously stated, the earliest account is that in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul, in recalling the facts as he had been told them, lists six appearances in chronological order, namely, to Peter, to 'the Twelve', to 'over five hundred of our brothers at once', to james, to 'all the apostles', and finally, 'even to me'. This is the only report which refers to lames and to the five hundred, but the most interesting feature of Paul's account is his apparent assumption, judging by his silence on the issue, that all these appearances were of the same visionary nature as his own on the Damascus road, his companions at most seeing a light, but neither seeing nor hearing any person (admittedly Acts 9.7 states that they did hear a voice, but this is flatly contradicted in a later account in Acts 22.9 - see also Acts 24).


Turning to the Gospels, Mark 16.1-8 has no appearances (those in verses 9-20 being ignored as a second-century appendix to the Gospel), but there is the angel's promise that the disciples will see Jesus in Galilee. Whether there was an original but lost ending to Mark's Gospel telling of the fulfilment of that promise we cannot say. Matthew describes two appearances, first to two women hurrying from the tomb to tell the disciples of the angel's resurrection announcement and his instruction to proceed to Galilee, Jesus himself repeating this instruction, and secondly, to the eleven disciples at a prearranged mountain venue in Galilee, yet, amazingly, the text adds that 'some were doubtful' (28.17). The report also includes the commission to evangelize all nations, baptizing them 'in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit' (28.19), a formula which is in open conflict with the practice reported in Acts of baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ, and clearly reflects a later theological development, the commission also conflicting with the hesitation of the disciples to preach to the Gentiles.

In contrast to Mark's and Matthew's stress on the disciples being ordered to Galilee, Luke portrays the risen Jesus as ordering them to stay at Jerusalem 'until you are armed with power from above' (24.49; see also Acts 1Af), and in fact his three appearance stories, which have nothing in common with those of Matthew, all take place in or near Jerusalem. Most space is given to the strange Emmaus Road incident, regarded by many as a sort of parable about eucharistic theology. There is a mere passing reference to an appearance to Peter, and the book ends with Jesus appearing to the Eleven, even eating some fish to convince some who were 'still unconvinced' that he was bodily present with them and not just as a spirit, and then leading them out to Bethany before parting from them. If the disputed final chapter of John's Gospel is set aside (being either an appendix by a different author or else a later supplement by the original author, but not integrated with or fully consistent with the earlier chapters), then the Fourth Gospel agrees with the Third in confining all the appearances to Jerusalem, and also in reporting three of them, but not the same three. According to John the first appearance of Jesus took place outside the tomb to Mary of Magdala, who initially mistook him for the gardener, and then that evening he appeared to the disciples in a room, Thomas being absent, reappearing a week later when Thomas was present, and inviting him to overcome his doubts by inspecting his wounds. A peculiar aspect of the second appearance is that Jesus is reported


as breathing on the disciples, saying 'Receive the Holy Spirit' (20.22), which do not harmonize with the account of Pentecost in Acts 2. Chapter 21 is an elaborate account of the risen Christ meeting the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, leading to a miraculous catch of fish, a shared meal and a searching dialogue with Peter. The main event looks suspiciously like an Easter version of the miracle reported in Luke 5.1-11, whilst the dialogue with Peter may reflect later problems concerning his priority.

Without going into further details it is obvious from this condensed review that it is impossible to reconcile the various accounts of the appearances of Jesus, trying to decide, for example, whether they took place exclusively around Jerusalem or primarily seventy miles away in Galilee. Beyond that, the marked extent to which some of the accounts are made to serve theological purposes, together with the tendency in the later narratives of Luke and John to represent the resurrection in more concrete terms (a fully physical Jesus sharing meals with his followers, yet capable of subsequently dematerializing), all this raises profound misgivings about the historicity of these events. Even more disconcerting for many is the candid admission in Matthew 28.17 that some of the disciples were doubtful as to what they had really experienced, just as others had failed to recognize Jesus at first. The element of doubt is so embarrassing in Gospels confidently proclaiming the risen Christ that if it was not true it would hardly have been recorded, and it certainly indicates that the resurrection appearances were not straightforwardly self-evidencing or unambiguous. 'The element of unbelief', writes James McLeman, 'is inexplicable if it refers to the recognition of a person who is presumed to be intent on establishing his identity in the presence of intimate friends'.is

Giving due weight to these serious divergencies and other difficulties, and also to the non-corporeal nature of Paul's resurrection experience, which he evidently regarded as typical of all the others he mentions, it would seem inherently probable that the Gospel stories about the tangible bodily appearances of Jesus have developed from some more visionary or immaterial original event or events, this judgment being corroborated by modem biblical criticism. Thus Peter Carnley writes that:

One of the most conclusive results of contemporary redactional studies of the New Testament traditions of the appearances ... is that an original nucleus of tradition has been developed during


the course of its transmission and that the resulting diversity can be explained by reference to apologetic motives and concerns along the way; the modification of the tradition is an inevitable by-product of the attempt to communicate and defend resurrection belief in different contexts to different people with different preconceptions and concerns.16

Accepting this, it might seem that the real task before us is to determine as best we can the precise nature of the 'original nucleus' behind the Easter appearance narratives, assuming that is, that some startling paranormal occurrence was essential to change the disciples from defeated and disillusioned mourners for their dead leader into crusading evangelists for the 'risen Lord', and correspondingly rejecting as totally inadequate a modern view that this required nothing more than changed convictions about Jesus and no resurrection event of any kind, a view which will be examined more fully in the next section. The thesis here presented, however, is that we do not need to speculate unduly as to the exact nature of the original pre-elaborated appearances of Jesus (taking it as generally agreed that they were not blatantly of a hallucinatory type, as suggested by D. F. Strauss in the last century), because the really crucial issue is whether the appearances of this one historical individual, in contrast with the reported appearances of numerous other individuals, must be assigned a unique significance; and that, I submit, is something we have no grounds whatever to affirm. Lest this seems somewhat evasive I might add that I am fully prepared to accept that in some objective sense Jesus probably did appear to several of his followers, but then, I must equally accept that, despite many suspect and some detectably fraudulent reports of similar apparitions by other deceased persons, there still remain a multiplicity of such incidents which, having been rigorously investigated, have satisfied their critics as being at least honest accounts of what were genuinely believed to be visual and perhaps auditory encounters with the dead, especially recently deceased relatives. To highlight this issue we glance at just the bare outline of one arresting modern instance of this type, and which can be read in full in two different books by Leslie Weatherhead, who reproduces it from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.17

It concerns a Captain Eldred Bower who was killed in a plane crash in France on 19 March 1917. That same day his half-sister, knowing nothing of his death or even that he had returned to


France, was sitting in a hotel in Calcutta minding her baby before its baptism and thinking of Eldred, as he had originaIly promised to be the child's godfather. Suddenly she had 'a great feeling' that she must turn round, and on doing so was amazed to see Eldred, looking very happy. After an initial exclamation of joy she put the baby down and rose to greet him, but he was no longer there. About the time of his death his little niece, not quite three years, reported to her mother that 'Uncle Alley Boy is downstairs', insisting that she had seen him despite her mother's statement that he was in France. Also that day an elderly friend of the family had a disturbing sense that something was wrong regarding Eldred, prompting her to write to his mother. Two further appearances are stated to have occurred in December that year.

Even if only a fraction of such accounts impress us as being the authentic recollections of persons of sound mind and moral integrity they still pose the question why such appearances are taken to point to nothing more than the survival of death, although some reputed appearances of the 'Virgin Mary' have been accorded a revelatory significance, whereas the appearances of one, and only one, historical figure are supposed to point to divinity. This is also odd in that other alleged appearances in the Gospels carried no such implication, for example, of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration, or in Matthew's incredible legend of saints leaving their graves after the resurrection and entering 'the Holy City, where many saw them' (27.53). Why then should the appearances of Jesus, unlike those of Eldred and all others, be held to indicate and vindicate his assumed unique status as God's only Son?

There are, I submit, two factors which readily explain but do not justify such diverse interpretations of post-mortem appearances, one being psychological and the other historical. Psychologically, there is bound to be a very big difference between a person's response to the appearance of a dead relative or friend, most likely seen as a reassurance that he or she is alive in another world and still concerned for loved ones here, and, on the other hand, the appearance of a charismatic religious leader to members of his or her beloved band of personal disciples, almost inevitably prompting the ecstatic reaction that 'our leader is alive again and still our leader', although no longer as an ordinary flesh-and-blood individual. In such a situation it would seem quite natural to exclaim: 'the Lord has risen', or, 'I have seen the Lord' (whether or not those actual words in Luke 24.34 and John 20.18 are truly historical), and also to


feel inclined, as time passes, to attach a deeper significance to the term 'Lord'. It may be relevant here to note the reported reluctance of some who have hero-worshipped modem cult or revolutionary leaders, such as Che Guevara, to accept that they are really dead, and clearly a post-mortem appearance of such a leader would give more than metaphorical meaning to their slogan 'Che lives '. At any rate, it is understandable why the appearances of Jesus, unlike those of Eldred, would almost automatically tend to induce a sense of his continued and exalted leadership.

The historical factor powerfully reinforcing this tendency to accord a unique significance to the appearances of Jesus was, of course, that they occurred in the context of intense messianic expectation. Not surprisingly, therefore, they came to be interpreted as revealing or ratifying the identity of Jesus as the Messiah, who would therefore shortly return to establish the Kingdom of God in power. This expectation had to be drastically revised as time passed and no parousia took place, but by then the conviction that Jesus was God's special envoy had become firmly rooted in Christian belief, culminating in the credal affirmation that he is 'very God of very God'.

We can speculate but cannot really be sure as to how this process of deification actually developed, many regarding it as almost inevitable in the wider non-Jewish religious climate of that time, in which outstanding religious figures were often deified. Thus John Hick argues that once Christians ascribed titles such as 'son of God' to Jesus, to express his significance for them, it was 'natural and intelligible' that 'later this poetry should have hardened into prose and escalated from a metaphorical son of God to a metaphysical God the Son'.18 More specifically, Wolfhart Pannenberg's account of how the resurrection was increasingly interpreted in incamational terms seems quite plausible, even though I do not share his realist understanding of the resurrection itself. He argues that what Jesus probably expected in the near future was the universal resurrection of the dead, not his own personal resurrection, and that when the disciples were confronted with the resurrection of Jesus they no doubt understood this as the beginning of the universal resurrection and the end of history. It was only to the 'second generation of New Testament witnesses ... Mark, Matthew, Luke and John ... ' that it became clear that Jesus' resurrection 'was not yet the beginning of the immediately continuous sequence of the eschatological events but was a special event that happened to Jesus alone'.19 Hence,


in addition to its earlier signficance as indicating that the end of the world had begun, and that 'God himself had confirmed the pre-Easter activity of Jesus', the disciples were now convinced that , Through his resurrection from the dead, Jesus moved so close to the Son of Man that the insight became obvious; the Son of Man is none other than the man Jesus who will come again',20 and that 'If Jesus, having been raised from the dead, is ascended to God and if thereby the end of the world has begun, then God is ultimately revealed in Jesus'.21 Elaborating on this, he claims that:

If these apocalyptic ideas are translated into Hellenistic terminology and conceptuality, their meaning is: in Jesus, God himself has appeared on earth. God himself - or God's revelatory figure, the Logos, the Son - has been among us as a man in the figure of Jesus. In this sense, in the transition of the Palestinian tradition into the Syrian sphere eschatology was translated throughout into epiphany. This Hellenistic concept of revelation prepared the basic pattern for the subsequent doctrine of incarnation.

In conceding that all this is psychologically comprehensible, we are at the same time stressing that, theologically, it was totally unwarranted. In the first place, there is no viable reason why the appearances of a leader should be given greater evidential weight than those of an ordinary person, and in the second place, as will be shown in the next chapter, none of the titles ascribed to Jesus, including Son of Man, really or properly denotes divinity. Hence even if Pannenberg's theory reconstructs the actual flight of faith in the early church it does not vindicate it. In particular, the probable appearances of Jesus in no way justify the subsequent conviction that he was uniquely raised from the dead, still less that he is uniquely the Son of God.

4. Unacceptable Justifications of Resurrection Belief

Mainly because biblical and historical criticism is seen as seriously compromising the traditional apologetic defence of the resurrection several modem writers insist that the Easter faith rests primarily, if not almost exclusively, on other grounds. We shall briefly examine four such reputed foundations of resurrection belief, as based respectively on an act of faith, religious experience, the emergence of the church, and the disciples' post-crucifixion realization of Jesus'

112 Part I1I - Incarnation as Explanation of the Christ Event

messiahship, concluding that none of these can truly be substituted as the major reason, or even count as a significant supplementary reason, for affirming that Jesus alone is transcendently risen from the dead.

Demanding certainty, yet fearful that 'if the Resurrection be brought within the context of history, it must share in its obscurity and error and essential questionableness', as Barth wrote in his commentary on Romans,22 neo-orthodox theologians have dogmatically declared that this Christian conviction can only be understood and known to be true by an act of faith, such faith not being a leap of trust based on a favourable assessment of the historical evidence, but rather a personal response to divine invitation, especially through the preaching of the gospel, and almost totally independent of historical inquiry and evidential support. Reason by itself is said to be utterly incapable of establishing whether or not the resurrection took place; it must be accepted and asserted by 'faith alone', such faith being variously described as a risk, a revelation, a miracle, a gift of grace, and as caused by God. Thus H. J. Richards, having demythologized both the empty tomb and appearance stories as 'symbols ... a pictorial and concrete way of expressing faith in the risen Christ',23 yet insisting that the resurrection itself was a 'transhistorical' reality, an 'act of God', but not an historical event in the normal sense, goes on to stress that it 'can only be recognized or grasped or spoken of in terms of faith. Without this "faith-perspective" the resurrection is simply an unrecognizable event ... an unbeliever ... simply cannot "see" what the believer "sees"'.24

In almost complete disagreement with this approach I protest that it stultifies religious faith as inherently non-rational and subjective, and, worse still, apparently portrays God as the arbitrary donor of such a 'gift'. Ideally, faith is an extension and not a replacement of sight, nor is it some mysterious kind of esoteric insight, independent of rational persuasion. Furthermore, where historical events are concerned (and no playing about with terms like 'transhistorical' can hide the fact that we are dealing with what allegedly happened to a historical figure at a historical time), one cannot confidently and dogmatically proclaim their reality and true significance whilst simply ignoring the devastating findings of critical research. Attempting to do so may well foster a sense of certainty, but if so, it will be illusory. Indeed the more such writers emphasize that a faith acceptance of the resurrection must


be, not just unverifiable, but a bold venture, bravely leaping over the stumbling-block of reason rather than following the path of wisdom, the more such faith stands self-condemned. It can never be a virtue to be intellectually unsupportable.

Overlapping extensively with this untenable justification of resurrection belief is that in terms of religious experience, for according to neo-orthodoxy those genuinely acknowledging through faith that Jesus has been raised from the dead also have a sense of being saved by that event. 'My faith', writes H. J. Richards, 'like that of the apostles, is founded on Jesus himself, whom I know to be alive because he makes it possible for me today to pass from death to life'.25 This stress on experience is by no means confined to neo-orthodoxy; many others have placed a similar reliance on the experiential foundation of the Easter Gospel. Thus Geoffrey Lampe, who like Bultmann did not believe that the resurrection was an observable event in history, contended that 'There was no objective demonstration at Easter that Jesus had won the victory. .. Only the assurance of experience. The experience of those whose eyes were opened to know Jesus as their Lord . .. the experience of those who wrote the New Testament . . .. And the experience of ourselves ... '.26 Elsewhere he writes of the early Christians being 'absolutely convinced that there was an encounter ... between the objective presence of Christ, "outside" themselves, and their own selves', the experience of Paul being the most impressive testimony of this, but equally, 'Christians continue to be encountered by his living presence in other modes'.27 Actually the term 'encounter' is tendentious, precluding a purely psychological explanation, but we retain it as indicating a sense of being encountered. Peter Camley similarly deplores the fact that most studies of the resurrection treat it as a question of what was involved in the original Easter experience, arguing that we must give 'equal weight' to what is involved in knowing 'the presence of the raised Christ in our own living contact with sacred reality. After all, the object of our faith is the raised Christ himself, not the experience of the first Christians'.28 Edward Schillebeeckx, to cite one further example, places the emphasis strongly on

new experiences after his death . .. And I mean, not experiences of an 'empty tomb' or of 'appearances' (themselves already an interpretation of the resurrection faith), but experiences such as ... 'the conversion process' undergone by the disciples, their


'encounter with grace' after Jesus' death. That the New Testament bases itself on specific experiences after Jesus' death (however they might be interpreted) seems to me ... undeniable.29

Having already accepted that religious experience has a positive but limited role in theistic argument the widely reported experience of Christ's presence among believers clearly demands serious consideration, but in fact it falls far short of establishing a plausible case for the resurrection (and I refrain from commenting on Lampe's astounding claim that it even establishes theism: 'The Easter experience tells us that God is').30 In the first place, even a profound sense of the presence of a dead person (assuming for present purposes that such a presence can truly be identified) does not in itself indicate anything more than that the person's spirit is surely alive and reassuringly near, but certainly not that he or she has been raised from death in some transcendent sense. Interestingly, the Captain Bower incident already cited ends with his half-sister's assertion that 'all the time in church at baby's christening he was there, because I felt he was, and knew he was, only I could not see him'. Clearly, then, the phrase 'the experience of Christ' has no special or unique significance, except when qualified to mean the 'raised Christ ... experienced as God', as Carnley puts it,31 but unless one holds that the distinctive -presence of different divine persons - in trinitarian terms, Father, Son and Holy Spirit -can be readily distinguished by all believers, and that is not official Christian doctrine, although it may be a popular assumption, we must inevitably face the question why some experiences apparently of God are to be identified as those of the risen Christ?

To deal adequately with this problem we must look separately, I suggest, at early and modem experiences reputedly of the 'risen Lord'. In the period immediately following the death of a loved one, and very especially if one is convinced that he or she has made a post-mortem appearance to oneself and/or to others, it would be completely natural to associate a subsequent sense of an unseen kindly presence with that departed person, and hence for the early Christians with Christ himself, but despite the reported words of 'doubting Thomas', 'My Lord and my God' (found only in John's Gospel, and almost certainly unhistorical), I cannot believe that at this stage such identification was taken as implying divinity. That developed later, and unjustifiably so, as we have argued. Today, however, the theological, sacramental and evangelical context in


which Christ is proclaimed and worshipped is such that it frequently evokes an awesome sense of divine presence, but far from proving that Jesus alone has therefore been raised and exalted as the only Son of God, it shows rather that the form in which the divine Reality is experienced by different people is environmentally conditioned; for others the experience of divine presence and of salvation or liberation is realized as their thoughts and devotion are directed to mythical or historical figures such as Rama, or Krishna, or Gotama the Buddha, yet most Christians would be appalled at the suggestion that these individuals should therefore be recognized as real incarnations or avatars of God. It follows that, short of rejecting or at least drastically downgrading all non-Christian religious experience, we cannot argue that a consciousness of divine presence during specifically Christian worship and proclamation is in itself a vindication that Christ has been raised. At most it would tend to confirm this if the resurrection was already established on other grounds, but that, I contend, has been shown not to be the case. Religious experience, past and present, cannot therefore be a primary ground for resurrection belief. The fact that for many devout Catholics Mary is experientially as real as Jesus should act as a further caution against such an apologetic.

A third alleged major justification of such belief is the fact that Christianity emerged as a vibrant new religious faith: ' The evidence of Christ's resurrection consists in the coming into being of the Church, if we have regard to the circumstances in which the earthly mission of Jesus ended in disaster', to quote the opening sentence of Alan Richardson's article on 'Resurrection of Christ' in A Dictionary of Christian Theology.32 Similarly, Geoffrey Lampe declared during a television discussion that 'the nearest ... you can get to objective proof of the Resurrection - is the birth of the Christian Church'.33 That the emergence of a fervent, missionary-minded and rapidly growing religious community is no assurance of the truth of its distinctive theological affirmations should readily be conceded, however, by all non-Mormons, as they feel no compulsion whatever on such grounds to accredit the alleged visions and revelations received by Joseph Smith, or the subsequent theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. One cannot quote the text 'Ye shall know them by their fruits' (Matt. 7.16 AV) only when it suits one's case. As for the dramatic growth of the first century church it seems that one prominent element contributing to the success of early Christian preaching in attracting recruits was the illusory


expectation of Christ's imminent return in power and glory, and there is nothing surprising in the surmise that success may also have stemmed from a theological misinterpretation of the probable appearances of Jesus. The coming into being of the Christian church is therefore, at best, a very weak argument for the resurrection.

Finally, there is the more radical view put forward by those who are convinced that the serious inconsistencies between and even within the various Gospel accounts of the resurrection, coupled with the non-strictly-historical nature of such writings, make it likely that 'the phenomenon at the centre of the traditions is not an objective event but a conviction arrived at by normal process and that this explains the patent discrepancies of the traditions', as James McLeman contends.34 More specifically, he writes that 'it is sufficient to maintain that what happened was the conscious and explicit formulation of a conviction which arose directly out of what He had always been to them', in other words, 'the conviction that He is the Messiah, a conviction arrived at in full view of the CrosS'.3S Indeed the paramount question of his real identity could only be solved, he claims, in the light of the crucifixion. Don Cupitt has defended a similar standpoint, rejecting the notion of a resurrection event in both the 'crude' sense of Jesus walking from the tomb and the more visionary sense of his appearing to various persons, maintaining instead that the resurrection was really a post-crucifixion faith judgment by the disciples as they reflected on his life and death in the light of Old Testament prophecies, and realised that he must be the Christ, the Messiah.36

There is no need to elaborate further on such theories because, psychologically, and still more theologically, they would appear to lack all credibility. In the first place, I regard it as highly implausible that a group of rabinically untrained men, simply through looking back on the ministry and fate of Jesus, would have reached such an astounding conviction about him, and devoted their whole lives to propagating it. It would seem far more likely that such a radical reappraisal of the identity of Jesus must have been stimulated by some arresting post-mortem event or events, or at least authentic-sounding reports of such events, as in fact explained the conversion and Christology of Paul. But even if mere reflection on the remarkable life and dreadful execution of Jesus was psychologically sufficient to explain the dawning of the Easter faith, it still would not give it theological validity, for if the arguments of the other chapters in Part III are sound, there


was nothing in the life, deeds or teaching of Jesus to warrant a conclusion that he should be seen as the 'Word of God'. As for his messiahship being realized and justified by the study of Old Testament prophecies, C. F. D. Moule has effectively shown, in response to Cupitt, that Jesus did not really fit the Jewish scriptural understanding of the Messiah, which certainly did not envisage that he would be rejected and killed.37 I submit, therefore, that attempts to explain and justify the origin of the Easter faith as arising purely from theological thinking, unprompted by any appearances or other events, are wholly unconvincing.

