All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made...
And the Word was made flesh... .
from the Gospel of John
The Gospel of John is an esoteric work written primarily for Christians to ponder their relation to God through Jesus as the Christ. It is pivotal in understanding Christian theology, particularly, Christology. It was written to present truths about Jesus that are larger than words can express. As such, it was not intended to be taken as literal fact, but rather as allegory and metaphor.
What John does is to take the notion of God as a verb, the spoken and speaking Word, and has God paradoxically speaking the God-concept into becoming a being within our linear existence. In other words, God as that being in which we live and have being, becomes, within the context of our being, one of us as an individual, as being within his own being-ness at a particular time and place within human history.
The Gospel of John is an esoteric work written primarily for Christians to ponder their relation to God through Jesus as the Christ. It is pivotal in understanding Christian theology, particularly, Christology. It was written to present truths about Jesus that are larger than words can express. As such, it was not intended to be taken as literal fact, but rather as allegory and metaphor.
What John does is to take the notion of God as a verb, the spoken and speaking Word, and has God paradoxically speaking the God-concept into becoming a being within our linear existence. In other words, God as that being in which we live and have being, becomes, within the context of our being, one of us as an individual, as being within his own being-ness at a particular time and place within human history.
The incarnation story is not germane to Christianity. Every religion has within it the concept of the enfleshed divinity.
In Judaism, for example, the original incarnation story is found in Genesis 1 and 2.
From Genesis 1 we find:
"And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them."
From Genesis 2 we find:
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
All of these stories are allegorical. Each is filled with God's love and a tenderness that they defy further explanation.
No words, apart from allegory and metaphor, can describe the immense beauty and the intimacy of our own evolving creation as God's crowning opus on Earth, as God's presence amongst us; as God's presence within us.
This is the Mystery of the Incarnation.
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE INCARNATION
In pondering the immensity of it all we are assisted by various scriptures. For Christians, we have stories about Jesus recorded in the New Testament. As you shall see they are extremely diverse in their presentation of the incarnation.
The Gospel of Luke
The most familiar story of the incarnation is found in the Gospel of Luke. It is, of course, an allegorical story, meant to get us to probe and contemplate its applications.
Luke begins by introducing us to two women, Elizabeth and her much younger cousin, Mary. There is connection between these two women as mothers of a foretold prophet, John the Baptizer and the mother of the Christ, Jesus, and two other women, Sarah, the mother of a nation, and Eve, the mother of the human race, whose stories are recorded in the book of Genesis.
Luke's story is a mirror reflection of the stories of Sarah and Eve in the way that mirrors reflect left as right and right as left:
In Genesis, the birth of Isaac was received with no small amount of skepticism by both Abraham and Sarah who thought it some kind of joke due to Sarah's age. In Luke, upon hearing that his aging wife, Elizabeth would conceive, Zechariah is literally rendered speechless because of his skepticism until John is born, but Elizabeth accepts the news and laughs for joy.
In Genesis, when Eve receives God's warning about not eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she doesn't take it seriously and readily believes the reasoning of the serpent and eats what is forbidden and is told by God that she shall bear children in pain. In Luke, Mary, upon hearing news that she will bear God's Son, receives it in faith and is filled with joy at Jesus's conception and birth.
It is as if Luke's account of these two births was intended to cancel out Eve's lack of faith and Sarah's skepticism and to engage the listener or reader into letting go of mundane reasoning and enter the realm of Divine wisdom and faithfulness.
Luke spares no allegorical or poetic expense in getting across that God is waging a grassroots campaign to redeem the world by depicting God's direct involvement in human affairs as righting the human failures of the past.
To that end, Luke presents the incarnation as a linear story of mythic proportions; in that, God impregnates a young virgin in order to directly participate in redeeming his own creation. To the modern ear this sounds more than a little bizarre, but it wouldn't have at the time it was written.
So in this mythic story, Luke has to get these Galileans, Mary and Joseph, from Nazareth to Bethlehem, David's home town to ensure a direct connection with prophecy and the Davidic line; to render it consistent with the Hebrew scriptures. He does this by tying the story to a census supposedly ordered by the Roman Emperor, Augustus, which requires Joseph to return to the place of his birth. It's a spurious situation at best, but it's gets Joseph and Mary where they need to be to be in time for Jesus to be born where he needed to be born at in Luke's mind.
