As I showed in my last post, there are those who overly emphasize the humanity of Christ in the sense that they make him out to be some sort of gloried human. Consequently they do not affirm Christ’s true divine nature.

On the other side of the coin are those who over emphasize the divinity of Christ and make his humanity out to be a mere appendage or like a three-dimensional image. An ancient example of this is the error of the Valentinians. Valentinus (c. 100 - c. 160) taught that Christ did not have an earthly body; rather, he brought one from heaven that was spiritual in nature. Valentinus based his view on John 3:13 and 31 which speak of Jesus descending from heaven.

One of the big problems with this error is that it undercuts the scriptural teaching that we are truly one with Christ as his brothers and sisters and that he suffered the same weaknesses and travails that we have. As Hebrews states:

Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Generally, the philosophical premise for the overemphasis on Christ’s divine nature is dualism. Dualism posits a stark dichotomy between a good spiritual realm and an evil material realm. Consequently, with this philosophical view, the idea of a truly human Christ becomes very problematic. His human physicality would be inherently evil. Therefore, the so-called Christian Gnostics such as Valentinus devised ways of spiritualizing Christ’s appearance in human flesh.

While there are certain contemporary Gnostic-type Christian sects, they tend to be esoteric and inconsequential. On the other hand, there are many Christians who unwittingly overemphasize the divinity of Christ to the detriment of his real humanity. One example of this is very prevalent in Charismatic circles. There is popular teaching that describes Christians as being a “spirit, having a soul and living in a body.” This view of human nature is essentially flawed and, if projected on to Christ would make his bodily human nature simply his “earth suit.” While these Christians normally would defend the teaching of the real humanity of Christ, they propagate a view of human nature that is Gnostic or dualistic. Gnostics oven viewed humans as spiritual “sparks” of divinity trapped in evil human bodies. Classic Christianity defines human nature as a composite of body and soul. The human body is affirmed as essentially good by Christianity. Additionally, God is a spirit as are the blessed angels. Humans, though, are not spirits. This means that Christ’s human nature included a real body and soul. Therefore, the divine Son assumed a fully human nature including a soul and body. His human nature was not just his soul. It was both his soul and body.

One of my seminary professors had a simple motto. He would say, “Bad theology produces bad behavior.” Inevitably, the overemphasis on either the divinity or humanity of Christ to the detriment of its counterpart will eventually produce bad fruit in those who hold such beliefs.

Christmas is not about Santa, reindeer, presents, or sugarplums dancing in your head. Christmas is about Immanuel, God with us. Without the Incarnation, Christmas becomes a meaningless celebration for celebration’s sake.

By the word Incarnation we mean that the babe in the manger who grew to be Jesus of Nazareth was fully God and fully man. When we read in Scripture that the Lord showed fear, grieved, thirsted, and died we understand this to mean that in his human nature he suffered these things. Then when we read that by his power he healed the sick, raised the dead, commanded nature, drove out demons, forgave sins, and rose from the dead we understand that these reveal his divine nature.

The two great theological mistakes are to depreciate either Christ’s human nature or his divine nature. Both of these mistakes have arisen at different times in history. Currently we are in a time that struggles with the idea of God’s supernatural intervention, so, the tendency is to see Christ as some sort of better-than-normal man. This was the ancient error of the Ebionites and the false teacher Cerinthus. By the way, the gospel of John was written to counter the teaching of Cerinthus.

Basically, these false teachings asserted that Christ only had a human nature and that divinity was in him by some sort of outstanding participation in God’s glory based upon Christ’s personal merit through his own goodness. This, of course, is not just an ancient heresy. Today many people view Christ in this way. The bottom line is that these people doubt that God would assume human flesh to become a man; rather, they believe that it is possible for a man to be so good that he can become godlike. As I mentioned, the gospel of John was written as a rebuke against such notions and it powerfully states that the “Word became flesh” and not that flesh became the Word.

Additionally, the exact opposite moral lesson is taught by the Cerinthian heresy than is taught by the Bible. The Bible teaches that the Son of God humbled himself and was made man. The Cerinthian heresy teaches that a man was glorified to become godlike. One, (Scripture) teaches humility, whereas the other (heresy) teaches exaltation. The heresy appeals to man’s pride and vanity whereby he thinks that by the merit of his good works he can become a god. The gospel teaches that even Almighty God humbles Himself for others. The gospel rebukes man’s pride and vanity which seeks to crown his own efforts with deity by pouring a massive dose of God’s humbling love upon his ego.