The verdict of this chapter must be that there probably were post-mortem appearances of Jesus, and that as a result his followers increasingly came to interpret certain mystical experiences as implying his continued presence with them, but this in no way substantiates the belief that he was uniquely and transcendently alive, and hence it follows that the resurrection, as traditionally interpreted, is completely unsustainable, and does not accredit his divinity.

9 Do Other Factors Point

to Divinity?

1. Authority and Intimacy with God

It could well be maintained that the verdict of the last chapter, if valid, should put an end to our inquiry, and that any further consideration of reputed grounds of Jesus' divinity would be a mere waste of time, but since such claims continue to be made we are accordingly obliged to examine them. We begin with the arguments that Jesus exercised divine authority and claimed a unique oneness with God.

Wolfhart Pannenberg commences a chapter reviewing modem arguments from authority with the statement that 'Today when Christology is pursued "from below", from the investigation of the historical Jesus, Jesus' unity with God is substantiated in most cases by the claim to authority in his proclamation and work, not by his resurrection',! Amongst others he quotes Paul Althaus, who insisted that 'The authority that Jesus claims presupposes a nearness to God, a solidarity with him, that no other man has'.2 He also notes that Ernst Kasemann regarded the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, each beginning with or presupposing the formula 'You have heard that it was said ... but I say unto you', as implying that Jesus not only set his authority above that of Moses, but was acting as the direct spokesman of God; a similar claim to an authority 'which surpasses that of every rabbi or prophet'3 being evident in his attitude towards laws about the Sabbath and purification. Pannenberg, however, finds this far from conclusive, arguing that neither his words nor his deeds on their own could authenticate any claim to be the special vehicle of man's salvation:

This claim by Jesus could be shown to be true only when the general resurrection of the dead occurred and the judgment of

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Do Other Factors Point to Divinity? 119

the Son of Man actually took place according to the standard of the relation of men to Jesus.4

But in that sense, although Pannenberg does not stress this, his authority was not confirmed by God. Summarizing the debate he writes: 'There is no reason for the assumption that Jesus' claim to authority taken by itself justified faith in him ... Jesus' claim to authority by itself cannot be made the basis of a Christology'.5

In more general terms we would simply observe that acting or speaking with authority, especially in a religious context, is in itself no guarantee whatever of rightfully doing so; indeed the more confidently some individuals presume to be the appointed agents and spokespersons of God the more suspect become their authoritative deeds and pronouncements. Equally, of course, one may act and speak confidently after carefully and critically thinking out the implications of one's basic faith, but even then, it is primarily because of the content of that faith and the consistency of its interpretation, rather than its confident presentation, that others are invited to accept and act upon it, and also give appropriate recognition to the one proclaiming it. That aside, we must ask if Jesus really did speak and behave with unparalleled authority, suggesting a very special if not unique relationship with God.

We look first at what Eduard Schweizer describes as 'such unprecedented statements as the "But now I tell you" passage (Matt. 5.21-48), in which laws of the Old Testament are abrogated and the "I" of Jesus speaks in the place of God'.6 Assuming that these six antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, although found only in Matthew's Gospel and clearly combined into a unit by him, are probably authentic because unparalleled in Jewish literature, it is still amazing that commentators insist on reading into this contrast between the old Law of Moses and the new ethic of Jesus the consequent super-divine authority of the latter, conveniently overlooking the fact that if the old Law is being superseded it was never the timeless 'word of God' in the first place, and even more conveniently overlooking the fact that the new ethic is obviously exaggerated and cannot be meant to be taken literally. But, in that case, why must the general formula of these sayings, 'You have heard ... but I say unto you', be taken as a totally unexaggerated claim to absolute authority? Thus if the ethical challenge of the first antithesis is truly expounded by Herman Hendrickx as meaning: 'But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother


shall be meted out the death penalty',? what immediately strikes one is the appalling injustice of this saying, not the authoritative manner in which it is pronounced; but if, on the other hand, we take it as an instance of Jesus' frequent use of hyperbole it makes its point effectively, the hyperbole also extending to the formula by which it is introduced. This equally applies to the other antitheses, for example, the fifth, exhorting his hearers to turn the other cheek (yet Jesus himself did not do so if John 18.24 is authentic), to give their coats also to anyone suing them for their shirts, to go the extra mile and not to refuse those wanting to borrow from them.

Another alleged example of Jesus' exercise of divine authority is his occasional pronouncement that a person's sins have been forgiven. Various writers seem to echo the lawyers' exclamation: 'Who but God alone can forgive sins?' (Mark 2.7), but they see these words, not as a protest against blasphemy, but as a virtual proof of his divinity. Geza Vermes, however, has put paid to this particular argument, pointing out that 'absolution from the guilt of wrong-doing appears to have been part and parcel of the charismatic style', as he illustrates from the Dead Sea Scrolls, adding that 'In the somewhat elastic, but extraordinarily perceptive religious terminology of Jesus and the spiritual men of his age, "to heal", "to expel demons" and "to forgive sins" were interchangeable synonyms'.8 'My son, your sins are forgiven' (Mark 2.5), and similar texts elsewhere, have therefore no special Christological significance.

Two further issues on which it is frequently argued that Jesus authoritatively repudiated Jewish Law concern Sabbath observance and ritual purification, but whilst there is no denying that he sometimes did clash with the Jewish authorities on such matters, his overall attitude to the observance of the Law, and to these aspects of it in particular, was by no means as radical as is commonly assumed. Repeatedly in the Gospels he is depicted as meticulously complying with the requirements of the Law, observing the Passover, paying the Temple dues, even commanding a leper he had healed to 'Go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering laid down by Moses for your cleansing' (Mark 1.44). Hence, allowing for some over-statement, he was probably quite serious when he declared that 'It is easier for heaven and earth to come to an end than for one dot or stroke of the Law to lose its force' (Luke 16.17; Matthew 5.18). As for his disputes with the Pharisees and others over details of Sabbath observance, hand washing before meals, etc., it is again Geza Vermes who reminds us that, in fact, Jewish legal teaching on


such topics was 'still in a fluid state in his time',9 not being rigidly codified until after AD 70. The real debate about what is permissible on the Sabbath turned on the interpretation of the widely accepted principle that saving life takes precedence over Sabbath observance, Jesus upholding the more liberal standpoint that all healing is life-saving. On other contentious topics, such as ritual handwashing before eating, he also took a more liberal stance, but not to the extent of totally rejecting the Jewish distinction between pure and impure foods, as Mark misinterprets his statement that it is not what goes in but what comes out of the body that defiles a man, adding the comment: 'Thus he declared all foods clean' (Mark 7.19). Peter's vision and the later controversies about food in the early church (Acts 10.13-16 and 15.19-20) clearly indicate that the disciples did not understand Jesus as repudiating all Jewish regulations about food.

We must conclude, then, that arguments based on the alleged unparalleled authority of Jesus turn out on investigation to have only a fraction of the weight they are supposed to have, and consequently afford no solid ground for affirming his divinity.

Closely associated with these arguments based on his reputed unique authority are those resting on his special intimacy and sense of unity with God. In approaching such claims we must bear in mind that the language of personal relationships is highly metaphorical, so that even if the statement John attributes to Jesus: 'My Father and I are one' (John 10.30) was historical, it would not necessarily mean a shared divinity, and obviously could not denote their complete identity. That Jesus was intensely conscious of God's presence surrounding him, far more so than his contemporaries (as far as we can judge), and that he was also deeply convinced that he had been assigned to fulfil a special mission, seems indisputable, but of course other religious leaders have been similarly confident of God's nearness and call to service, and hence what we are really asking is whether there is strong evidence that Jesus was very specially, if not uniquely, aware of being at one with his Father, and if so, what that entails.

Ignoring John's Gospel as reflecting the later views of the church (except to note that John 20.17 would undermine the odd argument for Jesus' distinctive unity with God on the grounds that he speaks of 'my Father' but 'never includes himself among the disciples by saying "our Father"'10), there are two apparent intimations of a special closeness to God which require consideration. The first


of these is the fact that, alone within the New Testament, and, it was believed, within contemporary Judaism, Jesus is recorded as addressing God directly as 'Abba', the very intimate term used by a child for his or her Dad. Once more it is Geza Vermes with his specialist knowledge of the period who demonstrates the weakness of such an argument, pointing out that abba could be used in solemn and 'far from childish' situations,ll and also citing an instance of its application to God by Hanan in the first century BC, showing that its use was not peculiar to Jesus, even if characteristic of him.

The more striking allusion to a unique personal relationship between Jesus and God is the saying found in both Matthew and Luke: 'Everything is entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son and those to whom the Son my choose to reveal him' (Matt. 11.27, see also Luke 10.22). Of course, even if there were no doubts about the genuineness of the saying, it would not by itself prove the reality of this exclusive relationship, any more than the earlier quoted claim 12 by Sun Myung Moon to be God incarnate established his divinity, but in fact the historicity of the text is very dubious, quite apart from the fact that Jesus' acknowledged ignorance of the timing of the end of the age, that 'hour' being known only to the Father ( Matt. 24.36; Mark 13.32), clearly conflicts with the sweeping claim that everything had been entrusted to him; and to make matters worse he mistakenly promised that 'the present generation will live to see it all' (Mark 13.30). Commenting on Matthew 11.25-30, F. C. Fenton notes that the authenticity of these verses has been questioned, partly because 'the use of the terms the Father and the Son . .. is unusual in the words of Jesus', and partly because he is unlikely to have said of himself: 'J am gentle and lowly in heart'. He concludes that 'The passage reads more like a piece of Church writing based on a number of Old Testament quotations and put into the Lord's mouth (such as we have in the discourses in John's Gospel) than a tradition of Jesus' words spoken during the ministry'.13 Fenton does not mention Karl von Hase, but in effect his verdict echoes the latter's celebrated remark in 1876 that Matt. 11.27 'gives the impression of a thunderbolt fallen from the Johannine sky'.14 In the present century Rudolf Bultmann contended that because this verse 'presents us with Gnostic language' IS it is definitely not the sort of statement which Jesus would have made. On the other hand, it has been argued on linguistic grounds that the whole passage could well be of Semitic origin, and hence must


not be assumed to be the product of later Hellenistic Christianity; indeed Joachim Jeremias not only urged that Matt. 11.27 be accepted as authentic, but speculated that it 'could have been an important stimulus to Johannine christology ... one of the logia of Jesus from which Johannine theology grew'.16 Theoretically, that presumably remains a remote possibility, but I would personally judge, as do many others, that because the content and terminology of these verses are so untypical of the Synoptic presentation of Jesus it is very unlikely that they go back to his teaching ministry, and far more probable that they reflect the early church's thinking about him. The really crucial point, however, is that even if someone could demonstrate conclusively that, incredible though it may seem to many of us, Jesus did make this claim to an exclusive, though still not co-equal, relationship with his Father, such an isolated saying could count as supplementary evidence for his divinity only if it was already fairly certain on other grounds that he was in a unique sense the 'Son of God', but in the absence of valid reasons for that staggering conclusion, as argued in this and the preceding chapters, Matt. 11.27 can have virtually no force whatever, little more than if any other religious leader made a similar astounding if not outrageous claim. In brief, Jesus would no more deserve to be deified for claiming that 'no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son' than the Sufi mystic al-Hallaj deserved to be put to death in AD 922 for the not dissimilar claim that:

I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I; We are two spirits dwelling in one body. If thou seest me, thou seest Him, And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.17

Quite apart from this failure to show that Jesus enjoyed such a unique personal relationship with God as to suggest some sort of ontological identity with Him, there are various recorded sayings of his which clearly point in the opposite direction, sayings in which he distinguishes himself from God and even feels deserted by Him. The most arresting instance is his reply to the stranger who ran up to him and, 'kneeling before him, asked, "Good Master, what must I do to win eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone'" (Mark 10.17-18). No wonder the saying is radically altered in Matt. 19.17. Even John's Gospel


portrays Jesus as declaring that 'the Father is greater than I' (14.28), which, as Ian Wilson comments, 'should have been enough to spike the Alexandrian guns at Nicaea')8 Wilson also makes the point that in answering the lawyer's question 'Which commandment is first of all?' (Mark 12.28) by quoting the Shema Israel and in no way amending the words 'the Lord our God is the only Lord' to introduce any reference to himself, Jesus 'was affirming in the most emphatic way possible that the Jewish faith was the absolute bedrock of his belief',19 in a word, belief in pure monotheism. Finally, we note that the cry of dereliction on the cross: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' (Mark 15.34), however understandable it may be from a human standpoint, certainly does not fit in with the belief that Jesus constantly enjoyed a confident unique sense of intimacy with his Father.

2. The Messiah and Other Titles

Those contending that the divinity of Jesus can be supported by the various titles attributed to him in the New Testament tend to assume that this depends entirely on the exact meaning of these titles, and on the authenticity of their use by him, but what tends to be overlooked is the more basic question of the legitimacy of any or all apparently divine-human titles and their related expectations. Hence a proof that Jesus definitely claimed a title definitely implying his divinity would not confirm that exalted status unless the theological credibility of the office or role in question, and the essential qualifications for holding it, were generally recognized and rationally defensible. But having stressed this point we do not need to pursue it any further, for the argument from Jesus' titles in fact fails at an earlier stage, in that, with one partial exception, none of these titles truly denotes divinity. More precisely, it has been shown that when the various titles are interpreted in the light of contemporary Jewish usage they cannot properly be taken to support any belief in Jesus as God incarnate. Moreover, it is very dubious whether Jesus ever assumed the most prominent of the titles, that of Messiah, although this becomes somewhat irrelevant if the title did not designate a divine being in any case.

In seeking to substantiate the purely human meaning of the various titles ascribed to Jesus, when judged by their use in contemporary or near contemporary Jewish sources, those who are not specialists in Semitic studies must obviously rely on the expertise of


those who are, the present writer being particularly indebted to the very detailed review of these titles by Geza Vermes in Jesus the Jew, and regarding it as sufficient here to summarize his main findings without reproducing all his supporting evidence. Vermes devotes successive chapters to Jesus the prophet, lord, Messiah, son of man and son of God, but we commence with the basic New Testament emphasis on Jesus as 'the Christ', 'the Anointed', the long-awaited Messiah.

Having emphasized the multiplicity of messianic notions in interTestamental literature, Vermes maintains that we must distinguish between 'the general Messianic expectation of Palestinian Jewry, and the peculiar Messianic speculations characteristic of certain learned and/or esoterical minorities',2o and that for a religious teacher addressing 'Israel at large' it is only in the former sense that references to the Messiah would be meaningful. He further argues that the most reliable indication of the precise nature of this messianic thought and expectation is to be found in Jewish prayer, especially in the Psalms of Solomon and the Eighteen Benedictions, and concludes that such

ancient Jewish prayer and Bible interpretation demonstrate unequivocally that if in the inter-Testamental era a man claimed, or was proclaimed, to be 'the Messiah', his listeners would as a matter of course have assumed that he was referring to the Davidic Redeemer and would have expected to find before them a person endowed with the combined talents of soldierly prowess, righteousness and holiness.21

In a word, a saintly but non-supernatural military hero or king. As regards 'Messianic speculations' Vermes notes four additional

ideas or images, namely those of Priest Messiah, Prophet Messiah, the 'hidden and revealed Messiah' and 'The slain Messiah', but none of these implied divinity. (Incidentally the Dead Sea sect apparently contemplated three messianic figures - 'Until there shall come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel' 22). Admittedly, there are some allusions to messianic pre-existence, but this applies only to 'his "name", i.e. his essence and nature ... let there by no mistake. In Jewish thought the celestial pre-existence of the Messiah does not affect his humanity'P

But what of the possibility that Jesus understood and claimed Messiahship in a radically new and in fact divine sense? The


simple answer seems to be that he didn't. 'That Jesus never asserted directly or spontaneously that he was the Messiah is admitted by every serious expert', writes Vermes, and having surveyed the apparently authentic references by Jesus to Messiahship he judges that since this concept seemingly was not central in his teaching, since there is no record of anyone accusing him of messianic pretensions before his trial, and, moreover, since he did not endorse Peter's confession: 'you are the Messiah' (Mark 8.29), 'there is every reason to wonder if he really thought of himself as such'.24 Putting it more strongly a few pages later he asserts that 'if the Gospels have any coherent meaning at all, his comment on Peter's confession and the answers to the high priest and Pilate are only to be understood as a denial of Messiahship'.25 The Fourth Gospel, admittedly, gives the opposite impression, with Jesus explicitly claiming to be the Messiah, as in the dialogue with the woman of Samaria, but only very conservative writers regard this as historical. Even a commentator fully accepting Jesus' Messiahship refers to 'the inherent improbability that Jesus would reveal to a flippant woman a secret which he withheld for long even from his closest friends'.26 Despite this overall negative verdict there is no denying that the early church focused on the title, regarding Jesus in the light of resurrection belief as the exalted Messiah who would return as universal judge and king. As an argument for his divinity, however, it carries no weight.

The title 'son of God' must similarly be understood against the background of its Jewish usage, and 'to a Jew', as Vermes summarizes the situation in Jesus and the World of Judaism:

son of God could refer, in an ascending order, to any of the children of Israel; or to a good Jew; or to a charismatic holy Jew; or to the king of Israel; or in particular to the royal Messiah; and finally, in a different sense, to an angelic or heavenly being. In other words, 'son of God' was always understood metaphorically in Jewish circles. In Jewish sources, its use never implies participation by the person so-named in the divine nature.27

In Jesus the Jew he cites the tradition regarding the charismatic figure Hanina ben Dosa that a heavenly voice repeatedly declared: 'The whole universe is sustained on account of my son Hanina';28 a remarkable parallel to the story of Jesus' baptism, and indicating the purely commendatory significance of such language. In fact


Christian scholars do not dispute this. Thus James Dunn in The Evidence for Jesus explains that 'For Christians "Son of God" is a unique title. Only Jesus can be called "the Son of God". What we must realize, however, is that there was nothing particularly unique about calling someone "son of God" at the time of Jesus '.29

Against this it may be contended that there are various texts in the Gospels where Jesus seems to identify himself as 'the Son' in a pre-eminent sense, e.g. Mark 13.32/Matt. 24.36 and Matt. l1.27/Luke 10.22, but Vermes, along with 'all the more openminded' interpreters, queries the authenticity of these references. Surprisingly, he does not deal at this point with the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, in which the absent owner of a leased vineyard repeatedly sent servants to collect his share of the produce, but all were beaten or killed, and so, finally, he sent his only son, but they killed him also and seized the property. Understandably, even critical writers like Ian Wilson have thought that the 'quite unmistakable' meaning of this parable is that God, having sent many prophets who were rejected, had in the end to send his only son, Jesus, who was to suffer a worse fate. Thus Jesus 'could hardly have more plainly spelled out that his relationship with God was distinctive and special'.30 Had Wilson consulted standard treatments of the parables, such as those of C. H. Dodd or Joachim Jeremias, he would have realized that it is most unlikely that Jesus told the original simpler story as an allegory about himself, even if it later came to be interpreted in that way. As regards the landlord's only son, Dodd insists that 'It is the logic of the story, and not any theological motive, that has introduced this figure',3! whilst Jeremias quotes Kummel declaring that 'No Jew, hearing in our parable the story of the mission and slaying of the "son", could have dreamed of applying it to the sending of the Messiah'.32 In any case, a story ending with the murder of the son would be a very poor illustration of the later resurrection faith. Coming back to Vermes, he maintains, especially in view of Jesus' apparent rejection of the fuller title 'Messiah, the Son of God' in response to Peter's confession and the high priest's question,33 that 'there is not a sign in the Synoptic Gospels of his having arrogated to himself this exalted relationship'.34 It was rather his second generation disciples who transformed the talk of Jesus as 'son of God' into the theology of Jesus 'the Son'. 'The Hellenistic son of God/"divine man" then appears not as an original element in the Gospel tradition, but as one superimposed on a solidly established


Palestinian Jewish belief and terminology'.35 That verdict seems indisputable.

Turning next to the phrase 'son of man' it is notable that in the Synoptic Gospels, although much less in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus frequently refers to himself, but others never refer to him, in this way, the description only occurring three times in the rest of the New Testament. It is agreed that the phrase is of Aramaic origin, but its precise meaning in each context, and in particular its relation to the vision in Daniel 7.13, which refers to 'one like a son of man' coming with the clouds of heaven, is still disputed. For present purposes, however, we do not need to review this debate, our aim being merely to show that 'son of man' does not designate a divine being. Once more we take the shortcut of noting Geza Vermes' conclusion, having examined the use of the phrase in both Jewish writings and in the Gospels, that there are no grounds whatever for holding that 'son of man' was ever used as a title, or that any of its likely usages by Jesus referred directly or indirectly to Daniel 7.13. More positively, he points out that a speaker describing himself as 'the son of man' would do so, in accordance with Aramaic usage, 'out of awe, reserve or humility. It is this neutral speech-form that the apocalyptically-minded Galilean disciples of Jesus appear to have "eschatologized" by means of a midrash based on Daniel 7.13'.36 Other leading scholars are quoted as endorsing this interpretation, which effectively empties the phrase 'son of man' of any incarnational content.

Equally, the fact that Jesus is often referred to as 'Lord' in the New Testament should not be taken as a direct acknowledgement of his divinity. The title could be used in many contexts. Indeed 'in Jewish Aramaic the designation, "(the) lord", is appropriate in connection with God, or a secular dignitary, or an authoritative teacher, or a person renowned for his spiritual or supernatural force. The field in fact ... is entirely open'P Looking at its use in the Gospels, Vermes claims that the title 'primarily links Jesus to his dual role of charismatic Hasid and teacher',38 but, not surprisingly, the Fourth Gospel extends the significance of 'Lord' to its limits, as in Thomas' exclamation: 'My Lord and my God' (20.28). Applying the title to Jesus in this full theistic sense, however, clearly reflects later Hellenistic influence and not the situation during his preaching and healing ministry.

Finally, we must comment on the common description of Jesus as a prophet, there being no doubt that he thought of himself as such


(see Mark 6.4), and that he was so regarded by the ordinary people (see Luke 7.16), even if the Pharisaic elite held that the days of the prophets had ceased. The real issue, however, is whether he saw himself, and was seen by his contemporaries, as the final prophet, an expectation which took the form either of a returning Elijah acting as mediator between God and Israel, or of a prophet 'like unto Moses', apparently envisaged primarily as a teacher. There is no hint in the Synoptics, however, that these models played any part in Jesus' self-awareness. It is only in Peter's sermon in Acts 3 that he is explicitly identified with the prophet forecast by Moses in Deuteronomy 18.15. The more pertinent point is that neither a returning Elijah nor a prophet of Moses' stature would entail the least modification of monotheism, and hence would provide no support whatever for Jesus' alleged divinity.

All in all, a consideration of Jesus' titles in no way strengthens the dramatic claim that he was God incarnate.