At the same time, Luke ensures that we understand the humility that God endures for our sake by having God's incarnate self, Jesus, born in a barn and whose crib was a feeding trough. To top it off, this wondrous birth is announced, not to the halls of power, but to unkempt, lowly shepherds in the darkness of night.
In presenting the incarnation this way, Luke, as all the gospels do, turn the notion of power and glory upside down. That which looks strong is weak, and that which appears weak is strong. In Luke we see the strength of faith beyond belief in Elizabeth's, Mary's, and the shepherds' receptivity of God's improbable answer to the impossible situational they were living in.
Luke helps us ponder God's incarnate presence in our midst by providing us with some of the most memorable poetic texts in Christianity:
1. Elizabeth's verbal reaction to seeing Mary which forms the text of the, "Ave Maria,"
2. Mary's contemplative canticle known as the "Magnificat,
3. Zechariah's contemplative canticle, "Benedictus Dominus Deus," and
4. the canticle of angels when announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, "Gloria in excelsis Deo."
All of these texts are regularly used in liturgical worship settings . It is these texts, within the linear mythic setting of Luke's narrative of Jesus's birth, that we are invited to contemplate what God is up to in becoming one with us and what God is motivating us to do as God continuing, incarnate presence in the world today.
The Gospel of Matthew
Matthew's gospel presents a storyline about Jesus's birth that is more cryptic than Luke's. In the first chapter, Matthew traces Jesus's ancestry from Abraham to David, David to the Babylonian exile, from the exile to Joseph to establish a prophetic link to the past, even though, a Matthew points out Jesus's birth is caused by God's Holy Spirit without any involvement on Joseph's part.
Unlike Luke, Matthew starts his narrative by placing the Holy Family in Bethlehem as their original home and he has to find a way to get them to Galilee to fulfill the prophecy about Jesus being called a Nazarene. This undoubtedly influenced Matthew's mythic storyline, as Luke having to get them from Galilee to Bethlehem influenced his storyline.
Both Matthew and Luke offers us two different genealogies of Jesus. Matthew makes a point of letting us know that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David and fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen generations from the time of the exile to Jesus.
Mere coincidental trivia on the part of Matthew?
Not at all. In Matthew, numerology and astrology play an important role in his configuration for proving Jesus to be the promised Messiah, the Christ. There are three sets of fourteen. The number three is the number of Divine love and creativity represented by the planet is Venus, the Morning Star. The number fourteen is made up of two sets of seven, the number of completion and perfection. Combined we have the number forty-two representing a multiplication of the six days of creation and the perfection attained on the seventh day, all of which points to Jesus being the perfected creation as God most beloved son; God's own in-dwelling presence amongst us.
By contrast, Luke provides the genealogy of Jesus after his baptism by John the Baptist, almost as an afterthought. Luke's approach begins with Jesus's "thought to be father," Joseph, and goes all the way back to Adam as God's first son. An interesting twist that is consistent with Luke's attempt to portray the incarnation story of Jesus as a correcting narrative to undo the perceived wrongs of the past.
Matthew gives Joseph the odd role of being Jesus's father without ever having sexual relations with Mary. Both Matthew and Luke make a point of mentioning this in their accounts. The point I believe they were trying to make was that Jesus was not the product of lust or any process other than the pure love of God for all of humanity. This was also important in their theological view as the means to establish Jesus as the purely conceived sacrificial Lamb of God who was destined to take away the sins of the world.
In Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as being a threat to those who abuse power, like Herod the Great who figures prominently in Matthew's account. To that end, Matthew tells us the story of the three kings or wise men who, in their astrological observations and charting, identify a star that leads them to a divine king who they seek to worship. When they approach Herod's court to inquire where they may find such a newborn king after, Herod's has his scribes search the scriptures and they determine that such a king was foretold to be born in Bethlehem. The three kings depart and being led by the star (what becomes later identified in Christian hymnody as the Morning Star, Venus) they find the place where Jesus is and offer him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew tells us that Herod, fearful of being overthrown by this newborn king, plotted to kill all male children in that area two years and younger. Joseph, being warned in a dream, takes Jesus and Mary and they escape to Egypt. As with Luke, Matthew connects the incarnation story to the prophecies found in the Hebrew scriptures.
