Matthew Burden's Blog

 

Could Jesus Have Sinned?

The Two Natures ofChrist and the Doctrine of Original Sin

Could Jesus have sinned? – The instinctive Christiananswer is “No,” but this raises a secondary question: In what sense, then,could Jesus be said to have struggled and been tempted like us?

Hebrews 2:17-18: “For this reason he had to be madelike them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become amerciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that hemight make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himselfsuffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a highpriest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one whohas been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”  (Seealso Matt. 4:1-11)

The answer to the title question hinges on understanding thetwo natures of Christ: fully divine, and fully human. Based on that fact, thecorrect answer would seem to be: Yes, in theory, the human nature ofJesus Christ could have sinned; but also No, in practice, Jesus wouldnever have sinned because of the union of his human nature with his divinenature. So while his human nature could, in theory, have sinned, in actualityit was a practical impossibility. Let’s back up a little and examine whatthis answer is getting at:

The Two Natures of Christ:

The Bible testifies that Jesus is fully man and fully God.On the one hand, he is a human being with a real human body and a rationalhuman soul, sharing the same human nature that you and I do (Heb. 2:17; Rom.5:12-17). On the other hand, Jesus is clearly shown in Scripture as being fullyGod, sharing the same divine nature as God the Father (John 1:1; Col. 2:9; Heb.1:3; John 10:30). In the words of the Chalcedonian definition (an earlyChristian summary of traditional doctrine), Jesus was “perfect in Godhead,perfect in Manhood, truly God and truly Man, the self-same of a rational souland body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead; co-essentialwith us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, except for sin.”

[It is important to note that this does not mean that Jesushad two “persons” inside of him, a human Jesus and a divine Christ, or anythinglike that. Rather, Jesus is one person, who shares fully, at the same time, inboth the divine and human natures. These two natures are distinct from oneanother by essence (one is uncreated and eternal; the other is created andcontingent), but they are perfectly united in Christ, so that he cannot be seenas internally divided (like a split personality), nor as having the two naturesblended together into something new. He has both natures, fully distinct butinseparable, existing in perfect union together in his one person.]

So Jesus had a full, authentic human nature. This humannature was naturally inherited, in the miracle of his incarnation and birth,from his mother Mary. But that leads to another question:

Since human nature is fallen, wouldn’t Jesus haveinherited a corrupt, fallen human nature? The answer to this is No, and toexplain why, we must look at the doctrine of original sin, and what we meanwhen we say that human nature is fallen (or corrupted by sin).

Original sin is the term we use to refer to the clearbiblical teaching that in Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience against God, sinaffected human nature in such a way that every subsequent human being isautomatically and inextricably trapped in sin’s power (Romans 5:12-19).

-       How does original sin get passed on? Eventhough the Bible is clear about the reality of original sin, it does notprovide a clear picture for the mechanism by which original sin works(that is, how it is transmitted from person to person).

-       Is it biologically inherited? Throughoutchurch history, various answers have been given. Augustine thought thatoriginal sin was a genetically-inherited corruption, passed on biologically fromparents to children. (Incidentally, this view is partly why the Roman CatholicChurch holds to the immaculate conception of Mary, believing that it would havebeen necessary for Mary to be purified from all sin before she becamethe mother of Christ, otherwise a “sin nature” would have been passed to him.)

-       Is it legally imputed upon us? TheProtestant Reformers thought that original sin was both a matter of aninherited corruption which inclines us toward sin, and also the imputation ofthe guilt of Adam’s sin upon us, since Adam is the “federal head” of allhumanity, representing us before God.

-       Sin = Falling out of Communion with God: Theclassical view of the eastern church fathers, however, had a view which was rootedboth in the philosophical nature of sin and the idea of salvation as a matterof union with God. This view holds that sin is not a “substance” that can taintour nature or produce a direct effect on human biological inheritance, butthat, as disobedience to God, it simply signifies the breaking of communionbetween God and humanity. When Adam and Eve sinned, their communion withGod—the spiritual closeness that connected them to God’s grace—was ruptured.All human beings inherit a fallen human nature in that sense—not as thoughsomething has gone genetically awry with human nature that changes us in ouressence, but rather that human nature as a whole is no longer in communion withGod and thus no longer in direct contact with his sanctifying grace. We fellaway from God together, as a race, in Adam and Eve, and are now born disconnectedfrom his grace. So, what we inherit didn’t change in the Fall—humannature is still “in the image of God”—but the intended conditions in which ournature was meant to operate have changed. To use an analogy from electronics,our natures were meant to be “plugged in” to God, but all humans now are bornin an unplugged state. In the absence of communion with God, who is the sourceof all spiritual life, we inherit the consequence of death, and we are leftwith the survival-oriented selfishness of humanity’s biological nature. Thisself-oriented bent, which conforms to the established patterns of ancestral sinin the world around us, makes it an absolute certainty that every single one ofus will sin. Thus, because of the Fall, we have two effects: (1) we inherit theconsequences of original sin because our human nature is not in communion withGod (as it was originally intended to be, before Adam and Eve’s sin), and (2)we all ultimately ratify this condition with our own sins.

