My current class at Fuller seminary is The Religious and Cultural Environment of Early Christianity, taught by Prof. Scott Bartchy of UCLA. One of the points Bartchy has made numerous times is that Jesus defines God, not the other way around. Sounds rather banal at first, doesn’t it? I mean, what’s the difference?—in programming $Jesus $God and $God $Jesus mean the same thing. But theology isn’t programming (though you’d sometimes think it from the tight logical deductions people make about God and salvation). I digress.
The point Bartchy is making is that what has often happened in theology is that we start with a preconceived idea of who God is and then fit Jesus into that mold. For example, we might begin with a more Stoic conception of God. The Stoics thought of God as the universal reason, that abstract principle that permeated everything (except our emotions). They also equated this logos or rationality with fate, the idea that everything is predetermined. And so there was much in the Middle Ages that borrowed from the Stoic idea of God, seen in the emphasis on all the omnis. God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. We might also wonder if the Calvinist emphasis on sovereignty (when that means a strict determinism that negates human freedom for all practical purposes—not all Calvinism defines it thus) drinks too heavily from the Stoic well. These abstract definitions of God seems more like an ethereal, eternal idea than the a God who interacts with history, becomes incarnate, and even changes his mind (c.f. Jonah 3:10).
How you conceive of “ultimate reality,” whether that means God, the universe, or some other being, lies at the foundation of religion. In the example above a Stoic conception of ultimate reality has had a big impact on how some strains of theology describe God. Moreover, judging from history if you begin with a preconceived notion of God it is not that hard to “fit” Jesus into your framework.
However, if Jesus really is the “image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), and if seeing Jesus, knowing him, means seeing the Father (Jn. 14:7) then where we should begin when trying to figure out what ultimate reality is like is with Jesus. And not only the theological statements about him, but also his life. Of course, one of the things all the Historical Jesus stuff has shown is that it’s equally easy to make Jesus look just like us (which would be a flip flops-wearing, beach town, theology-talking guy in my case 
). Reading the gospels closely, looking at what the different critical interpretive methods can add to our reading, reading a wide breadth of what the saints have thought about Jesus through the ages, and learning about the other regligious groups of Jesus’ day all help. The latter one seems especially important since we can often only grasp what is distinctive about someone when we see what they are defining themselves over and against.
Anyhow, I think when we start with Jesus we end up with a unique and challenging picture of God. If Jesus shows us God, then God is particularly concerned about the poor and outcast. God wants us to hang out with and befriend the kinds of people our parents told us not to date (i.e. “sinners and tax-collectors”—weren’t your parents vehemently against the IRS?). God is not interested in maintaining a patriarchy, but wants women to be included as full members in the new community (c.f. Jesus and the women at the well, Jesus healing the hemmoraging women and calling her “daughter”). God is not violent (esp. seen in Jesus’ rejection of the violent apocalypticism of the Essenes). God is no longer concerned so much with ritual purity (i.e. not being defiled by unclean things, see Leviticus), but is concerned with the purity of our interactions with one another (Mark 7:14-16). God is interested in seeing a new community form, a kingdom come, where we love others and God with heart, soul, and mind. God is not interested in having a temple building or bloodlines. Jesus is the new temple, and the church is where our strongest kinship ties are found. And finally, God isn’t interested in questions of “who caused such and such calamity?” or “was it predestined?”, but is interested in bringing healing to the situation (c.f. John 9).
That’s what I’m learning anyway, and so far I’m really digging it.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Eric Lee // Feb 14, 2006 at 9:08 am
Jason,
Great post, thanks!
Maybe we could write a Triune God class that extends Jesus but points back to God in a recursive manner… nevermind, that’s not really going to work!
Peace,
eric
2 Jason // Feb 14, 2006 at 9:14 am
Eric, it’s good to know someone got my obscure programming metaphor! My wife looked at me and said “what the heck does money-sign God equals-equals money sign Jesus mean?”