Throughout Matthew's account Joseph is constantly being warned in his dreams on what to do and where to go. In the end, one of Joseph's dreams leads to take Jesus and Mary to Nazareth in Galilee. All the dreaming on the part of Joseph in Matthew is reflective of another dream-prone Joseph found in Genesis. I believe this to be more than mere coincidence. Matthew is engaging his audience in the story by reminding them of the story of Joseph in Genesis as a frame of reference for how God's purpose is met.
Matthew portrays the incarnation story of Jesus's birth as a cosmic event that brought the stars of heaven and the logic of earth together to this one place and one time that would be the undoing of the corruption of power that is referenced by bringing Herod into the story.
Matthew and Luke are the only two Gospels found in the Christian Bible that provide any details about Jesus's birth. They're the only two places in the entire New Testament where one hears mention of the roles played by Mary and Joseph in explaining the incarnation. Both of these gospels attempt to answer the impossible question of how did Jesus become the Son of God in manner consistent with mythic mindset of the day in combination with reference to the Hebrew scriptures.
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark does not provide an account of Jesus's birth at all. The incarnational status of Jesus as the Son of God is a matter of revelation that took place at his baptism by John in the Jordan river. Mark's gospel begins by quoting Isaiah's prophecy about a voice in the wilderness, John the Baptist, and quickly moves to the baptism of Jesus and God's declaration that Jesus is God's Son.
In other words, Jesus is named, claimed, and appointed as God's Son, an approach that was more in keeping with the Jewish mindset of the time, but would have done little to satisfy the Greek mindset of the expanding early church that was increasingly gentile and cosmopolitan in composition.
The Gospel of John
In contrast to Mark, the Gospel of John would have great appeal to the emerging Christian church in the Hellenized Roman Empire, particularly, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. It is in the Gospel of John that the concept of Christ in Christianity is differentiated from the Messiah of Judaism.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is not just the Messiah, as a son of God, but is declared to be the Only-begotten Son of God in John 1:18, 3:16, and 3:18. Apart from this term being used in the Epistle to the Hebrews once, Hebrews 11:17, the only other place Jesus is referred to as the Only-begotten Son of God in the New Testament outside of the Gospel of John is in The First Epistle of John 4:9. In total, there only five places in the Holy Bible that refers to Jesus as the Only-begotten Son of God.
The fact that this became an article within the creeds is remarkable. As a side-note, Jesus being mentioned as the Only-begotten the Letter to the Hebrews tends to place the Epistle to the Hebrews more in keeping with Johannine theology than with Pauline or Petrine theology regarding Jesus.
After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Johannine theology rewrites the concept and trajectory of Judaic Messianism in strictly Christ-oriented terms. Its combination of Greek thought and Hebrew scriptures renders Jesus synonymous with God, not as the Judaic Messiah but rather as the Cosmic Christ through whom all things came into being. In essence, the first chapter of the Gospel of John is a complete makeover of the Genesis creation story.
This is what makes the Gospel of John the esoteric work it is when answering the question how Jesus came to understand God as his father. In spite of its esoteric style, John provides some insights not only into Jesus's relationship to God as God's Son, but also into our relationship to God as God's children.
The trick is (and it is tricky business) not to take John literally. In my opinion, any literal interpretation of John renders it totally meaningless. In order to make John relevant today, one must ignore its anti-Jewish rhetoric. By doing so, one can distill from this gospel a beautiful unitive message about how Jesus, in becoming the Christ, pulls everyone, including Jews, into a unitive relationship with God as Father of all and Father to all.
What the Gospel of John offers is an expansive understanding of humanity's incarnate likeness of God if one side-steps Jesus being described as God's only begotten Son. The reality is that descriptor of Jesus does not enhance our understanding of Jesus as the Christ in the 21st Century. It undoubtedly had great appeal at the beginning of the 2nd century when declaring Jesus as being the only person to be God's Son was a subversive jab at imperial dictum that described every Roman emperor being the Son of God.
If one understands where John is coming from in his declaring Christ to be the only begotten Son of God as product of the time, the Christ concept is easier to expand beyond confines of a particular theistic religion, Christianity, and makes it applicable to everyone. Jesus as the Christ then becomes the everyman figure all can relate to.