-       Why Was Jesus’s Human Nature Not Fallen? Underthis conception, Mary was a recipient of humanity’s sinful inheritance justlike us (as both the Bible and the earliest Christian witness appear toassume). How, then, did the nature she passed on to Jesus not suffer from theproblem of sin? Because the problem of sin was fundamentally a problem of beingout of communion with God. But the incarnation was a miracle of the unionof God’s nature with the human nature Jesus inherited from Mary, so his humannature automatically existed in full communion from the very beginning. It cameinto being in a “plugged in” state because of the union of Christ’s twonatures. Therefore, Jesus’s human nature did not bear the fallen effects of sinthat ours do, because his human nature was in union with the divine nature.

-       Jesus’s nature and pre-Fall Adam’s nature: Assuch, the closest parallel we have to Jesus’s human nature is that of Adambefore the Fall: a nature in communion with God. (Technically, Adam’s communionwith God may not have been fully developed. Many church fathers thought he wascreated on the beginning of “growth trajectory” into greater union with God, whichsin interrupted. Further, Adam did not have the divine nature existing in hisperson, as Jesus did, so the analogy is imperfect—but it still remains theclosest one we have.)

-       Then could Jesus have sinned? In theory,yes—Jesus’s human nature, possessing authentic free will, could have sinned,just as Adam’s human nature, in communion with God, did sin. However, becauseJesus’s human nature was fully united to the divine nature, in practicethis flips the answer to No—sin is a practical impossibility when one is infull union with God. To put it another way: Jesus’s human nature was fullycapable of sinning, but because of its union with the divine nature, it neverwould. (And this also explains why we won’t have to worry about sin inheaven—as heirs of full communion with God, even richer than Adam experienced,sin will become a practical impossibility, even though we retain free will.)

-       What was Jesus’s temptation like? So didJesus really experience the struggle of temptation? Yes, in his human nature hereally did. There was never any possibility that he would give into it, but thestruggle was real in a couple key ways: both in terms of facing the pain of ourbroken, fallen world, and of having the discipline to choose God’s way insteadof the easy path of self-satisfaction. Jesus’s human will had authentic powerof choice, and every time a temptation came his way, it had to choose to alignitself to God’s will.

-       What This Means for Us: When we come infaith to Christ, we are transferred over from the old humanity under Adam tothe new humanity in Christ (Rom. 5:12-21). This new humanity has a restoredcommunion with God, made permanent in the everlasting union of Christ’s twonatures. In other words (to return to our electronics analogy), we get pluggedback in. So as we stay connected to Christ, like branches to the vine, weremain connected to God’s sanctifying grace. Our individual sins still occur,but they no longer break our communion with God because those sins have beenatoned for by Jesus’s death, and we are covered by his righteousness, whichjustifies us and restores us to right relationship with God. Now, by his grace,we can learn the same discipline against temptation which Christ practiced, andin our ever-deepening communion with God we can experience ever greaterdeliverance and purification from our sins.

 

What is the Sabbath? Traditionally,it is the practice of dedicating a day of rest devoted to God on the seventhday of the week (Sabbath literally means “seventh”), as modeled in God’s workof creation and commanded under the Law of Moses (Ex. 20; Deut. 5). Throughoutchurch history, there have been various ways how Christians have regarded theSabbath, with most emphasizing that the legal requirements of the Law of Mosesare no longer binding, but that if one so chooses, the Sabbath may be continuedas an act of love and devotion rather than of legal observance.

Evidence from the Gospels:The Gospels show the Sabbath as being re-oriented in its meaning toward theperson of Christ, to be fulfilled in him:

-       Jesus in the Gospels – Jesus and hisdisciples observe the Sabbath-laws just like any godly Jews, since the NewCovenant has not yet been established by Jesus’s death. On the other hand,Jesus is regularly presented as pushing the boundaries of normal practice inhis Sabbath-keeping, re-orienting its meaning around his own identity (e.g.,calling himself “Lord of the Sabbath”). Jesus reinterprets Sabbath practicesfrom an emphasis on simply keeping the Law to an emphasis on pursuing God’screated intent for humanity—“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for theSabbath” (Mark 2:27). Ultimately, Jesus’s “rest” on the seventh day of hispassion-week—when he was lying in the grave—sums up the Christologicalsignificance of the Sabbath, as the event to which the Old Testament pointed.

