Source: http://www.focusonthekingdom.org/98.pdf
by Anthony DeMarco
Is Jesus God? To most Christians for the past 1700 years, the answer has been a firm Yes. To them, the question was settled in the fourth century at the Council of Nicea, which proclaimed Christ to be “God of God, Light of Light…of one essence with the Father” in its Christological creed (Christology being the study of Christ’s nature). Not everyone agreed and, to this day, many people dissent. We, of course, are in that minority. As a result, we unitarians are frequently accused of demeaning Jesus by disagreeing with the creed.
In fact, many of us were not always unitarians; we may have been raised in a Trinitarian household. When we first learn that Jesus is not the Supreme Being, we can indeed easily come to think less of him, and this is what happened with the unitarian movements that later became Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism. Nevertheless, the first unitarians in America were all passionate Christians; open-minded and liberal to be sure, but all were deeply devoted to Christ and God. Undeniably, it was this intense devotion that led them to unitarian affirmations: to reject the doctrine of the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ.
Scholarship has come quite a long way since the unitarian “Enlightenment.” We have learned things about Jesus and his times that were unknown to the early unitarians. And we have learned much more about the Bible itself.
So how can we, as unitarian Christians, say Biblically correct things about Jesus? Clearly, we have to get back to what the Bible has to say about Christ. Such a study is beyond the scope of this paper. For the time, we will simply focus on the works of Paul whose beliefs represent the original Jerusalem churches’.
For Paul, Jesus is not God, but he is God’s Son; God’s image. As such, Christ reveals God to us, but he also reveals God’s will for humanity in an unprecedented way. These are things the early unitarian pioneers all affirmed. But only tangentially did they touch on another extremely important aspect of Paul’s Christology: the fact that Christ accomplishes for God what only God gets to do. This is the womb from which Trinitarian theology emerged; but this is also where we can most easily see the mistakes made by Trinitarians. For when we study what Christ did in his crucifixion and resurrection, and when we study what he currently does at the right hand of God, can we find Christ’s staggering significance woven together with his clear inferiority to God. This is what we must now explore.
Throughout the Old Testament, God promised that one day, He would renew His covenant with Israel, forgive their sins, and defeat evil. (Though the number of passages that discuss this are far too many to list, Deuteronomy 24 is a good place for the reader to look to get these ideas firmly implanted mentally.) But throughout Paul, and even the Synoptics, we see that all these things occurred in Christ. Jesus renewed the covenant; Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplished the saving act of God by forgiving the sins of the world and defeating evil. In other words, Christ had done what only God could do.
This saving act Christ accomplished on earth — but currently he is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. What’s he doing now? The answer is striking, breathtaking, and amazing: Christ currently functions as God. Many of Christ’s functions are duties God either used to take or was supposed to take. We begin with Philippians 2:9: “For this reason [Christ’s humility], God highly exalted him and gave him the Name that is above every name.” Two main questions stem from this verse: What is “the Name,” and what does its bestowal on Jesus mean? First, “the Name that is above every name” would undoubtedly be understood as a euphemism for God’s own not-to-be-pronounced Name, YHWH (probably pronounced as YAH-weh). That is to say, Jesus has received God’s own unique Name. But second, this does not mean Jesus changed his name to God’s, as when my wife changed her last name to mine. In ancient Jewish culture, when someone was bequeathed a new name, this meant his function or status had changed. The point of the verse, therefore, is that Jesus now functions accordingly with anything associated with the Name, YHWH; he is functionally God. He functions for God without of course being God Himself, because God is only One Person. Simply put, God exalted Jesus to His right hand and bestowed on him His own unique Lordship and Office.
