Christus Victor!

I've been doing some thinking about the meaning of Jesus's ministry and death (not because I've got nothing else to do, but because this stuff really matters to me, believe it or not). This gets a little repetitive, so be warned.

Was it something completely unplanned on God's part, something he came up with at the last minute? Or did he always intend to do what he did in Christ? And do the OT prophecies actually point forward to Christ, or predict his life?

I think God from the beginning intended to bring about his purposes for creation, and humans within creation, by becoming part of the creation. Israel was chosen as the vessel, so to speak, to receive his revelations and develop an actual relationship with him. Israel was supposed to be the light of the world, the nation to show all nations what it means to serve God. But Israel could never do this perfectly, so God himself had to become human for a truly perfect life to be lived. Whether this was a change in the tactics--a response to Israel's inability--or part of the scheme all along is a question beyond me, but like I said, I think God always desired to become one of his creatures so as to fully unite mortality with immortality. The context of Israel produced a human in whom God would be able to dwell. I don't think Jesus came full equipped with memories of his life in heaven and full-blown empirical knowledge of his special relationship to deity. Rather, I think he was a "normal" person who felt called out by God to live out the story of Israel and complete its journey in his own actions. He then appropriated to himself the scriptures of Israel and understood himself to be the one who would be for Israel what it had long called for: a representative, a suffering servant, a high priest, a true king. The prophets and psalmists had cried out to God for these things and had suffered under evil, so to be true to his covenant promises God "must" in a sense undergo the same experiences as his people, take it all on himself and by submitting to the powers of mortality and "darkness" undermine and defeat them...however that actually works out in practice. Maybe death is not an ontological force to be defeated, but rather our fear of the idea of death keeps us from seeing beyond it into the reality of God's new world; so Jesus becomes the fixed point onto which we place our hope and enter into the relationship with God that actually allows us to receive his resurrecting power (i.e., God always had power over death, but he "transferred" it to Christ in the sense that Christ is the measure now of who receives the new life...whatever). Another complication is trying to figure whether God chose to act through Jesus because Jesus was such a pure adherent to Torah or whatever--i.e., Jesus was chosen as the Messiah because he chose to be the Messiah (adoptionism)--or rather the converse, that Jesus felt led to do this and was empowered to do this because he had been chosen to be the true vessel of God and God dwelt in him from the beginning. The interplay between the human Jesus and the Word of God at work in him is subtle beyond our power of reckoning, but I do think that in his earthly ministry Jesus was not 100% sure he was the chosen one, or the Son of God, but he felt it so strongly that he went through the whole thing on faith, and was proven right by the resurrection. And whatever the reality of causation, whether Jesus did what he did because it was part of God's plans all along or God decided to use Jesus because Jesus was such a good guy (and when I put it like that, I really start to see how unconvincing the idea; does God choose anyone based on previous merit? doubtful), the way I understand the Gospels is that Jesus understood himself as and most certainly was the true Temple, the central point of God's presence in the world, the place that bridged our world with God's.

But no one neat little theory can do justice to the whole complexity of all these questions. Still, I believe strongly that the OT, while all its prophecies and psalms do not exist solely to refer forward to Christ, does point to Christ in that it points, in hope, toward one who will bring Israel's story to its conclusion and stand in its place as the representative of God in the world. The words of the OT are not planted by God in human heads; they are products of human hearts struggling to better understand God and his purposes, and their faith in God and love for him as a just Father led them to speak of such things as the Messiah, and the resurrection. It could be argued that God gave Israel these things because they asked for it. But that seems a little silly. Rather I think it was always part of God's designs to "come down" himself as a savior and to be true to his covenant promises even beyond death, which means a resurrection. But Israel's realization of these things was slow in coming. Still, God underwent what he did through the person of Jesus because Israel had underwent those things. Jesus's trials, in a real sense, are the ultimate answer to the prayers of Israel, the pleas of David in the wilderness. Of course God would have known that any people would suffer in life, so whichever nation he chose would experience hardship, and if he were going to truly become one of them he too would have to undergo hardship; in that case it's not a question of whether God himself must suffer, but rather what manner of suffering he must endure. It must coincide with the sufferings of the chosen people. So there's a complicated interplay of God's predetermined plans and the unfolding drama of human existence. To a great extent I think God lets humans determine the course of how his designs will play out, even if the "general framework" is set from the beginning.