3. Sinlessness and Example

For a typical example of the argument from sinlessness we turn to an older book on Christology, H. R. Mackintosh's The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (1914), in which he wrote that 'He is unique in virtue of His sinlessness - the one quite unspotted life that has been lived within our sinful race'.39 If it had been otherwise, he argued, the disciples would not have represented him as 'without sin', adding that 'Once the fact of his sinlessness has been apprehended, however, we can put forward strong antecedent grounds for accepting it. Only a sinless person can guarantee the Divine pardon of sin . .. If He shed His blood for the remission of sins, it is because He is without spot or blemish'.4o Summing up, he claims that:

No miracle of Christ equals the miracle of His sinless life . .. And reflection proves that the ground or reason of it must be sought in our Lord's unique relation to God. .. It is vain to speak of Him simply as different from others in degree; the difference is one of type. .. Divinity is here the source and basis of perfect manhood.41

Modem conservative writers would undoubtedly endorse every word from this extract, but the really remarkable development, as


noted in Chapter 1, is that some non-conservative writers have revived the argument in a modified form - in terms of Jesus' absolute unselfishness and openness to God.42 The question, however, is whether there is historical evidence to substantiate that claim?

Before attempting to answer this question it should be noted that even if every recorded word and deed of Jesus evoked nothing but our highest admiration, and even if we knew far more than we do about his life and character, an argument from perfection would still, to a tremendous extent, be an argument from silence; total sinlessness in thought, word and deed (assuming we truly understood what that involves) could never be proved. Beyond this, some have argued that the familiar description of Jesus in Hebrews 4.15 as 'one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning' (RSV) seems self-contradictory, in that temptation can only be real if it is attractive, and its attractiveness indicates the presence of sin. John Knox has gone even further, maintaining that 'Unless sin is to be defined in a starkly and exclusively voluntaristic sense and, moreover, is to be associated only with outward, overt actions, I should say we cannot make so enormous an exception in Jesus' case without effectively separating him from our humanity'.43 Perhaps it is no wonder that others wish to change the question, if not evade the whole issue. Thus Norman Pittenger, having insisted that sin is not basically a matter of breaking divine commandments or laws but a 'distortion or deviation of aim ... the refusal to play one's part in the total expression of 10ve-in-action'44 adds: 'Let us not ask whether or not Jesus was sinless. Let us ask if we have sufficient material in the gospels to assure us that in the life that was remembered ... there was an out-going, active, and creative goodness'.45 But the most positive answer to that question would do little to substantiate traditional Christology.

Leaving these more general considerations we must inquire if the New Testament evidence really supports the claim that Jesus was totally without sin. To that question we are forced to give a negative answer, but it is imperative to place that answer in its proper perspective by emphasizing that the overall impression of the character of Jesus as portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels is that he was a very very good and lovable person. However, the precise issue before us is not his undoubted saintliness but his alleged sinlessness.

Two incidents whose straightforward meaning immediately undermines that supposition are that Jesus insisted on submitting


to John's 'baptism of repentance', and, as previously noted, that he challenged the man who addressed him as 'Good Master' with the exclamation: 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone' (Mark 10.18; Luke 18.19), a reply whose apparent disavowal of sinlessness has never been convincingly explained away. Apart from this, there are various reported acts and attitudes of Jesus which fairminded critics both inside and outside the Christian church, as distinct from those axiomatically placing him above all criticism, cannot regard with moral approval.

Admittedly, some charges against Jesus are misplaced and unjustified in that critics (and especially atheists) often make insufficient if any allowance for the dubious historicity of some of the disturbing incidents they cite as evidence. To avoid this danger I would strongly urge that Jesus should not be misjudged for his apparently irrational and ill-tempered cursing of the fig tree because it had no fruit out-of-season (Mark 11.12-14 and 20-22; Matt. 21.18-21 - two conflicting accounts, but plausibly conjectured to have originated as a misunderstood parable, or as a legend about the cause of some conspicuous withered tree near Jerusalem), or for his apparent cruelty in sending the devils exorcised from the Gadarine demoniac into a herd of swine, causing about two thousand of them to drown in the lake (Matt. 8.28-32; Mark 5.1-13; Luke 8.26--33 - their fate, if real, and not a later addition to the story to underline the power of Jesus, probably resulting from a stampede for natural reasons, which was promptly misinterpreted), or for his apparently disrespectful words to his mother at the wedding at Cana: '0 woman, what have you to do with me?' (John 2.4 RSV - a highly symbolic episode found only in the Fourth Gospel and of very questionable historicity). Rather surprisingly, critics seem to overlook the apparent utter thoughtlessness of the twelve-year-old Jesus in staying behind at Jerusalem while his parents journeyed homewards for a whole day thinking he was in the crowd, and then had to rush back to Jerusalem and spend three days frantically searching before finding their totally unrepentant son in the temple (Luke 2.41-51 - but again a very improbable event, most likely a theological elaboration on a visit Jesus may well have made on reaching his majority, but incredibly ascribing to him at that age an emerging messianic self-consciousness).

The telling fact, however, is that when we have made as full allowances as we can for those incidents which, as reported, unfairly malign Jesus, there are still several others which critical scholarship


judges to be probably authentic, and which by normal standards of moral assessment certainly do not evoke our admiration and approval; and indeed lend weight to the Jewish scholar C. G. Montefiore's reported claim that 'Jesus was not good enough to be God'.46 We can conveniently divide these criticisms of Jesus' character into three sections, dealing respectively with his attitude to non-Jews, to those opposing or ignoring him, and just occasionally to his family and followers.

Describing the 'Jewishness of Jesus' Geza Vermes writes that:

It is a Jewishness that sometimes amounts to downright chauvinism, as is manifest in the unflattering epithets which the blunt Galilean lets fly against non-Jews. 'Dogs', he observes of them, 'dogs' not fit to eat the bread belonging to the children (Mark 7.27; Matt. 15.26) or to be given a 'holy thing' (Matt. 7.6); 'swine', on which his apostles are not to waste the pearls of their teaching (Matt. 7.6). Do not trouble yourselves with them, he explicitly enjoins on another occasion. 'Go nowhere among the Gentiles ... but rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel' (Matt. 10.5-6; 15.24).47

The most disquieting of the incidents alluded to in this passage is, of course, Jesus' treatment of the Gentile woman who appealed to him to cure her daughter, only to be met with the retort that 'it is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs' (Mark' 7.27; Matt. 15.26). Even a Christian writer, John Baker, has commented: 'Could the most bigoted and racially exclusive Jew of the time have been any more brutally rude?',48 although he goes on to speculate that it may have been said in half-jest. At any rate, it was the woman's tactful response that 'even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps' which changed his attitude, or as Bernard Shaw mischievously put it, 'made Christ a Christian',49 so that he granted her request. It is because these harsh references to non-Jews are in such open conflict with the early church's mission to the Gentiles that it is inconceivable that they would have been attributed to Jesus if it was not firmly believed that he had spoken in this narrow-minded way.

Jesus's attitude to his opponents has also been severely criticized. 'The fierce denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23; cf Mark 7.1-13; 12.38-40; Luke 11.37-52; John 9.40-41) strike us as lacking in charity and understanding at least',SO to quote John


Baker again. Of the New Testament references cited here it is undoubtedly Matt. 23, with its seven woes: 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites', and its blistering sarcasm in verse 22: 'You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?' (RSV) which, assuming its authenticity, most striking confirms Baker's judgment. The fact that 'the experts on the Judaism of the first century tell us that the scribes and Pharisees have been considerably caricatured here; they were not all like this picture of them, indeed many were extremely loving and holy men', as one commentator reminds US,51 only makes matters worse. The one way in which Jesus could be exonerated from these charges of unfairness and uncharitableness is by accepting E. P. Sanders thesis in Jesus and Judaism that he didn't define his own position vis-a-vis the Pharisees, and that Matthew 23, or large parts of it, do not depict the historical Jesus.52 Much as I would welcome that verdict I am afraid that he has not convinced me that the chapter in question really does seriously misrepresent Jesus, although I fully accept that the form in which the material is presented owes much to Matthew, as evident from the parallel passage in Luke 11.37-52. Pending a more persuasive rejection of Matthew 23 the charges must stand. Another situation which evidently provoked Jesus to uncharitable condemnation, or 'vindictive fury' as Bertrand Russell describes it,53 was when people did not respond to his mission, and hence his angry declaration that on the day of judgment it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah than for those towns in Galilee which did not repent on seeing his mighty works (Matthew 11.22-24), and also for the towns which rejected the preaching of the twelve or the seventy disciples whom he sent out on mission (Matt. to.15; Luke 10.12).

Finally, we note that at times Jesus seems to have acted insensitively towards his own family and his followers. His reaction to the person who informed him that his mother and his brothers had arrived and wanted to speak to him - 'Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? . .. Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, my sister, my mother' (Matt. 12.49-50) - certainly makes a point, but if I had been the messenger I would have been more taken aback by his discourtesy to his human family than challenged to belong to his spiritual family. Presumably the suddenness with which he expected Peter, Andrew, James and John to become his disciples, immediately abandoning family responsibilities ( Matt. 8.18-22), abbreviates the full story, yet it would be in line, not only with his words in Matt. 10.34-38, but also with the most glaring


instance of insensitivity when he retorted to the man offering to follow him as soon as he had buried his father: 'Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their dead' (Matt. 8.22; Luke 9.60). E. P. Sanders considers attempts to tone down the severity of this reply, and firmly rejects suggestions that it may have been just a proverb, or not referred to a real death, insisting that it only makes sense if the man's father was actually dead, and hence the demand for immediate discipleship entailed violating not just natural filial duty but also the fifth commandment. 'Disobedience of the requirement to care for one's dead parents is actually disobedience to God'.54 In The Sayings of Jesus T. W. Manson wrote that 'The seeming harshness of Jesus and His almost brutal thrusting into the background of natural feelings and obligations are due to the overwhelming urgency of His task. The King's business requires haste'.55 That would be acceptable if 'the urgency of His task' really meant that before the disciples he sent out on mission would 'have gone through all the towns of Israel the Son of Man will have come' (Matt. 10.23), but of course that did not happen, and anyway such mistaken eschatology is a topic for the next chapter.

To end this chapter on a more positive note we quote from W. Durant's characterization of Jesus:

He had the puritan zeal of the Hebrew prophet rather than the broad calm of the Greek sage. His convictions consumed him; righteous indignation now and then blurred his profound humanity; his faults were the price he paid for that passionate faith which enabled him to move the world. For the rest he was the most lovable of men.56

In a word, a real saint, but not impeccably so.

10 Does All His Teaching

Befit Divinity?

1. Magnificent but Sometimes Mistaken

The word 'all' in the chapter title must be mentally underlined, for there is no intention here to question the sublime nature of 'nearly all' the recorded teaching of Jesus, and indeed it is within the context of a profound appreciation of that teaching in general that we must nevertheless make fairly severe criticisms of some particular aspects of it. Admittedly, it may seem petty-minded to focus entirely on the mistakes or disputable utterances of 'one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had', to quote Gandhi's warm tribute to Jesus,1 but in view of dogmatic claims that he came to earth as God incarnate, bringing the supreme revelation of divine love and human duty, and that the reported content of this revelation helps to confirm his Sonship, it is imperative to ask if his teaching was wholly free from serious error or misguided counsel. The negative answer we must give to that question in the present chapter must be counterbalanced, however, by the positive portrait of Jesus in the following chapter, if we are to grasp something of his real stature as a moral and spiritual leader.

For most Christians, I suspect, a conviction about Jesus' perfect teaching is in reality an inference from his assumed divinity, and not a conclusion based on an independent assessment of all his sayings. I further suspect that it is simply taken for granted and not explicitly argued that such a disclosure of truth implies divine status; but theologians, needless to say, are obliged to give a more articulate expression of this line of reasoning. Again we turn to H. R. Mackintosh for a clear presentation of the argument:

We need not labour the point that Christ has given to men the

135


perfect revelation of the Father. To redeem by authority, by atonement, by the gift of life - this is revelation. The words of Jesus are the voice of God . .. Than His revelation none more perfect can be conceived. .. Can we say that the experience of Christ's revealership holds a Christology in solution?

The answer may be put briefly by saying that only He can reveal perfectly who is what he reveals.2

Although revelation is here understood primarily in terms of 'the work' rather than the words of Jesus, it is still stressed that his words are 'the voice of God', and clearly if some of these are shown to have been fundamentally in error, or morally or spiritually very questionable, then the argument forfeits all persuasiveness; not that it was a valid argument in the first place, the presumed finality of the Mosaic or Mohammedan revelations carrying no hint of the divinity of such figures.

Two major difficulties affecting all arguments about the teaching of Jesus are, of course, the questions of its authenticity and proper interpretation, and these have far deeper implications than the obligation to check and double-<:heck the likely validity and significance of all scriptural texts cited in the following pages, and especially any reputed teaching of Jesus being judged erroneous or defective. More basically, I would contend that the degree of fundamental uncertainty concerning both the genuine content and original meaning of Jesus' teaching as a whole has definite Christological implications, it being hard to credit that God would go to the length of becoming once-for-all incarnate to disclose his loving forgiving nature and his will for mankind, and yet do nothing to ensure that posterity had a full and totally reliable record of that revelation, instead of having to grapple with somewhat conflicting acounts not written down for a generation or longer after the event, and evidently subject to misunderstandings, alterations and additions during that oral period. To appreciate the force of this contention we need only remind ourselves that despite two centuries or more of critical New Testament scholarship there is still widespread disagreement about numerous important aspects of the mission and message of Jesus, for example, whether or not he intended to found a new community, or what he really said or meant about issues like divorce and pacifism.

Replying to all this many would undoubtedly insist that the primary purpose of the incarnation was to make sacrificial atone-

Does All His Teaching Befit Divinity? 137

ment for sin by dying on the cross, thus relegating Jesus' teaching ministry to a secondary place, but I simply refer back to Chapter 4 where that view as resolutely rejected. Replying more specifically to charges of ignorance or error in Jesus' teaching it has been urged that this is a natural consequence of the full humanity of the incarnate Son, but that convenient explanation could equally be used to refute similar objections to the alleged hidden divinity of any saintly individual. At most one might resort to such an explanation to excuse minor mistakes, but where major religious misconceptions are involved, as will be considered presently, it would seem illogical to dismiss these by invoking the normal limitations of human nature, whilst still insisting that he was uniquely possessed of a full divine nature.

Before examining the few seriously questionable elements in Jesus' teaching something needs to be said about the general style of that teaching, if for no other reason than to avoid making undeserved criticisms of it. One of its most prominent characteristics was his constant use of hyperbole. Everyone recognizes this as regards sayings about plucking out an offending eye or cutting off an offending hand (Matt. 5.29-30; 18.8-9; Mark 9.43, 45, 47), but clearly there is a problem as to whether this extends to all his 'hard sayings', including, for example, those about loving one's enemies and always turning the other cheek when hit (Matt. 5.44 and 39; Luke 6.28-29). Hyperbole may be a useful device for captivating people's attention and even stimulating them to think, but if it becomes a regular feature of one's public speaking it deprives what is being said of precise meaning and direct relevance, and it would be particularly inappropriate if, as most Christians believe, such preaching was meant to be recorded as God's final revelation. The deliberate gross exaggeration which might be condoned in a prophet passionately concerned to challenge his hearers to repentance and commitment to a new life could hardly be commended in a preacher whose words are supposed to be taken for all time as the direct words of God. Our more immediate concern, however, is to make adequate allowance for Jesus' frequent overstatement of his case, and not falsely accuse him of teaching unacceptable beliefs or ideas which were never meant to be taken literally.

Amongst other characteristics of his teaching we need only draw attention here to its unsystematic nature, even if Christians ever since have been trying to expound it systematically. Jewish religious teachers, we are reminded, did not spend their time in


abstract theorizing about the nature of God; rather they thought and spoke of him 'not in philosophical or theological terms, but in existential language', as Geza Vermes puts it,3 mainly as King and Father. Correspondingly, their practical preoccupation was to serve, and rouse others to serve, this Father-God, rather than presenting carefully worked out doctrinal beliefs about him. It seems very likely that Jesus too fitted into this pattern, and hence it may be an unwarranted assumption that every saying is part of a fully developed theology, or that all the sayings form a consistent whole.

2. False Eschatological Expectations

The aim of this section is most emphatically not to present a comprehensive review of the many and varied expositions of Jesus' teaching on eschatology, although indirectly most of the major standpoints will have to be noted and evaluated, but simply to argue that Jesus almost certainly did expect God to intervene dramatically to end the present age, and to stress the serious implications of this error for Christology, whilst at the same time denying that it totally undermines his ethical teaching.

It was, of course, Albert Schweitzer who made most Christians uncomfortably aware of the eschatological dimension in the teaching of Jesus, claiming that his frequent references to the future, which had traditionally been interpreted as forecasts of Pentecost or the fall of Jerusalem or his own return in glory, in fact plainly indicate his almost obsessive anticipation of an imminent climax in history, inaugurating the Kingdom of God with power, and, moreover, that his demanding ethical teaching applies only to the interim period before the end of the era. He further maintained that it was to expedite this event that Jesus sent the twelve disciples out on mission and finally went to Jerusalem to undertake the sufferings which he supposed were essential to bring about this goal, but on the cross he realized his mistake and died in despair.

It is doubtful if anyone today accepts Schweitzer's thesis in its entirety, for he can justifiably be criticized for not recognizing the extent to which eschatological passages in the Gospels may reflect the beliefs of the early church rather than of Jesus himself, and he can also be criticized for merely assuming and not substantiating the claim that Jesus deliberately submitted to suffering from the conviction that this was necessary to force the appearance of the


Kingdom; yet despite these objections many contemporary writers fully accept his basic contention that Jesus' outlook and teaching was dominated by his intense expectation of the impending end of the age.

Others, however, totally reject this, maintaining that Jesus was overwhelmingly concerned with the present rather than the future, and in general upholding C. H. Dodd's interpretation of the relevant sayings and parables as implying that 'the "eschatological" Kingdom of God is proclaimed as a present fact',4 that 'Jesus intended to proclaim the Kingdom of God not as something to come in the near future, but as a matter of present experience'.s In defending this concept of 'realized eschatology', seeing the ministry of Jesus as 'the impact upon this world of the "powers of the world to come"',6 Dodd concentrated on sayings such as Matt. 12.28; Luke 11.20: 'But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out the devils, then be sure the kingdom of God has already come among you', and Luke 17.20: 'You cannot tell by observation when the kingdom of God comes ... for in fact the kingdom of God is among you', or 'within you', as he claimed is the better translation. Correspondingly, he treated texts which overtly refer to a future event as true in some non-eschatological sense, or else as due to the beliefs of the early church. E. F. Seott, on the other hand, argued that the Kingdom is only present in a proleptic sense, but is essentially a future catastrophic event. Jesus 'thought of the Kingdom as future, but yet as so near at hand that its power could be felt already. .. This in our judgment is the true significance of those sayings of Jesus in which a present realization of the Kingdom appears to be contemplated? This almost seems to anticipate Bultmann's position; the Kingdom is completely in the future, yet it determines the present and demands our decision here and now, hence the phrase 'existential eschatology'.

As the debate becomes more complex one may begin to wonder with Norman Perrin 'whether it is legitimate to think of Jesus' use of Kingdom of God in terms of "present" and "future" at all',8 but that suggestion, I submit, only sounds plausible if one is insisting on a strict either/or verdict, whereas reading through the relevant sayings of Jesus gives the inescapable impression that both time dimensions are included. The Kingdom is present in that everyone is invited to enter it by surrendering to God's will. Equally, however, it is presented as a future event, a Kingdom coming 'in power', and the key question is whether


that future dimension involved forecasting a dramatic event which never happened.

Before giving reasons for a positive answer to that question it must be fully acknowledged that some of the future-orientated sayings in the Gospels have clearly been coloured and heightened, if not invented, by the evangelists or the early church. One has only to compare such sayings in Matthew's Gospel (e.g. 16.28 and 24.3) with their earlier wording in Mark's Gospel (9.1 and 13.4) to realize this. What is more, even some of the references in Mark's Gospel are highly suspect, for example, the reply which Jesus is recorded as giving at his trial to Caiphas' question: 'Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?' Jesus answered: 'I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God and coming in the clouds of heaven' (14.62). The historicity of this must be questioned because no disciples were present at the trial behind closed doors to hear what was said. Clearly, then, we must make due allowance for the likelihood that some later beliefs about the parousia have been read back into the accounts of Jesus' teaching, and also for the likelihood, as noted earlier,9 that passages alluding directly or indirectly to Daniel 7.13 (one like the 'Son of man' (AV) coming with the clouds of heaven) do not date in their present form from the time of his ministry. Despite all this, there are still strong reasons for holding that he almost certainly entertained and proclaimed false eschatological expectations, and these reasons include both general considerations and the exegesis of particular texts.

E. P. Sanders gives four reasons why, if 'we have to choose between "present" and "future" as emphases in Jesus' message, we must, on the basis of present evidence, put the emphasis on the kingdom as immediately future,' namely:

(1) A future emphasis corresponds to Jesus' early association with John the Baptist. (2) The behaviour of the apostles indicates that they expected a dramatic event in the near future . .. It appears that what the followers of Jesus learned from him was that the kingdom was at hand. .. The Christian movement was differentiated from the rest of Judaism by the conviction that the Lord would soon return, and this is to be seen as a transformation of Jesus' view that the kingdom of God was near. .. This fact, more than any other single one, shows where the emphasis lay in Jesus' own message. (3) The prediction of the destruction of the temple shows that a future event was expected. (4) The


expectation of the arrival of the kingdom is well grounded in the Judaism of Jesus' day.10

There is no need, I believe, to elaborate on this, I would, however, add the further consideration that direct or veiled allusions in the Gospels to some great event in the near future are so numerous -not just in several parables and 'son of man' sayings, but in the so-called 'Little Apocalypse' (Mark 13.5-37 and corresponding sections in Matt. 24 and Luke 21) - that if we are to delete or explain away all this material as misrepresenting the teaching of Jesus it raises profound misgivings about the authenticity of what remains.

Supplementing these general considerations we look at just two of a large number of texts which cannot be entirely dismissed as originating from the early church, beginning with Matt. 10.23, in which Jesus, having given specific instructions to his disciples on sending them out on mission, concluded with the assurance: 'I tell you this: before you have gone through all the towns of Israel the Son of Man will have come'. The point is that even if the original reference was to the coming of the Kingdom and not the 'Son of Man', it is unbelievable that such a blatantly unfulfilled promise or prophecy would have been recorded unless it was believed that Jesus had said it. Accordingly, many commentators accept the saying as genuine; 'This saying', writes J. c. Fenton, 'which is almost certainly an authentic saying of Jesus, expresses his belief that the end will come soon.'l1

The other text is Mark 9.1, the forecast that some of Jesus' listeners would 'not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God already come in power'. C. H. Dodd commented on this that 'The meaning appears to be that some of those who heard Jesus speak would before their death awake to the fact that the Kingdom of God had come',12 which is frankly a meaning which none of his listeners in that period of eschatological expectation could be expected to grasp. Similarly, Francis Glasson commented on this and other sayings about the Kingdom:

Did the coming of the Kingdom with power mean (a) the end of the world, sudden catastrophe, judgement, and new creation, or (b) the outburst of spiritual power which brought the Christian movement into existence and began a new era in human history, so that the early Church felt it was already living in a new world?


