(14) What I Believe “And in Jesus Christ…who was incarnate and became man.” When the Creed affirms that Jesus became incarnate (Greek: sarkothenta, Latin: incarnates est) and became a human (Greek: evanthropesanta, Latin: homo factus), it saying two dialectically different things which are both essential. The first, ‘sarkothenta’ has to do with Jesus becoming that which is creaturely; the second, ‘enanthropesanta’ has to do with his specific person, as a singular human being. The first has to do with his corporate character as one who has taken up in himself that which was created, the second to do with his assumption of being a real human being, a first century male Jewish teacher and prophet from Galilee. It is important to affirm both of these. If we only affirm the first we can easily miss out on Jesus as a real person, if we affirm only the second we can miss out on Jesus sharing in our humanness, in our existence as creatures. They are both necessary affirmations if we wish to understand Jesus. The first affirmation, ‘sarkothenta’ indicates his corporate character, his having become the True Human in whom we are all included, even as we are also included in the First human Adam. This is the logic of Romans 5:12-21, where Adam and Jesus are paralleled or in Phil 2:5-11 where Adam and Jesus are paralleled in a hymn. Jesus in his person is all humanity, just as Adam in his person is all humanity and please don’t think for a moment I believe in a literal Adam, I am using Adam as a figure or trope of ‘sinful’ humanity in the same manner as Paul. Unlike Adam, who I do not believe is a historical figure, Jesus is a historical figure, he is ‘enanthropesanta.’ The Adamic is the human species as sinful. The Adamic is that way we have of speaking about the brokenness of the human race. It speaks to all sorts of things but primarily to our violence. You will recall in earlier posts on Genesis or if you have read my book The Jesus Driven Life that I do not separate out Genesis 2-3 from Genesis 4-11 which is one contiguous narrative about humanity’s rapacious use of scapegoating violence. Adam’s ‘sin’ was not some sort of disobedience to certain ‘laws’ or the breaking of some supposed covenant (which is never mentioned); it has to do with his false identity through imitation of Eve. The Adamic way of life is that life we humans live when we imitate one another nonconsciously, when we seek to derive our value, worth and being from other humans. Jesus, in contrast, imitated the One he knew as Abba. He drew his value, measure and self-worth from his faith that God loved him and all others, that God was a loving deity. As such a one, Jesus opened the way for us to have a new model, a new mode of being, also grounded in imitation, otherwise known as discipleship. What he does he does for all, his life lived is all human life lived out in perfect trust in this God. As such a corporate figure Jesus is all of us. What happens in his human existence is our human existence. All that he is is all that creation is; what occurs in his flesh is also what happens in all that is created. We have already seen this in yesterday’s post. As one who is ‘enanthropesanta’, as a specific human Jesus can be our new model. If it is the case that we are hard wired to imitate, then if we are to break free from our Adamic ways of violence, shunning, marginalizing, discriminating and hurting one another we need a model of humanity who is accepting, inclusive, caring, nurturing and loving and this example of real human or the True Human is found in the life of Jesus of Nazareth recorded in the canonical Gospels. In ‘sarkothenta’ we are included in him, in ‘enanthropesanta’ we are given a new way of being human. By affirming the former, we find our exodus from our Adamic existence in following the teacher from Nazareth, who has very concrete teaching on love, even enemy love; on retribution, in the forsaking of it; in forgiving, even as God forgives, an unlimited number (70 x 7). In Jesus we have one who came to demonstrate the way out of doing this thing we call human culture by showing us the culture of the Abba (the basileia tou theou, the reign of God). With these two words ‘sarkothenta’ and ‘enanthropoesanta’ we acknowledge our Adamic existence, frailty and violent ways, and we also acknowledge that a way out (an exodus) has been provided so that, like Jesus we may become truly human. As Jesus is the child of the Father, so we too, who follow him, whose lives are modeled on his life, are also children of God. Becoming a child of God does not have to do with praying a prayer at the back of a tract, nor does it have to do with having all one’s doctrinal ducks lined up in a row. Being a child of the Abba means recognizing that all that we are’ in Jesus’ trumps all that we have been ‘in Adam.’ Some Implications A final note to all my friends who are caught up in ‘grace preaching’ or the ‘finished work of Christ.’ These are important movements but they have not figured it all out. These emphases have been tried before in the history of Christianity. Inevitably they end up right back where they started: in self-justification because people actually believed they were beyond sin. One only has to study church history to realize that there is nothing new under the sun and if we do not wish to repeat the mistakes of the past we must learn where others made those mistakes. Grace does not mean that sin is forever gone from our lives but it does mean that we may daily find ourselves being transformed. It does not mean that we somehow are magically taken from the realm of the Adamic but that we may, in choosing Jesus as our model instead of others, find ourselves becoming a little more like him today than we were yesterday. We do not have it all now. This was the mistake of the Corinthians who had an over-realized eschatology; they thought the future was completely present. Paul, grace preacher though he was, emphasizer of the finished work of Christ that he was, had to remind them that this life is still one of brokenness; that in this life we are ‘broken jars made of clay.’ One never finds Paul reveling in perfection; he only revels in Jesus. We live with both natures in this business of space, time and history. We live between the times. Those who assert otherwise are in denial of the ways in which they nonconsciously participate in violence against others (not just deeds, but words, thoughts, and desires). Yes, grace trumps sin in this life, sin is forgiven. But we still hurt one another. “Sin is the destructive way we handle our pain.” If we deny this, we will only ever be about self-righteous justification and that is precisely what we do not wish to be! If we are humble and acknowledge our own propensity to hurt one another, we also acknowledge that the salvation of forgiveness is now extended into the human sphere; we are those who forgive others who have sinned against us and who seek forgiveness when we hurt others. Sin is not about abstract law breaking; it is about the way we imitate one another’s desires and seek being and value from the other. Jesus is the only model who can provide us with the real alternative of what seeking God does to save, transform and heal us. Now we may just find ourselves, in following Jesus, in taking him as our model for what it means to be fully and truly human as those who can indeed be called ‘children of the heavenly Abba.’
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 11:37:58 +0000
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