Albrecht Dürer: “Selbstbildnis im Pelzrock”, 1500, Öl auf Holz, 67 × 49 cm, Alte Pinakothek München
To understand Christ, we have to start with the Trinity, which consists of one divine being, God, who is comprised of three distinct persons, each with a unique role: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christology is essentially the study of the person of Jesus Christ, the Son: who he is in relation to the other two persons of the Trinity, his divine and human natures, and his mission to save humanity from its otherwise inescapable fallenness.
In the historic Apostles Creed, we are told of:
Jesus Christ, [God’s] only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and nine months later was born the savior of the world. He lived the life we should have lived, taught us the true nature of God. He was condemned by the rulers of his own people and handed over to a Roman leader named Pilate, who did what was reasonable to try let the man go free. But in the end, Jesus was treated as an exceptional criminal, as a traitor to the Roman republic, and received the horrific punishment of being beaten, scourged, stripped naked, and nailed to a cross to die.
Jesus was given a fairly normal Jewish burial, though in a tomb beyond his family’s ability to pay, but was not given with the standard burial treatment due to it being the Sabbath.1 Three days later, he arose from the dead, the firstfruits of the new kingdom he has initiated and will eventually complete when he returns in glory to judge all people.
Christology, then, consists of making sense of this man, this God, for Jesus was both God and man. He was both one with the Father, equal in power and glory, as well as a man, born of woman and with all the limitations of humanity.
1The women who discovered the empty tomb had come to complete the task of preparing Jesus’ body
I was reading chapter 17 of Exodus this morning. The people of Israel had already grumbled in the previous chapter about not having food — God gave them food; they grumbled in this chapter about being thirsty — God gave them water.
All fine and well.
But then I read the final verses of chapter 17 about the Amalekite people attacking the Israelites in the wilderness, and a doubt overcame me that this part was a true story. It seemed so, well, unbelievable — even bothersome — that God would magically use Moses’ staff to overcome the enemy on the battlefield. This account must have been a later insertion.
So I immediately prayed that God would forgive me. Before I could even fully form the thought, God told me not to worry — it’s ok, even natural, to doubt like that. I smiled to myself and then finished reading the story. It ended with this verse:
“The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
Curious, I googled Amalek. Who the heck is that? Well, it turns out that he was the grandson of our hairy friend Esau. His people, the Amalekites, lived in the area near Horeb where Moses struck the rock to water his people. But here’s a quote from the googled commentary that struck me:
“Amalek is the constant doubter, brazenly rushing to any sign of passion for holiness and cooling things down.”
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.
Anyone who knows me well is more than aware that I love Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. The guy is just so humble, learned, and wise. No one currently living — and I mean no one — has more significantly impacted my faith and my understanding of what life is all about.
If I could force everyone I know to watch the following, I would. Alas, I can’t. Will you please watch? You’ll be very glad you did.
In the last post, I asked whether you, dear reader, might even want God to exist. And I tried to provide some reasons for maybe why that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’d like to shift gears a little bit and get philosophical.
According Boston College professor Peter Kreeft, the only truly formidable argument against God’s existence is the so-called “Problem of Evil.”[1] I’m going to spend at least the next post addressing it. But before we get into that, can we agree agree to put aside two common but unnecessary obstacles to thinking on this question?
1. Relativism. This is the idea that what is true for you isn’t necessarily what’s true for me. While helpful when arguing over vanilla versus chocolate, the idea is utter nonsense when you’re talking about whether a thing exists. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say: “It may be true for you that the Sun is up there in sky, but it’s not true for me.” The Sun is either there or it isn’t. Same with God: He either exists or He doesn’t, whether we want Him to or not.
2. Science has disproved God’s existence. If God exists, He’s by definition outside the created order — and therefore not detectable via the Scientific Method. One would only find the idea palatable by bringing to the question an a priori assumption that He doesn’t exist. Which kinda makes intelligent conversation on the subject difficult.
[1] Peter Kreeft, A Shorter Summa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 53.
We are a free online apologetics discussion group for Christians interested in deepening the imaginative and philosophical grounds for our faith. Our focus is primarily, though not exclusively, on the literary and philosophical works of C.S. Lewis, arguably the 20th century’s greatest defender of the Christian faith.
There are no prerequisites other than a love of reading and thinking.
We are set to begin our first session of 2020.
Here’s how it works:
Sign up in the comments section below, making sure to enter your name and email address. (You may also contact me via Facebook)
On Sunday, April 12th, 2020 (and going forward every Sunday), I will send out info on the week’s subject material — as well as a link to a video lecture
Starting on Wednesday, April 15th (and going forward on every Wednesday evening), we will gather from 7-8pm for group discussion via web conference
The plan right now is to continue meeting through early June, 2020
Week One will consist of a general overview. And Week Two will be on how we as humans create meaning from information. Both are setup material for C.S. Lewis’s treatment of love in his The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces.
If you want to get ahead of the reading, we will be starting in Week Three on The Four Loves. You might want to go ahead and purchase both books now, if you don’t already own them.