The advantage of the second view is that this is what actually happened.13

That is true, but it is a very poor basis for judging what Jesus originally meant. For what seems a far more realistic exposition I turn to Dennis Nineham's commentary on Mark:

The most natural interpretation then is that, though in a very real sense the kingdom has already drawn near in the words and deeds of Jesus, its manifestation in its full and final form lies still in the future, though according to this verse in the very near future; the kingdom of God come with power will then refer, as we should expect it to do in the light of contemporary Jewish expectations, to the time of the final judgement and the supersession of the whole present world-order by a completely new one - in fact to the whole complex which we now describe - very inadequately - as 'the end of the world' ... 14

He adds that, in spite of the problems this raises about the limited extent of Jesus' knowledge, the interpretation is to be accepted, 'especially in view of such a passage as Matt. 10.23, and of the expectations of the early Church'. IS

Where I differ fundamentally from Nineham, however, is in his further comment about numerous writers having shown 'that admission of such ignorance, and even error, on the part of our Lord is fully compatible with belief in the Incarnation'.16 That Jesus could be gravely mistaken about a basic conviction which gave direction and urgency to his mission and yet be acclaimed as God incarnate, as the final revelation of his Father, is simply incomprehensible. Any prophet who seriously misinformed his hearers about God's immediate purposes and plans would automatically lose credibility, even if in other respects his teaching and his life were exemplary, inspiring and challenging his followers to profound faith and costly service; and what applies to prophets in general must apply far more to the alleged final prophet. It would surely be a patent contradiction to declare that God became incarnate and thereby misled many into believing that the end of the age was at hand.

What does not follow from Jesus' false eschatological expectations is that his ethical teaching concerned only the short interval before the 'end', and has little permanent value, a view currently advocated by Jack T. Sanders in his Ethics in the New Testament:


To put the matter now most sharply, Jesus does not provide a valid ethics for today. His ethical teaching is interwoven with his imminent eschatology to such a degree that every attempt to separate the two and to draw out only the ethical thread invariably and inevitably draws out also strands of the eschatology, so that both yams only lie in a heap. Better to leave the tapestry intact, to let Jesus, as Albert Schweitzer appealed to us to do, return to his own time,17

That some aspects of Jesus' ethical teaching, especially his more extreme unrealistic demands, were deeply influenced by his eschatology is highly probable, but what Sanders completely fails to allow for is Jesus' constant resort to hyperbole, and the fact that there is no evidence that most of his moral exhortation was delivered in the context of eschatological discourse, or implied that context. Sanders' treatment of the parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates his extremism in forcing everything into an eschatological mould. To most readers the question which evoked the parable: 'And who is my neighbour?' (Luke 10.29), has nothing to do with imminent eschatology, and Jesus' reply in terms of the Samaritan's caring generosity in no way suggests an ethic only possible and binding in view of the nearness of 'the end of the age'. As Sanders sees it, however, the Samaritan's acts of love escalate to the point where he 'proceeds to behave as no man ever behaved', even using his bank account 'as guarantee of payment for all further hospital bills ... however extensive they may be'. In fact his behaviour is 'not of this world', for 'whence come his unlimited leisure and unlimited funds?'.18

It is plain to the hearer that to accept the demand of the parable is to accept an eschatological reality: the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God who vindicates the righteous . .. If the righteous God does not come shortly, the one who accepts the demand of the parable will either starve to death or wind up a derelict. 19

That this is how the lawyer was meant to understand the parable, as implying a short-term emergency ethic during which everyone must act exactly as the Samaritan acted, irrespective of personal circumstances, is simply unbelievable. Its obvious challenge is rather that the duty of loving God and one's neighbour is far more

144 Part 11I - Incarnation as Explanation of the Christ Event

demanding than strictly observing the 613 commandments of the Jewish Law, that there are in fact no limits to caring love in its deepest sense - a truth that is surely timeless and not merely part of an interim ethic. Hence, whilst accepting that a mistaken belief in imminent eschatology deeply influenced the teaching of Jesus, we deny Sanders' 'main thesis' that it was the 'necessary framework' for his selfless ethics, and 'that when the imminence faded Christian ethics became little more than bourgeois propriety'.20 On the contrary, much of his ethical teaching seems wholly independent of his eschatology, and, allowing for his fondness to exaggerate for the sake of effect, it still has direct and profound relevance today. That said, it must be admitted that there are other factors which somewhat diminish the stature of his moral teaching.

3. Improper Reliance on Providence, Rewards and Punishments

By itself the expectation that the Kingdom of God was about to come at any moment would adequately account for Jesus' counsel not to be 'anxious about tomorrow' (Matt. 6.34) as regards food or drink or clothing, but the context of these sayings in Matt. 6.25-34 and Luke 12.22-31 makes it clear that another reason why he is 'against all prudent provision of material goods to avoid poverty and provide for the future ... and ... frequently and consistently recommends improvidence', as Richard Robinson interprets such passages,21 is his almost naive confidence that God will providentially supply all our needs, just as he feeds the birds and clothes the lilies. As a caution against over-anxiety about material possessions and prosperity these sayings of Jesus are very important, but the contrasting attitude of faith is so extreme, and presupposes such an unrealistic interventionist theology, that it cannot possibly be commended. There is therefore some substance in Robinson's condemnation of this 'complete substitute for thrift and prudence', and in his charge that Jesus 'gives the impression of never having had the thought that, if we all followed his advice, everybody would soon be permanently poorer',22 especially those heeding Luke 12.33: 'Sell your possessions and give in charity'. A similar over-reliance on providential intervention is evident in his command to his disciples not to prepare their defence beforehand if arrested, for the right words would be given to them at the time (Mark 13.11; Matt. 10.19-20; Luke 21.14), and also in the promise


that if any two agree on a request to 'my heavenly Father' it will be granted (Matt. 18.19). Against all this the parables of the Pounds and Talents, and the puzzling if not embarrassing parable of the Unjust Steward, seem to point in the other direction to some extent, but not sufficiently to offset all the criticisms of writers such as Robinson.

Another questionable aspect of Jesus' ethical teaching is his occasional reference to the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell to reinforce his appeal for self-denial and public service, even promising his disciples generous compensation 'in this age', as well as eternal life in the age to come, because they had left all to follow him; the further promise of a hundred-fold restoration of 'houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and land' (Mark to.30) being an obvious instance of hyperbole. Although some of the most striking examples of this type of teaching are very suspect, for example, the so-called parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matt. 25.31-46 - generally regarded as secondary or having 'the appearance of being a Jewish story which has been adapted for Christian purposes',23 it is likely that other warnings of torments or promises of bliss hereafter (e.g. Matthew. 5. 12 and 22) to induce hearers to pursue goodness and avoid evil do go back to Jesus, and show that he did not always urge people to do their duty from purely disinterested motives. It could, of course, be argued that not everyone would respond to the call of duty for duty's sake, or for God's sake, and might only be moved to better discipleship by some 'rod or carrot' considerations. 1 might add that in regretting the use, or overuse, of such ulterior motivation in exhorting people to loving service there is no question mark against the concepts of judgment, reward and punishment as such.

A more serious accusation is that Jesus apparently taught a doctrine of everlasting punishment without realizing that this is utterly inconsistent with his understanding of God as a loving Father. The frequency of his reported references to 'eternal fire', to 'hell, where the devouring worm never dies and the fire is not quenched' (Mark 9.48), or the 'blazing furnace, the place of wailing and grinding of teeth' (Matthew 13.42 and SO), leaves no doubt that Jesus did use such language and meant it to be taken seriously, but that does not mean that Bertrand Russell was fully justified in his harsh condemnation of Jesus on this account: 'I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment'.24 The simple fact is that people are often


far better than their theology, many being saints despite some of their beliefs. The charge would have been more apposite if he had written 'profoundly humane and completely consistent'. Later, having cited many of these sayings about everlasting punishment and noted how they are repeated again and again, Russell makes the more disturbing charge that

this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as His chroniclers present Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.25

Intuitively one feels that there may be some, but only some, truth in this, and that, overall, Jesus does not deserve such severe censure.

On the other hand, we must equally reject the attitude of those who seem totally unperturbed by Jesus' references to everlasting punishment, either wholly accepting and possibly echoing them in evangelistic preaching, or else lightly dismissing them as merely Jesus' use of contemporary rabbinic thoughtforrns, in particular the idea of Gehenna, originally the Valley of Hinnon near Jerusalem, where it is believed the city's rubbish was always burning, and hence became the symbol of perpetual torment, but a symbol which must now be demythologized as indicating separation from God. The fact remains, however, that if Jesus really did believe and teach that unrepentant sinners are condemned to everlasting punishment then he was guilty of not rigorously thinking out the logic of his gospel of God's forgiving love, and also guilty of too readily reproducing the theological ideas of his own time. Such a failure might be excusable in a 'prophet powerful in speech and action' (Luke 24.19), but not in someone subsequently proclaimed to have been God incarnate.

4. Significant Gaps in His Teaching

Ignoring some individual sayings which don't exactly impress us as being the direct words of God, for example, his bewildering explanation of why he preached in parables (Mark 4.10-12; Matthew 13.10-15; Luke 8.9-10), or his statement that he came not to bring


peace but a sword (Matthew 10.34), we conclude with a section noting briefly the silence of Jesus on various important issues concerning which an incarnate God would surely have made clear pronouncements. Certainly, anyone learning beforehand that God was to become once-for-all incarnate as a first-century Jew, and was to spend approximately three years of his earthly life teaching people about their duty to their Heavenly Father and to one another, would expect him to give specific guidance, if not take steps to put it on record, regarding all major topics of moral and religious concern, not to mention probably revealing medical and other information vital to the welfare of mankind. To avoid undue complication, however, we confine ourselves here to the sphere of moral teaching. In this respect it is simply assumed by most Christians that all the virtues are either mentioned or strictly implied in the teaching of Jesus, and that the answer to virtually every moral dilemma boils down to the correct application of the basic principles he enunciated. Consequently it may come as something of a shock to find his teaching deprecated because of what it does not include.

For a forthright expression of such criticism we turn again to Richard Robinson:

Certain ideals that are prominent elsewhere are rather conspicuously absent from the synoptic gospels . .. The ideal of beauty is wholly absent from this teaching: ... unless in the reference to the lilies. .. The ideal of truth and knowledge is wholly absent ... he never recommends the virtue that seeks and leads to knowledge, namely reason. .. The virtue of conscientiousness ... is not placed high by Jesus ... Jesus says nothing on any social question except divorce . .. He does not pronounce about war, capital punishment, gambling, justice, the administration of law, the distribution of goods, socialism, equality of income, equality of sex, equality of colour, equality of opportunity, tyranny, freedom, slavery, selfdetermination, or contraception. .. The Jesus of the synoptic gospels says little on the subject of sex.26

Undoubtedly one could dispute the inclusion of various items in this list, and also its overall fairness, but equally one could add to the list. I do not, for instance, find any clear guidance on animal welfare, despite Albert Schweitzer's claim that his own ethic of 'Reverence for Life' is 'the ethic of Jesus brought to philosophical expression'.27

148 Part IIl- Incarnation as Explanation of the Christ Event

The point is that even a carefully revised list would still pinpoint several areas in which people in nearly all ages have suffered from moral perplexity or blindness, often leading to unfairness if not inhumanity, and on which they therefore urgently needed firm moral guidelines, yet on such vital issues Jesus either remained totally silent or was totally unreported.

The vital question facing us here concerns the significance of such silence, and I submit that if Jesus was just a great prophet, or more truly the greatest of all prophets, then that silence has no serious significance, for we do not expect prophets to pronounce on all major issues; but it is certainly in conflict with the claim that Jesus was God incarnate bringing to mankind the ultimate revelation of divine truth. Thus the unfortunate absence of some things he ought to have taught, as well as the mistaken or misguided nature of some of the things he did teach, do not befit an affirmation of divinity.

5. The Cumulative Verdict of Parts 11 and III

The conclusions reached in these chapters in Part III are not all of equal weight, the most devastating being the denial of any cogent reasons for belief in the unique resurrection of Jesus. The other conclusions, however, if valid, do not just demolish additional arguments for his alleged supernatural status, some of them on their own would place a huge question mark against orthodox Christology. Taking all of them together, and assuming that they are fair and properly substantiated, the verdict of Part III is unquestionably that there is no need whatever to resort to an incarnational hypothesis to account for the life and ministry of Jesus and the subsequent Easter faith, a concern for truth and simplicity forbidding any appeal to divine intervention (even if inherently permissible) when uncalled for. And when this Part III verdict is further combined with that of Part 11, affirming the prior improbability of God becoming incarnate, their cumulative force clearly entails that any credal declaration that Jesus is 'the only-begotten Son of God' is wholly untenable. Nor can such declarations be rescued by any convenient doctrine of development of the type advocated by John Henry Newman/8

maintaining that Nicene Christology, whilst not directly provable from Scripture, only makes explicit what is already implicit in the New Testament writings. On the contrary, the more we penetrate back behind the Gospels, the more we find pure monotheism, so that later trinitarian orthodoxy, far from being the natural flowering


of the religion of Jesus, is rather an alien graft, something which, as Geza Vermes feelingly expresses it, 'would have filled this Galilean Hasid with stupefaction, anger and deepest grief'.29

The denial that Jesus was ontologically unique does not mean, however, that he cannot hold a unique position for people worldwide in terms of their understanding of and response to God as a loving heavenly Father.

Part IV The Place of Jesus in

Non-Incarnational Faith

11 Seeking to Understand

the Real Jesus

1. As Charismatic Prophet

The denial of his divinity does not excuse us from trying to give a more precise answer to the question which Jesus is reported as putting to his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: 'Who do you say I am?' (Mark 8.29). This is especially important because many liberal writers seem to be very vague or evasive when it comes to that question, if not attempting to have it both ways - on the one hand, accepting the critical findings which in our judgment ruled out an incarnational theology, yet, on the other hand, mysteriously reaffirming a near orthodox Christology. Thus Don Cupitt, whilst acknowledging that the early church emerged as

a religion of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, a pre-existent divine being who had been sent by God to save men from their sins by his sacrificial death. He was now risen, ascended, glorified, the Lord of all, and through the church's sacraments men could gain heaven by union with him.1

immediately adds that 'To put it crudely, Jesus had not taught, had not been aware of, these ideas '; and yet, despite this implied rejection of traditional Christology, he states in the Epilogue to the same book that because Jesus 'grasped and lived' his message that 'The Kingdom of God is at hand!' he 'is rightly called saviour, mediator, redeemer, not because of what he is in himself, but because he was so possessed by that to which he bore witness. In that sense he is rightly called the absolute in time'.2 Unless the term 'absolute' is here given a vastly reduced meaning I fail to see how from his standpoint Jesus can be reinstated as 'the

153

154 Part IV - The Place of Jesus in Non-Incarnational Faith

absolute in time'! Equally surprising, although less extreme, is Ian Wilson's testimony in his 'Author's Postscript', immediately following a very critical chapter on 'The Real Jesus' in his Jesus: The Evidence, that 'With every sceptical faculty alive and kicking I do believe that nearly two thousand years ago, in the land we today call Israel, the 'word', a vital something of that indefinable something men call God, was made flesh and dwelt in a Galilean Jew called Jesus'.3 This, however, is so vague that it is hard to know what it means. As for functional Christology, dismissing Jesus' divinity in any ontological sense, yet reasserting it as the 'deed of God' in him, or his 'God-bearing',4 we have already judged that this is in reality unitarianism.5

Turning to the positive characterization of Jesus, we start from the historical fact that through his teaching and healing ministry he profoundly impressed the multitudes who following him as being a great prophet. Those who witnessed the miracle at Nain exclaimed: 'A great prophet has arisen among us' (Luke 7.16), and those watching his entry into Jerusalem described him as 'the prophet Jesus from Nazareth' (Matthew 21.11). Shortly after this we read that the chief priests and Pharisees hesitated to arrest him because 'they were afraid of the people who looked on Jesus as a prophet' (Matthew 21.46), and on Easter Sunday the two unknown disciples journeying to Emmaus refer to him as 'a prophet powerful in speech and action' (Luke 24.19). The setting of this last quotation is very suspect, but there can be no doubt that it reflects a widespread estimation as to who Jesus was. Moreover, Jesus himself seems to have understood his mission in these terms, judging by his reaction to a rather hostile reception at Nazareth: 'A prophet will always be held in honour except in his home town' (Mark 6.4; Matthew 13.57; Luke 4.24), and indeed in Luke's account going on to compare himself with the prophets Elijah and Elisha (as historical figures, not the Elijah of eschatological myth returning as the herald of the messianic age). Again, in his response to Herod's reputed threat to kill him, he exclaimed: 'it is unthinkable for a prophet to meet his death anywhere but in Jerusalem' (Luke 13.33).

More specifically, Jesus' activities as teacher, healer and exorcist seem to place him in the line of charismatic prophets known as the Hasidim or Devout. These were rare individuals of extraordinary piety and compassion, who attributed their powers to perform miracles to their direct relationship with God. Understandably, such holy men were venerated by the ordinary people, but were disliked

Seeking to Understand the Real Jesus 155

by those in authority because of their non-conformity and apparent over-familiarity with God. It is not merely as a charismatic prophet, however, but as the greatest of them, that Jesus commands our esteem and discipleship. He comes across, not just as one prophet amongst many, but as the supreme prophet, the person who more than any other had deepened our understanding of the nature and will of God, and thus deserves a pre-eminent place in religious life. Needless to say, if such judgments reflected only the evaluation of those within the Christian tradition they might well be suspected of expressing little more than sectarian prejudice, especially if voiced by those with a very limited knowledge of comparative religion, but in fact open-minded members of other faiths have equally used superlatives in appraising the ministry of Jesus. Thus Mahatma Gandhi, writing as a Hindu, and having affirmed his disbelief in the dogma that Jesus was 'God's only begotten son', insisted that this did not mean that he could not appreciate 'all the grandeur of His teaching and His doctrine'. 'He expressed, as no other could, the spirit and will of God.'6 Geza Vermes, writing as a member of the Jewish faith, not only describes Jesus as 'the paramount example of the early Hasidim or Devout? but emphasizes that:

The discovery of resemblances between the work and words of Jesus and those of the Hasidim, Honi and Hanina ben Dosa, is however by no means intended to imply that he was simply one of them and nothing more .... no objective and enlightened student of the Gospels can help but be struck by the incomparable superiority of Jesus ...

Second to none in profundity of insight and grandeur of character, he is in particular an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of spiritual truth and of bringing every issue back to the essence of religion, the existential relationship of man and man, and man and God.8

Although the Jesus of some early unitarian writers, who relied on a fairly literal pre-critical interpretation of the Gospels, was a somewhat super-human but still non-divine figure, even possibly having a subordinate role in creation,9 modem Unitarians would defend not just the correctness but the total adequacy for religious faith of the understanding of Jesus as supreme prophet. Thus Alfred Hall wrote in his Beliefs of a Unitarian that:


Jesus was the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, their culmination and their glory. He stands in direct historical connection with Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah. .. Before his time, God's witnesses had already spoken of the Fatherhood of God, had conceived the idea of all men worshipping together, and had had foregleams of the kingdom of heaven. To these conceptions Jesus gave a new and deeper significance.10

Whilst recognizing that public preaching was but one aspect of the life of a charismatic prophet, in the case of Jesus it was so captivating and convincing that, despite the deficiencies noted earlier, we must further characterize him as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all religious teachers.

2. As Profound Teacher

In claiming that it is the teaching of Jesus which is his greatest contribution to religious faith it is not implied that this was equally true for the first Christians. On the contrary, what mattered most in the early church was evidently the prospect of his early return in glory, together with the developing theology about Jesus, rather than what Jesus himself had taught. Quite candidly it must be admitted that it was probably these mistaken beliefs about his identity and expected parousia, and not his arresting sayings and parables, which explain why he came to be remembered, and why Christianity emerged as a new religion. In that respect H. J. Cadbury was, if anything, guilty of an understatement when he wrote over fifty years ago:

The ultimate success of early Christianity in winning a wide and devoted adherence rests not exclusively on the life and teaching of Jesus. How far success was due to this influence, personally, directly and accurately transmitted to the first and succeeding generations of his followers, and how far to a religious propaganda in which there was an idealized Jesus who was the future Messiah, or the present Lord, or the actual deity of an attractive cult, we find it at this late day extremely difficult to tell ... one must be prepared to admit that the religion which became the Christianity of the Roman Empire may have had but slight relation to the historical actuality of its founder.ll


It must be stressed that in acclaiming Jesus as one of the greatest religious teachers we are not forgetfully overlooking the questionable beliefs criticized in Chapter 10, but rather testifying to a profound impression that the vast majority of his sayings are truly 'pearls of great price'. In brief, what is magnificent far outweighs what is mistaken in his teaching. We might add that the authenticity of nearly all the texts quoted in the following paragraphs is not seriously disputed, and hence there is rarely any need to add comments on their origins or exegesis.

It should also be made clear that we are not seeking to evaluate his teaching in terms of its originality, something which could only be judged adequately in the light of a very detailed knowledge of contemporary and background thought. On this issue we would simply endorse Norman Pittenger's observation that:

What he taught, how he looked at the world, his conception of God, and the like, did not have about it the sort of originality which might be supposed if he had appeared as a bolt from the blue. All of it is set in the context of the Judaism of his age. Jesus' originality, which is certainly marked, was of another sort ... it was shown not so much in what he said as in what he omitted saying: it is in Jesus' selectivity that his original genius manifests itself. 12

Starting, then, from the realization that Jesus is portrayed as fully accepting the beliefs and practices of his Jewish faith, and realizing also that he was not a philosopher or theologian propounding some new doctrinal system, but a prophetic figure using everyday images to make God more real to his listeners and evoke their commitment to his service, our real purpose here must be to note those elements in his religious heritage which he emphasized and developed, as expressing the essence of moral and spiritual truth. His overall standpoint is best seen in his summary of the Old Testament Law in the two commandments to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength ... [and] your neighbour as yourself' (Mark 12.30-31); and, according to Matthew, adding that 'Everything in the Law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments' (22.40). In Luke's account, admittedly, the summary is placed in the mouth of the lawyer questioning Jesus, but what matters is not whether Jesus originated the summary but that he accepted it, and that his teaching made the


double duty to love God and our neighbour more meaningful and challenging. Coupled with this we note his even shorter summary of ideal behaviour: 'Always treat others as you would like them to treat you', and again it is in Matthew's account that he adds: 'that is the Law and the prophets' (7.12). Once more, this may not be an original saying, as a version of it has been accredited to Hillel, but it is the acceptance and recommendation of it that really counts.

