Beyond the Meadow’s Margins: Negative Christology and
the Ways in Which We Speak of God
By David Zub
During the last decades of
that most tumultuous of decades, the Christian Church—including The United
Church of Canada—has been torn between a wandering search for relevance,
and the irrepressible need for that which is roughly known as
"orthodoxy". The solution to this schism seems simple enough: the
connection between the life and work of Christ, and a life of faith, is
inseparable. Yet, as Phyllis Airhart has illustrated, The United Church of
Canada (and presumably other denominations and individual Christians) has
been consistently willing to bury the priority of doctrine for the sake of
the immediate future.' This willingness has been true of so-called liberal
factions who seem to be willing to discard orthodox formulations in favour
of every 'new thing' that comes along, and of self-appointed guardians of
Christian tradition who wish to drape the flag of "orthodoxy"
over dearly-held social myths and values, even when those sentimental
values and perspectives sit outside of the teachings of Christian
orthodoxy. These trends are wholly coherent with what Jurgen Moltmann
called the twin-crises of the church: the crisis of relevance, and the
crisis of identity.2 While neither can win out over the other,
the current dilemma of both ends of the spectrum is found in the reality
that the unintentional consequence of a trend toward relevance over
identity robs the church of resources essential to making ethical claims
on the basis of faith in Christ. Doctrine is a necessity. Doctrine is the
means by which we are guided to a more Godly life.3
That life obviously includes
the political and economic life of the Christian. There is, however, a
point at which any of us, claiming to be Christian, no longer speaks or
acts in ways that conform to the name of Christ. This is also the goal of
doctrine: to not only describe what is Christian, but also to
delineate that which is not. Bonhoeffer used the term "negative
christology" in lieu of the word, "heresy," which has been
burdened with the historical connotations of abuse and exclusion. The
reclamation of the concept may well be an essential task of theology during
this tumultuous period that sees the rise of right wing Christianity and
secularized "christianism." In this paper, I will briefly
describe the basic paths of negative christology, and suggest in turn some
ways in which they may provide a Christian hermeneutic for ethical
discernment.
Four Paths Away From
Christ
Negative
christology cannot be defined in terms of ecclesial authority. It must be
understood in terms of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer, and
Schleiermacher before him, described four "natural" expressions
of negative christology as Pelagianism, Manicheism, Nazareanism or
Ebionitism, and Docetism.5 Christopher Morse depicted these categories
soteriologically as any belief maintaining that:
(i) human beings do not need
salvation;
(ii) humans are not salvageable;
(iii) Jesus Christ is too like other humans to be
able uniquely to save;
(iv) Jesus Christ is too unlike other humans to
have
sufficient access to them to save.6
These are not exhaustive
categories, nor are they listed in the order in which they historically
appeared. I will attempt to explicate them chronologically.
The
First Path: Appearance Without Substance
Christian
faith came into existence in a world that had numerous preconditions by way
of religion, cultures, and social and political structures.7 The
affirmations of the church were developed in tension with some of these
preconditions. Among them was Gnosticism, which declared that salvation is
gained according to a special knowledge, or "gnosis," by way of
which the believer could escape from the material world to the spiritual.8
When adapted to Christian teachings, Gnosticism expounded a denial of
creation as the work of the saving God. Similarly, Gnostics denied that God
took human form, or that Jesus had a true body and only appeared to be
corporeal (hence the term "docetism," from the Greek dokeo:
to seem). Gnosticism denied the resurrection, asserting instead that some
souls are by nature "immortal."9 Docetic Gnosticism
therefore maintained that salvation is an otherworldly manifestation of
faith attained by the ability and work of the human creature who must, by
obtaining certain knowledge, "earn" salvation. Salvation does
not take place in creation, which is deemed to have been the result of a
willful act of disobedience by subordinate divine entities, and therefore
debased.
The
encounter between Christian faith and Gnosticism came early.10
Ireneus, in his Adversus haereses, wrote against Docetism in the
second century. He did so, not to establish a form of "right
thinking," but as a pastor concerned with the spiritual well being of
his flock in Lyons. His concern with Gnosticism was not for its theological
verity per se, but that it led people to a devaluation of
themselves as part of God's good creation, and thus to extreme asceticism
or libertarian-ism, instead of a life of Christ in service to the world.