Jesus stood at the high point of Israelite understanding of God. Of course he was the greatest and final prophet of the nation of Israel (the nation was for all intents and purposes disbanded within a generation after his life), and he ministered to the afflicted in fulfillment of the long tradition of anguished supplication to God for the healing of the sick, hope to the poor, etc. He embodied the crystallization of all that Israel had hoped for. A true Jubilee--remission of debts--and a true age of renewal came upon the land. The spiritual exile was over, for those who would accept the King who was to lead the faithful out of captivity. So Jesus filled several very important OT roles. But on a more general level, Jesus was the first (only?) person to fully grasp what God is like, and what God demands. So Jesus's principal mission was to take it on himself to do what God demands, to be like God; and knowing from the scriptures that God's faithfulness to Torah extends beyond death, Jesus was convinced that if he lived exactly according to the principles of Torah, God would be faithful to him beyond death--i.e., raise him. Jesus did, and God did. Part of that obedience was to trust God, to not take matters into one's own hands, to let God work things out. Jesus either a) got in trouble with the authorities "by accident" and did not retaliate when they decided to do away with him, or b) purposefully delivered himself into their hands to make a point that one need not fear death when one trusts in God. I like the latter. So God appoints Jesus to be the one in whom "salvation" is achieved. Jesus was faithful to the letter of the law and put his whole trust in God. The cosmic Christ, raised by God, stands as the bridge between God and humanity. We trust in Jesus, who is closer to us than the vague idea of "God", who is one of our own, and because of the power conferred to him by God, our trust in his name secures our salvation, our hope of resurrection. So Jesus becomes the means by which God makes new life possible. Resurrection, life beyond the mortal realm, was always part of God's plan. But Jesus as the faithful Messiah became the one through whom that plan was put into actual effect. Our hope of new life, our belief in it, is what saves us, but our belief must rest in the actual new life offered by the actual creator. Jesus is the representative of that hope and reality. He is the fixed point upon which our faith must rest. Resurrection, new life, was always there, so to speak. The only thing keeping us from it is our own ignorance and fear (and of course moral insufficiencies).

Another way to look at it: God must overcome the power of death. Death holds a dominion over people and keeps us away from God. Only God can defeat death, and that only by himself experiencing it. But taking it on himself he can "exhaust" its power as it were. He can get beneath it and uproot it and take control of it. So God chooses a human to experience death through. It is his will that this human suffer and die. Jesus realizes this is the will of God for him, even if he doesn't understand why it must be so. And he believes, from the scriptures, that God will be faithful to his obedience and trust beyond death, and will raise him. That is the hope Jesus clings to. God says, "I want you to die, that is my will for you." Jesus follows that, and the rest of God's laws, to the very last, perfectly. Through his death God conquers death, and the resurrection of Christ is the first sign of death's defeat. So the resurrection of Christ is God's keeping of his promises to his faithful servant, as well as God's great victory over the powers of mortality. The two things are very closely bound, because the point of being obedient to God all along was to achieve God's purposes for the world. Israel was chosen to carry God's plans ahead toward fruition, and those plans always were about bringing this world into the next. Torah-faithfulness and cosmic redemption go together and cannot be separated.

I think both of these perspectives can help us get a grasp on things. In the first, Jesus is more of an exemplary, one who shows us what to hope for and how to live. But more than that, he himself becomes the object of our hope and the strength of our living, because he himself was a perfect servant of God. God is the end of Torah-obedience, of a pure and holy life. Jesus shows us how to go about entering a relationship with God, but at the same time he himself becomes the physical representative of God, the image on which to fix our hope and aim our lives. So the pattern he sets toward God is now taken up by Christians and lived for Christ, because Christ is the channel through which the relationship of God to humans is made actual. In the second, Jesus's power comes from being the embodiment of God, and death is some ontological force to be overcome rather than an idea, the fear of which must be overcome. I think death is something of both of these. Death was never meant to last, and God always planned for us to pass through it to the new world. But perhaps somewhere along the way we lost sight of that reality, and needed a new point to focus our hope on; or else we never knew about it until the Jews began speculating on it and Jesus proved it. Death was part of the created order but the only way God could bring us out of it was to defeat death itself. Or rather, the only way for us to move beyond death was to put our hope in God, and Jesus stands as the evidence of that hope and the source of strength to maintain that hope. Jesus is the way in which we come to realize the true measure of God's faithfulness and power. God always had power over death, then transferred it to Jesus as the one who is the measure of what it takes to receive the new life. The new life can only be received through free acceptance of God's will; and the way we now accept God's will for ourselves is by surrendering to Christ, who is the only one to completely do all God asked of him and who now reigns over life and death. The question remains, was Jesus able to completely obey God only because he was God, or did he manage it himself and get rewarded for it........or a strange mixture of both?? That's a question for another day.