Complementing the Jewish insistence on the transcendence and awesome holiness of God, and his sovereignty as King, Jesus drew special attention to his loving nearness, frequently referring to and addressing him, and teaching others to address him, as 'Father' or 'our Father in Heaven'. In particular, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 has numerous references to 'your Father', with assurances of his caring concern for those who trust him. Whilst it must be acknowledged that these chapters do not explicitly teach that God is the universal Father of mankind this seems to be clearly implied in passages such as Matthew 5.43-48, commanding that our love must not be confined to those loving us, but must extent even to our enemies, just as our heavenly Father cares for good and evil alike. For most people it is the parable of the Prodigal Son which most tellingly portrays the Fatherhood of God, and despite the overreaction of those adamantly denying that any parable can be interpreted allegorically, and hence 'The Father is not God, the elder son is not a Pharisee', to quote Norman Perrin,13 I find it hard to believe that Jesus meant this to be seen as nothing more than a story about human family relationships, and must side with those commentators who are convinced that 'beyond doubt, in the mind of Jesus the father stood for God'.14 In brief, God as almighty, allloving Father is worthy of our highest praise, and rightly demands that we aim to reflect his love and goodness in the service of others, especially those in greatest need. 'There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father's goodness knows no bounds' (Matthew 5.48). 'Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate' (Luke 6.36).

Expressed in terms of God's sovereignty this amounts to accepting the Kingdom of God, a phrase unfortunately used in different and some unacceptable senses, but basically denoting the rule of God in people's lives. In a word, 'thy kingdom come' means 'thy will be done on earth as in heaven' (Matthew 6.10). Or as Edward Schillebeechx puts it: 'That this kingdom comes means that God looks to us men and women to make his "ruling" operational in


our world'.15 The implications of this, as Jesus understood it, are very varied, and cover much more than his specific references to the Kingdom, but primarily, as already noted, it involves imitating God's goodness and mercy in caring for others, particularly the destitute and outcasts of society, those who cannot repay us, and, moreover, caring for them not just when it is convenient to do so but even when it's costly. As usual, Jesus drove this home to his hearers in parables as well as trenchant sayings, the story of the Good Samaritan vividly illustrating what loving one's neighbour may entail, as well as identifying anyone in need whom we can help as being our neighbour. Furthermore, such altruistic acts or public service must be performed without ostentation, as if the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. They must also be done out of a sense of duty to God, and not in the hope of recognition or reward, realizing that at our best we are unprofitable servants. Indeed purity of motivation and of thought, and not mere conformity with expected standards of decent behaviour and charitable giving, is an essential element of the God-controlled life, as Jesus saw it. It is the 'pure of heart' who see God, whereas those harbouring evil thoughts in their 'hearts' are defiled and prone to evil deeds. Here again, admittedly, Jesus resorts to hyperbole in suggesting that the man who nurses thoughts of anger against his brother, or looks on a woman 'with a lustful eye', is already guilty of murder or adultery, but his concern for integrity of attitude as well as action is unmistakable.

A similar integrity and humility must characterize our approach to God in worship. It is not those listing their virtues and religious observances, as the Pharisee in the Temple, but the truly penitent who are pardoned; and to be acceptable to God such penitence must include not only remorse and a turning away from evil towards goodness, but a readiness to forgive others. Jesus also urged an almost childlike trust in approaching God as our Father, which is very commendable as a spiritual attitude, although we earlier criticized the undue extension of this model to include the providential provision of all our needs.

Amongst many other important insights into the nature and duties of the God-governed life we note his stress on being peacemakers, both with our 'brother' and in the wider society, on being truthful and not requiring to be put on oath, on never leading children or other 'little ones' astray by our words or example, on making use of all our talents in the service of our Maker, on


upholding the ideal of loving fidelity within marriage, and so on. Penetrative sayings on other issues such as judgment and the life hereafter could also be cited, but, without going into further details, it should by now be evident that we have in the recorded teaching of Jesus, despite the reservations expressed in the previous chapter, a profound expression of spiritual truth, its inherent attractiveness and persuasiveness being further enhanced by the character of the teacher. And it is to this gospel of Jesus, far more than that of any other preacher, that many of us are supremely indebted for stimulating and helping us to formulate our own deepest religious convictions, and, beyond that, to respond spiritually and morally to the presence and will of our Father God. We conclude, therefore, that his teaching, although more accurately his life and teaching, fully justifies the pre-eminent position he holds in the Christian tradition.

The plain fact, however, is that for the vast majority within that tradition it is the supposed sacrificial death of Jesus rather than his life and teaching that has supreme significance, and hence we must conclude this chapter by considering the death of the real Jesus, arguing that in the political circumstances of that time this is fully understandable as the tragic execution of a great prophet, and affords no basis for the dogmatic superstructure subsequently built upon it.

3. But Not as Sacrificial Saviour

The first point to establish is that the Gospel accounts of why Jesus was crucified, primarily on a charge of blasphemy by the Jewish leaders, who then pressurized a somewhat reluctant Pilate to order his execution, simply do not stand up to critical examination. To substantiate this it is sufficient, without going into great detail, to note the following discrepancies and peculiarities in the records of his arrest and trial.

To begin with, the behaviour of the crowds seems inexplicable, acclaiming Jesus with Hosannas on his entry into Jerusalem, yet howling for his crucifixion within a week. If his popularity was so great that the 'chief priests and the doctors of the law' hesitated to arrest him during the festival lest 'we should have rioting among the people' (Mark 14.2), the subsequent absence of any public protest, and still more the public demand for the death, is, to say the least, very surprising.


Even more incomprehensible is the role that Judas is portrayed as playing in betraying Jesus. The alleged betrayal might make sense if Jesus was relatively unknown and needed to be identified, or was in hiding and needed to be located, but neither set of circumstances is relevant. No wonder that one writer has surmised that the references to Judas are not only legendary but tendentious, Judas being 'simply the Jew par excellence'.16

Passing over the minor problem of who exactly arrested Jesus (contrast Mark 14.43 or Matthew 26.47 with John 18.3), we move on to difficulties involved in the reported trial of Jesus by the Jewish authorities. According to the Synoptic Gospels, but not John who places the events a day earlier, the trial took place during Passover night, but the point is that Jewish customs did not allow for nocturnal trials or for sentences being pronounced on the same day as the interrogation. Indeed some have spoken of such a trial breaking every rule in the book. Another puzzling feature is whether the Sanhedrin met once or twice - if at all! Mark and Matthew describe Jesus being taken directly to the High Priest's house where he is promptly tried by the Sanhedrin in the middle of the night, and then next morning they meet again and decide to take him to Pilate, but Luke mentions only the morning trial, whereas John makes no reference to the Sanhedrin, and simply tells of Jesus being questioned first by Annas, who then sends him for further questioning by his son-in-law Caiaphas, the High Priest (although the questioner at Annas' house is also mysteriously called the High Priest!). As regards the charge of blasphemy on which the Sanhedrin decided (explicitly in Mark and Matthew but more implicitly in Luke) that Jesus deserved to be put to death, we have the anomaly that, strictly speaking, claiming to be the Messiah was not considered blasphemous in Jewish eyes. Significantly, the charge levelled against Jesus before Pilate was of a political nature, that he was 'subverting our nation ... and claiming to be Messiah, a king', as Luke put it (23.2). We will return to this point presently.

Next we note that the reported reaction of Pilate to the whole situation, trying repeatedly to save Jesus until intimidated by the Jewish mob threatening to report him to Caesar, is even harder to credit, being totally at variance with what is known from other sources about his ruthless character and his contempt for the Jews. In brief, he was not the sort of man to be unduly concerned about the fate of a prisoner whose preaching was creating a disturbance, nor would he allow himself to be manipulated by Jewish authorities


or crowds. He was still less likely to adopt the Jewish custom of symbolically washing his hands of the affair, even quoting from the Old Testament in doing SO.17 According to Luke, but not the other evangelists, he also tried to remit the case to Herod, but Herod merely questioned and ridiculed Jesus before sending him back to Pilate for sentence. The Barabbas episode further deepens our suspicions about the reliability of these records. As Joel Carmichael comments:

The first thing that arrests the eye is the idea of the custom itself, that the Roman authorities were compelled to release a tried and convicted criminal at the mere command of a Jewish mob. Not only is there no other evidence for this in any classical record; it is inherently extraordinarily unlikely. It is either entirely legendary or the sole hangover of a vanished state of affairs.1s

Adding to this 'historical absurdity' is the fact that Pilate 'had to remind the Jews of their own national custom, of which there is no Jewish trace!'19

The crucial question, of course, is what lies behind all the incoherences and improbabilities in the Gospel narratives of the trial of Jesus, and the twofold answer, now increasingly being recognized by scholars, is, first of all, that it was the Romans, possibly with the connivance of the Roman-appointed High Priest and other Temple authorities, who arrested, tried and condemned Jesus on a charge of sedition, crucifixion being a distinctively Roman form of execution, and secondly, that the Gospel writers are concerned to shift the blame for his death from the Romans to the Jews. Matthew even represents the mob as declaring: 'His blood be on us, and on our children' (27.26); words not unconnected with almost 2000 years of anti-Semitism. Whilst disagreeing entirely with the main thesis of Joel Carmichael's The Death of Jesus, to be considered presently, his interim verdict seems inescapable:

The impression is unmistakable that the venom of the Gospel writers was directed at the Jews; the Romans are referred to in a quite innocuous way. Indeed, it is also obvious that an attempt is occasionally made, before our eyes, so to speak, to whitewash the Romans and exonerate them as far as possible of any active role in the execution of Jesus. The Gospels put the Roman authorities in the position of being innocent tools of a Jewish plot ... 20


The reason for this is that by the time the Gospels come to be written the early church was already separate from and anxious to distance itself from Judaism, both theologically and politically; in particular, these first or second-generation Christians wanted to reassure their Roman masters that their movement should not be persecuted as it had no association with the Jewish Zealots who led the revolt against Rome in AD 66, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 by Vespasian. It was therefore imperative to portray the crucifixion of Jesus, even if carried out by the Romans, as instigated by the Jews, thus accounting for the tendentious misreporting of his arrest and trial. In fairness it should be added that the evangelists were reflecting the developing theology of the church as the new Israel, rather than deliberately fabricating the evidence.

All this, however, inevitably raises the further question as to why a peace-loving preacher of righteousness should have been condemned to such a horrific death by the Romans, and to account for that some writers have surmised that he must have been guilty of severe provocation as a political activist. Building on such enigmatic texts as 'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword' (Matthew 10.34), 'I have come to set fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!' (Luke 12.49), and 'whoever ... has no sword, let him sell his cloak to buy one' (Luke 22.36), together with the facts that one of his disciples, Simon, was a Zealot, that some of his followers in the Garden of Gethsemane were reportedly armed, one of them drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of the High Priest's servant, and that the criminals between whom he was crucified were probably rebels, writers such as Joel Carmichael in The Death of Jesus and S. G. F. Brandon in Jesus and the Zealots and The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth have contended that Jesus was a political revolutionary, actively opposed to the Roman occupying forces and the collaborationist Jewish leaders. Accordingly, they explain his downfall as following a triumphant entry into Jerusalem and armed occupation of the Temple, Brandon regarding it as an abortive raid on the Temple treasury, although disguised in the Gospels as a one-man attack on the money changers, and Carmichael insisting that 'Jesus must have had an armed force powerful enough for him to seize this vast edifice and hold it for some time'.21

The sober fact, however, is that there is no need whatever to resort to such unwarranted speculation contradicting the general impression of Jesus' character, and going far beyond a credible


reading of the events concerned, in order to make sense of his trial and crucifixion. The much simpler explanation, as presented very convincingly by Ellis Rivkin in What Crucified Jesus?, is that a charismatic preacher attracting huge crowds as he proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, however non-politically, was automatically seen in the political atmosphere of that time as a threat to be removed, as indeed happened to other 'prophet-like charismatics' such as Theudas and 'the Egyptian'. More significantly, Rivkin quotes the explanation of John the Baptist's execution as given by the Jewish historian Josephus, who was born shortly after Jesus died:

he was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practise justice towards their fellows and piety towards God. .. When others too joined the crowds about him ... Herod became alarmed. Eloquence that had so great an effect on mankind might lead to some form of sedition. .. Herod decided therefore that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising.22

Expanding on this, Rivkin stresses that to the Roman authorities 'revolutionaries and charismatics alike were outside the mosaic of Judaism . .. The charismatics were politically dangerous because their teaching and eloquence attracted crowds - and crowds were unpredictable and therefore dangerous. Charismatics, prophets, visionaries - all were potentially threatening and therefore better out of the way'.23

Applying this more specifically, if indirectly, to Jesus, he asks:

What chance of survival would a charismatic of charismatics have - this man of eloquence, wonder-works, religious fervour, fevered fantasies, messianic pretensions, and sheer charisma - if his person attracted crowds in Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate and his high priest Caiaphas quaked at every rustle of discontent and every wisp of dissidence. No chance at all!24

He adds that 'The fact that the charismatic of charisma tics had taught no violence, had preached no revolution, and lifted up no arms against Rome's authority would have been utterly irrelevant,'25 and concludes that:


If the charismatic either claimed to be or were believed to be the Son of man, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, and if he were preaching the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, which of necessity would displace the kingdom of Rome, then the case was open and shut,26

Hence it is not a question of who but of what crucified Jesus, and 'the culprit is not the Jews, but the Roman imperial system'P Rivkin also makes clear, incidentally, that the Scribes-Pharisees, with their policies of 'the two realms' and of 'live and let live', that is, of separating religion and politics and of religious toleration, would not have been involved in plotting Jesus' death, although they might verbally have opposed him, but the procurator-appointed High Priest and his privy council, on the other hand, might well have been over-anxious to suppress any appearance of political dissent and avoid Roman reprisals.

Lest all this seems over-dependent on the views of just one writer, I must correct such an impression by noting a similar verdict in E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism: 'A man who spoke of a kingdom, spoke against the temple, and had a following was one marked for execution; but no one need have regarded him as a military leader'.28 Indeed the fact that Jesus' disciples went free, although he was executed as 'king of the Jews', shows that 'the Romans regarded him as dangerous at one level but not at another; dangerous as one who excited the hopes and dreams of the Jews, but not as an actual leader of an insurgent group'.29

We have thus a perfectly adequate explanation of why Jesus was crucified, but if so, why read any further meaning into it? That could be justified if he had willingly accepted or even invited martyrdom as a vital contribution to some great cause, or as an indispensable part of God's scheme of salvation for mankind, but in addition to the reasons given in Chapter 4, Section 3, for rejecting all ideas of sacrificial atonement as utterly needless, and indeed incompatible with the just but forgiving fatherhood of God, we might comment further on the absurdity of Christians in past ages, and perhaps some even today, in branding Jews as 'Christ-killers', when in terms of orthodox theory they were only performing a vital if distasteful part in the alleged drama of salvation, and had they been more tolerant or more responsive to Jesus' teaching they could have deprived mankind of the hope of pardon and of heaven!

Needless to say, people are free to read whatever they fancy

166 Part IV - The Place of Jesus in Non-IncarnationaI Faith

into the crucifixion of Jesus, but not reasonably or justifiably so, and we conclude that his untimely death, no less than his dedicated life, befits that of a great charismatic prophet, and neither requires nor warrants any further explanation in terms of sacrificial saviourhood.

12 Why then the Special Focus

on Jesus?

1. Pluralism and Particularity

The argument of the preceding chapters, in rejecting not only the idea of incarnation but also interventionist and especially propositional views of revelation, clearly entails that no historical faith can claim to be the sole and divinely sanctioned repository of all theological truth and religious duty. Consequently, any dogmatic claim to absolutism should be replaced by a recognition of pluralism, a recognition that, to some extent at least, there are other paths to God, other traditions in which He may be truly known and worshipped and served.

This, of course, has been a long-established tenet in some Eastern faiths, but it is now increasingly accepted also by liberal Christians, who discard not just Christian exclusivism, that outside the church there is no salvation, but equally Christian inclusivism, that salvation is available outside the church because non-Christians are included in the saving grace of Christ's life and death, that 'every man without exception ... has been redeemed by Christ', as the encyclical Redemptor Hominis of Pope John Paul 11 expressed it in 1979, and instead adopt the pluralist position, acknowledging that God may genuinely be experienced and responded to in many different religions, thus abandoning claims for the unique validity and finality of Christianity. Indeed Wilfred Cantwell Smith goes so far as to claim that 'For Christians to think that Christianity is true, or final, or salvific, is a form of idolatry'.1

Those advocating this more open and positive approach to other faiths are well aware that they are calling for a revolutionary change of perspective, variously describing it as 'a paradigm shift' or 'the crossing of a theological Rubicon',2 yet they feel compelled to make

167


this move for a number of reasons, the basic one being the realization that all religious beliefs and practices and sacred texts have been deeply influenced if not conditioned by their historical and cultural background, and hence must be judged as having relative and not absolute authority. Langdon Gilkey suggests that, above all, it has been the decline of Western power and influence after centuries of military, industrial, scientific and religious dominance (Christianity and commerce having often gone hand in hand) which explains the changing religious attitude of many Christians from a sense of religious superiority towards one of parity with other faiths.

The West no longer ruled the world; Western ways were no longer unassailable; Western religion became one among the other world religions; and (not insignificantly) the Christian faith became the one now most morally culpable, the chief imperialistic, nonspiritual, and in fact barely moral faith! Correspondingly, Western culture became radically open to non-Western religions . . . 3

Even if exaggerated, this cannot be entirely dismissed. John Hick insists that any question of superiority must be tested by comparing the fruits of Christian and other faiths, but in fact 'we find in each case a complex mixture of valuable and harmful elements'.4 Having elaborated on this as regards the major world religions he concludes that:

In face of these complexities it seems impossible to make the global judgment that anyone religious tradition has contributed more good or less evil, or a more favourable balance of good over evil, than the others ... the world traditions seem to be more or less on a par with each other. None can be singled out as manifestly superior.s

I would merely comment that if religious faiths are judged by their founders rather than their histories we might not reach such an open verdict.

The more specific aim of this chapter is to explain why those accepting the main thesis of this book, in effect unitarian Christians, should adopt a limited form of pluralism, and yet at the same time

Why then the Special Focus on Jesus? 169

can fully justify their special if not unique focus on Jesus. The two primary reasons for not accepting Christianity as the exclusive pathway to God have already been mentioned, namely, the denial of any historical incarnation and a recognition of the extent to which all religions have been subject to cultural conditioning. Another factor determining a pluralist theology is that virtually all modem Unitarians would endorse James Martineau's claim that 'reason is the ultimate appeal, the supreme tribunal, to the test of which even scripture must be brought', and hence he had argued that even if the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement and everlasting torments were in the Bible 'they would still be incredible'.6 With rationality thus established as the supreme test of the credibility of religious convictions it follows that all religious systems, insofar as they meet this criterion, should be acknowledged as genuine expressions of religious faith.

At least a minority of Unitarians would further embrace pluralism on the grounds of a strictly non-interventionist theology, especially as regards revelation. An apparent paradox in this respect is that one of the contributors to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, Tom Driver, actually pleads for pluralism from the opposite interventionist standpOint, arguing that God had participated in other 'salvation histories' besides those of Judaism and Christianity, from which he draws the startling conclusion that 'Inasmuch as God has different histories, then God has different "natures". In pluralist perspective ... there are real and genuine differences within the Godhead itself, owing to the manifold involvements that God has undertaken with a great variety of human communities'? This is certainly not the thesis being defended here, but it is interesting as an indication that pluralism is not necessarily tied to non-interventionism. Indeed the classic expression of pluralism based on assumed divine intervention is Peter's exclamation in Acts 1O.34f: 'I now see how true it is that God has no favourites, but that in every nation the man who is god fearing and does what is right is acceptable to him'.

Whilst thus recommending religious pluralism it is at the same time vitally important to stress its limitations; otherwise it simply degenerates into a meaningless syncretism, if not agnosticism. Indeed it cannot be overemphasized that, properly understood, such pluralism does not require one to accept the equal validity of all religious or quasi-religious traditions, and neither does it rule out a special commitment to one particular tradition. Both of these qualifications demand further consideration.


To many it may seem utterly superfluous to begin by stating that religious pluralism should not extend to include atheistic humanism, but in some religious circles this is in fact a very real and divisive issue. Thus in the USA and Canada an extensive sociological survey entitled Religion Among the Unitarian Universalists,8 published in 1973, concluded that the majority reject all supernatural beliefs, so that 'the most significant fact of Unitarian Universalist religiosity is the dominance of posttraditionality', in which 'God belongs to a metaphysical past'.9 Inevitably this has led to constant internal debate between theists and humanists, as reflected in the titles of such contrasting journals as Unitarian Christian and Religious Humanism. It also means that whilst the traditional Unitarians meet together primarily to worship God, their more secular co-religionists redefine the purpose of their meetings in terms of 'intellectual stimulation, personal psychological growth, social action, and value support' - as Robert Tapp summarized their goals. IO Evidently it is not those who have inherited a unitarian Christian tradition from earlier generations but the reported 89 per cent influx of converts to the faith who are responsible for this secularization, but whatever the origins of such 'religious humanists', my contention is that they are not really Unitarians.

This, needless to say, depends on how the term should be defined, and in its historical usage it unquestionably meant an affirmation of the existence and unity of God, 'the view that God is one person only and which therefore denies ... the doctrine of the Trinity' as a modem Dictionary of Christian Theology puts it.ll Accordingly, we must completely repudiate Tapp's explication of the term, having complained that its 'precise meaning ... is often misunderstood by both outsiders and insiders', and insisting that 'Correctly speaking, it is nothing more than a rejection of the Christian dogma of the trinitarian nature of God',t2 a totally negative definition which by implication embraces all non-Trinitarians, whether theists, polytheists, atheists or agnostics. It is, of course, true that words can have more than one meaning, or acquire new meanings, but the mere fact that some contemporary writers misuse the term unitarian is definitely not a sufficient reason for holding that it too has radically changed its connotation, and especially so when there are standard and widely used terms to designate those who deny or are agnostic about the existence of God.

To avoid any misapprehension that such problems emerge only within unitarianism, making it particularly suspect, we should


briefly note that similar debates have surfaced in other traditions. Thus Don Cupitt of Cambridge remains an Anglican priest despite having defined the term God in The Sea of Faith as 'the sum of our values, representing to us their ideal unity, their claims upon us and their creative power',13 the implied denial of a supernatural deity being more explicit in the title of a book about him, Atheist Priest? Don Cupitt and Christianity.t4 Another Cambridge academic, R. B. Braithwaite, made it clear in his article 'An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief'ls that he regarded theistic statements as having no factual significance, an affirmation such as 'God is love' really being an announcement and recommendation to follow the agapeistic way of life, and not a characterization of a supernatural Being; a peculiar attitude for someone received into the Anglican church by adult baptism.