Docetic influence is very
much alive. This path is followed when power claims authority over the
church, and thus attempts to control it. It can be felt in the influence of
powerful economic elites informed by the last vestiges of the Enlightenment
and the limitations of scientific empiricism. In its historical form,
Docetism consistently maintains that Jesus was too unlike humanity to
suffer with us, and therefore ineffective to save. In modern Docetism,
certain terms of reference are imposed upon the church, which therefore
separate the Body of Christ from the world. Its role is thus limited to
that of a social phenomenon with a function defined by public policy and
economic agenda, as happened during the incorporation of the various
denominations into the plan to assimilate First Nations' People via the
Indian Residential School system. The church is thereby cut off from any
prophetic proclamation for social justice that speaks against the decisions
of government and commerce, which treats creation and the human creature as
something to be used. The Docetism of our modern day limits the mission of
the church to the care of those made poor by the "best efforts"
of those in power, and to the "care of souls" in preparation for
the "life to come." Though these poor might be suffering the
consequences of decisions made by those in power, the church may not speak
against those who act in ways that are contrary to God's revelatory and
salvific act in Christ. Salvation is not 'of this world,' but merely a
consolation for those who are sacrificed in the interests of political
ideology and economic progress. Christ's Body, therefore, has a useful
function for secular power, rather than a lived mission given by God in
Christ. The church is severed from its commission to care for God's
beloved, including those who must be criticized and corrected for their
actions. The Body of Christ is removed from the world for which he suffered
and died. This is Docetism today: the Body of Christ has insufficient
access to the real world to embody God's salvific act in Jesus Christ for
all people. It is reduced to a social convention dispensing consolation,
rites of passage, and the assurance of "a better life to come."
The
Second Path: Irredeemable Creation
It was also during the
second century that Marcion founded his own church after being expelled
from the Christian church." Smith sympathetically referred to Marcion
as someone who saw the "new Christian movement" as "sufficiently
different. . . that it need not conform to previous dispensations in the
matter of scriptures."12 Less positively, Marcion appears
to have despised Judaism to the extent that he wished to expunge Christian
faith statements of all such references, and assembled the first canon of
what later became known as the New Testament, consisting of Paul's letters
and the Gospel of Luke, minus their "Judaizing interpolations.'"3
In doing so, Marcion developed a dualism that differentiated between a god
of creation who rules this world, and the God of redemption known in Jesus
Christ. The latter he expounded as the "unknown God," who is
love; the former as the God of the Old Testament who rules in justice.14
His thought, known primarily
through his opponents Tertullian, Justin Martyr and Iraneus, was obviously
more nuanced than can be related here, but it is sufficient to say that his
greatest departure from Christianity was on the subject of the incarnation.
Marcion perceived that if the Saviour were born into this world, he would
have been under the auspices of the Creator (lesser) God, which would deny
him any salvific efficacy in this world; salvation is of the next.
While Marcion's dualism, as
well as his Docetism, was derived from his wish to expunge Christian faith
of Jewish references, later developments were inherently dualistic in
their condemnation of creation as accursed and beyond redemption. Chief
among these was Manicheism, which began in the third century. Its founder,
Mani, may have been the only person ever to set out to found a religion, or
at least to intentionally write a scripture.15 He claimed to
reconcile the goodness of God with the evil of creation by defining all
things as being made up of two "principles," one of light and
another of darkness; the first spiritual, the latter corporeal. Human
creation is the result of an abominable mixture of the two, and is
therefore cursed.
Manicheism maintained that
the world has not been and cannot be redeemed, and that the human creature
is doomed along with the rest of creation. Manifestations of Manicheism are
found today in the nihilistic armed enclaves and sects that are associated
with places like Waco, Texas, the bombing of the federal building in
Oklahoma, and underlying the practice of warfare that ignores permanent
destruction of the environment and accepts the destruction of civilian
populations. It is expressed in the will to power for which life is,
however regrettably, expendable for the sake of achieving personal ends
("salvation") in forms of social Darwinism in which the
"fittest" survive. The underlying assumption is that creation is
damned anyway, and the purpose of life is to gain as much as possible
before "getting out of it." Creation, and the human creature
within it, is irredeemable and might as well be "used up."
The
Third Path: The Insignificant Cross
The third "natural"
instance of negative christology appeared shortly after a period of intense
persecution followed by the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., which placed the
Christian church in an unfamiliar period of relative safety. Non-Christian
rulers were intolerant of the long process of debate and consensus that had
previously been the norm. Instead, decisions began to be made on the basis
of imperial authority deciding who was "right," and who should
be silenced. After the so-called "conversion of Constantine" this
state of affairs was becoming the norm when a local conflict in Alexandria
developed to the point that Constantine intervened.16 A
presbyter named Arms, in an effort to preserve the doctrine of God's
unchanging nature, determined that the Word was not God, but the first of
God's creations. His assertions were over and against the teaching of the
church, which affirmed that the Word is coeternal with God. Arius thus drew
a line that included the Word as part of creation. Jesus would be not only
functionally, but also ontologically subordinate to the Creator God. If
this were the case, then Jesus would not have been the saviour since only
God can save. The cross would be the mere symbol of a concept, and have no
redeeming power. God, in other words, is not "with us."