A remaining subject, one I will have to deal more with later: what does it mean to say that Jesus "died for sins"? Well, "sin" in Jewish thinking is that which runs counter to the Law. And the Law is set up to point humans on the path to a Godly life. No human can actually meet all the demands of Torah, so sacrifices are needed to compensate for the failure. The idea of an angry god being personally affronted and insulted by sin and demanding blood to satiate his wrath is, admittedly, a little off-putting; rather we should think of sacrifice as the means by which the faith community of Israel expressed its recognition of its own failures and its continuing devotion to God and the covenant of righteousness. The sacrifices were not themselves ontologically effective but symbolically meaningful. So the sacrifice of God is a sign that God himself is committed to the covenant, that he is willing to give up something of his own in the cause of holiness, and unlike the human rituals it was efficacious and actually brought about a change, actually made the way to life accessible by giving people a source of spiritual energy to stake their lives on and become renewed by. The sacrifice was also a way for the community to set aside its guilt, recognize it and banish it in a symbolic act, so in Christ all our guilt is completely permanently done away with. Our failures are finally compensated for. You may say, "I don't have guilt. I've never done anything worth feeling terrible over." Hmmm...well, part of encountering the true God is realizing how far beyond our own ideas of perfection and goodness he actually is. Jesus himself said, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but the Father." By our very natures as created beings, as creatures produced by evolutionary chaos, we are imperfect and incomplete. So even if you've never done anything really "bad", still you haven't done anything "good" enough to be on a level with God. Our natures simply do not mix with his, like oil with water; water does not choose to not mix with the oil, but by virtue of what they are "in default" there can be no mingling. So the greatest person in the world--Gandhi, say--is still not good enough to warrant an immortal nature. And most of us have actually done bad things. The race as a whole has committed unthinkable atrocity and dug itself into a deep hole of blindness and madness for its whole career. But Christ was more than mere mortal, and by his strength and faithfulness achieved something no one else could have. His strength is conferred to us that we may strive for the true will of the true God. We do not have to worry about striving for Torah perfection on our own strength; rather we rely upon the strength of Christ to bridge the divide for us and bring us into that sphere of holiness where our souls are compatible with the presence of God and capable of fully entering into relationship with the Creator, a relationship that transforms and allows our beings to be transferred into the new world. And yet we still fail, even as Christians, to meet the standards of godliness in this life. But here's what counts: first, our willingness to try, our efforts for the kingdom which prepare the way for the new creation within the present--because that's what salvation is really about, being called into Christ's service to build for God's tomorrow, so our "works" are important and seal our place within the covenant; Christ's "righteousness" is not magically imputed to us so that we become holy and pure, but rather, as he achieved the highest end and stands on a "cosmic" all-embracing level, he can bestow upon us his Spirit to take part in the work he began. God desires relationship with his creatures. The individual relationship stands at the heart of the whole scheme of creation. The destiny of reality is bound up in intimate, personal communion. That can only happen if the creatures comply and give their willing assent. But our own ignorance, pride, etc. gets in the way. So Christ steps in to show us the road to walk and to give us clarity and strength "to will and to work". That willingness, coupled with the atoning work of Christ in uniting humanity and divinity, with his perfecting of human faithfulness to Torah through divine power, covers over the remaining imperfections in human nature. We are no longer barred from God by our lack of goodness, by our fears and uncertainties, our stupidity. The process of real "becoming" begins. Upon entering into Christ we truly become "one" with him--humanity in its basic state is unable to reach the level of deity; in Christ Jesus, humanity does reach the level of deity (or deity reaches down to the level of humanity, whatever); Christ then is the ultimate representative of humanity; so all humanity can stand within him as a single body, and the individual discrepancies are lost in the overwhelming virtue of his glory--and we as one are taken into the presence of God by the power of Christ's lordship. That lordship is the agency by which God achieves his purposes for creation; it's not through the whole race or a nation that the world is transformed (Torah was set up to show the people of God what a truly godly world would be like, in a sense), it's through one Man, and by pledging our allegiance to that Man we become partakers in the kingdom project. The work is done in Christ: but there is still much work to be done. It's infinitely complicated and way beyond our agencies of comprehension. But remember this much: it's called grace, and it works.