In American Judaism, to cite just one further instance, it was proposed in 1978 to create a Polydox Jewish Confederation to cater for the many radicals who no longer accepted traditional theism, let alone a deity who revealed himself supremely to Moses and the prophets. In Polydox services the word God is therefore replaced by vague formulations such as 'the power of creation', and, correspondingly, Old Testament rites and history are ruthlessly reinterpreted in secular terms.16

A second restriction on pluralism is that it cannot meaningfully extend to religious traditions in which 'God' or ultimate reality or 'the Real' is understood as a non-personal Absolute, as in some Eastern faiths or schools within such faiths. On this issue I can go a considerable but not the whole way with John Hick in seeing different religions as valid although culturally conditioned responses to the one transcendent Real,17 for once the Real ceases to be thought of as a personal divine Being, evoking worship and loving obedience, it has far too little in common with theistic faith to regard both as variations on the same theme, as it were. Instead we must judge that if theism is valid and theistic experience authentic then any non-theistic understanding and response to the Real is totally inadequate. In brief, we hold that religion is most meaningful and rational only when it concerns 'a Being than whom no greater can be conceived', and personhood is the supreme and indispensable perfection of such a deity. We must therefore fully endorse James Martineau's protest: 'I cannot conceive of a Church without the worship of a living and Personal God'.18

Further restrictions on pluralism should exclude any notion of


parity with blatantly polytheistic faiths, except where it is understood that the different gods are really different names for the one divine Being, and also with blatantly immature or immoral faiths. All this clearly points to the fact that pluralism implies varying degrees of recognition of other paths to God, always coupled with a readiness to re-examine one's own path.

The other vital qualification regarding pluralism is that it in no way precludes a wholehearted commitment to a particular faith. On the contrary, it is those who have a positive yet critical attachment to their own religious tradition who are most likely to appreciate what is good in other traditions, and approach them in a spirit of ecumenical tolerance. It is certainly not those who remain detached from all living faiths but rather those actively participating in one of them, provided this does not arise from a blind or bigoted allegiance, who tend to be more sensitive to the spiritual riches to be found in other communions. Langdon Gilkey makes the much stronger claim that pluralism paradoxically combines relativity and absoluteness; relativity in that no religion is final, absoluteness in one's commitment to one's own religious understanding. His justification of this latter aspect is, however, unconvincing, arguing that the imperative duty of resisting intolerable religious practices and attitudes, from ancient human sacrifices to modern religious nationalism, presupposes an 'absolute commitment' to our own ultimate values and sense of reality. 19 In fact it presupposes nothing more than active loyalty to our highest moral and religious ideals, but he is at least correct in maintaining that pluralism, with its inherent relativity, is fully compatible with a dedicated adherence to a specific faith. Nor need there be anything paradoxical about such commitment. There can be perfectly reasonable grounds why open-minded persons attach themselves to a particular religion and give it their full support. Our immediate task, however, is to spell out the twin reasons why unitarian Christians can fully reconcile their commitment to religious pluralism, enabling them to draw from the treasures of other faiths, with their very special commitment to the leadership of Jesus.

2. Why Jesus? - Heritage

The argument of this section is really twofold, one part being mainly negative but the other positive. On the negative side we must stress that whilst identification with one's religious heritage


can be a powerful psychological incentive to retain a particular faith, together with its system of beliefs, theologically this by itself is an extremely weak defence of one's religious commitment. On the positive side we would contend that where it is a question, not of choosing a basic faith, assuming that faith already commands assent on what are honestly believed to be rational grounds, but of choosing a religious figurehead whose life and thought make that faith really attractive and convincing, then the collective and continuous experience of one's forebears in focusing on some outstanding leader, whose teaching and example gave direction and nobility to their lives, may quite properly count as a very significant factor in determining one's religious orientation. More specifically, it is entirely rational for those in whose family background the discipleship of Jesus had proved a fruitful and constant inspiration, even if some of them held mistaken beliefs about him, to want to perpetuate that discipleship, a sense of solidarity with the past reinforcing their present appreciation of Jesus as for them the supreme guide in matters of faith and morality.

Some, admittedly, defend the more sweeping assertion that loyalty to one's religious heritage and/or a desire to belong to a particular religious community are in themselves a sufficient justification for affirming the faith of that community. Donald Miller, in a book entitled The Case for Liberal Christianity, testifies that 'I find myself inalterably committed to the Christian community', and for him that involves regularly and fully reciting the Apostles' Creed in worship, having no misgivings about the fact that there are parts of it he does not literally believe, because for him the creed is 'a statement of my history, of the tradition that has united my community - the Christian community - for twenty centuries. Wanting to be a part of that community of faith, 1 recite the creed, thereby affirming my commitment to the community';2o or, as he puts it a little later, 'To recite the creeds is to recall my heritage, my roots.'21 Indeed he acknowledges that in seeking to return to faith 'what I was looking for was not just a belief system, but an identity or, more broadly stated, a tradition in which 1 could locate myself. .. Furthermore, I wanted (almost desperately) an identity with transcendent and metaphysical overtones.'22

Miller recognizes that his 'new basis for commitment to the church' is by 'any orthodox standard ... heretical?3 but I submit that the real reason why his standpoint is untenable is that, even when we have made due allowance for the poetic nature of much


that is said or sung in worship, and also for the legendary nature of many scriptural narratives, and beyond that, made allowance for a permissible element of doubt or agnosticism regarding certain aspects of faith, there must still be some minimum theological conviction before one can meaningfully claim to adhere to a particular faith; and for Unitarians, I maintain, that minimum should include belief in the existence and unity of God, and for Trinitarians, belief in his existence and triunity, together with an acceptance of the historicity of the incarnation and resurrection. Without such minimum beliefs even the most intense sense of kinship with a past or present religious community cannot amount to true identification with that tradition, any more than the polydox Jews or posttraditional Unitarian Universalists already mentioned are really and truly Jews or Unitarians, so long as they remain totally sceptical about the supernatural. Thus, at its best, Miller's case is very inadequate, whilst, at its worst, it could be no more than religious tribalism.

Coming back to the positive contention that we can be legitimately influenced into giving a pre-eminent place to a particular prophetic figure by the long experience within our religious heritage that this prophet's message and spirituality have been a constant source of challenge and enrichment, we need only recall that, historically, it was within the Christian heritage that unitarianism emerged, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact, the early Unitarians, with their emphasis at that time on the Bible rather than on reason as the ultimate authority in matters of faith, and rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity precisely because it was nowhere to be found in the Bible and was in conflict with numerous texts,24 saw themselves as correcting or reforming Christianity rather than rejecting it. Far from breaking with the past they wanted to get back to the religion of Jesus himself, not a theology about Jesus. They may have denied his full divinity, but they never questioned his primacy as supreme teacher and exemplar of faith. Understandably, therefore, unitarianism has frequently been summed up as belief in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the leadership of Jesus. In brief, the early Unitarians very definitely saw themselves as part of the universal Christian church, sharing its mission and proud of its heritage. In line with that understanding the ideal envisaged by English Unitarians, accepting that others did not agree with their interpretation of Scripture, was not to establish a separate denomination, but that


the national church would adopt an inclusive policy, welcoming all who believed in God and revered the spirit and teaching of Jesus. The Act of Unifonnity wrecked that dream.

It must of course be recognized that many modern Unitarians, and especially Unitarian Universalists, have not come from a Christian background, and that, regrettably, many who do have a Christian background no longer value or identify with it, but for all those who treasure that Christian heritage, in which the life and ministry of Jesus held a central place, and who also appreciate how his sayings and parables exercised a tremendous influence for good in the lives of ordinary people, it must surely seem natural and imperative to want to continue focusing on Jesus as the paramount religious leader, one in whose discipleship contemporary believers may find the same strength and inspiration.

3. Why Jesus? - Excellence

This is obviously the indispensable element in any justifiable choice of a spiritual and moral leader. However prominent that leader's place within one's heritage, evoking the profound affection, loyalty and obedience of successive generations, this is nevertheless insufficient to warrant the continuation of such loyalty unless that person's life and gospel, as seen in the light of modem critical scholarship, can still be characterized in terms of excellence. And in most respects this is undoubtedly true of Jesus.

It is vital at this point to stress that by 'excellence' we do not mean absolute perfection. Admittedly, this has commonly been attributed to Jesus in popular piety and dogmatic theology, and even in the idealized portraits of him by older liberal theologians, but there is no question here of retracting any of the criticisms made earlier of some of his beliefs, attitudes and actions.25 Rather, it is despite such factors as his mistaken eschatology, undue reliance on providence, and harsh words about those who did not respond to his preaching, that he still comes across in the Gospel records, as edited by textual criticism, as a most attractive personality, most of whose genuine teaching captivates and convinces us as being a supreme portrayal of the fatherhood of God and of our duty to both our Father God and our brother man. It is because of the depth of such spiritual insights, and their magnificent presentation in memorable sayings and parables, making God real to his hearers as he was intensely real to himself, all of this coupled with his compassionate healing


ministry, care for the outcasts of society and love of children, that compells us to use the word 'excellence' in describing both the man and his ministry.

The fact, as already noted, that open-minded members of nonChristian faiths have also paid glowing tributes to his moral and spiritual stature further deepens that impression of excellence. We have already quoted such tributes from Mahatma Gandhi and Geza Vermes,26 and we could cite similar expressions of esteem from many other writers, but one or two will be sufficient. Thus the Jewish writer, Ellis Rivkin, in his book What Crucified Jesus?, uses the writings of Josephus to sketch a portrait of the ideal charismatic prophet, 'that charismatic of charismatics ... so compassionate, so loving, so eloquent, and so filled with the Spirit of God that his disciples would refuse to accept his death as real'p and later explicitly suggests that 'the historical Jesus ... is one and the same as the charismatic of charisma tics we have deduced from Josephus. Not simply a charismatic, but a charismatic of charismatics - one of those rare spirits who bursts into this world at infrequent intervals to confront ordinary humans and mere charisma tics with a life that is out of this world, and a love that is out of this world and a hope that is out of this world'.28 In a much older book Joseph Klausner wrote of Jesus the teacher that 'In his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables', adding that if and when his teaching is 'stripped of its wrappings of miracles and mysticism', then 'the Book of the Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time'.29

Because of this stress on excellence it is certainly not the case that for unitarian Christians Jesus is no more than 'one guru amongst others', to quote a phrase Brian Hebblethwaite uses to highlight the consequences of an 'extreme modernist and relativist Christology',30 yet it must be conceded that some writers have come close to suggesting this. For others, however, the supremacy accorded to Jesus arises from a profound impression that in his teaching they are being confronted with what must surely be the ultimate truth about God, and about man's duty both to God and to his fellow man. They further discover that this is not just a matter of theological and moral enlightenment, but of being moved thereby to deeper religious commitment. They feel inspired to love and serve the Father God whom Jesus loved and served. In the language of


Paul Van Buren, not that they should have any sympathy with his 'death of God' theology, they find that in following Jesus they are 'liberated', and so they accept the 'liberator, Jesus of Nazareth, as the man who defines for them what it means to be a man and as the point of orientation for the lives. '31

To all this it may be objected that priority should only be given to any religious leader after an exhaustive comparison with all other candidates, and few have the time or expert knowledge to conduct such an inquiry. There is undeniably some force in this charge, but it is not as destructive as it appears. The point is that we can usually recognize and respond to excellence without necessarily having to measure it against every other, or almost every other, alleged instance of excellence in the same field. As for the excellence of Jesus, it would seem impossible to conceive of a higher ethic or theology than that encapsulated in his reply to the question about the greatest commandment32 and elaborated in the timeless parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Apart from this, there are not a few who have both a reasonable acquaintance and sympathy with the thoughts and life-stories of other religious founders, yet cannot honestly regard any of them as equal or superior to Jesus. Comparative religion thus confirms their Christian discipleship, but this may not be true for others. Even without such support there is more than enough, on the basis of their heritage and acknowledgement of Jesus' inherent excellence, to justify Unitarians in their special focus on the prophet from Nazareth, and their glad acceptance of his leadership.

13 An Attractive and Viable

Faith

1. Freedom and Rationality of Belief

At first sight the inclusion of this final chapter must seem not only superfluous, in that we have already stated the case for unitarian Christianity, but also improper, in that it may suggest that the reasoned argument of the preceding chapters is being supplemented by a propagandist recommendation of such faith. The real reason, however, for this brief defence of the spiritual viability of unitarianism is to counter the apparently widespread suspicion that as a religious option it is very seriously deficient. We have already noted Brian Hebblethwaite's astounding claim that 'The conviction that God is love is a major casualty of unitarian theism'.t Elsewhere he has written that 'When we turn to the question of the moral and religious value of the non-incamational christologies ... one is bound to say that they look pretty vague and thin.'2 Even Maurice Wiles refers disparagingly to 'an old-fashioned unitarianism which the main body of the church in the past has rejected as something lacking the dynamic of a living faith'.3

In response to such charges and innuendos it should be underlined that it is one's convictions about the truth rather than the attractiveness or value of religious beliefs that primarily matters, but, setting that aside, there are more than adequate grounds for refuting these serious criticisms of unitarian Christianity. One way of doing this would be to quote the testimonies of those who have experienced such faith 'from the inside', and for whom the 'Gospel of Unitarianism' means 'a joy-giving, health-bestOWing and saving religion', to quote Alfred Hall,4 but a more objective procedure is to outline some of the main emphases in unitarian religiosity, which will at least help to explain the type of person to whom it

178

An Attractive and Viable Faith 179

appeals and brings fulfilment, for it certainly will not appeal to those demanding a faith that is very authoritative, or emotional, or steeped in ecclesiastical tradition. There is, however, no insinuation that these typical and deeply valued features of unitarian Christianity are wholly exclusive to that faith.

Most members would probably cite freedom of belief as the most prized of these characteristics. This is not just a negative freedom from having to recite or subscribe to largely unacceptable ancient creeds or confessions, but a positive freedom and duty to reach one's own religious convictions, nor arbitrarily, but as constrained by reason and the relevant evidence.

Those taking unitarianism in a wider sense, as distinct from unitarian Christianity, may perhaps be excused for insisting on 'entire freedom of belief' as one of their 'fundamental principles',5 but the ideal here defended is rather that of extensive freedom coupled with certain basic convictions, the indispensable minimum being the previously quoted acknowledgement of the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the leadership of Jesus. It is theological freedom within this context that is important and precious, and not the unrestricted freedom to be an atheist, or an agnostic, or a dedicated advocate of some non-Christian faith. Of course, people are free to adopt such standpoints, but not free to do so as unitarian Christians, although they will still be welcome if they wish to participate in the worship and fellowship of such congregations.

One writer who clearly affirmed both the real but also the limited nature of such freedom of belief was Henry Gow. Having stated that 'Our Churches exist for the worship of God, for the deepening of the spiritual life in communion with God, and for Christian morality in personal and social life', he adds, significantly, that:

This basis includes many differences in theology, but it does not imply that everyone who calls himself a Free Thinker, or who proclaims that he is bound by no creed, will feel himself at home amongst us. We have Christian traditions and principles which involve love to God and man in the spirit of Jesus ... we have no Creed, but we have a Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who proclaimed the love of God and the divine nature of man.6

Despite reservations about the last phrase, this admirably captures that balance of freedom and commitment which is at the heart


of unitarian Christianity, combining a strong anchorage of 'belief in God and a reverence for the spirit and teaching of Jesus', as he expresses it elsewhere? with genuine liberty to pursue theological truth without credal or confessional restrictions.

Some congregations have taken the further step of drawing up a statement of the fundamental beliefs generally accepted by their members, and thus the basis of their fellowship, but always including the principle of freedom of belief. That this is nothing new is evident from the fact that in 1609 Polish Unitarians wrote in the preface to their catechism that 'Whilst we compose a Catechism, we prescribe nothing to any man: whilst we declare our own opinions, we oppress no one. Let every person enjoy the freedom of his own judgment in religion ... '8

It is, of course, an undeniable fact that, despite formal subscription to creeds and confessions, members of other churches frequently take an equal or greater liberty of theological belief, but even when there is some implicit understanding that they are subscribing to the spirit rather than the letter of these doctrinal formulations this still involves some equivocation, and in many instances stretches the resort to mental reservations to breaking point. For those, on the other hand, who want to take religious affirmations seriously, the fact of not being tied to outdated statements of belief is not only liberating, but affords an honest openness to new sources of truth. In a nutshell, unitarian Christianity is deeply attractive to many as a faith which is unfettered, yet has solid foundations, a faith which is both firm and free.

The complementary stress on assessing all religious beliefs in terms of their reasonableness needs little by way of elaboration. In a brief psychological study of this religious tradition Dennis Wigmore-Beddoes wrote that of the three aspects of human consciousness - reason, feeling and will- 'Unitarianism is more or less unique in placing the greatest amount of emphasis upon the rational aspect',9 but definitely not at the expense, still less exclusion, of the emotional and volitional aspects. Earlier he had claimed that 'Unitarianism has always been regarded as a religion of common sense, a religion that thinks, - and, indeed, in some quarters it has been "dismissed" as a religion simply for intellectuals ',10 a charge he vigorously refutes. Actually this could be a real danger in so-called 'posttraditional' unitarianism, but unitarian Christianity, with its strong belief in God and the leadership of Jesus, should be in little danger of sliding into a cold rationalism. With that fear removed,


this further emphasis on accepting only such beliefs as seem rationally persuasive, and never merely through the constraints of some external authority, also helps to explain why this faith appeals to many who are prepared to think for themslves about the ultimate issues of life.

2. Realistic Worship and Social Commitment

Because unitarianism emerged originally as a reforming movement within Christianity, even if outsiders saw it as nothing more than a rank heresy, there was naturally a strong tendency to preserve the particular forms of worship to which its members had been accustomed, amending these where necessary to fit their changed convictions.

The varied religious background of early British Unitarians helps to explain their varied forms of worship, many preferring the simpler 'hymn sandwich' order of service, but others retaining a more structured liturgy. The earliest example of this was when Theophilus Lindsey introduced his revision of the Church of England Orders of Morning and Evening Prayer at the Essex Street Chapel in London in 1774.

Making unitarian worship 'realistic' involves much more than deleting trinitarian creeds, doxologies and benedictions, or the appropriate rewording of many hymns and anthems; it also means avoiding all allusions to discarded beliefs, such a divine forgiveness being dependent on Christ's vicarious sacrifice. More positively, there should be a sensitive yet ever-questioning approach to Scripture, to doctrine and to church traditions, seeking to highlight and identify with what is good, but fearlessly rejecting what fails to commend itself to reason and conscience. All in all, John Bowden's regret in Jesus: The Unanswered Questions that 'one feature of our age is the virtually complete divorce between liturgy and spirituality on the one hand and critical thinking on the other'll should apply less forcibly to unitarian worship, as also his later reference to complaints by church members about 'the mental gymnastics they have to go through'12 in order to join in some aspects of the liturgy. On the other hand, there is need for eternal vigilance, in view of the reputed extent of non-theistic 'religion' amongst Unitarian Universalists in America, to ensure that a deep desire to reform worship doesn't degenerate into its replacement by religious humanism.

The retention of sacramental worship in many unitarian churches


may appear to be particularly indefensible in view of its strong Christological significance in orthodox Christianity, and hence the continuation of these services demands a more specific justification. The explanation, in brief, is that both sacraments are observed in a different form and with a different meaning from what is accepted in trinitarian churches. Needless to say, this involves discarding traditional baptismal and eucharistic theology, but there is no need to spell this out in detail. What really matters is the positive meaning accorded to each sacrament, and for typical statements on that point we turn again to Alfred Hall's Beliefs of a Unitarian, noting first the twofold purpose of baptism as an expression of thanksgiving and dedication (or devotion, as he calls it):

The service is conducted as a help to the parents rather than to the child. (1) It is a service of thanksgiving ... (2) It is a service of devotion. By taking part in the baptismal service the parents signify that it is their solemn intention to bring up their child in the ways of religion and godly living . .. This is their oath of allegiance - or sacramentum.13

The corresponding statement on the communion service reads:

For Unitarians the service is one of memorial and communion. They call to memory the life and words of Jesus, reflect on his suffering and sacrifice for the truth, and endeavour in moments of quiet meditation to gain a spirit akin to his. They strive also to come into communion with the Spirit which has animated and guided noble men of all ages - with the soul of goodness and love ... 14

Because these services, as thus understood, are found to be helpful and challenging they are therefore retained in many unitarian churches. Critics may well protest, however, that no one has a right to reinterpret or otherwise tamper with sacraments instituted by Christ himself; but the effective reply to this is that it is very unlikely that either sacrament goes back to Jesus. The only explicit command by Jesus to baptize, namely the reputed post-resurrection commission in Matthew 28.19 to 'baptize men everywhere in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit', is widely regarded as inauthentic, being in direct conflict with the reports of


such events in Acts 2.38, quite apart from the dubious historicity of all post-resurrection pronouncements.

The debate on the origins of the eucharist is more complex. To begin with, we note that the earliest account of its origin in 1 Corinthians 11.23-26, and, incidentally, the only account to command its perpetuation 'as a memorial of me' (Luke 22.19b-20 not being in the early manuscripts and hence a later addition), is explicitly stated by Paul to be 'the tradition which ... came to me from the Lord himself', suggesting some sort of vision, for he never met the historical Jesus. Indeed Paul made a similar claim about 'the Gospel you heard me preach' in Galations 1.11-12, insisting that it 'is no human invention. I did not take it over from any man; no man taught it me; I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ'. These claims, combined with the fact that eucharistic sacramentalism seems alien to Jewish belief and practice, have convinced some scholars that the communion service is most unlikely to go back to Jesus, and more likely to have developed as the fellowship meals held by the early Christians, and which included the 'breaking the bread', were transformed under Hellenistic influence into occasions for celebrating his supposed sacrificial death to secure man's atonement with God. It is not questioned that Jesus held a 'last supper' with his disciples, a Passover meal according to the Synoptics, although not according to John, but it is questioned if he ever spoke the words 'This is my body' and 'This is my blood'. The latest scholar to defend this general thesis is Hyam Maccoby in Paul and Hellenism,Is arguing that it was in fact Paul and not Jesus who was responsible for instituting the eucharist, being deeply influenced by both Gnosticism and the mystery religions. Clearly this is too large a topic to investigate further here, but the very real doubts about the authenticity of the Pauline and Synoptic reports of the origins of the sacrament (John mysteriously omitting it entirely), confirms the wisdom of unitarian Christians in restricting its meaning to devotional acts which are theologically unobjectionable yet spiritually uplifting.