It is not surprising, then, to find Christ acting correspondingly. Clearly, there is a “functional overlap” between God and Christ, who now exercises divine prerogatives. There are many examples of this, but a few will do for our purposes. In Romans 10:13, Paul says that “everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord will indeed be saved.” This verse is a direct quotation from Joel 2:32 which envisioned “everyone” calling on the Lord God for salvation. This accomplishment, though, Paul now attributes to Jesus, who is the lord of Romans 10:13. Clearly, Christ stands in loco Dei; that is, in the place of God. Similarly, Paul can speak of the “judgment seat” of God and Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). Even more striking, he takes up the well-known Old Testament theme of the “Day of the Lord,” which envisioned God coming to earth to bring divine judgment, and understands the lord in question as Christ who acts in God’s role as His agent or representative. Again, we can see an arresting functional overlap.
Equally significant is another passage, 1 Corinthians 15:45: “the first Adam became a living soul…the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit.” Paul’s readers could hardly have failed to notice the obvious: that he has just attributed the function of “life-giving Spirit” to Christ. To “give life” was always the job of the Holy Spirit, who is not a person per se, but God Himself in His outreach to humankind. And yet, in Paul’s thought, this task has been taken up by the exalted Christ.
Therefore, whether it was in his existence on earth or his post-existence at the right hand of God, Christ does what only God can do. Yet, he is constantly distinguished from God. Never is the title “God” given to him,1 and even though he has the Name, this was bestowed on him by God; it is not his by nature. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:6 that there is “one God…and one Lord.” There are two choices we can now make. We can say that the reason Paul can attribute divine functions to Christ is because God is a Trinity, thereby ignoring Christ’s essential inferiority to God, or we can resolve the tension the way Paul does: Christ can function this way precisely because he was authorized by God to do so. To be sure, Christ functions in ways in which he is clearly aligned with the one God. Nevertheless, our Christology never says more than that Christ is God’s agent; His representative; or His functionary. This is an extremely exalted way of speaking about Christ; to say he is functionally God is to say things about him that we can say of none other. But the earliest people who made such formulations did not take it the further step into the confusing territory of the Trinity.
Earlier I mentioned that no intermediary would do; only “the arm of the Lord” could accomplish for God what only God could do. This is undoubtedly true. Here we see the heart of the unitarian controversy. For while unitarians wished to dispute the claim that God was a Trinity and that Christ was therefore dual-natured, they likewise upheld the idea that Jesus, precisely as a man, was created to fulfill the role of God. Let me explain this. We must approach the Bible as a grand narrative.
From first to last, an enormous story is being told. God created all things; all things have become corrupt; God will restore all things. Scripture affirms that this act of restoration would be the work of God Himself. But the central figure in this drama is no longer God, but Jesus. Or rather, as I am convinced we must say, Christ existed solely to be, in his function, God for the world. God is transcendent; He cannot be beheld lest the beholder instantly disintegrate. So if He is going to act in history, He must do so through a chosen agent. But not just any agent will do; this is a job for God himself. God therefore created Jesus to be His personal representative on earth, to do for Him what only He alone can do. Jesus was born for this purpose. And what is more, if Paul can believe such things and arrive at neither a Trinitarian theology nor a belief in a dual-natured-Jesus, neither should we.
Therefore, we can reclaim Paul’s Christology, and can add more to the unitarian debates, things that hitherto were unknown to our spiritual pioneers. Christ was and is a man; his existence began in the womb of Mary. He worshipped, loved, and prayed to his God, and any equality he claimed was a functional equality (Phil. 2:6). But he is thus the one who fulfills the role of God; precisely as a man — no more, no less — he embodies the saving power of God Himself. He completes the tasks which only God can do. And this is because it was always God’s intention that He, through Christ, would complete the grand work of salvation prophesied millennia ago. As unitarians, knowing and believing this, we cannot add more to Scripture by affirming the words of the Nicene Creed; but moreover, as unitarian Christians, neither can we ever be accused of demeaning our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ.◊
1 The one exception may be Rom. 9:5, but clearly Christ’s function as God is what is in view. Issues of punctuation make the reference of God to Jesus uncertain. [Other texts applying the word “God” in a secondary sense to Jesus are Heb. 1:8 and John 20:28 — ed.]