Arianism is one of a number
of propositional frameworks that classically came under the rubric of
"Ebionitism," a name attributed to an early form of Jewish
Christianity. They include a wide variety of expressions, including
Arianism, adoptionism, Nestorianism, some forms of modalism, and Deism.
Arianism is distinctive because it provoked the fourth and fifth century
councils, the composition of the Nicene Creed, and the refinement of
Trinitarian theology. In its modern form, this approach suggests that Jesus
was not divine in his nature. He was, instead, endowed by God in order to
achieve God's ends, or he was adopted by God because of his excellence as
a human creature, or God merely donned Jesus like a suit in a way that
allows Jesus of Nazareth no particularity, somewhat parallel to the Hindu Avatar.
This line between the
temporal and supra-temporal worlds may not be crossed by either God or
human; God does not work in the world, the cross and resurrection become
mere symbols of human work, and the world is untouched by the incarnate God
who lives, suffers, and dies, "giving up the spirit" (Jn. 19:30)
for the world. Salvation is, then, separated from any saviour other than
oneself. Christ is bereft of significance as God's revelation. Salvation
is reduced to a device for the sake of survival or "good sense."
The Arianist approach is congruent with institutions
that perceive the future of the world in terms of human achievement in
politics, technology and progress, and with the remnants of 18th
Century Deism that perceive God as distant and unin-volved with daily life.
This allows unimpeded participation by professing Christians in the
ecological and political rape of whole continents, the cultural extinction
of indigenous people, and quiet complicity with genocidal activities. Ironically,
Ebionitic formulations are among those most often used among Christians who
wish to be accepting and open to people of non-Chrisitan religions.17
While their intent is to take a compassionate and ethical stance toward
the non-Christian neighbour, the approach lacks the moral backbone needed
in reaction to the imposition of suffering in our current context.
The Fourth Path: An
Unnecessary Cross
The Council of Nicea did not
offer the last word on controversy, however—not even upon the Arian
controversy. Following Constantine's death there were nine emperors in
quick succession from 337-375, including several who preferred Arianism,
and at least one (Julian) who held Christianity in contempt. This was also
a significant time for Christian theology. It was the era in which
Athanasius and the Cappadocians developed the foundations of orthodox
trinitarian theology, and during which the Council of Constantinople took
place in 381. It was also the period during which Chrysostom and Augustine
began their formation. Tragically, Christian history is still bearing the
scars of imperial edicts, beginning in 381, by the Emperor Theodosius,
whose desire to help the churches resolve conflict quickly took the form of
a code making it illegal to be other than Roman Christian. By 438, his
successor Theodosius II decreed the death penalty for anyone who denied the
Trinity or was re-baptized. Nationalist loyalty and particular belief
systems became synonymous, as did "heresy" and sedition—a trend
observable in the western world to this day. Christians began to address
differences with an imperial sword.
Into this foment strode a
monk from Britain named Pelagius, ready to contest with Augustine on the
nature of grace and the human creature. Augustine had debated with the
Manicheans, who claimed that good and evil were eternal principles and
therefore immutable: evil could not do good, and good could not do evil;
matter, being darkness, could do no good. Augustine refuted this claim,
saying that while the power of sin takes hold of human will, the grace of
God takes the initiative, and not human decision. Pelagius was intent that
no excuse be allowed for those who would blame their sin on human weakness,
and asserted that the initiative for salvation is the human will to submit
to God's decree. Like a later, subtler development in medieval theology
called "synteresis," which held that every human bears a seed of
conscience, Pelagianism bore twin burdens. It declared that God alone is
insufficient to save, and that human will may affect salvation. The entire
discussion of salvation may therefore take place without reference to Jesus
Christ, who becomes extraneous if salvation is a human act.
In its modern form,
Pelagianism considers sin to be an outmoded concept. "Salvation"
is a matter of taking care of oneself or of one's own, rather than the
neighbour. We are to "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps," which
is just another way of saying that our work is our justification. In this
view, neither the church nor a saviour is necessary—we can be "good
people" without Christ. It is a dominant stance within our current
neo-conservative political and neo-liberal economic context, and among our
secular populations. If people are poor or are suffering, they have not
done enough to account for their own salvation and therefore deserve their
suffering. In this construct, people don't intrinsically matter, only their
productivity and ability to contribute to the economy—the ethical extension
of a view of justification that ignores the Incarnation, which has nothing
at all to do with merit!