-       Jesus’s Fulfillment of the Law – Thecommand to observe the Sabbath is foundational to the Old Testament covenantwith Israel, given to Moses in the Ten Commandments. In the Gospels, Jesus issaid to fulfill the Law, not abolish it (Matt. 5:17). In practice, this meansthat the commands of the Law of Moses are considered binding on Christianswhere they reflect the character of God (since Jesus is himself the Son ofGod), but the practical laws intended to regulate Israelite culture are only bindinginsofar as they convey unchanging moral principles. For example, the lawsrelating to Temple sacrifices are fulfilled by Christ and are no longer bindingon Christians, but they do continue to inform us about foundational moralprinciples regarding sin and atonement. In Christian tradition, the Sabbath isusually thought to be one of these practical laws. It tells us valuable thingsabout who God is and who we are, but its letter-of-the-law practice is nolonger binding on Christians.

o   Butwhat about the Ten Commandments? The position outlined above surprisessome people, as it appears to negate one of the Ten Commandments, but rememberthat the Ten Commandments were given as part of the Mosaic covenant, which weare no longer directly under. This does not mean, however, that the other rulesin the Ten Commandments are somehow optional, because most of them are morallaws which reflect the character of God, and so they represent a standard ofunchanging reality. Because God is still God and sin is still sin, murder andadultery and so on continue to be prohibited in Christian practice, but theSabbath was a command specifically oriented toward the religious practices ofancient Israel, and was not required of God’s followers who were not under theLaw of Moses (like all of the great men and women of faith in Genesis). In thesame way that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were never asked to keep the Sabbath,neither are we who are under the New Covenant. Nevertheless, we must rememberthat while Christ fulfills the Law, he does not abolish it, so while we’re notobligated to a letter-of-the-law observance of the Sabbath, we should stillseek out and apply the principles behind it.

Other New TestamentEvidence: The New Testament shows that the idea of Sabbath now appliesto the Christian’s whole life in Christ (see Heb. 4), and that Christians werenot expected to keep the Sabbath laws of the Old Covenant (see Acts 15, 21;Col. 2).

-       In Acts 15:19-21, there are only threeLaw-oriented rules which the apostles require of Gentile converts: to abstainfrom food sacrificed to idols, from the meat of strangled animals or blood, andfrom sexual immorality. These combine practical laws about food with morallaws, with the idea being that breaking these laws would make GentileChristians offensive to the Jewish believers in whose company they now live(see v.21). Gentile Christians are not asked to keep the Sabbath; it is not oneof the three requirements (see also Acts 21:25).

-       Colossians 2:16-17: “Do not let anyonejudge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, aNew Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things thatwere to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”

-       Hebrews 4:9-10 [using the Sabbathallegorically to speak of salvation in Christ]: “There remains, then, aSabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also restsfrom their works, just as God did from his.”

Evidence from the EarlyChurch: It appears that early Christians considered the Sabbath to havebeen fulfilled in Jesus, and they no longer practiced the Sabbath laws of theOld Testament. Instead, they saw life in Christ as an obligation to a“perpetual Sabbath,” ordered around refraining from sin and resting in God’ssalvific work on their behalf. They did not see this as a relaxation of theSabbath ordinance, but, if anything, an expansion of it.

-       Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st,early 2nd century, a student of the apostles): “If, then, thosewho had lived according to ancient practices came to the newness of hope, nolonger keeping the Sabbath but living in accordance with the Lord’s day, onwhich our life also arose […] how can we possibly [do less]?”

-       Justin Martyr (mid-2nd century):“The new law requires you to keep a perpetual Sabbath. However, you [a Jew] areidle for one day, and suppose you are godly. […] If there is a thief among you,let him cease to be so […]. Then he has kept the true Sabbath of God.”

-       Irenaeus (mid-late 2nd century):“The Sabbaths taught that we should continue day by day in God’s service […],abstaining from all avarice. […] However, man was not justified by these things.This fact is evident, for Abraham himself—without the observance ofSabbaths—‘believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’”

-       Tertullian (late 2nd, early 3rdcentury): “Let the one who contends that the Sabbath is still to beobserved as a balm of salvation prove to us that in times past righteous men(like Enoch, Noah, or Melchizedek) kept the Sabbath and were thereby madefriends of God. […] Just as the abolition of fleshly circumcision and of theold Law is demonstrated as having been consummated at its specific times, soalso the observance of the Sabbath is demonstrated to have been temporary. […]We Christians understand that we still more should observe a Sabbath from all[unbefitting works]. This is not only every seventh day, but at all times.”