3 isaac // Feb 15, 2006 at 6:09 am
Beginning with Jesus. The doctrine of God starts with Jesus, the self-revelation of God. That’s great, Jason. I couldn’t agree more. By the way, you are Barthian whether you like it or not! Your post sounds just like Karl Barth. Don’t resist the Barthian current running deeply in your theology—it’s there because you learned from Jonathan Wilson.
Anyhow, here’s a quote from Barth that I’m sure rings true. “the voice which reigns, the voice by which we were taught by God Himself concerning God, was the voice of Jesus Christ…. But when theology allows itself on any pretext to be jostled away from that name, God is inevitably crowded out by a hypostatised image of man. Theology must begin with Jesus Christ, and not with general principles”
“Speaking generally, [Jesus Christ] is the demonstration, the overflowing of the love which is the being of God, that He who is entriely self-sufficient, who even within Himself cannot know isolation, willed even in all His divine glory to share His life with another, and to have that other as the witness of His glory. This love of God is His grace. It is love in the form of the deepest condescension. It occurs even where ther is no question of claim or merit on the part of the other. It is love which is overflowing, free, unconstrained, unconditioned. And we must add at once: It is love which is merciful, making this movement, this act of condescension, in such a way that, in taking to itself this other, it identifies itself with its need, and meets its plight by making it its own concern. And we must add at once: It is love which is patient, not consuming this other, but giving it place, willing its existence for its own sake and for the sake of the goal appointed for it” (Church Dogmatics, II/2: 4, 9-10)
4 Jason // Feb 15, 2006 at 9:03 am
Isaac, thanks for the quote, I hadn’t thought of it, but I suppose there is a Barthian streak in me. I had thought of it more in terms of Anabaptist theology, which also is strongly Jesus-centered. It seems, though, that there is a subtle, but important, difference between Anabaptist theology and Barth in that Anabaptists draw much of their theology from how Jesus lived and the theological implications of the cross and incarnation, while Barth seems to draw primarily from the latter. I haven’t read much Barth though, is that a wrong assumption?
I’m also curious how Barth deals with the revelatory character of taking Jesus as the starting point for God. What does he do when Jesus changes or even contradicts a view of God from the Old Testament (e.g. God’s violence)? I think my response is that Jesus realized God was up to something new, and that there was a progressive revelation of God to God’s people which finally was crystalized in Jesus. However, the implication of this is that there are aspects of God in the Old Testament which are imperfect, perhaps even faulty, revelations of who God is. I’m curious what is your and/or Barth’s take on this?
5 Lee // Feb 21, 2006 at 7:58 am
This is good stuff, but I wonder if there isn’t a danger of falling into what H. Richard Niebuhr called a “unitarianism of the second person of the trinity”? In other words, does Jesus define deity without qualification, or are things complicated by the fact that it is the divine Son who became incarnate?
6 Jason // Feb 21, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Good question, Lee. And one for which I don’t have a good answer, though I’ve been turning it over all day. My current thought is that while we can affirm that the 3 persons of the Trinity are equal we still learn the character of this Triune God through the Incarnation. The analogy I think of is that Jesus is the clearest mirror through which we glimpse the character of God. Also, the Spirit of Jesus continues to illumine the Son to the church and the what we learn about God from Jesus points to the Father…
7 isaac // Feb 21, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Jason, the life of Jesus is also important for Barth—it’s not just all about the cross and resurrection; the whole of Jesus is revelatory. But, there may be an important difference of emphasis for anabaptist conceptions of following in the way of Jesus and Barth’s talk about the way Jesus reveals God. Along these lines, it is interesting that Barth doesn’t hold in high regard the “imitation of Christ” tradition.