Negative
Christology as a Basis for Ethical Discernment
These are not exhaustive
categories. They do, however, provide an adequate checklist if considered
along with Karl Barth's observation that negative christologies...
..
.spring from the fact that man does not take seriously the known ground of
divine immanence in Jesus Christ, so that from its revelation, instead of
apprehending Jesus Christ and the totality in Him, he arbitrarily selects
this or that feature and sets it up as a subordinate centre... '8
Negative christology helps
us, therefore, to identify the willful act of emphasizing some aspect of
Jesus (his humanity, divinity, gender, etc.), and presenting it as though
it were salvific in and of itself. When considered soteriologically, the
discernment extends to Christ's church as well.
Statements based upon such
soteriological misapprehensions tend to meet logical dead-ends, or become devoid
of ethical currency. Classical concepts of heresy and orthodoxy are
regarded today as archaic socio-political phenomena hammered out by dusty
old men a long time ago, responding to questions no one ever asks, played
as tokens in a power game involving the church's accrual of power in
relationship to the state. As a result, good and faithful people adopt the
point of view that such categories have little bearing on Christian
practice, and rely upon personal opinion and experience marked by the absence
of a doctrine of sin. But the application of negative christology as
critical theology is a useful mode of discernment for the living church of
Christ, and its people.
The mark of that discernment
is one of utility. Docetism suggests that the Body of Christ can be used
for the consolation of those who are caused to suffer by draconian social
policies. Manicheism asserts that creation and the human creature can be
"used up" as the irredeemable accident of supranatural forces.
Arianism implies that God is not decisively involved in the affairs of the
world as advocate or redeemer, and whose conduct in relation to the world's
resources and people is not governed by God's judgement. Pelagianism holds
within it the possibility that people are responsible for their own
salvation, and therefore their own suffering, by virtue of their own act of
will, and may be used so long as they "choose" to be used. The
vulnerability of the Christian church in these formulations becomes
apparent when we, as Christians, allow ourselves to be drawn into distorted
terms of reference for God, Christ, mission, and church. When we are
subsumed into those terms of reference and follow a path far from the
centrality of Christ, we will be tempted to treat the divinity of Christ as
a problem to be solved instead of a gift to be shared. We give up the one
thing that makes the church the Body of Christ capable of offering
salvation even to Christ's enemies. As a result, Christ "goes through
the ages, questioned anew, missed anew, killed anew... always betrayed with
a kiss."19 We even give up the ability to live in
relationship and dialogue with those who wish to pose questions for the
sake of measuring the wisdom that is the foundation of Christian wealth.
Finally, echoing Iraneus' primary concern, we give up the pastoral office,
especially with reference to those who impose suffering and stand in need
of correction.
Michael McAteer describes
the openness of The United Church with a vivid parable by Peter Wyatt,
former General Secretary for Theology, Faith, and Ecumenism for The United
Church, and current principal of Emmanuel College of the Toronto School of
Theology:
Some
churches herd people into corrals and tell them they must believe
everything they've been told. If they don't, they are out of the corral—out
of the fold, so to speak. Other churches handle it differently. Anglicans,
for instance, rather than building a corral, drive a post in the middle of
a meadow, attach their articles of faith to it, and invite people to get as
close to the post as possible.20
The parable demonstrates the
difference between the responsibility of the church to teach according to
scripture and the long tradition of the church, and the responsibility of
its members to receive, discern, and act upon those teachings. These are
very different responsibilities, and the church is not relieved of its
office to teach according to the gift of God in Christ. Within the parable
is the possibility that there is something beyond the margins of the meadow
where the post (and the attached articles) can no longer be seen. At some
point, a person or a community can find itself so far beyond that meadow
that they might be lost in a forest, falling off a cliff, or floundering in
deep waters. When this happens, it is the pastoral responsibility of the
church to discern and speak out—not to "correct" or control, but
to aid God's people in recovering the wealth of ethical discernment and
action that is the fruit of God's gift in Christ. The way back to the
meadow in which our proclamation is posted starts with the recognition of
these paths as veering from the christological center of God incarnate.
These are the pressures, the temptations, which are brought to bear upon
the church and its members to conform to the world that the church is
pledged to transform (Rom. 12:2). If we are to hold ethical ground, we must
do so as servants of Christ.