We glance finally at the 'by their fruits ye shall know them' test of religious traditions, a test which many of its critics evidently take for granted that unitarianism must fail, seeing it as primarily an intellectual movement intent only on denying certain doctrines and demanding complete freedom of belief. Correcting that misconception, Alfred Hall pointed out that 'its history reveals that its purpose has been moral and spiritual rather than narrowly intellectual.' 16


Expanding on this later he reiterates that 'Unitarians lay great emphasis on practical religion. Preaching, as they do, salvation by character, they have often been accused of exaggerating the importance of good works. '17 W. G. Tarrant also responded vigorously to this misrepresentation of unitarianism, reminding his readers that 'Domestic Missions' were set up in America to care for the poor, and quoting a declaration adopted at the National Conference of Unitarians in America in 1894:

These churches accept the religion of Jesus, holding in accordance with his teaching that practical religion is summed up in love to God, and love to man; and we invite to our fellowship any who, while differing from us in belief, are in general sympathy with our spirit and our practical aims.IS

That this has been equally true of British unitarianism is evident from R. V. Holt's The Unitarian Contribution to Social Progress in England, with its detailed and well documented review of unitarian involvement in campaigns for civil and religious liberty, for improvements in working conditions and general health, for greater educational opportunities and other forms of public welfare, more than justifying his opening sentence that 'Unitarians have been leaders in most of those changes which have transformed the England of the eighteenth-century into the England of the present day. '19

It would be very mistaken, however, to assume that the depth and viability of any faith can be measured simply by the number or the percentage of its members who have been prominent in public service, or have otherwise won public esteem, although, if that was the criterion, unitarianism would evidently top the league, at least in America. A book published in 1955 informs us that 'In the United States a competent student of the national history (not himself a Unitarian) has calculated that Unitarians have supplied 150 times more leaders of the first rank than the remainder of the population.'2Q A more recent publication claims that 'a third of the names in the American "Hall of Fame" consists of those of Unitarians',21 and on the same page refers to C. L. Fry's analysis of the denominational affiliation of entries in the American Who's Who for 1930-31, concluding that, when taking the total membership of each denomination into account, Unitarians were over-represented to the tune of 32.5 times, the second highest over-representation


being only 6.5 times. These statistics would certainly seem to justify Vance Packard's verdict in The Status Seekers, 1961, that 'The Unitarian Church, tiny in total number, outranks all denominations in the number of eminent Americans who have claimed it as their church.'22

Even if these facts and figures are totally accurate, they are still to a large extent irrelevant, for it is not the proportion of prominent individuals nurtured within a particular faith, or attracted to it, that really counts, but its overall emphasis on helping those in need, and the implementation of this in the lives of its ordinary members. Hence a truer indication of the moral strength of unitarianism is the fact recorded by Phillip Hewett that 'A brief statement, long used in many Unitarian churches to describe the practical outcome of a free religious faith, runs thus: "In the love of truth, and in the spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship of God and the service of man.'"23

I conclude that the various characteristics of unitarian Christianity as outlined in this chapter, together with its theological justification as argued earlier in the book, certainly make it for those sharing these convictions and commitment a truly attractive and viable faith - intellectually, morally, emotionally, and, in sum, spiritually.

Notes

CHAPTER 1 - THE NARROW CHOICE

1. Ian Wilson, Jesus the Evidence (Pan Books 1985) p. 11. 2. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology

(Cambridge University Press 1987) pp. If. 3. Ibid., especially as title of Essay 10, p. 126. 4. G. W. H. Lampe, God as Spirit (Oxford University Press 1977) p. 23. 5. John Hick, 'Is There a Doctrine of the Incarnation?' in Michael

Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued (SCM Press 1979) p. 48.

6. John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (SCM Press 1977) p. ix. 7. Ibid., p. 162. 8. See for example John Hick in ibid., p. 178. 9. Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 140.

10. Quoted in New Essays in Phr7osophical Theology, ed. by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (SCM Press 1963) p. 268n.

11. James Mackey, Jesus the Man and the Myth (SCM Press 1979) p. 233. 12. Ibid., p. 240. 13. Quoted by Daniel E. Bassuk, Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity

(MacmilIan 1987) p. 195. 14. Quoted in ibid., p. 193. 15. John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (SCM Press 1963) p. 74. 16. Norman Pittenger, Christology Reronsidered (SCM Press 1970) p. 2,

quoting from his earlier book Christ and Christian Faith (1941) p. 45. 17. John Knox, The Death of Christ (1958) (Fontana Books 1967) p. 105. 18. John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (SCM Press 1973)

pp. 184f. 19. Lampe, op. cit., p. 17; Robinson, The Human Face of God; Anthony

Hanson, The Image of the Invisible God (SCM Press 1982); David Welbourn, God-Dimensional Man (Epworth Press 1972); Edward SchilIebeeckx, Jesus (Fount Paperbacks 1983) p. 626.

20. Lampe, op. cit., p. 102. 21. Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, p. 190. 22. A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Clarendon Press

1979) Chapter 5, especially pp. 24Of. 23. A. T. Hanson and R. P. C. Hanson, Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the

Christian Faith (Oxford University Press (1980) 1983) p. 106. 24. Ibid., p. 104. 25. Ibid., p. 181. 26. Ibid., pp. lOSf. 27. Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Paternoster Press 1984)

p.298. 28. A. T. and R. P. C. Hanson, op. cit., p. 104.

186

Notes to pp. 9-21 187

29. Maurice Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge University Press 1967) p. 173.

30. Anthony Hanson, The Image of the Invisible God, p. 12. 31. John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (SCM Press and

Trinity Press International 1990) p. 374.

CHAPTER 2 - THE AGREED BACKGROUND

1. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation, p. 104. 2. Michael Goulder and John Hick, Why Believe in God? (SCM Press

1983) pp. 26f. 3. John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (Oxford Paperbacks 1963) p. 132. 4. See Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Clarendon Press 1979)

pp. 130,283 or 289. 5. Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth (SCM Press 1969)

p.87. 6. Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (Collins 1972) p. 110. 7. A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science, p. 105. 8. D. J. Bartholomew, God of Chance (SCM Press 1984) p. 101. 9. Ibid., p. 98.

10. Ibid., p. 100. 11. See ibid., Chapter 3, reviewing Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe,

and Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space. See also Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (Penguin Books (1983) 1986), Chapter 12.

12. Hugh Montefiore, The Probability of God (SCM Press 1985) p. 169. 13. Ibid., p. 174. 14. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (Macmillan 1989) p. 87. 15. Ibid., p. 85. 16. See for example the extract from F. R. Tennant's Philosophical Theol

ogy, Vol. Il, 1930, in John Hick (ed.), The Existence of God (Macmillan (1964) 1973) pp. 120-136.

17. See Swinburne, op. cit., Chapters 8 and 10. 18. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (Macmillan 1966) especially'

Part IV. 19. F. A. Iremonger, William Temple Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford

University Press 1948) p. 85. 20. Swinburne, op. cit., p. 254. 21. Ibid., p. 266. 22. See Basil Mitchell, The Justification of Religious Belief (Macmillan 1973)

especially Chapter 3; Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Clarendon Press 1989) especially Chapter 9; William J. Abraham, 'Cumulative Case Arguments for Christian Theism' in William ]. Abraham and Steven W. Holtzer (eds), The Rationality of Religious Belief, (Clarendon Press 1987) Michael C. Banner, The Justification of Science and the Rationality of Religious Belief (Clarendon Press 1990) especially Chapter 6; R. Prevost, Probabz1ity and Theistic Explanation (Clarendon Press 1990).

188 Notes to pp. 21-35

23. Davis, The Evidentud Force of Religious Experience, p. 241. 24. James Dunn, Christology in the Making (SCM Press 1980) p. 251. See

also p. 253.

CHAPTER 3 - DOFS GOD INTERVENE IN HISTORY?

1. David Brown, The Divine Trinity (Duckworth 1985) p. x. 2. Ibid., p. 4. 3. Eusebius, The EcdesiastiCllI History and the Martyrs of Palestine, ed. H.

J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton (SPCK 1927, Vol. 1) p. 288. 4. W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (SCM Press 1984) p. 24. 5. Goulder and Hick, Why Believe in God? p. 88. 6. See Time Magazine (6 July 1981). 7. The Works of the Rev John Wesley, AM (London, Wesleyan Conference

Office 1872, Vol. XI) p. 5. 8. Brown, op. cit., pp. 15f. 9. Quoted in A Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Antony Flew (Pan Books

1979) p. 81. 10. This phrase admittedly echoes Bonhoeffer's assertion that 'God is

the "beyond" in the midst of our life' (see entry for 30 April 1944 in letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (SCM Press 1953) p. 124, but I cannot endorse his apparently non-religious interpretation of theism and Christianity. See further: William Hamilton, 'The Letters are a particular Thorn' in Ronald Gregor Smith (ed.), World Come of Age: A Symposium on Dietrich Bonhoeffor (Collins 1967) pp. 131-160.

11. Deut. 21.21 and 22.21, part of 'God's laws delivered to Moses', to quote the heading in the New English Bible for Chapters 12-26.

12. See for example Deut. 2.24-37 and 3.1-7; 1 Sam. 15.1-3. 13. See for example Lev. 16.1-15 and 17.1-9. 14. See for example Ex. 22.18-20; Lev. 20.1-16. 15. William Temple, Nature Man and God (Macmillan (1934) 1960)

p.317. 16. Ibid., p. 312. 17. Ibid., p. 350. 18. Goulder and Hick, op. cit., p. 84. 19. Quoted by W. E. Sangster, God Does Guide Us (Hodder and Stoughton

(1934) 1950) p. 13. 20. Maurice Wiles, God's Action in the World (SCM Press 1986) p. 108. 21. As reported in most British newspapers on 19 January 1987. 22. Wiles, op. cit., p. 101. 23. Goulder and Hick, op. cit., p. 77. 24. C. H. Dodd, The Authority of the Bible (revised edn, Fontana Books

1960) p. 248. 25. Ibid., p. 255. 26. Gordon D. Kaufman, God the Problem (Harvard University Press

1972) pp. 134f. 27. Ibid., p. 147.

Notes to pp. 36--53 189

28. Ibid., p. 146. 29. Wiles, op. cit., p. 54. 30. Ibid., p. 108. See also Goulder and Hick op. cit., pp. 72-74, and for a

wider review of the theme, see Owen C. Thomas (ed.), God's Activity in the World (California, Scholars Press, 1983).

31. Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation, pp. 160f.

CHAPTER 4 - WHY WOULD GOD BECOME INCARNATE?

1. Bhagavad-Gita (Fourth Lesson, verses 7 and 8). 2. A. S. Pringle-Pattison, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Clarendon

Press 1930) p. 252. 3. William Temple, Nature Man and God, p. 322. 4. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation, p. 4. 5. Ibid., p. 67. 6. David Brown, The Divine Trinity, pp. 12f. 7. Ibid., p. 13. 8. See above, p. 7. 9. Gerald Priestland, Priestland's Progress (BBC 1981) p. 76.

10. Michael Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 80. 11. Geoffrey Lampe, God as Spirit, p. 16. 12. D. M. Baillie, God was in Christ (2nd edn, Faber and Faber 1958)

p.172. 13. A basic axiom of the Antiochene school, as expressed by Gregory of

Nazianzus in his Epistola (101.7). 14. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 240. 15. See J. McLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement (4th edn, James

Clarke and Co. 1959); R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality (John Murray (1901) 1922), especially pp. 121-124.

16. John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God, p. 78. 17. Lampe, op. cit., p. 16. 18. John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths (revised edn, Fount

Paperbacks 1977) pp. 69f. Contrast his standpoint in Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 81.

19. Hebblethwaite, op. cit., pp. 5f.

CHAPTER 5 - HOW COULD GOD BECOME INCARNATE?

1. H. D. Lewis, 'Christology Today' in The Modern Free Churchman (No. 97, Spring 1973) p. 8.

2. Maurice Wiles in Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 6. 3. Brian Hebblethwaite in ibid., p. 28. For a very broad use of the

concept see Jacob Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism (Fortress Press 1988) p. ix: 'By the incarnation of God, I mean the description of God, whether in allusion or narrative, as (1) corporeal; (2) exhibiting traits of


emotions like those of human beings; (3) doing deeds that men and women do, in the way in which they do them.' Not surprisingly he finds numerous instances of this in Judaism.

4. I am deliberately ignoring some unwarranted complications, for example, that the incarnate being retains his human nature for all time, being 'God from everlasting, man for evermore', and also J. H. Newman's odd claim that Jesus became man but not a man.

5. G. W. H. Lampe, God as Spirit, p. 138. 6. John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, p. 178. 7. Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 83. 8. Ibid., p. 54. 9. Hebblethwaite, op. cit., p. 3.

10. H. M. Relton, A Study in Christology (SPCK 1917) p. 265. 11. D. M. Baillie, op. cit., p. 97. 12. David Brown, op. cit., p. 231. 13. Ibid., p. 232. 14. Ibid., p. 231. 15. Ibid., p. 232. 16. D. M. Baillie, op.cit., p. 96. 17. Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconct1ia

tion (T. and T. Clarke 1900) p. 410. 18. Quoted by H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ

(3rd edn, T. and T. Clarke 1914) p. 268. 19. Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Macmillan 1983)

p.123. 20. Don Cupitt in Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, p. 137. 21. Thomas Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Cornell University Press

1986) p. 99. 22. Ibid., p. 101. 23. Ibid., p. 91. 24. Hastings Rashdall, God and Man (Blackwell 1930) pp. 95f. 25. Morris, op. cit., pp. 61f. 26. Ibid., p. 90. 27. W. R. Matthews, God in Christian Thought and Experience (Nisbet

1930) p. 255. 28. Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Clarendon Press 1977)

p.212. 29. See Henry Bettenson (ed.), Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford

University Press 1943) pp. 7lf. 30. Brian Hebblethwaite in Goulder, (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 90. 31. Brown, op. cit., p. 262. 32. See ibid., pp. 26lf, but contrast his criticism of Charles Gore on

p.233. 33. Godfrey Vesey (ed.) The Philosophy of Christianity (Cambridge Uni-

versity Press 1989) pp. 53-70. 34. Ibid., p. 61. 35. Ibid., p. 66. 36. Ibid., p. 67. 37. Morris, op. cit., p. 90. Immutability is also treated as incapable

Notes to pp. 64-79 191

of kenosis but is given a special meaning, and to avoid unduly complicating the issue it can be ignored here without affecting the main argument.

38. Ibid., p. 73. 39. Ibid., p. 66. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., p. 69. 42. See for example John Knox, The Humanity and Divinity of Christ

(Cambridge University Press 1967) p. 68: 'Unless he was human to the lowest depths of his conscious and subconscious life, he was not truly human at all.' See also Norman Pittenger, Christology Reconsidered, pp. 35f.

43. Hebblethwaite, op. cit., p. 135. See also p. 78. 44. Ibid., pp. 134f. 45. 'Unitarianism' in Alan Richardson (ed.), A Dictionary of Christian

Theology (SCM Press 1969). 46. W. R. Matthews, op. cit., p. 191. 47. Ibid., p. 192. 48. Morris, op. cit., p. 214. 49. Brown, op. cit., p. 293. 50. Ibid., p. 296. 51. Ibid., p. 299.

CHAPTER 6 - HOW COULD GOD INCARNATE BE RECOGNIZED?

1. Frances Young, 'Can there by any Evidence?' in Goulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 62.

2. Bassuk, Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity, pp. 179f. 3. Time Magazine (14 June 1976) p. 39. 4. See also p. 35 above. 5. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (Gollancz 1978). 6. Matthew, 24.24. 7. Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (Nisbet 1943) p. 25. 8. Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (SCM Press 1975)

p.15. 9. Ibid., pp. 15 and 31.

10. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (Scribners, New York, 1958) p.14.

11. Don Cupitt and Peter Armstrong, Who was Jesus? (BBC 1977) p. 9; See also Geza Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism (SCM Press 1983) pp 19ff.

12. Anthony Hanson, The Image of the Invisible God, pp.2f. 13. G. E. Lessing, On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power in H. Chadwick

(ed.), Lessing's Theological Writings (A. and C. Black 1956) p. 53. 14. As quoted with approval by Rudolf Bultmann in History and Escha

tology (1957) (Edinburgh University Press 1975) p. 153. See also Emil


Brunner, The Mediator (1934), (Lutterworth Press 1952) Chapter VI, 'The Christian Faith and Historical Research'.

15. James McLeman, Resurrection Then and Now (Hodder and Stoughton 1965) pp. 217f.

16. Perrin, op. cit., p. 237. 17. See also Dennis Nineham's criticisms of Perrin in John Hick (eel.),

The Myth of God Incarnate, pp. 195f.

CHAPTER 7 - DOES THE MIRACULOUS INDICATE DNINITY?

1. Alan Richardson, The Miracle Stories of the Gospels (SCM Press 1941) pp.48f.

2. Ibid., p. 2ln. 3. As quoted in ibid., p. 29. 4. R. H. Fuller, Interpreting the Miracles (SCM Press 1966) p. 13. 5. Herman Hendrickx, The Miracle Stories (Chapman 1987) p. 7. 6. Ibid., p. 12. 7. See Matthew 11.4-5; Luke 7.22. 8. Richardson, op. cit., p. 127. 9. Ibid., pp. 128f.

10. Fuller, op. cit., p. 20. 11. Actually the term 'virgin', as Geza Vermes points out, was used

elastically in Judaism, often meaning a girl who had not started to menstruate, even if she was married, and if she became pregnant at her first ovulation she would be a 'virgin mother'. See Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (2nd edn, SCM Press (1983) 1986) pp. 218ff.

12. Ian Wilson, Jesus the Evidence, p. 49. 13. C. B. Caird, Saint Luke (Penguin Books 1963) p. 47. 14. J. c. Fenton, Saint Matthew (Penguin Books 1963) p. 35. 15. Herman Hendrickx, The Infancy Narratives (revised edn, Chapman

1984) p. 20. 16. Leslie D. Weatherhead, Psychology, Religion and Healing (revised edn,

Hodder and Stoughton 1963). 17. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, pp. 73 and 75. 18. See Matthew 8.5-13; Luke 7.1-10; Cf. John 4.46-53. 19. See Weatherhead, op. cit., Section One, Chapter 3. 20. G. H. C. Macgregor, The Gospel of John (Hodder and Stoughton 1928)

p.253. 21. William Barclay, The Gospel of John (Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Saint Andrew

Press 1956) p. 117. 22. See Hendrickx, The Miracle Stories, pp. 214ff. 23. See 1 Kings 17.17-24 and 2 Kings 4.17-22 and 32-37. 24. Fuller, op. cit., p. 38. 25. Sir Edwyn Hoskyns and Noel Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament

(Faber and Faber 1958) pp. 123f. See also Howard Clark Kee, Miracles in the Early Christian World (Yale University Press 1983) pp. 163ff, stressing that there could be 'multiple levels of meaning within a single narrative', and illustrating this.

Notes to pp. 94-112 193

26. Hendrickx, The Miracle Stories, pp. 177f. 27. Ibid., p. 185. 28. See for example D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark, pp. 150f. 29. Leslie D. Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic (Hodder and

Stoughton 1965) p. 67. 30. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 206. 31. Caird, Saint Luke, p. 132. 32. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and ludaism (SCM Press 1987) p. 172.

CHAPTER 8 - DO THE RESURRECTION REPORTS ACCREDIT DIVINITY?

1. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (5th edition, SCM Press 1967) p.165.

2. B. F. Westcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection (3rd edition, Macmillan 1874) p. 174.

3. Quoted by James McLeman, Resurrection Then and Now, p. 231. 4. EmU Brunner, The Medmtor, p. 575. 5. Peter Camley, The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Clarendon Press

1987) p. 24. 6. As quoted in ibid., p. 35. 7. Ibid., p. 9. 8. See Don Cupitt, Christ and the Hiddenness of God (Lutterworth Press

1971) pp. 181, 196 and 215. 9. See Herman Hendrickx, The Resurrection Narratives (revised edition,

Chapman 1984) p. 6. 10. Ibid., p. 4. 11. See D. E. Nineham, St Mark (Penguin Books 1963) p. 433. 12. G. W. H. Lampe and D. M. MacKinnon, The Resurrection (Mowbrays

1968) p. 48. 13. P. Althaus, as quoted in Camley, op. cit., p. 54. 14. Camley, op. cit., p. 60. 15. McLeman, op. cit., p. 157. 16. Camley, op. cit., pp. 67f. 17. Leslie D. Weatherhead, The Christmn Agnostic, pp. 183f. Also quoted

in his The Resurrection of Christ (Hodder and Stoughton 1956) pp. 71ff from the Proceedings of the SPR, Vol. 33, pp. 167-76 (1923).

18. John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, p. 176. 19. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man (1964) (SCM Press 1976)

p.66. 20. Ibid., p. 68. 21. Ibid., p. 69. 22. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (6th edition, Trans. Edwyn C.

Hoskyns, Oxford University Press (1933) 1957) p. 204. 23. H. J. Richards, The First Easter: What Really Happened? (Mow bray

1976) p. 45. 24. Ibid., p. 72.

194 Notes to pp. 113-126

25. Ibid., p. 74. 26. Lampe and MacKinnon, op. cit, p. 11. 27. Ibid., pp. 21 and 39. 28. Camley, op. cit., p. 27. 29. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus, p. 394. 30. See Lampe and MacKinnon, op. cit., p. 10. 31. Camley, op. cit., p. 24. 32. Alan Richardson (ed.), A Dictionary of Christian Theology, p. 290. 33. Lampe and MacKinnon, op. cit., p. 23. 34. McLeman, op. cit., p. 162. 35. Ibid., pp. 171 and 181. 36. Cupitt, op. cit., Chapters 9 and 10. 37. See Theology (LXXV, No. 628 (October 1972), pp. 507-19). The idea

of a slain Messiah was not entirely foreign, however, in rabbinic literature - see Vermes, Jesus the Jew, pp. 139ff.

CHAPTER 9 - 00 OTHER FACTORS POINT TO DIVINITY?

1. Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, p. 53. 2. Quoted in ibid., p. 54. 3. Quoted in ibid., p. 56. 4. Ibid., p. 64. 5. Ibid., p. 66. 6. E. Schweizer, Jesus (SCM Press 1971) p. 14. 7. Herman Hendrickx, The Sermon on the Mount (Chapman 1979; 1984)

p.63. 8. Geza Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 10. 9. Ibid., p. 46.

10. David Brown, The Divine Trinity, p. 120. 11. Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 42. 12. See above, p. 73f. 13. F. C. Fenton, Saint Matthew, p. 186. 14. Quoted by Joachim Jeremias in New Testament Theology, Vo!. 1, The

Proclamation of Jesus (SCM Press 1971) p. 56. 15. Quoted by Alan Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New

Testament (SCM Press 1958) p. 43. 16. Jeremias, op cit., p. 59. T. W. Manson also argues for the authenticity

of Matthew 11.27; see The Sayings of Jesus (SCM Press 1949) p. 79. 17. Quoted by Sidney Spencer, Mysticism in World Religion (Penguin

1963) p. 322. 18. lan Wilson, Jesus: the Evidence, p. 147. 19. Ibid., p. 148. 20. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 130. 21. Ibid., p. 134. 22. Quoted in ibid., p. 137. 23. Ibid., pp. 138f. 24. Ibid., p. 149.