On your question about Barth and Jesus and Scripture, maybe a quote from Telford might be helpful. In his Living and Active, he writes about Barth and the Word: “The Word of God is not to be found encrypted within the biblical text nor recovered from the historical events beneath it; it is the witness to Jesus Christ of the text itself” (p. 74). I take it that part of what this means for Barth is that the Word of God is found within the bible when it witnesses to Jesus Christ. So, I guess that means we should start with Jesus, and through that lens we can better discover the Word of God spoken throughout the whole text.
But back to your concern about the way Jesus might call into question portrayals of God in the OT. That’s a tough one. But I think that what makes us Christians is that we call the first part of our bible the “Old Testament” not “Torah” or “Tanak.” And we call it this not because it is irrelevant, but that it is only through the decisive revelation in Jesus Christ that we can understand the Word proclaimed in the Old Testament. I think it might also be helpful to keep in mind that the OT is not a systematic tract on doctrine, but a conversation through time about the God whom Israel worships. And there are very real disagreements about God and what it means to be God’s people in those holy texts.
Lee, I am wondering if you could say a little more about this H. Richard Niebuhr stuff. He’s not a very authoritative figure for me or my theological tradition, so I need to hear a little more about his concern.
8 Lee // Feb 22, 2006 at 7:11 am
Hey fellas,
Sorry about the somewhat cryptic nature of my earlier comment. What I understand Neibuhr to have been saying was that North American Christianity had a tendency to focus on the figure of Jesus to such a degree that the Father and the Holy Spirit sort of fade into the background and the essentially trinitarian nature of God is lost.
But I think Jason is right when he says that it is precisely the Triune God that is revealed in the Incarnation – through, among other things, Jesus’ relationship with his Father and the sending of the Spirit. What I think sometimes happens, though, is that Jesus’ character and teachings are taken to exhaustively reveal the nature of God with little reference to the wider trinitarian context.
Lest this be taken for meaningless hair-splitting, let me offer a concrete example of where I see this making a difference. I’ve seen it asserted in several places that Jesus reveals a God whose nature is totally inimical to violence of any kind. Since Jesus renounced violence, then God cannot possibly wield violence (this has implications in Atonement theory, among other things).
But if you look at the wider “trinitarian context” this seems less clear (at least to me). The one who Jesus called Father is also the one who led the children of Israel out of Egypt, and not without a certain amount of violence visited on the Egyptians! Now, I’m not “pre-critical” enough to think that everything in the OT should be read as though it literally happened, but, for what it’s worth, the NT also talks about God’s wrath doesn’t it? I’m not a biblical scholar, so I’ll defer to y’all’s judgment on that score. (Incidentally, Miroslav Volf has some interesting things to say about this in Exclusion and Embrace – that it’s possible for God to be violent even if we shouldn’t be.)
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not sure that Jesus exhausts everything there is to say about God (I may be edging into some kind of heresy here, so take this as exploratory questioning rather than any kind of hard and fast position!).
Cheers,
Lee
9 Jason // Feb 28, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Lee, sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. Thanks for expanding on what you (and Neibuhr) meant.
I definitely agree with your statement that Jesus doesn’t exhaust everything there is to say about God. It seems one of the primary functions of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into further knowledge of God. And I do want to resist the temptation to develop a theology that so emphasizes Jesus that the Trinity fades out for all practical purposes.
However, I would distinguish between how the Trinity is revealed and how we relate to the Trinity. I am rather comfortable with saying that the the Triune God is ultimately and most clearly revealed Jesus. In practical terms I think this means Jesus crystalized some things about God that we learn in the OT while doing away with other aspects of God that we learn about in the OT (and not just violence, but also the importance of the Temple, the need for sacrifices, and the exclusion of the Gentiles). Does that mean I think there is a NT God and an OT God? No, but I do think God is revealed progressively in Scripture, and the final revelation of who God is comes in Jesus.
But just because I think God is revealed most clearly in Jesus doesn’t mean that we should only talk about or pray to Jesus. In the language of prayer we pray in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, to the Father.
Does any of that make sense? It’s definitely something I’m still working through.