In
the Gospel of John, Chapter 18, we read how Jesus was brought before Pilate
to explain his position and describe his intentions. In that interrogation,
Pilate attempted to control Jesus by defining him in terms of function and
utility. But Jesus would not accept the limitations of one whom he came to
save. "You say that I am a king. For this I was born... to testify to
the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
There, in the presence of the living personification of power and control,
having been betrayed by countrymen concerned with their legitimacy in the
eyes of the Empire, abandoned and denied by his closest friends, Jesus
refused to be co-opted by the language and terms of his inquisitor. By that
act, he revealed the desperation of power that cannot tolerate...
..
.the presence of truth. He thus revealed Pilate's power as demonic,
obsessed with power for the sake of power, and disinterested in truth.21
Jesus refused to be
externally defined, but defined himself always and only in terms of his
relationship to the creating, redeeming, and sustaining God whom we
know only through Jesus. The Body of Christ can do no less, and must ever
guard against being a utility in the employ of the State, commerce, and
power. Christians are called for service, not merely identified, used, and
deemed useful by political and economic powers. Every encounter with the
secular world, and especially with the powers that presume to dictate the
nature of Christ and the work of the church must be met with the identity
and mission we receive from the living Word among us. This is our Wisdom.
This is our hope, and the salvation of the world. This is the aim of
orthodoxy!
The recovery of negative
christology as a form of Christian discourse is an essential device for
every such encounter. It is not, however, a way of discarding or vilifying
others. It is to be used as an anchor from which we can offer the hand of
Christ to those who are lost, falling, or floundering out of sight of the
meadow in which the post upon which our proclamation of God's love is
posted. Or, perhaps more appropriately, to those who are far from the hill
upon which the cross of Christ protests suffering imposed by the world's
powers and principalities. Only then may we sing with all the saints:
"All our hope is firmly founded in our great and living Lord."22
Endnotes
'Phyllis Airhart, "A
'Review' of The United Church of Canada's 75 Years," Touchstone,
Vol.18, 19-31.
2Cf.
M. Douglas Meeks, Origins of the Theology of Hope, (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1974), 3; Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross
of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology,
translated by R.A. Wilson and John Bowden, (London: SCM Press, 1974), 134.
3Ellen
Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of
Christian Doctrine, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), viii,
240, etc.
4Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Christology, translated by John Bowden, originally
published as Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, by Christian Kaiser
Verlag, 1960; (London: Wm. Collins, Sons & Co., Ltd)., 77-106.
5Friedrich
Schleiermacher. The Christian Faith, Vol.1, edited by H.R. Mackinosh
and J.S. Stewart, originally published in 1830 (New York: Harper and Row,
Publishers, 1963), 97ff. Bonhoeffer described these as Docetic, Ebionitic,
Monophysite and Nestorian, and Subordinationist and Modalistic. A fifth
important category, Donatism (that the efficacy of the gospel is dependent
upon its bearer) cannot be discussed here for purposes of brevity.
6Christopher
Morse. Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief, (Valley
Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994), 74ff.
7Justo
Gonzales. Church History: An Essential Guide, (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1996), 23.
8Ibid.,
28.
9Ibid.,
28.
10According
to Justin Martyr the earliest recorded
encounter is in Acts 8, with Simon Magus, I
Apologia 1. Cf. Justo Gonzales. A History of Christian
Thought, Vol.1, From the Beginnings to the Council of
Chalcedon, (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1970), 101-109.
11Ibid., 137-143.
12Wilfred Cantwell Smith. What
is Scripture? A Comparative Approach, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993), 54.
13Gonzales, Christian Thought,
Vol.1, 140.
14Ibid., 138-139.
15Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The
Meaning and End of Religion, (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1991),
92-98; What is Scripture?, 22, 51-52.
16Justo Gonzales. The Story of
Christianity, Vol.1, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984),
158-159.
17Cf. e.g. John Hick. "Jesus and the World Religions," in The Myth
of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick, (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1977), 181.
18Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics
II.i: The Doctrine of God, edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.P. Torrance,
translated by T.H.L. Parker, W.B. Johnston, H. Knight and L.L.M. Haire,
(Edinburgh: T&T dark, 1957), 319. Earth, of course, used the term "Christian
heresies."
19Op.Cit., Bonhoeffer, 106.
20Michael
McAteer, "What do United Church People Believe?" in Fire and Grace,
(Toronto: The United Church Publishing House, 2000), 53-59, 54.
21Cf.
Paul Lehmann, The Transfiguration of Politics: the Presence and Power of
Jesus of Nazareth In and Over Human Affairs, (New York: Harper and Row,
Publishers, 1975), Ch.5; Paul Anderson, The Christology of the Fourth
Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6, (Valley Forge:
Trinity Press International, 1996).
22Hymn
by Joachim Neander (1680), translated by Fred Pratt Green, in Voices
United, (Toronto: The United Church Publishing House, 1996), #654.
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