Impeccability and Temptation

Understanding Christ's Divine and Human Will

Johannes Grössl, Klaus von Stosch, Johannes Grössl, Klaus von Stosch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000376678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In Christian theology, the teaching that Christ possessed both a human and divine will is central to the doctrine of two natures, but it also represents a logical paradox, raising questions about how a person can be both impeccable and subject to temptation. This volume explores these questions through an analytic theology approach, bringing together 15 original papers that explore the implications of a strong libertarian concept of free will for Christology. With perspectives from systematic theologians, philosophers, and biblical scholars, several chapters also offer a comparative theology approach, examining the concept of impeccability in the Muslim tradition.

Therefore, this volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in analytic theology, biblical scholarship, systematic theology, and Christian-Islamic dialogue.

Part I

Was Christ sinless? Exegetical and historical approaches

1 The sinlessness of Christ and human perfection

Jeffrey Siker

1 Reconsidering the sinlessness of Jesus

The notion of a sinless Jesus is completely wrapped up in still larger theological questions about the identity of Jesus and his relationship to God, especially in terms of the understanding of the dual natures of Christ that developed early in the Christian tradition – the paradox that Jesus must be understood as both fully God and fully human. About this conviction, of course, there has been no dearth of discussion and debate from the very beginning of Christianity to the present day. It is within this larger theological framework that I decided to explore how it is that Jesus came to be viewed as sinless in early Christianity. This exploration resulted in my book, Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

In the process of writing this book I came to develop three convictions that I think complement the Christological debates about Jesus as fully God and fully human. First, I have become convinced that all theology is fundamentally a retrospective undertaking. We are always engaged in retrospective theologizing, namely, making sense of our pasts in light of our present experiences and understandings. We cannot step out of our current skins and pretend to approach a topic from other than where we stand. And we certainly cannot step out of our human skins and pretend to have the vantage of God.

Second, I have become convinced that the Christian theological enterprise has ever and again chosen to sacrifice the humanity of Jesus upon the altar of belief in his divinity. Even in the desire to maintain some semblance of balance between the human and divine natures of Jesus, the Christian tradition inevitably stumbles upon the scandal of his humanity, reverting time and again to what in my mind are – at worst – merely different forms of a docetic Christ, a Jesus who is mostly human, but then ultimately is a divine figure above all else. In my view, this tendency betrays the true scandal of Christian theology – one of not letting Jesus be truly fully human.

Third, I have become convinced that ontological claims are tricky at best, since all ontological claims are proximate and subject to change – for that is our situation as contingent human beings. Thus, it is imperative that we really understand the significance of changing creedal pronouncements within the life of the church and the life of faith. Contexts change and develop, and our faith perspectives change and develop with them. Just as one example of such change and development, the initial impetus to include Gentiles as Gentiles in the early Jewish Christian movement caused the first major division within the emerging church (Acts 10–15), with the Apostle Paul arising in the middle of the first century CE as the champion of Gentile inclusion in Christ apart from Jewish law observance. But within 100 years we find the early Gentile Christian apologist Justin Martyr arguing that Gentile Christians are the true descendants of Abraham, not Jews, who have rejected Jesus as the living messiah and have held fast instead to the now-dead Jewish law (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 119).¹ The origins and centuries-long impact of Christian anti-Judaism have been well documented.² Christian anti-Judaism culminated in its horrific contribution to the Holocaust during the Second World War. Subsequent Christian reflection, in turn, has led to repentance of its long history of anti-Judaism, expressed so clearly in the Vatican II document from 1965, Nostra Aetate, from which have flowed many more statements from various churches that have now recast the Jewish people as beloved elder brethren who remain in covenant relationship with God even apart from Christ.³

Although faith convictions change and develop over time in response to human experience, this does not mean that certain patterns of belief do not get repeated over and over again. For example, the centrality of the cross of Jesus and his resurrection have been and remain central touchstones of Christian faith. They are considered revelatory events, even if exactly what they reveal are loci of debate. The sinlessness of Jesus is also one such recurring faith conviction that has been repeated time and again throughout Christian tradition. But recurring patterns of belief should still be subject to renewed reflection and examination. We need to be careful not to allow ontological claims to harden into unexamined fossils. In particular, I have come to the conclusion that the language of sinlessness, when applied to Jesus, is fundamentally a metaphor, about which I’ll say more below.