Basic Biblical Christology for Unitarian Christians
by Anthony DeMarco
Is Jesus God? To most Christians for the past 1700 years, the answer has been a firm Yes. To them, the question was settled in the fourth century at the Council of Nicea, which proclaimed Christ to be “God of God, Light of Light…of one essence with the Father” in its Christological creed (Christology being the study of Christ’s nature). Not everyone agreed and, to this day, many people dissent. We, of course, are in that minority. As a result, we unitarians are frequently accused of demeaning Jesus by disagreeing with the creed.
In fact, many of us were not always unitarians; we may have been raised in a Trinitarian household. When we first learn that Jesus is not the Supreme Being, we can indeed easily come to think less of him, and this is what happened with the unitarian movements that later became Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism. Nevertheless, the first unitarians in America were all passionate Christians; open-minded and liberal to be sure, but all were deeply devoted to Christ and God. Undeniably, it was this intense devotion that led them to unitarian affirmations: to reject the doctrine of the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ.
Scholarship has come quite a long way since the unitarian “Enlightenment.” We have learned things about Jesus and his times that were unknown to the early unitarians. And we have learned much more about the Bible itself.
So how can we, as unitarian Christians, say Biblically correct things about Jesus? Clearly, we have to get back to what the Bible has to say about Christ. Such a study is beyond the scope of this paper. For the time, we will simply focus on the works of Paul whose beliefs represent the original Jerusalem churches’.
For Paul, Jesus is not God, but he is God’s Son; God’s image. As such, Christ reveals God to us, but he also reveals God’s will for humanity in an unprecedented way. These are things the early unitarian pioneers all affirmed. But only tangentially did they touch on another extremely important aspect of Paul’s Christology: the fact that Christ accomplishes for God what only God gets to do. This is the womb from which Trinitarian theology emerged; but this is also where we can most easily see the mistakes made by Trinitarians. For when we study what Christ did in his crucifixion and resurrection, and when we study what he currently does at the right hand of God, can we find Christ’s staggering significance woven together with his clear inferiority to God. This is what we must now explore.
Throughout the Old Testament, God promised that one day, He would renew His covenant with Israel, forgive their sins, and defeat evil. (Though the number of passages that discuss this are far too many to list, Deuteronomy 24 is a good place for the reader to look to get these ideas firmly implanted mentally.) But throughout Paul, and even the Synoptics, we see that all these things occurred in Christ. Jesus renewed the covenant; Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplished the saving act of God by forgiving the sins of the world and defeating evil. In other words, Christ had done what only God could do.
This saving act Christ accomplished on earth — but currently he is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. What’s he doing now? The answer is striking, breathtaking, and amazing: Christ currently functions as God. Many of Christ’s functions are duties God either used to take or was supposed to take. We begin with Philippians 2:9: “For this reason [Christ’s humility], God highly exalted him and gave him the Name that is above every name.” Two main questions stem from this verse: What is “the Name,” and what does its bestowal on Jesus mean? First, “the Name that is above every name” would undoubtedly be understood as a euphemism for God’s own not-to-be-pronounced Name, YHWH (probably pronounced as YAH-weh). That is to say, Jesus has received God’s own unique Name. But second, this does not mean Jesus changed his name to God’s, as when my wife changed her last name to mine. In ancient Jewish culture, when someone was bequeathed a new name, this meant his function or status had changed. The point of the verse, therefore, is that Jesus now functions accordingly with anything associated with the Name, YHWH; he is functionally God. He functions for God without of course being God Himself, because God is only One Person. Simply put, God exalted Jesus to His right hand and bestowed on him His own unique Lordship and Office.