The Incarnation and Paul
Paul's epistles have a lot in common with the Gospel of Mark; in that, there is no mention of Jesus's birth, no mention of Mary, no mention of Joseph, no angels, no shepherds, and no wise men in any of Paul's writings. In fact, Paul does not specifically mention Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. Baptism is mentioned as a Christian rite, but there is no reference to it being connected to Jesus's baptism by John. When baptism is brought up by Paul, it is in reference to Jesus's death and resurrection.
Paul refers to Jesus as God's Son, but never refers to Jesus as God's Only-begotten Son. The reality is that in the letters scholars believe were most likely authored by Paul, like his epistle to the Romans, Paul speaks a great deal about the children of God as being those who have faith in God through Jesus as the Christ.
Paul also speaks of Jesus almost exclusively as the Christ, not only as the Jewish Messiah, the promised one who would redeem Israel, but extends the notion of Christ as the Savior, the Redeemer of the world. Like Luke, Paul sees Jesus as the Christ being the correcting agent who repeals the errors of God's first son, Adam, by being obedient to God the Father, even unto death. The result, for Paul, is that all who have faith in Jesus as the Christ is a child of God.
Paul's concept of the incarnation is an evolutionary leap from the Judaic mindset he was raised and educated in. Having said that, however, it would be a grave mistake to say that Paul abandon Judaism. The fact is, according to Paul, he felt himself to be more grounded in his Judaism after receiving his revelation of Jesus. If anything, Paul expands his understanding of Judaism in Christ Jesus to the entire world, "For there is neither Jew nor Greek, freeman or slave, male or female for you are all one in Christ" (Gal. 3:28). Paul embraces the concept that everyone is a child of God. Faith is key to Paul's theological perspective of the incarnation. It is through faith beyond ideological belief that becomes the means of seeing God for Paul and of seeing ourselves as children of God.
Paul describes himself as one untimely born (1Cor. 15:8), meaning that he never knew Jesus apart from the revelatory experience he had on the road to Damascus. Paul sees himself as child of God strictly as a result of his faith in God, a faith that existed prior to the revelation he received, a faith that led him to becoming blind to what he believed prior to that experience so that faith in Christ alone would lead to him to understand himself to be a child of God, a brother of Christ, and one with all through Christ.
This is not an easy task. The fact is we don't often like what we see in others, but, like reading the Gospel of John, we are prompted to side-step the obvious flaws and to look past the temporal image of what it means to be human - to look deep, very deep to find the Self that resides in all our selves.
Until next time, stay faithful.
From Genesis 2 we find:
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
All of these stories are allegorical. Each is filled with God's love and a tenderness that they defy further explanation.
No words, apart from allegory and metaphor, can describe the immense beauty and the intimacy of our own evolving creation as God's crowning opus on Earth, as God's presence amongst us; as God's presence within us.
This is the Mystery of the Incarnation.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE INCARNATION
In pondering the immensity of it all we are assisted by various scriptures. For Christians, we have stories about Jesus recorded in the New Testament. As you shall see they are extremely diverse in their presentation of the incarnation.
The Gospel of Luke
The most familiar story of the incarnation is found in the Gospel of Luke. It is, of course, an allegorical story, meant to get us to probe and contemplate its applications.
Luke begins by introducing us to two women, Elizabeth and her much younger cousin, Mary. There is connection between these two women as mothers of a foretold prophet, John the Baptizer and the mother of the Christ, Jesus, and two other women, Sarah, the mother of a nation, and Eve, the mother of the human race, whose stories are recorded in the book of Genesis.
Luke's story is a mirror reflection of the stories of Sarah and Eve in the way that mirrors reflect left as right and right as left:
In Genesis, the birth of Isaac was received with no small amount of skepticism by both Abraham and Sarah who thought it some kind of joke due to Sarah's age. In Luke, upon hearing that his aging wife, Elizabeth would conceive, Zechariah is literally rendered speechless because of his skepticism until John is born, but Elizabeth accepts the news and laughs for joy.
In Genesis, when Eve receives God's warning about not eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she doesn't take it seriously and readily believes the reasoning of the serpent and eats what is forbidden and is told by God that she shall bear children in pain. In Luke, Mary, upon hearing news that she will bear God's Son, receives it in faith and is filled with joy at Jesus's conception and birth.