-       Apostolic Constitutions (3rdcentury): “God had given the commandment to keep the Sabbath [to Moses], byresting on it for the sake of meditating on the laws. However, he has nowcommanded us to meditate on the law of creation and of providence every day.[…] There is only one Sabbath to be observed by you during the whole year—thatof our Lord’s burial. On that day, men should keep a fast, but not a festival.”

How Should Christians Keepthe Sabbath?

1.)   First,recognize that in Christ, we have been given rest from the works of the Law, andare no longer tasked with earning our favor with God by means of following achecklist of rules. Rather, we are saved by grace, and we rest in Christ’s workon our behalf.

2.)   Second,seek to keep a “perpetual Sabbath”—leaving the works of the world behind anddevoting yourself to God every day of the week.

3.)   Third,while not required of Christians, it is helpful to recognize that Sabbath wasgiven to God’s people as a blessing, and that we can grow in a healthy andwell-ordered devotional life by choosing to practice it—not because we have to,but because it is the gift of a good and loving God. As such, Christians havedeveloped a variety of Sabbath practices, from devoting a “Sabbath hour” ineach day to choosing a particular day, like Saturday or Sunday.

a.     For most, the best practice is to set aside oneday per week if you are able—and preferably the seventh day—to put aside work,distractions, and other obligations, and carve out intentional time to spend inthe presence of the Lord. While Christians are not required to do this, doing iton the actual Sabbath helps us order our lives according to the biblical cyclesof both God’s creation and Jesus’s passion. For Christians, a continuingpractice of honoring the Sabbath on the seventh day also helps prepare ourhearts and minds for worship on the next day, Sunday.

b.    Just remember that if you choose to keep Sabbaththis way, it is a gift of God and not a law that earns you favor or merit.There is a danger of sliding into a “works-righteousness” faith, and we need tobe vigilant about that. Do not fall into the trap of judging others for notkeeping the same kind of Sabbath you do, and also don’t judge yourself tooharshly if your own practice of Sabbath fails to live up to your hopes andexpectations for yourself.

Of all the traditional doctrines of Christianity, none elicits quite as much eye-rolling scorn from "the cultured despisers of religion" (as Schleiermacher put it) as the story of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. This is not surprising; to the crude and disenchanted minds of modern skeptics, anything that calls upon the supernatural is a target for derision--and even more so a supernatural act that turns the messiest, most carnal of human experiences (conception and birth) into something unutterably holy. A Christian can easily (and rightly) reply that with God, all things are possible. But to many doubters, the virgin birth smacks too much of the kind of religious fabulism that was common all across the ancient Mediterranean world. Why, then, should Christians believe the Gospels' story of the virgin birth? 
I recently preached on the prophecy of the virgin birth found in Isaiah 7:14. There I noted that the Hebrew word used, 'almah, was not a word that specifically meant "virgin" in the same way that our word does. Rather, it means "young woman," used of a woman of marriageable age until the birth of her first child. There is another word for an unbetrothed young woman, still in her father's care, which one might more readily go for if "virgin" is specifically what was meant. For this reason, some skeptics suggest that the Isaiah 7 passage was simply meant to refer to a contemporaneous event--the birth of a baby into either Isaiah's family or the royal household in Isaiah's time--but that it held no import for a future messianic figure. The problem with that, however, is that the text clearly implies something stunning is about to happen--indeed, something miraculous, which the birth of an ordinary baby would not fulfill. Further, the candidates often proposed (Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz? Hezekiah?) simply do not match all of the data in the text (the former does not appear to be the first child of its mother, and according to biblical chronologies, the latter would have already been born). Even more, the overriding context of the prophecy, as the prophetic hinge on which the whole section of Isaiah 7-12 turns, suggests a future Messianic connection--Isaiah 9 and 11 especially so.
So why did Isaiah use this particular Hebrew word, if a virgin birth was in view? Importantly, there is no single specific word for "virgin" in ancient Hebrew to call upon, merely the two terms applied to young women of marriageable age--and when one considers this, and Mary as a possible referent, then it immediately becomes clear that 'almah was the correct choice: Mary was betrothed and no longer under her father's care, so she could not have fallen under the semantic range of the other word; and further, in a case like hers, virginity would absolutely have been assumed. The word 'almah itself might lean ever so slightly in this direction, etymologically appearing to refer to a marriageable woman who is somehow "hidden" or "enclosed." All of this is worth knowing, but it still doesn't make for an open-and-shut case that Isaiah 7 makes reference to Jesus and Mary. The Christian argument is bolstered, however, by the fact that the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, the Septuagint (LXX), translates 'almah as parthenos--that is, virgin (at the very least, it leans much more heavily toward that part of the semantic range). This means that two centuries before Christ, the best Jewish textual scholars were interpreting Isaiah 7 as indicating a miraculous, virgin birth. (There's even a charming apocryphal story from later tradition--likely untrue, to be sure--which says that Simeon, of Luke 2 fame, was one of the LXX translators, who was told by an angel that he would remain alive until he saw Isaiah 7 come to pass--which would make him something like a quarter of a millennium old in the Gospel, and which gives some added poignancy, and even a little humor, to his great "Nunc Dimittis" canticle.)
Anyway, after my sermon, I encountered a question relayed from a skeptical family member of one of my parishioners. They enumerated several reasons why a skeptic might legitimately think that the virgin birth story in the Gospels was an early Christian fraud, dreamed up because the Gospel-writers thought (maybe erroneously, thanks to the LXX translation) that the Messiah had to be born of a virgin. Why doesn't Paul mention it? Why isn't it prophesied in other places in the OT? Why do only two of the four Gospels mention it? This got me thinking about the solid textual and historical reasons that Christians have for believing this wild and beautiful story, so I wrote out a few notes in response, which might prove helpful to others, too.

