The Diety of Christ Assailed

The media have been titillated recently by the publication of a book in which the authors claim that Jesus Christ was human but not divine. Edited by John Hick, in The Myth of God Incarnate seven British theologians, mostly from the Church of England, state openly what they and many other scholars have been thinking and believing (and disbelieving) for many years (Westminster, 211 pp., $4.95 pb).

Opposition to the deity of Christ is hardly new. Non-Christians, of course, have never recognized it. But even among those who profess to be Christians, there have been deniers of Christ’s deity. In the apostolic period certain Jewish Christian groups denied it. In the fourth century the Arian controversy gravely disrupted the Church. Arius and his followers held that Jesus was a created being rather than co-eternal with God. For a time such views seemed as if they would prevail, but through the efforts of men like Athanasius early ecumenical councils eventually recognized the true deity as well as the true humanity of our Lord. At the time of the Reformation opposition to the deity of Christ re-emerged with men like Servetus and groups like the Socinians.

Those who know anything about American religious history are aware of the great defection in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that took away most of the Puritan-founded congregations in eastern Massachusetts and led to the establishment of the Unitarian denomination. A parallel development took place in England, especially affecting the Presbyterians and the Arminian branch of the Baptists.

So the publication of yet another challenge to the truth of Christ’s deity is hardly new. What is interesting about this book is who published it and the views that lie behind the assertion that Jesus is not divine as well as human. In Britain the SCM Press, publishing arm of the Student Christian Movement, issued the book. In the United States the publisher is the Westminster Press, an agency of the United Presbyterian Church that is charged with promoting the cause of Christ through books. In their accompanying publicity, the United Presbyterians boast of releasing “Another challenging book from Westminster Press, publisher of Honest to God and Situation Ethics.” Booksellers are urged to take “profitable advantage” of it. We are told that the book is for “students and teachers of Theology, ministers and Biblical scholars, and readers who enjoy the challenge of fresh ideas.” At best the book might be labeled a “fresh treatment of an old idea.” But to say that the book has in it a “fresh idea” is simply untrue. Even worse is the absence of anything refreshing in the book. For as the early Church came to see, if Christ is not truly divine as well as truly human then he could not be our Saviour and we are eternally separated from God because of our sins.

The publication of this book by Westminster is yet another indication of what has been observable for many decades. The United Presbyterian Church is in a tragic state and in desperate need of a reawakening of true godliness. There are still many orthodox Christians in the United Presbyterian Church, but they seem powerless to do very much if they cannot even stop the publication of such a heretical book under the auspices of their denomination. (We do not say that the book should be unavailable, but Beacon Press, an arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, would be a more appropriate publisher.) According to an official report in 1976, forty per cent of the United Presbyterians do not believe the Bible to be the infallible rule of faith and practice. Are the other sixty per cent indifferent? Not long ago a presbytery denied ordination to a man who would not personally ordain women (though he wouldn’t campaign against others doing so) while ordaining a woman who denied major portions of historic Presbyterian and Christian doctrine.

One of the chief culprits behind the departure from cardinal Christian distinctives in once orthodox bodies like the Church of England and the United Presbyterian Church is the use of a historical critical method that has, under the guise of improving the understanding of Scripture, been employed rather to bring the Bible into disrepute. This method had its origins in the teaching of Semler who in the late eighteenth century argued that Scripture and the Word of God are not synonymous. We must find the Word of God in Scripture. This resulted in an extended search for a canon within the canon of Scripture. And no two researchers have ever been in full agreement about which parts of the Bible are in fact a Word from God. In the minds of such critics the Bible has been turned from a divine revelation into a subjective, normless book with each reader deciding for himself what to believe and what to repudiate.

Even so, one would have thought that the deity of Christ was sufficiently pervasive throughout the New Testament that no one who wanted to be called Christian would deny it. But having denied the divine role in Scripture has led to a denial of the divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. This denial is not by men on the fringes of their denomination, but professors of theology teaching future ministers. One of the authors, Maurice Wiles, is chairman of the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission.

A reading of this new book shows how the authors again and again refer to “scholarship” as the reason for their denial of Christ’s deity. But they have superimposed their views on Scripture. Instead of Scripture judging them they have judged Scripture. Wiles asks rhetorically, “Are we sure that the concept of an incarnate being, one who is both fully God and fully man, is after all an intelligible concept?” He, his co-authors, and his publishers may not think it an “intelligible concept,” but we, by the grace of God, are content to affirm in keeping with historic Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine; God has said so. He has revealed this in the person of Christ himself, and through his inspired Word, and through the operation of the Holy Spirit in believers, both individually and corporately.

It is fitting to recall the inspired words of the Apostle Paul. “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:20, 21).

The Myth of God Incarnate does make clear the critical question: Do we accept as the authority for religious truth the opinions of learned men and self-styled religious leaders? Or do we accept the clear testimony of the Word of God in fellowship with others down through the centuries who have done likewise?