In the next post I will look at the other mistake of over spiritualizing Christ.

St. Augustine labored for years over the manifold ways to interpret the creation account in Genesis 1-3. After his arduous efforts he wrote the great work “On the Literal Meaning of Genesis.” Within he observed that "It is a laborious and difficult task for the powers of our human understanding to see clearly the meaning of the sacred writer in the matter of these six days" (p. 103). I love his humility and wish that those who are so righteously convinced that theirs is the only interpretation of the creation story would take the time to read Augustine. Contemporary Christians too easily sweep aside the ancient and wise insights of some of the greatest minds given by God to His church.

Because Augustine believed Genesis 1-3 was hard to interpret, he urged Christians to be very careful to restrain themselves from taking hard-and-fast positions based on limited understanding of God’s counsels or the natural world. He puts it this way: "in matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision ... we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture" (p. 41). In other words, we should hold “lightly” onto our interpretation of Genesis 1-3.

One thing that Augustine was adamant about is that Christians should avoid making a so-called biblical case for things that clearly are opposed to what people know to be true from qualified sources. A classic example of this is how some Christians insisted that the bible taught that the sun revolved around the earth despite clear evidence to the contrary. The following is a lengthy but worth-reading statement in this regard from Augustine:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.... Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.” (pp. 42-43)

The big problem that Augustine saw was that when we make quasi-scientific pronouncements based upon our fallible interpretation of Genesis 1-3 we run the serious risk of defeating the very purpose of Scripture, which is to provide the saving gospel of God to a lost world. One wonders how many scientists and educated people of goodwill have been repelled by Christians thrusting their hobbyhorse views of Genesis upon an incredulous world. Again, Augustine reminds us that non-believers have no particular interest in agreeing with our interpretations, particularly, if those interpretations seem wildly at odds with established knowledge.

“They are not bound by the authority of our Bible; and, ignorant of the sense of these words, they will more readily scorn our sacred books than disavow the knowledge they have acquired by unassailable arguments or proved by the evidence of experience.” (pp. 47-48)

Humility about the “how” of creation is helpful if we want to evangelize those who are not already singing in the choir.

While God is ultimately incomprehensible, there are still many things we can know about Him from the revelation of Himself in Scripture and in what He has made. One thing we need to remember, though, is that no matter how similar we think God is to us, He is still unique. There is no other being like Him. Consequently, when we ponder God’s nature we must think analogically. In other words, we can ascertain things about God from the things He has made but recognize that there are still differences. He is the Creator and everything else is His creation.

We can see from the creation a number of things about God. For one, the universe must have come into existence at some point in time. If the universe existed eternally then there would be no starting point and this moment in time could never arrive “now.” If the universe’s existence stretched back infinitely, it would be like trying to walk backwards to a starting point. The only problem is that you would continue to walk backwards forever. Therefore, we know that God purposely chose to begin the creation at a specific point. This implies that God is intelligent. He made a willful intellectual decision.

In considering God’s intellectual nature, we can see correlations between Him and ourselves. Yet, there are significant differences. For instance, when we consider lowly things, they can distract us from those things that are ennobling. Paul admonished Christians to think on the more noble things in life.

Philippians 4: 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

The problem for us is that thinking about lowly things can turn us away from thinking about the better things in life. Additionally, when we think about lowly things it can cause us to give rise to certain unfitting affections such as lust or greed. In my view, this is a huge problem in contemporary society because it is awash in prurient imagery that is specifically intended to pull our thinking into the gutter.

It is not, however, possible for God to be distracted by lowly things nor can His thinking give rise to unfitting affections. First of all, God’s thinking does not move from one thing to another as does ours. Because of God’s divine perfection all things which can be known are contained simultaneously in Himself. Our thinking flits around like a butterfly from one thing to another. We are highly and easily distracted. God is not distracted in any way because of the power of His intellect. Everything from the noblest to the lowliest of things in all of time are simultaneously and fully known by God. Therefore, it is most fitting that God knows even the lowliest things. There is nothing that escapes His knowledge.

Secondly, God does not know anything by receiving information from things. We, of course, need outward stimuli in order to know what is happening. God’s intellect, though, is an active power. God knows things not by receiving stimuli from them, but, rather, by exercising His causation on them. Because God continuously sustains all things in the universe, it is obvious that His knowledge extends to the most remote things. Because of the perfect power of God’s intellect, He knows the lowliest possible things that exist.

From the creation, we can see that God knows even the number of hairs on each person’s head and when a lowly creature like a sparrow falls to the ground.