While in strict historical terms, one cannot definitivelyrule out a possible interpretation of the virgin birth tradition as being aninvention of early Christians in response to a misunderstanding of Isaiah 7:14,there are several quite good reasons for thinking otherwise:

 

Old Testament foreshadowings: Whileonly explicitly prophesied in Isaiah 7, there are several other possibleallusions to the virgin birth throughout the Old Testament.

-   These begin as early as Genesis 3, in the“curse” narrative, where the prophesied “seed” who will crush the serpent’shead is said to be the seed of the woman. This is extremely unusual language;in almost every parallel construction referring to biological descent,reference is made to the seed of the man, not the woman (for cultural and,frankly, biological reasons—women didn’t have “seed”). To have the Messianicfigure identified as the seed of the woman implies that the identity of hismother and the nature of his birth—presumably lacking a biologically male father-figure—willbe exceptional.

-   In Jer. 31:22, as part of a longer section whichrefers to the coming of the new covenant, there is this intriguing line: “Forthe Lord has created something new on earth: a woman shall encompass a man.” [Thisis sometimes translated differently in modern versions, because the literalmeaning of the Hebrew words makes almost no sense given the surrounding context(unless, that is, it’s a reference to the virgin birth), so some versionsstretch the translation to try to make it fit other themes in Jeremiah.]The word for woman here is the term for the specificallybiological/gynecological aspect of female identity, while the word for man isthe word for a hero, a strong one, a mighty man. This appears to indicate,then, that in bringing forth his new covenant, God will do something new,something never before seen on earth, and that the miracle will center on awoman’s physical body encompassing (as in pregnancy) a mighty hero. If thevirgin birth story is not true, then this is an exceptionally weird verse thatmakes little sense in its broader context; but if the virgin birth story istrue, then it makes perfect sense and would seem to be a reference to that veryevent. Since this verse’s Messianic meaning is most clearly seen in the Hebrew,not in Greek translations like the Septuagint, the earliest Christians did notseize on this as a proof-text for the virgin birth; it went pretty muchunnoticed until Jerome’s time in the early fifth century. This is important,because it means that here we have a plausible prophecy of the virgin birththat cannot be accused as having been a misunderstood passage that motivatedearly Christians to invent a virgin birth story for Jesus; rather, it stands asan independent witness to the plausibility of the traditional reading of Isaiah7.

-   Other possible allusions to the virgin birthalso exist: for example, the fact that Jesus’s progenitor David regularly usesreferences to his mother’s womb in his psalmic prophecies (rather than, aswould be more culturally normal, references to his father’s house); and the Messianic“Servant” character in Isaiah 49 giving emphasis to divine action in fashioninghim in the womb. None of these are definitive, of course, nor as clear asIsaiah 7, but there enough hints strung out throughout the OT canon that theygive some support to the plausible reading of Isaiah 7 as pointing toward thevirgin birth of Christ.

 

Paul: While it’s true that Paul makes no directreference to the virgin birth, to take this as evidence against the virginbirth is an argument from silence, so not particularly strong. An argument fromsilence is only compelling if there is silence where one would reasonably haveexpected something else. In Paul’s case, this is not so—Paul’s writings are notinterested in providing a narrative of Jesus’s life—where they mention it, theyfocus only on the Lord’s Supper, the cross, and the resurrection (Paul also mention’sJesus’s ancestral pedigree at least once, but there his main concern is aboutJesus’s connection to the Davidic line). Paul’s silence would only beinstructive if it came as part of a passage in which Paul was mentioningJesus’s birth or his early life.