Cheryl Forbes, singer

I was nine years old the first time I saw Elvis Presley. I’d heard little of him and didn’t know what to expect. Because I was one of the first people in the movie theater that day I got a free autographed picture of him. The film was Love Me Tender, a cowboy picture, similar to so many others in its plot. But Elvis was the star. And he died at the end of the film. Hundreds of teenage girls stood crying on the sidewalk after the film. That disgusted me. I tore his picture into small pieces and threw it into our bathroom waste basket.

As I grew up it seemed that my peers, male and female, were divided into two camps—those who followed Elvis and those who didn’t. But even those kids who weren’t full-fledged fans, and I was one of that group for a time, were affected by his music. He transformed the top forty from the leftovers of the big band and croon era into what we now know as rock. He took homegrown American music—rhythm and blues, the black sound, and gospel—and melded it into a new musical form. He paved the way for the Beatles, and nearly every major rock group today claims to have been heavily influenced by Elvis. It would be too much to say that he created a culture for teenagers, but he certainly epitomized it. Anyone who wants to understand rock music—a pivotal element in the generation gap—must understand Elvis.

People nicknamed him “Elvis the Pelvis” because of his hard-driving beat and holy roller style movements, which he said he learned in his pentecostal church. But his real contribution was through the blues ballad. His first record, “That’s All Right, Mama,” is an example, as is “Love Me Tender,” “Love Me” (the first song from a long-play album to sell a million), and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” And from blues he turned in later years to haunting interpretations of well-known gospel music: He won a Grammy for his version of “How Great Thou Art.” When he sang gospel songs he put feeling into faith, and helped people hope despite a world of sorrows. Perhaps that’s why his gospel albums were his best sellers last month.

Critics have tried to explain the power Elvis had over an audience, no matter what its age. They talked about his heavy lids and his pouting curled lip. Those were just his gimmicks. What made them effective is what painters call chiaroscuro. He had it in abundance. He seemed caught between two worlds, the light and the dark. He was a shy, country boy who sang in the church choir and read the Bible and yet he was a man consumed with raw sensuality. His voice could light up with amazing sweetness or cloud huskily with pain and longing.

And that’s why he captured a generation or more of young people. At that age you are caught between two worlds. You’re no longer a child, but still not an adult. The transition is strange and painful at best. Elvis put that into his music—not into the words he sang, but in the way he sang them. Unlike the French art song or German lieder the words are less important in rock than the way in which they’re sung.

It took years before I could listen to an Elvis Presley song without feeling that he was somehow to blame for the reactions of those teenage girls. But his music, without my sensing it, seeped into my culture. And even though I moved from his love songs to Brahms and Schubert and from his gospel music to Bach and Mendelssohn he served as a link with my past. His death weakened that connection.

Politicians and Their Finances

The conviction of Marvin Mandel, governor of Maryland (whose predecessor was Spiro Agnew), the imprisonment for campaign-funding violations of resigned representative Richard Tonry of Louisiana, the Leon Jaworski-led investigation of Korean bribery of Congress, and the continuing revelations about the financial activities of Bert Lance are welcome indications that the American people now expect higher standards from their elected and appointed officials. It is not that we are becoming more corrupt; rather we are becoming less tolerant of longstanding corruption.

Of course, the personal inconvenience is unpleasant to politicians who are at least partly right when they complain that “this is the way it’s always been done.” But it is hard to see how standards can be tightened, whether through old laws being enforced or new ones being enacted, without people getting prosecuted during the transition period. To be sure, other forms of avoiding the “spirit of the law” are quick to emerge and on more than one occasion the aftermath of “reform” has been worse than before.

In the case of Lance most Americans are learning more about our banking system and about men of apparent wealth than we knew before. We already have laws forbidding someone to borrow from a bank in order to buy it, and with good reason. Is it not just as reasonable to forbid loans from a bank in order to buy its correspondent bank? Lance’s actions may not have been illegal or even unethical, but President Carter rightly set a higher standard for his appointees. Besides we wonder about the appropriateness of having the federal budget directed by a person whose own budget is characterized by big spending with correspondingly big debts. One six-million-dollar man is enough.

No one wants government to set standards so demanding that business or professional men and women would find it impossible to serve in government. But surely there must be capable persons whose records are not colored by such questionable judgments as those of Lance. There also must be talented men and women who would not administer the affairs of state in part by under-the-table transactions the way Mandel and Agnew did. The task of a society concerned with morality is to find such qualified people to serve in government.

Ethel Waters (1896–1977)

In 1924 a young black singer and actress made her stage debut in a Broadway musical, “Plantation Revue of 1924.” Ethel Waters spent more than fifty years in show business—on Broadway, in films, and in gospel music, traveling in later years with Billy Graham crusades. She made such blues songs as “Am I Blue” and “Stormy Weather” famous. But she is perhaps best remembered for her rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” She understood its lyrics from the inside out.

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