It is as if Luke's account of these two births was intended to cancel out Eve's lack of faith and Sarah's skepticism and to engage the listener or reader into letting go of mundane reasoning and enter the realm of Divine wisdom and faithfulness.
Luke spares no allegorical or poetic expense in getting across that God is waging a grassroots campaign to redeem the world by depicting God's direct involvement in human affairs as righting the human failures of the past.
To that end, Luke presents the incarnation as a linear story of mythic proportions; in that, God impregnates a young virgin in order to directly participate in redeeming his own creation. To the modern ear this sounds more than a little bizarre, but it wouldn't have at the time it was written.
So in this mythic story, Luke has to get these Galileans, Mary and Joseph, from Nazareth to Bethlehem, David's home town to ensure a direct connection with prophecy and the Davidic line; to render it consistent with the Hebrew scriptures. He does this by tying the story to a census supposedly ordered by the Roman Emperor, Augustus, which requires Joseph to return to the place of his birth. It's a spurious situation at best, but it's gets Joseph and Mary where they need to be to be in time for Jesus to be born where he needed to be born at in Luke's mind.
At the same time, Luke ensures that we understand the humility that God endures for our sake by having God's incarnate self, Jesus, born in a barn and whose crib was a feeding trough. To top it off, this wondrous birth is announced, not to the halls of power, but to unkempt, lowly shepherds in the darkness of night.
In presenting the incarnation this way, Luke, as all the gospels do, turn the notion of power and glory upside down. That which looks strong is weak, and that which appears weak is strong. In Luke we see the strength of faith beyond belief in Elizabeth's, Mary's, and the shepherds' receptivity of God's improbable answer to the impossible situational they were living in.
Luke helps us ponder God's incarnate presence in our midst by providing us with some of the most memorable poetic texts in Christianity:
1. Elizabeth's verbal reaction to seeing Mary which forms the text of the, "Ave Maria,"
2. Mary's contemplative canticle known as the "Magnificat,
3. Zechariah's contemplative canticle, "Benedictus Dominus Deus," and
4. the canticle of angels when announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, "Gloria in excelsis Deo."
All of these texts are regularly used in liturgical worship settings . It is these texts, within the linear mythic setting of Luke's narrative of Jesus's birth, that we are invited to contemplate what God is up to in becoming one with us and what God is motivating us to do as God continuing, incarnate presence in the world today.
The Gospel of Matthew
Matthew's gospel presents a storyline about Jesus's birth that is more cryptic than Luke's. In the first chapter, Matthew traces Jesus's ancestry from Abraham to David, David to the Babylonian exile, from the exile to Joseph to establish a prophetic link to the past, even though, a Matthew points out Jesus's birth is caused by God's Holy Spirit without any involvement on Joseph's part.
Unlike Luke, Matthew starts his narrative by placing the Holy Family in Bethlehem as their original home and he has to find a way to get them to Galilee to fulfill the prophecy about Jesus being called a Nazarene. This undoubtedly influenced Matthew's mythic storyline, as Luke having to get them from Galilee to Bethlehem influenced his storyline.
Both Matthew and Luke offers us two different genealogies of Jesus. Matthew makes a point of letting us know that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David and fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen generations from the time of the exile to Jesus.
Mere coincidental trivia on the part of Matthew?
Not at all. In Matthew, numerology and astrology play an important role in his configuration for proving Jesus to be the promised Messiah, the Christ. There are three sets of fourteen. The number three is the number of Divine love and creativity represented by the planet is Venus, the Morning Star. The number fourteen is made up of two sets of seven, the number of completion and perfection. Combined we have the number forty-two representing a multiplication of the six days of creation and the perfection attained on the seventh day, all of which points to Jesus being the perfected creation as God most beloved son; God's own in-dwelling presence amongst us.
By contrast, Luke provides the genealogy of Jesus after his baptism by John the Baptist, almost as an afterthought. Luke's approach begins with Jesus's "thought to be father," Joseph, and goes all the way back to Adam as God's first son. An interesting twist that is consistent with Luke's attempt to portray the incarnation story of Jesus as a correcting narrative to undo the perceived wrongs of the past.