-   Many scholars think that Paul does makereference to it obliquely, even if not directly. In Gal. 4:4 he writes thatJesus was “born of a woman,” which would be a strange way of putting it in thatculture unless he believed there was something exceptional with regard toJesus’s parentage and birth.

-   Acts shows that Paul is also intimatelyacquainted with the evangelist Luke (and in a couple places he even quoteslines that match exactly with Luke’s Gospel), so given the prominence of Maryand the virgin birth in Luke’s writings it’s hard to imagine that Paul wouldsomehow be unaware of that tradition.

-   Furthermore, the doctrine of the virgin birth isusually tied to a high Christology—i.e., seeing Jesus as divine. Some of Paul’sletters are usually counted as the earliest NT writings we have, and yet Paul’sChristology is remarkably high, which suggests that a high Christology was partof the early Christian movement from the beginning. The argument that Paul’sfailure to mention the virgin birth says anything that would cast doubt on thetraditional Christian view of Jesus is therefore highly questionable.

Gospels: Some skeptics will point outthat the earliest Gospel, Mark, also has no narrative about the virgin birth(nor does John, which, although probably later, is the only “independent”Gospel account in the canon, while the other three lean on each other invarious ways). Nevertheless, Mark seems to assume that knowledge on the part ofthe audience—in Mark 6:3, Jesus is called “the son of Mary,” which is a veryunusual way of speaking of someone in that culture; reference would usually bemade to the father. It’s also the only reference to Mary in Mark’s Gospel,which probably means that her place was so well-known in the early Christiancommunity that no further comment was needed. And, like Paul, Mark seems toportray a higher Christology than one would expect if Jesus’s origin was merelyhuman. John, for its part, has a wildly high Christology, and while it doesn’treference the virgin birth directly, some take the verbal escalation in theconversation in John 8:41 as implying that the crowds had some questions aboutthe legitimacy of Jesus’s parentage from Joseph (as one would expect if thevirgin birth story were true), to say nothing of Jesus’s repeated insistencethroughout the Gospel of John that he has come down from heaven and that Godalone is his Father. Matthew and Luke, of course, form the main source materialfor the virgin birth narrative, and it’s worth pointing out that Luke tells us thatsome significant research went into the Gospel, and the content of chapters 1-2suggests that one of Luke’s sources might very well have been Mary herself. Allthat to say, while the Gospels may not be as early as Paul’s earliestdocuments, they are still the earliest narratives of Christ’s life available,and all appear to testify to a unanimous conception in early Christianity thatJesus’s birth was miraculous and that he himself was divine.

Early Christian Unanimity: The otherearly Christian documents also appear to be unanimous in holding to the virginbirth narrative, which is not necessarily what one would expect if it were aninvented story. If it had been invented, one would expect pushback fromalternative traditions in the earliest sources, such as by James or Jude, whocertainly would have been in a position to speak on the matter if an erroneousversion of their own family’s history was being circulated. Yet James and Judemake no attempt to rebut the virgin birth narrative, nor even to cast doubt onJesus’s identity in any way (an argument from silence, to be sure, but onewhere the silence may be telling). The immediate post-NT documents attest tothis unanimity and deepen it, with specific references to Mary and the virginbirth in ways that affirm and expand upon the traditions in Matthew and Luke. Thiscan be seen in the letters of Ignatius, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes ofSolomon, the Protoevangelium of James, and the writings of Aristides, Melito,Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus (all first- or second-century sources). To myknowledge, the earliest alternative narrative does not show up until the late secondcentury, some hundred and fifty years after Christ, when the critic Celsus bringsup a rumor that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier, Pantera. The lateness ofthat alternative theory, compared to the unanimity of the earlier Christiantradition, does not give it much of an air of credence. Further, the very factthat the alternative theory was a theory of illegitimacy, suggests that eventhe early skeptics accepted as common knowledge that there was somethingunusual about Jesus’s parentage. The first appearance of the more obviousalternative theory—that Jesus could have been Joseph’s biological son—comesinto view just a few years later, when Irenaeus castigates the hereticalEbionites for holding that theory. (The Ebionites were a schismatic sect thatappears to have broken away from the orthodox Jewish-Christian group known asNazarenes; for their part, the Nazarenes are believed to have descended incontinuity from the original Jerusalem church, and patristic writings show thatthey held a high Christology, including the virgin birth). All told, then, theevidence for compelling alternative theories of Jesus’s parentage in theearliest sources is severely lacking, and the unanimity of the traditionalChristian reading is significant.

