Richard E. Rubinstein: When Jesus became God (Hartcourt 1999)


(sid 6 ff, angående 300-talets diskussioner om kristendomens grundvalar:)

The almost obsessive quality of these disputes is nicely captured by a famous churchman, Gregory of Nyssa, writing twenty years after the lynching of Bishop George. In a sermon delivered at his church in Constantinople, Gregory deplored the contentiousness (grälsjuka, stridslystnad) of his fellow Christians. “If in this city you ask a shopkeeper for change,” he complained, “he will argue with you about whether the Son is begotten or unbegotten. If you inquire about the quality of bread, the baker will answer, ‘The father is greater, the Son is less.’ And if you ask the bath attendant to draw your bath, he will tell you that the Son was created ex nihilo [out of nothing].”⁽⁷⁾

Gregory's wry comment is fascinating both for what it says and what it implies. It suggests that ordinary tradespeople and workers felt perfectly competent - perhaps even driven - to debate abstract theological issues and to arrive at their own conclusions. It reveals that disputes among Christians, specifically arguments about the relationship of Jesus Christ the Son to God the Father, had become as intense as the centuries-old conflict between Christians and pagans. And it implies that Arianism, which orthodox Christians now consider the archetypal heresy, was once at least as popular as the doctrine that Jesus is God.

Gregory's shopkeeper questions whether Jesus Christ is “begotten or unbegotten” - that is, whether he is a creation of God or the Creator Himself. The bath attendant says that he was created “from nothing,” meaning that he was brought into existence like the rest of God's creatures. And the baker asserts that Christ is separate from and lesser than God. All these are Arian positions, so called because they were developed in sharpest form by an Alexandrian priest named Arius. The ill-fated George was also an Arian: one who believed that Jesus Christ was, indeed, the holiest person who ever lived, but not The Eternal God of Israel walking the earth in the form of a man.

How could one be a Christian and not believe that Christ was God incarnate? The Arians had an answer. To them, Jesus was a person of such sublime moral accomplishments that God adopted him as His Son, sacrificed him to redeem humanity from sin, raised him from the dead, and granted him divine status. Because of his excellence, he became a model of righteous behaviour for us. And because his merit earned the prize of immortality, the same reward was made available to other human beings, provided that they model themselves after him.⁽⁸⁾ From the Arian perspective, it was essential that Jesus not be God, since God, being perfect by nature, is inimitable. By contrast, Christ's transcendent virtue, achieved by repeated acts of will, is available (at least potentially) to the rest of us. Even though we may fall short of his impeccable standards, his triumph over egoism shows us how we also may become the Sons and Daughters of God.

Was Christ, then, to be considered human? In one sense, the answer was yes. Jesus of Nazareth was a real man, not some divine apparition or mask of God. But his moral genius and the importance of his mission raised him high above even the greatest prophets. The Saviour was sui generis. Many Arians believed that the Eternal had somehow concieved him (or concieved of him) before time began, and used him as an instrument to create the rest of the universe.⁽⁹⁾ Even so, they insisted, he could not possibly be God Himself. How could an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good Creator experience temptation, learn wisdom, and grow in virtue? How could he suffer on the Cross and die the death of a human being? Surely, when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ” he was not talking to himself!⁽¹⁰⁾ When he admitted that nobody knows the day and hour of Judgement, “not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only,” he was not just being modest.⁽¹¹⁾ And when he told his disciples that “the Father is greater than I,” he meant exactly what he said.⁽¹²⁾

Fotnoter:

(7) W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 636. I have altered the translation slightly.

(8) This interpretation of Arianism owes much to Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism - A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).

(9) The doctrine of the “pre-existent Christ” was accepted by Arian and non-Arian theologians. Arius insisted, however, that Jesus was a created being: “a prefect creature of God, but not like one of the creatures, a product, but not like one of the things produced....” R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 A.D. (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1988), 7; and see the discussion in Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987), 95-116. Some commentators think that the doctrine och pre-existence refers mainly to God's foreknowledge of future events. According to Gregg, God named Christ Son “on account of works he performed (works foreknown by God)....” The Life of Antony and The Letter to Marcellinus, trans. by Robert C. Gregg (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 12. And see Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism, 22-24.

(10) Matthew 27:46, The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, The New Testament (New York; Thomas Nelsen and Sons, 1953), 37.

(11) Matthew 24:36 RSV, 31.

(12) John 14:28 RSV, 123.