Matthew gives Joseph the odd role of being Jesus's father without ever having sexual relations with Mary. Both Matthew and Luke make a point of mentioning this in their accounts. The point I believe they were trying to make was that Jesus was not the product of lust or any process other than the pure love of God for all of humanity. This was also important in their theological view as the means to establish Jesus as the purely conceived sacrificial Lamb of God who was destined to take away the sins of the world.
In Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as being a threat to those who abuse power, like Herod the Great who figures prominently in Matthew's account. To that end, Matthew tells us the story of the three kings or wise men who, in their astrological observations and charting, identify a star that leads them to a divine king who they seek to worship. When they approach Herod's court to inquire where they may find such a newborn king after, Herod's has his scribes search the scriptures and they determine that such a king was foretold to be born in Bethlehem. The three kings depart and being led by the star (what becomes later identified in Christian hymnody as the Morning Star, Venus) they find the place where Jesus is and offer him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew tells us that Herod, fearful of being overthrown by this newborn king, plotted to kill all male children in that area two years and younger. Joseph, being warned in a dream, takes Jesus and Mary and they escape to Egypt. As with Luke, Matthew connects the incarnation story to the prophecies found in the Hebrew scriptures.
Throughout Matthew's account Joseph is constantly being warned in his dreams on what to do and where to go. In the end, one of Joseph's dreams leads to take Jesus and Mary to Nazareth in Galilee. All the dreaming on the part of Joseph in Matthew is reflective of another dream-prone Joseph found in Genesis. I believe this to be more than mere coincidence. Matthew is engaging his audience in the story by reminding them of the story of Joseph in Genesis as a frame of reference for how God's purpose is met.
Matthew portrays the incarnation story of Jesus's birth as a cosmic event that brought the stars of heaven and the logic of earth together to this one place and one time that would be the undoing of the corruption of power that is referenced by bringing Herod into the story.
Matthew and Luke are the only two Gospels found in the Christian Bible that provide any details about Jesus's birth. They're the only two places in the entire New Testament where one hears mention of the roles played by Mary and Joseph in explaining the incarnation. Both of these gospels attempt to answer the impossible question of how did Jesus become the Son of God in manner consistent with mythic mindset of the day in combination with reference to the Hebrew scriptures.
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark does not provide an account of Jesus's birth at all. The incarnational status of Jesus as the Son of God is a matter of revelation that took place at his baptism by John in the Jordan river. Mark's gospel begins by quoting Isaiah's prophecy about a voice in the wilderness, John the Baptist, and quickly moves to the baptism of Jesus and God's declaration that Jesus is God's Son.
In other words, Jesus is named, claimed, and appointed as God's Son, an approach that was more in keeping with the Jewish mindset of the time, but would have done little to satisfy the Greek mindset of the expanding early church that was increasingly gentile and cosmopolitan in composition.
The Gospel of John
In contrast to Mark, the Gospel of John would have great appeal to the emerging Christian church in the Hellenized Roman Empire, particularly, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. It is in the Gospel of John that the concept of Christ in Christianity is differentiated from the Messiah of Judaism.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is not just the Messiah, as a son of God, but is declared to be the Only-begotten Son of God in John 1:18, 3:16, and 3:18. Apart from this term being used in the Epistle to the Hebrews once, Hebrews 11:17, the only other place Jesus is referred to as the Only-begotten Son of God in the New Testament outside of the Gospel of John is in The First Epistle of John 4:9. In total, there only five places in the Holy Bible that refers to Jesus as the Only-begotten Son of God.
The fact that this became an article within the creeds is remarkable. As a side-note, Jesus being mentioned as the Only-begotten the Letter to the Hebrews tends to place the Epistle to the Hebrews more in keeping with Johannine theology than with Pauline or Petrine theology regarding Jesus.
After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Johannine theology rewrites the concept and trajectory of Judaic Messianism in strictly Christ-oriented terms. Its combination of Greek thought and Hebrew scriptures renders Jesus synonymous with God, not as the Judaic Messiah but rather as the Cosmic Christ through whom all things came into being. In essence, the first chapter of the Gospel of John is a complete makeover of the Genesis creation story.
This is what makes the Gospel of John the esoteric work it is when answering the question how Jesus came to understand God as his father. In spite of its esoteric style, John provides some insights not only into Jesus's relationship to God as God's Son, but also into our relationship to God as God's children.