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed that things have slowed down considerably for me here in recent months, so I thought I'd give a quick note of explanation for why that is, and what comes next.

- In addition to a new book on historical missiology coming out this December, my Evangeliad is now also on the road to publication! This is big news, because I never really knew for sure if my longstanding poetry project would ever be more than something I did for my own joy (and the enjoyment of a select few blog-readers). Poetry books do not command a large market at all these days, so it's rare to find a publisher or literary agent who will even give such a thing a glance. But I'm happy to report that I'll be putting out the completed text next year through Resource Publications (an imprint of the major Christian publisher Wipf & Stock). This means that I'll be able to get it out less than a decade after I started, which at this point feels like a real win.

- For this blog, that means that my regular posts from the Evangeliad will cease for the time being. I'm planning, however, to bring back a regular cycle of articles dealing with various topics of interest in culture and theology. In my midweek Bible study at my church, I'll shortly be shifting over to soliciting questions from my parishioners on any matter they would like an answer on (probably starting in less than a month), and my intent is to answer worthwhile questions both here, in writing, as well as in the Bible study sessions themselves. Hopefully some good fruit will come of that. Even if no substantial questions are forthcoming, I have a few of my own that I'll be bringing out on the blog in the next few weeks: reflections on how to approach the culture of skepticism in some circles of New Testament studies (e.g., Bart Ehrman and his ilk), and an exploration of the hiddenness of God, especially with regard to the lived experience of Christians.

Anyway, that's what's coming. I've been told by some that perhaps I should switch over to one of the sleek new blogging venues like Substack ("blogging" is itself, I'm told, too old-school of a term), but I think I'll stick it out here in the pre-2010 corner of the Internet for awhile yet, if only because most of online life after that point has not been worth keeping up with. Besides, if readers come away with the sense that I'm some sort of Luddite dinosaur because I'm clinging to an antiquarian way of presenting my writing to the world, well...they'd probably be right, so there's no harm in properly representing myself. So for the faithful few that keep wandering over to this dusty old corner of cyberspace, keep the faith: at the very least, you'll still have randomly infrequent articles to look forward to. 

(Click here for an introduction and previous installments of the Evangeliad)
Section 30:35-39 (corresponding to Luke 17:15-19)
The ten men, as one, obeyed this command--They tuned and went back; they hurried; they ran;Then as they hastened, the miracle came,And no sign of leprosy on them remained.
And then amid all their joy, one man paused,Turned back again, shouting glory to God;He ran back to Jesus, fell on his face,Filling the air with thanksgiving and praise.
This man, a Samaritan, lay there alone,Prostrate in wonder on the pilgrimage road.Jesus received the man's thanks and his praise,But there remained more for the Savior to say:
"How many were healed--wasn't it ten?And where are the other nine lepers, then?They've kept my command, but this shows their thoughtsAre all for themselves, not the glory of God.
For none of the nine came back to give praise,Nor to turn their hearts to gratitude's ways,But only this one, a stranger to us,Whose faith has rendered to God all his trust."
And Jesus said to the Samaritan man,"Arise, my friend, give thanks once again,For your faith has made you well; go your way."And the man went off, still shouting his praise.

 Just a quick update on a few things:

- My series of low-video-quality (but hopefully decent teaching quality!) studies on the Book of Revelation is complete. You can access it by clicking here.

- With several weeks of wonderful family vacations behind me, I'm currently in the midst of some book-related projects: my next work of historical missiology, Let the Earth Rejoice, will be coming out in December, so I'll be sharing some details about that in the coming months. I'm also in the process of finding publishers for a couple other projects, too, so keep me in your prayers as I discern whether the Lord has a place for those writings in a wider context.

- With the school year resuming, I'll be back to more of a regular schedule for my study and writing, so expect to see posts here with a bit more regularity.

(Click here for an introduction and previous installments of the Evangeliad)
Section 30:31-34 (corresponding to John 5:1; Luke 17:11-14)
And now it had come to that time of yearWhen Jews in Jerusalem all should appear,So out on the pilgrims' festival roadDid Jesus and all his followers go.
And as he was walking, making his way,He came on ten lepers shouting his name.These men stood far off, well back from the road,Girded with grime and with tatters of clothes.
For they knew Jesus, had heard of his fame,So when he was passing, they cried out his name:'Jesus, our master, have mercy on us!'And there Jesus' feet stood still in the dust.
He turned to the lepers, all ten of them there,And gave the command for the blemished-made-fair,The law to confirm one's leprosy cleansed:'Go and show yourselves to the priests, my friends.'