Notes to pp. 126-139 195

25. Ibid., p. 154. 26. G. H. C. Macgregor, The Gospel of John, p. 115. 27. Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 72. 28. Quoted by Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 206. 29. James Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (SCM Press 1985) p. 49. 30. Wilson, op. cit., p. 153. 31. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (1936) (Nisbet 1953) p. 130. 32. Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (3rd edition, SCM Press 1954)

p.57. 33. See Matthew 16.16 and 26.63; Mark 14.61. 34. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, pp. 192f. 35. Ibid., p. 209. 36. Ibid., p. 186. 37. Ibid., p. 121. 38. Ibid., p. 127. 39. H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 4OOf. 40. Ibid., p. 401. 41. Ibid., pp. 403f. 42. See above pp. 6f. 43. John Knox, The Humanity and Divinity of Christ, p. 69. 44. Norman Pittenger, Christology Reconsidered, p. 51. 45. Ibid., p. 55. 46. Quoted by John Austin Baker, The Foolishness of God (Darton,

Longman and Todd 1970) p. 147. 47. Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 54. 48. Baker op. cit., p. 148. 49. Bemard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion (Penguin Books 1946) p. 33. 50. Baker, op. cit., p. 147. 51. J. c. Fenton, Saint Matthew, p. 364. 52. See E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, pp. 5lf, 26lf, 276f. 53. Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian (Unwin Books 1967)

p.22. 54. E. P. Sanders, op. cit., p. 253. 55. T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus, p. 75. 56. W. Durant, Caesar and Christ (Simon and Schuster 1944) p. 561.

CHAPTER 10 - DOES ALL HIS TEACHING BEFIT DIVINITY?

1. M. K. Gandhi, What Jesus Means to Me (compiled by R. K. Prabhu, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad 1959) p. 9.

2. H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, pp. 34Of. 3. Geza Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 32. 4. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, p. 44. 5. Ibid., p. 46. 6. Ibid., p. 51. 7. E. F. Scott, The Kingdom and the Messiah (T. and T. Clarke 1911)

pp. 111-12.

196 Notes to pp. 139-158

8. Norman Perrin, Jesus and the LAnguage of the Kingdom (SCM Press and Fortress Press 1976) p. 40.

9. See above, pp. 128. 10. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 152. 11. J. c. Fenton, St Matthew, p. 161. 12. Dodd, op cit., pp. 53f. 13. T. Francis Glasson, The Second Advent (2nd edn, Epworth Press 1947)

p. 114. See also his summary on pp. 149f. 14. D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark, p. 231. 15. Ibid., p. 232. 16. Ibid .. 17. Jack T. Sanders, Ethics in the New Testament «1975) SCM Press 1986)

p.29. 18. Ibid., pp. 7f. 19. Ibid., p. 9. 20. Ibid., p. xii. 21. Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values (Blackwell1975) p. 145. 22. Ibid. 23. T. H. Robinson, The Gospel of Matthew (Hodder and Stoughton (1928)

1942) p. 208. 24. Bertrand RusseIl, Why I am Not a Christian, p. 22. 25. Ibid., p. 23. 26. Richard Robinson, op. cit., pp. 148f. 27. Quoted by George Seaver, Albert Schweitzer: the Man and his Mind (A.

and C. Black 1947) p. 285. 28. See J. H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

(1845), (Pelican Books 1974). 29. Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 13.

CHAPTER 11 - SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND THE REAL JESUS

1. Don Cupitt and Peter Armstrong, Who was Jesus?, p. 86. 2. Ibid., p. 92. 3. Ian Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence, p. 156. 4. See for example Geoffrey Lampe, God as Spirit, p. 208; David

Welbourn, God-Dimensional Man, p. 33. 5. See above, pp. 6-10. 6. M. K. Gandhi, What Jesus Means to Me, p. 10. 7. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 79. 8. Ibid., pp. 223f. 9. See, ego James Yates, A Vindication of Unitarianism (1815) (4th edn,

Edward T. Whitfield 1850) p. 65. 10. Alfred Hall, Beliefs of a Unitarian (3rd edn, Lindsey Press 1962)

pp.49f. 11. Henry J. Cadbury, The Peril of Modernizing Jesus (SPCK 1962) p. 40. 12. Norman Pittenger, Christology Reconsidered, p. 35. 13. Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, p. 97.

Notes to pp. 158-173 197

14. A. M. Hunter, Interpreting the Parables (SCM Press 1960), p. 61. See also C. B. Caird, St Luke, p. 184.

15. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus, p. 142. 16. Joel Cannichael, The Death of Jesus (Pelican Books 1966) p. 22. 17. Ibid., p. 35, the quoted text being 2 Samuel 3.28-29. 18. Ibid., p. 33. 19. Ibid., pp. 33f. 20. Ibid., p. 17. 21. Ibid., p. 116. 22. Ellis Rivkin, What Crucified Jesus? (SCM Press 1986) p. 37. 23. Ibid., p. 41. 24. Ibid., p. 49. 25. Ibid., p. 51. 26. Ibid., p. 52. 27. Ibid., p. 74. 28. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 295. 29. Ibid.

CHAPTER 12 - WHY THEN THE SPECIAL FOCUS ON JESUS?

1. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, 'Idolatry', in John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, (eds), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (SCM Press 1988) p. 59.

2. Ibid., pp. viif. 3. Ibid., p. 40. 4. Ibid., p. 29. 5. Ibid., p. 30. 6. James Martineau, The Rationale of Religious Enquiry (4th edn, E. T.

Whitfield 1853) pp. 63 and 62. 7. Hick and Knitter (eds), op. cit., p. 212. 8. Robert B. Tapp, Religion Among the Unitarian Universalists (Seminar

Press, New York, 1973). 9. Ibid., pp. 199 and 76.

10. Ibid., on the jacket cover. 11. Alan Richardson (ed.), A Dictionary of Christian Theology, p. 352. 12. Tapp, op. cit., p. 3. 13. Don Cupitt, The Sea of Faith (BBC Publications 1984) p. 269. 14. Scott Cowdell, Atheist Priest? Don Cupitt and Christianity (SCM Press

1988). 15. John Hick (ed.), The Existence of God, pp. 228-252. 16. See Time Magazine (20 March 1978). 17. See John Hick, An Interpretaton of Religion, especially Chapter 14. 18. Quoted by Henry Cow, The Unitarians (Methuen 1928) pp. 174f. 19. Hick and Knitter (eds), op. cit., p. 45. 20. Donald E. Miller, The Case for Liberal Christianity (SCM Press 1981)

p.5. 21. Ibid., p. 7. 22. Ibid., pp. 8f.

198 Notes to pp. 173-185

23. Ibid., p. 3. 24. For example, 1 Corinthians 8.6; Acts 2.22 and John 17.3, to cite

three texts used for this purpose by William Caskell in an essay in Unitarian Christianity (British and Foreign Unitarian Association 1912); another essay in the same volume, written by William Ellery Channing, having a subsection headed 'Trinitarianism, irrational and unscriptural'.

25. See above chapter 9, Section 3 and Chapter 10. 26. See above, p. 155. 27. Ellis Rivkin, What Crucified Jesus?, p. 42. 28. Ibid., pp. 70f. 29. Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth (Allen and Unwin 1925) p. 414. 30. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation, p. 63. 31. Paul Van Buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (SCM Press 1963)

p.138. 32. Matthew 22.37-40; Mark 12.29-31.

CHAPTER 13 - AN A ITRACTIVE AND VIABLE FAITH

1. See above, p. 68. 2. Michael Coulder (ed.), Incarnation and Myth, p. 90. 3. John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, p. 6. 4. Alfred Hall (ed.), Aspects of Modern Unitarianism (Lindsey Press

1922) p. 9. 5. E. M. Wilbur, as quoted by A Phillip Hewett, An Unfettered Faith

(Lindsey Press 1955) p. 47. 6. Henry Cow, The Unitarians, pp. 171f. 7. Ibid, p. 163. 8. Quoted by Raymond V. Holt, The Unitarian Contn'bution to Social

Progress in England (2nd edn, Lindsey Press 1952) p. 17. 9. Dennis C. Wigmore-Beddoes, A Religion That Thinks (Ulster Unitar

ian Christian Association, Belfast, 1972) p. 18. 10. Ibid., p. 11. 11. John Bowden, Jesus: The Unanswered Questions (SCM Press 1988)

p.198. 12. Ibid., p. 201. 13. Alfred Hall, Beliefs of a Unitarian, p. 126. 14. Ibid., p. 127. IS. Hyam Maccoby, Paul and Hellenism (SCM Press 1991). 16. Hall, Beliefs of a Unitarian, pp. 9f. 17. Ibid., p. 131. 18. W. C. Tarrant, Unitarianism (Constable & Co. 1912) pp. 87f. 19. R. V. Holt, op. cit., p. 13. 20. Quoted by Hewitt, op. cit. p. 152. 21. Wigmore-Beddoes, op. cit. p. 26. 22. Vance Packard, The Status Seekers (Pelican, London 1961) p. 177. 23. Quoted by Hewett, op. cit., p. 136.

Index of Names

al-Hallaj 123 Althaus, Paul 118, 193 Anselm 22 Aquinas, Thomas 68 Augustine 69

Baillie, Donald M. 9, 44, 56-7, 189-90

Baillie, John 13, 187 Baker, George 73 Baker, John, A. 132-3, 195 Barclay, William 92, 192 Barth, Karl 99, 112, 193 Bartholomew, D. J. 15, 187 Bassuk, Daniel E. 73,186, 191 Biedermann, A. E. 57 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 188 Bowden, John 181, 198 Bower, Eldred 108-10, 114 Braithwaite, R. B. 171 Brandon, S. G. F. 163 Brown, Colin 9,186 Brown, David 27-9,41, 56, 71,

188-91,194 Brunner, Emil 99, 192-3 Bultmann, Rudolf 7,77-9, 113,

122, 139, 191

Cadbury, H. J. 156, 196 Caird, C. B. 88, 96, 192-3, 197 Campbell, McLeod 47, 189 Carmichael, Joel 162-3, 197 Carnley, Peter 99-100, 107,

113-14, 193-4 Channing, William Ellery 198 Cupitt, Don 58, 100, 116-17, 153,

171,190-1,193-4, 197 Darwin, Charles 14 Davis, Caroline Franks 21, 187-8 Davis,Stephen 57,190 Dodd, C. H. 33-4, 127, 139, 141,

188,195-6 Driver, Tom 169

Drummond, Henry 31 DuBose, W. P. 10 Dunn, James 9, 23, 127, 188, 195 Durant, W. 134, 195

Fenton, J. C. 88-9, 122, 141, 192, 194-6

Fry, C. L. 184 Fuller, R. H. 86-7,93, 192

Gandhi, M. K. 135, 155, 176, 195-6

Gaskell, William 198 Gess 57 Gilkey, Langdon 168,172 Glasson, Francis 141, 196 Goulder, Michael 12, 28, 31, 55,

186-90, 198 Gow, Henry 179, 197-8

Hall, Alfred 155,178,182-3,196, 198

Hanina ben Dosa 90,96, 126, 155 Hanson, Anthony 7, 9, 77, 186-7,

191 Hanson, A. T. and R. P. C. 8-9,

186 Hebblethwaite, Brian 3-4, 12, 37,

40,51,55,68,176,178, 186-7, 189-91,198

Heine 44 Hendrickx, Herman 86,89,93,

102, 119, 192-4 Hewett, Phillip A. 185, 198 Hick, John H. viii, 4, 16-17,33,

43,51,54-5, 110, 168, 171, 186-90, 192-3, 197-8

Hodgson, Leonard 76, 191 Holt, Raymond V. 184, 198 Honi 155 Hoskyns, E. and Davey, N. 93,

192 Hume, David 35

199

200 Index of Names

Jaspers, Karl 80 Jeremias, Joachim 80,123, 127,

194-5 John Paul IJ, Pope 167 Josephus 164 Jung, Carl 5

Kahler, Martin 78 Kasemann, Ernst 118 Kasper, Waiter 28, 188 Kaufman, Gordon D. 34-6, 188 Kee, Howard Clark 192 Kierkegaard 57 Klausner, Joseph 176,198 Knox, John 6,130,186,191, 195 Kuhn, J. E. 78 Kummel, W. G. 127

Lampe, Geoffrey 4,7-9,43, 50, 68,103, 113-15, 186, 189-90, 193-4, 196

Lee, Ann 73 Leo I, Pope 60 Lessing, G. E. 78, 191 Lewis, H. D. 53, 189 Lindsey, Theophilus 181

Maccoby, Hyam 183, 198 Macgregor, G. H. C. 91, 192, 195 McKenzie, John 6 Mackey,James 5,186 Mackintosh, H. R. 129, 135, 190 McLeman, James 79, 107, 116,

192-4 Macquarrie, John 10-11, 187 Manson, T. W. 134, 194-5 Martineau, James 169, 171, 197 Matthews, W. R. 60,190-1 Meir, Rabbi 96 Miller, Donald E. 173-4, 197 Mitchell, Basil 21, 187 Moberly, R. C. 47, 189 Monod, Jacques 14, 187 Moon, Sun Myung 73-4, 122 Montefiore, C. G. 132 Montefiore, Hugh 16, 187 Morris, Thomas 58-9,61,64,66,

70,190-1 Moule, Charles 5, 117

Newman, J. H. 148, 190, 196 Neusner, Jacob 189 Nineham, D. E. 8,142,192-3, 196

Ogden, Schubert M. 80

Packard, Vance 185, 198 Paley, William 14 Pannenberg, Wolfhart 99, 110-11,

118-19, 193-4 Peacocke, A. R. 8, 15, 186-7 Perrin, Norman 76, 79-80, 139,

158, 191-2, 196 Pittenger, Norman 6, 10, 130, 157,

186, 195-6 Popper, Karl 24 Priestland, Gerald 42, 50, 189 Pringle-Pattison, A. S. 40, 189

Race, Alan 37 Rahner, Karl 9 Rashdall, Hastings 59, 190 Relton, H. M. 56, 190 Richards, H. J. 112-13, 193 Richardson, Alan 68,85, 87, 115,

191-2,194, 197 Ritschl, Albrecht 57, 190 Rivkin, Ellis 164-5, 176, 197-8 Robinson, John 6-7,50, 186, 189 Robinson, Richard 144-5, 147, 196 Rousseau 29 Russell' Bertrand 133, 145-6,

195-6

Sanders, E. P. 96, 133-4, 140, 165, 193,195-7

Sanders, Jack T. 142-4, 196 Schillebeeckx, Edward 7, 113, 158,

186,194,197 Schleiermacher, F. D. E. 9 Schweitzer, Albert 138, 143, 147 Schweizer, Eduard 119, 194 Scott, E. F. 139, 195 Shaw, George Bernard 132, 195 Smart, Ninian 14, 187 Smith, Joseph 115 Smith, Morton 74,96, 191 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 167, 197 Strauss, D. F. 78, 108

Index of Names 201

Swinbume, Richard 14, 16, 19,21, 45,60, 63, 187, 189-90

Tapp, Robert 170, 197 Tarrant, W. C. 184, 198 Taylor, Vincent 86 Temple, William 18,30,40, 187-9 Tertullian 56 Thomasius 56 Tillich, Paul 10 Turner, H. E. W. 93

Underhill, Evelyn 96

Van Buren, Paul 177, 198 Vermes, Ceza 90, 95, 120, 122,

125-8,132,138,149, 155, 176, 191-6

von Balthaser, H. U. 68 von Hase, Karl 122

Weatherhead, Leslie 89,94, 108, 192-3

Welboum, David 7,186,1% Wernle, Paul 44 Wesley, Charles 59 Wesley, John 28, 188 Westcott, B. F. 98, 193 Wigmore-8eddoes, D. C. 180,198 Wilbur, Earl Morse 198 Wiles, Maurice 5, 9, 31-2, 36-7,

41, 178, 187-9 Wilson, Ian 3, 88, 124, 127, 154,

186, 192, 194-6

Young, Frances 73, 191

Index of Subjects

Abba: addressing God as ] 22 Acts of God 34-6 Act of Uniformity 175 Angels as legendary 102 Anthropic principle 16 Atonement: theories of 44-50

Baptismal services 182 Bhagavad~irn 39

Chance and divine purpose 14-15,22

Charisma tics 154-5, 176 Christology

Choice regarding Chap. 1, esp. 3-4,10

Functional 6-10, 41 Mythological 4-6 Needs historical basis 78-80 see also 98-9, 112-13 Ontological 3-4 see also 53-4

Commissurotomy 62 Communion services 182-3 Contingency 55,59 Corporate culpability 45-6 Cosmological argument 14 Crosstianity 42 Crucifixion

why happened 160-5 why not central to faith 165-6

Cultural conditioning 168,] 71 Cumulative case 21-2,148

Deification 110-11, 123 Deism/Deists 28-9,78 Demonology 90, 93-4 Development: doctrine of 148 Discovering God's will see

Revelation Divided minds 63-4 Divine intervention Chap. 3,

169 Biblical view 27

Denial as deism 28 In other faith histories 169 Serious difficulties re: Physical

events 34-36; Religious experience 28-30; Special guidance 30-34

Empty tomb 101-5 Epiphanies 95-6 Eschatology 138-144 Eschatology and ethics 142-4 Eternality 55,59,64 Everlasting punishment 145-6 Evil: problem of 17-18,28,32,

35-6 Evolution 14-16,22 Exclusivism 167 Exorcisms 90 Explanatory power 23-4 Eucharist: doubtful origins of 183

Faith: nature of 112-13 see also 78-80

Faith only 112 Faith-knowledge 79-80 Fall of man 45 Fidelity to patristic faith 9 Forgiveness 43-7, 49-50, 159 Freedom of belief 178-80 Free will defence 17 Fully/merely human 64-67

God Action of 34-6, 189(30) Attributes of 55-67 Belief in 13-23 Fatherhood of 43-4, 158, 165,

174-5 Guidance by see Revelation Unity of 12, 22 see also divine intervention

Good Samarirnn 143-44, 159

202

Index of Subjects 203

Hasidim 154-5 Heritage and faith 172-5 Hinduism 12, 51, 73 Historicity of Gospels 76-8 History and sacred history 78-9 Humanism 170-1, 181

Immanence 8,37 Immutability 59-60, 199(37) Impassibility 59-60 Impersonal manhood 190(4) Improvidence 144-5 Incarnation

Centrality of 3-4 Continuous 4 Contradictoriness of 53-6 Incomprehensibility of 53 Meaning of 3-7 see also 189(3) Multiple instances of 39 Other claimants to 73-4 Perpetual humanity 190(4) Possibility of Chap. 5:

Kenoticism 56-60; Two natures 60-67; Two or more persons in one God 67-71

Possible reasons for: Identification 50-2; Physical deliverance 38-9; Revelation 39-43; Salvation 43-50

Recognizability of 40-2, 52, 71-5

Inclusivism 167 Intelligibility of universe 14-18,

22

Jesus Attitude to opponents 132-3 Authority of 118-21 Birth narratives 87-9 Crucifixion of 160-6 Full humanity of 6-7,191(42) Intimacy with God 121-4 Insensitivity of 133-4 Jewishness of 132 Messianic revolutionary? 163-5 Miracles of 89-95: Exorcisms

90; Healing the sick 89-90;

Nature miracles 92-5; Raising the dead 91-2

Resurrection of Chap. 8 Sinlessness of 8, 129-34 Supreme prophet 155-6, 176-7 Teaching of 135-48, 156-60:

Sublimity of 135-6, 157-60; Mistakes in 138-46; Originality of 157; Serious gaps in 146-8; Style of 137-8, 157

The real Jesus Chap. 11 Titles of 124-9: Lord 128;

Messiah 125-6; Prophet 128-9; Son of God 126-7; Son of Man 128

Tributes from non-Christians 135, 155, 176

Why special focus on Chap. 12: Heritage 172-5; Excellence 175-7

Kenoticism 56-60 Kingdom of God 85, 137-42,

158-9

Law governed universe 28, 34-5 Life hereafter 21,47-8 Limits of reinterpretation 9, 179

Mary, mother of Jesus 19,88, 115

Messianic expectations 138-144 see also 125-6

Minimum beliefs 174, 179-80 Miracles

As divine intervention 27-8, 34-6

As proof of incarnation 73-5 Interpretation of 85-6 see also Jesus: Miracles of

Mythological Christology 4-6

Necessary existence 59, 66-7

Omnipotence 55, 57-8, 64, 66 Omnipresence 55, 57, 59, 64,

66-7 Omniscience 55, 57-8, 64, 66

204 Index of Subjects

Orthodox Christology 3-4,10, 53-5

Particularity 172 Penal substitution 48-9 Penitence 49 Petitionary prayer 36 Pluralism

Grounds for 167-9 Limitations of 169-72

Polydox Jewish Confederation 171,174

Posttraditionality 170,174 Principle of credulity 19 Prior probability 23-4,75,148 Prodigal Son 43-4, 49, 158 Providence: argument from 16-17 Punishment 47-9, 145-6

Ransom 48 Rationality of belief 169, 180-1

see also 112-13 Reincarnation 57 Realized eschatology 139 Religious experience

As theistic argument 13, 18-20 As resurrection argument 99,

113-15 As culturally conditioned

18-19,171 Requires interpretation 13,

19-20 Requires intervention? 28--30

Resurrection Chap. 8 Centrality and credentials 98-9 Diverse appearances 105-10 Empty tomb 101-5 Meaning of 99-100 Needs historical basis 98-9 Unacceptable justifications of:

By faith alone 112-13; Emergence of church 115-16; Experience of Jesus 113-15; Seeing Jesus as Messiah 116-17

Revelation As non-interventionist 30-4,

169 see also 39-43 As progressive discovery 33-4

Rewards and punishments 145-6

Sacraments in unitarianism 181--3 Sacrifice 45,49-50 Salvation: meaning of 43

requiring incarnation? 44-50 Satisfaction 45, 49 Sin: consequences of 47-8 Subscription to creeds 4, 179-80

Teleological argument 14-18 Theodicy see Evil: problem of Trinity viii, 4,8-9, 68-71, 76, 148,

169,174 Tritheism 70-1 Two natures in one person 54-67 Two /Three persons in one

God 54, 67-71

Uniqueness of Jesus In what sense defended 155,

Chap. 12 In what sense denied 90, 100,

117,121,123,129,148-9 Unitarianism

Definition of 170,174 Disparagement of 68, 178 Justification of Chaps 2 and 12,

148-9 Some characteristics of: Freedom

of belief 178-80; Rationality of belief 169, 180-1; Realistic worship 81-3; Social Commitment 183-5

Unitarian Universalists 170, 174

Vale of soul-making 17,22 Verification principle 20 Vicarious penitence 47 Virgin: meaning of 192(11)

Wicked Husbandmen 127