The trick is (and it is tricky business) not to take John literally. In my opinion, any literal interpretation of John renders it totally meaningless. In order to make John relevant today, one must ignore its anti-Jewish rhetoric. By doing so, one can distill from this gospel a beautiful unitive message about how Jesus, in becoming the Christ, pulls everyone, including Jews, into a unitive relationship with God as Father of all and Father to all.
What the Gospel of John offers is an expansive understanding of humanity's incarnate likeness of God if one side-steps Jesus being described as God's only begotten Son. The reality is that descriptor of Jesus does not enhance our understanding of Jesus as the Christ in the 21st Century. It undoubtedly had great appeal at the beginning of the 2nd century when declaring Jesus as being the only person to be God's Son was a subversive jab at imperial dictum that described every Roman emperor being the Son of God.
If one understands where John is coming from in his declaring Christ to be the only begotten Son of God as product of the time, the Christ concept is easier to expand beyond confines of a particular theistic religion, Christianity, and makes it applicable to everyone. Jesus as the Christ then becomes the everyman figure all can relate to.
The Incarnation and Paul
Paul's epistles have a lot in common with the Gospel of Mark; in that, there is no mention of Jesus's birth, no mention of Mary, no mention of Joseph, no angels, no shepherds, and no wise men in any of Paul's writings. In fact, Paul does not specifically mention Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. Baptism is mentioned as a Christian rite, but there is no reference to it being connected to Jesus's baptism by John. When baptism is brought up by Paul, it is in reference to Jesus's death and resurrection.
Paul refers to Jesus as God's Son, but never refers to Jesus as God's Only-begotten Son. The reality is that in the letters scholars believe were most likely authored by Paul, like his epistle to the Romans, Paul speaks a great deal about the children of God as being those who have faith in God through Jesus as the Christ.
Paul also speaks of Jesus almost exclusively as the Christ, not only as the Jewish Messiah, the promised one who would redeem Israel, but extends the notion of Christ as the Savior, the Redeemer of the world. Like Luke, Paul sees Jesus as the Christ being the correcting agent who repeals the errors of God's first son, Adam, by being obedient to God the Father, even unto death. The result, for Paul, is that all who have faith in Jesus as the Christ is a child of God.
Paul's concept of the incarnation is an evolutionary leap from the Judaic mindset he was raised and educated in. Having said that, however, it would be a grave mistake to say that Paul abandon Judaism. The fact is, according to Paul, he felt himself to be more grounded in his Judaism after receiving his revelation of Jesus. If anything, Paul expands his understanding of Judaism in Christ Jesus to the entire world, "For there is neither Jew nor Greek, freeman or slave, male or female for you are all one in Christ" (Gal. 3:28). Paul embraces the concept that everyone is a child of God. Faith is key to Paul's theological perspective of the incarnation. It is through faith beyond ideological belief that becomes the means of seeing God for Paul and of seeing ourselves as children of God.
Paul describes himself as one untimely born (1Cor. 15:8), meaning that he never knew Jesus apart from the revelatory experience he had on the road to Damascus. Paul sees himself as child of God strictly as a result of his faith in God, a faith that existed prior to the revelation he received, a faith that led him to becoming blind to what he believed prior to that experience so that faith in Christ alone would lead to him to understand himself to be a child of God, a brother of Christ, and one with all through Christ.
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The story of the Incarnation is not just one story. In this twenty-first century, it is important to read these accounts with an open mind and heart. In many ways, I find explanations as to how Jesus came to understand himself as a child of God less necessary today, much in the way it did not seem necessary for Mark or Paul to offer one. Nevertheless, the mythic and cosmic accounts found in the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John offer us much to meditate on. These mythic and somewhat esoteric tales offer us pathways to contemplate our own beings as an incarnations of God, as found in the first incarnational stories of Genesis. Jesus, as an everyman concept, points us to the truth that if you want to see the Father, look in the mirror, or better yet, take a quick but deep look at everyone you meet and you will see a manifestation of God the Father, a manifestation of one's self.This is not an easy task. The fact is we don't often like what we see in others, but, like reading the Gospel of John, we are prompted to side-step the obvious flaws and to look past the temporal image of what it means to be human - to look deep, very deep to find the Self that resides in all our selves.
Until next time, stay faithful.
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