Beyond these three convictions, I can also say that my own sense of faith and belief in a God who is gracious beyond measure has grown and deepened in ways I never would have imagined throughout the process of working on this book. In particular, I have become more deeply attuned to the dynamics of sin and forgiveness, and especially to our changing understandings of what constitutes sin and why in the varied contexts of our relationships to one another and to God. As the Apostle Paul put it so well in 1 Corinthians 13:12, ‘Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.’

2 Retrospective theology and the sinlessness of Jesus

So, how and when did it happen that Jesus came to be viewed as sinless and perfect in early Christianity? The answer to the ‘when’ question is relatively simple. The notion of a sinless Jesus did not develop until after his followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus spurred a fundamental change in how his followers remembered and spoke about him. The answer to the ‘how’ question revolves around one event – the crucifixion of Jesus. What we know about the earliest followers of Jesus is that they were scandalized by the death of Jesus. They had believed that Jesus was going to usher in the Kingdom of God, a new era in which the Romans would be expelled from Israel, when God would restore the Kingdom to Israel. They had believed that Jesus would be the source of both national and personal redemption. The Gospel of Luke 24:21 puts it best: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” But then Jesus died and they hoped no more.

Nobody expected Jesus to rise from the dead. That is one thing that historians can say with certainty. After the death of Jesus the women went to the tomb on the third day, after the Sabbath, to anoint the body. They were expecting the body of Jesus to be there. When Mary Magdalene came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, she went and told the disciples, but they did not believe her. Why? Because Jesus was dead. His prophetic mission had ended in tragic death at the hands of the Romans. Her testimony “seemed to them an idle tale” (Luke 24:11).

But eventually the followers of Jesus came to believe that God had indeed raised Jesus back to life, a transformed life of resurrection.⁴ But now they had a problem. Nobody expected a dying and risen messiah, let alone a messianic figure who would be crucified. The Apostle Paul put it well when he said that the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles (1 Cor 1:23). Who wants to worship a man who was rejected by his people and crucified as a criminal by the Romans? What kind of messiah was this?

It is no accident that perhaps the earliest depiction of the crucified Jesus is a piece of crude, second-century graffiti etched into the wall of a house in the Roman Palatine. The inscription is known as the ‘Alexamenos graffiti,’ as it depicts a figure named Alexamenos worshipping a crucified figure who has the torso of a man, but the head of an ass – a donkey.⁵ This was apparently a pagan criticism of Christian devotion to Jesus. Only a fool would worship a crucified man, just as Paul stated.

But Paul and the other earliest Christians were convinced that God had raised Jesus from the dead.⁶ They describe their experiences in rather different ways, but they came to believe it. The problem, though, was how to explain the death of Jesus, and not only his death, but his death at the hands of the Roman oppressors, and not only that, but death by crucifixion – a shameful death? The death of Jesus was key to everything that unfolded after they came to believe that God had raised him to new life.

Figure 1.1 Alexamenos Graffiti.

The first thing the early Christians did was to search their scriptures to see if they could make sense of this radical development. They found echoes that resonated with their experience of a crucified and risen messiah. Isaiah 53 spoke of a suffering servant; Psalm 110 spoke of a Lord who was called to sit on the right hand of God.⁷ Death and resurrection. And then the followers of Jesus also reflected on the timing of Jesus’ death. He died at the beginning of Passover – either the first day (as per the Synoptic Gospels) or the day of preparation (as per the Gospel of John). What happened on the day of preparation? Thousands of faithful Jewish pilgrims brought their lambs to the Temple in Jerusalem to be sacrificed in commemoration of the Exodus, God’s freeing of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.⁸ In John’s Gospel, Jesus died at exactly the same time that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple (John 19:14). And only in John’s Gospel does John the Baptist see Jesus and say, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).⁹ The Apostle Paul could also refer to Jesus as “our Passover sacrifice” (1 Cor 5:6).¹⁰ What does it mean that the earliest Christians interpreted Jesus’ death in light of the Passover sacrifice? Various aspects stand out about the status of sacrificial animals in general, and the Passover sacrifice in particular. They must be unblemished and pure, which means they must be good physical specimens worthy of sacrifice to God. But now Jesus becomes the lamb of God. Jesus becomes the unblemished sacrificial victim, and so begins the process of perfecting Jesus, of making him sinless. The ritual status of the unblemished lamb becomes the moral status of the unblemished messiah who gave his life for human sin and now had been vindicated by God in resurrection.¹¹ He could only die for sin because he himself was unblemished, sinless (cf. Heb 4:15).¹²

But a problem arises here. The Passover sacrifice has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins. It has to d...