It is not surprising, then, to find Christ acting correspondingly. Clearly, there is a “functional overlap” between God and Christ, who now exercises divine prerogatives. There are many examples of this, but a few will do for our purposes. In Romans 10:13, Paul says that “everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord will indeed be saved.” This verse is a direct quotation from Joel 2:32 which envisioned “everyone” calling on the Lord God for salvation. This accomplishment, though, Paul now attributes to Jesus, who is the lord of Romans 10:13. Clearly, Christ stands in loco Dei; that is, in the place of God. Similarly, Paul can speak of the “judgment seat” of God and Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). Even more striking, he takes up the well-known Old Testament theme of the “Day of the Lord,” which envisioned God coming to earth to bring divine judgment, and understands the lord in question as Christ who acts in God’s role as His agent or representative. Again, we can see an arresting functional overlap.
Equally significant is another passage, 1 Corinthians 15:45: “the first Adam became a living soul…the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit.” Paul’s readers could hardly have failed to notice the obvious: that he has just attributed the function of “life-giving Spirit” to Christ. To “give life” was always the job of the Holy Spirit, who is not a person per se, but God Himself in His outreach to humankind. And yet, in Paul’s thought, this task has been taken up by the exalted Christ.
Therefore, whether it was in his existence on earth or his post-existence at the right hand of God, Christ does what only God can do. Yet, he is constantly distinguished from God. Never is the title “God” given to him,1 and even though he has the Name, this was bestowed on him by God; it is not his by nature. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:6 that there is “one God…and one Lord.” There are two choices we can now make. We can say that the reason Paul can attribute divine functions to Christ is because God is a Trinity, thereby ignoring Christ’s essential inferiority to God, or we can resolve the tension the way Paul does: Christ can function this way precisely because he was authorized by God to do so. To be sure, Christ functions in ways in which he is clearly aligned with the one God. Nevertheless, our Christology never says more than that Christ is God’s agent; His representative; or His functionary. This is an extremely exalted way of speaking about Christ; to say he is functionally God is to say things about him that we can say of none other. But the earliest people who made such formulations did not take it the further step into the confusing territory of the Trinity.
Earlier I mentioned that no intermediary would do; only “the arm of the Lord” could accomplish for God what only God could do. This is undoubtedly true. Here we see the heart of the unitarian controversy. For while unitarians wished to dispute the claim that God was a Trinity and that Christ was therefore dual-natured, they likewise upheld the idea that Jesus, precisely as a man, was created to fulfill the role of God. Let me explain this. We must approach the Bible as a grand narrative.
From first to last, an enormous story is being told. God created all things; all things have become corrupt; God will restore all things. Scripture affirms that this act of restoration would be the work of God Himself. But the central figure in this drama is no longer God, but Jesus. Or rather, as I am convinced we must say, Christ existed solely to be, in his function, God for the world. God is transcendent; He cannot be beheld lest the beholder instantly disintegrate. So if He is going to act in history, He must do so through a chosen agent. But not just any agent will do; this is a job for God himself. God therefore created Jesus to be His personal representative on earth, to do for Him what only He alone can do. Jesus was born for this purpose. And what is more, if Paul can believe such things and arrive at neither a Trinitarian theology nor a belief in a dual-natured-Jesus, neither should we.
Therefore, we can reclaim Paul’s Christology, and can add more to the unitarian debates, things that hitherto were unknown to our spiritual pioneers. Christ was and is a man; his existence began in the womb of Mary. He worshipped, loved, and prayed to his God, and any equality he claimed was a functional equality (Phil. 2:6). But he is thus the one who fulfills the role of God; precisely as a man — no more, no less — he embodies the saving power of God Himself. He completes the tasks which only God can do. And this is because it was always God’s intention that He, through Christ, would complete the grand work of salvation prophesied millennia ago. As unitarians, knowing and believing this, we cannot add more to Scripture by affirming the words of the Nicene Creed; but moreover, as unitarian Christians, neither can we ever be accused of demeaning our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ.◊
1 The one exception may be Rom. 9:5, but clearly Christ’s function as God is what is in view. Issues of punctuation make the reference of God to Jesus uncertain. [Other texts applying the word “God” in a secondary sense to Jesus are Heb. 1:8 and John 20:28 — ed.]