(Note: This is an original piece of biblical exposition. I've written and spoken about it on a couple of occasions, but never in a full article like this. It's an interpretation that has not been noted before in the history of Christian exposition so far as I can tell, but I believe it holds up. I'm working toward producing an article on this topic for a peer-reviewed theological journal, and I'll certainly post here if that happens.)

Tucked away in Genesis 15 isone of the strangest stories in the Bible—a bizarre theophany in which Godappears to Abram as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, together makingtheir way down a blood-soaked avenue between bisected animal corpses. Thisstory is easy to overlook, both for its strangeness and for the fact that itfalls between the Melchizedek story on the one hand, and the Hagar/Ishmaelstory on the other, and so is obscured by better-known arcs in the Abrahamicnarrative. But this curiously unsettling story is actually something quiteimportant—something that, if we had eyes to see, would unveil for us an enactedparable of the gospel itself. Its imagery, passing before Abram’s wonderingeyes some two millennia before the Incarnation, portrays in visible form thevery ideas that later Christians would call upon to articulate the mystery ofChrist. The strange story of Abram’s covenant shows the gospel of Jesus Christ,painted in terms that would later find their echo in the great creed of Nicaea.

To careful readers ofScripture, the importance of Genesis 15 is plain to see. It rituallyestablishes the covenant between God and Abram, and it includes repetitions ofthe divine promises: to give Abram an heir and possession of the land ofCanaan, as well as to redeem his descendants from their future bondage in Egypt.

Truth be told, some of thestory’s strangeness finds easy explanation in our knowledge of the biblicalworld. While the rite which is portrayed seems both curious and macabre tomodern readers, it is not unknown. God asks Abram to take one of each of themain kinds of sacrificial animals—bull, goat, and sheep (as well as some doves)—andto cut their bodies in two, arranging the bisected sections so that they arelined up on opposite sides of each other. This creates a blood-soaked pathwaybetween the corpses.

To ancient readers of this passage,this would be a recognizable scene. We have evidence of a similar (though muchlater rite) described in Jeremiah 34:18-20, as well as contemporaryattestations from elsewhere in the ancient Near East. This was the act of“cutting a covenant,” the solemn rite in which the two parties of a covenantwould pledge themselves to the covenant stipulations. Each party to thecovenant was to walk down the bloody pathway, with the implication being thatif either party broke those stipulations, the penalty was the very one depictedby the outpoured blood at their feet.

This brings us back to Genesis15, in which Abram has set up the scene of the covenant rite just as Godrequested it, and then—presumably waiting for God to show up so they couldproceed with the ritual—Abram falls into a deep sleep, and a great darkness comesupon him. These are clues that the theophany is at hand: the deep sleep echoesAdam’s deep sleep as God was bringing forth Eve from his side, and the darknessforetells a similar darkness that enshrouds Mount Sinai when the presence ofGod is there. When the narrative of the ritual scene resumes, we come to thestrangest part of all: “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, asmoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces” (Gen. 15:17,ESV).

There are two unexpected andcurious things about this. First, there’s the fact that Abram is not a party inthe covenant rite. He does not walk the bloodied pathway. And second, thesymbols themselves are bizarre: a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. Whatcould this mean? Any good set of commentaries will tell you that the basicsymbology of these items—both related to fire—show them to be a theophany. Fireis a frequent image of God’s presence throughout the biblical narratives, fromthe pillar of fire in Exodus to the tongues of flame at Pentecost. The fire potand the torch are thus both meant to represent God.

The fact that there are twosuch symbols seems to indicate that God is taking the place of bothparties in this covenant rite. Remember, it was supposed to be the two personsentering the covenant with one another who would pass between the animalcorpses: in this case, God and Abram. But instead, it is God and God, even asAbram and his descendants are declared to be the heirs of the covenant promise.And here we come to the first wondrous insight, which thunders with the messageof the gospel: by playing both roles, God is pledging to take upon himself thepunishment for any transgression of the covenant. Should Abram or his heirsviolate this covenant of promise in any way, it is not Abram on whom thepenalty will descend, but it will fall on God himself, for he is one who walkedthe avenue of sacrifice in Abram’s place. The punishment that should havefallen on the rebellious covenant-heirs will fall instead on God. This isnothing less than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yet we still have to reckonwith the specificity of the images involved. God could have appeared in aplainer and more obvious form—say, as two pillars of flame—but instead he choosesa smoking fire pot and a burning torch. Why? These are two common householdobjects, which everyone in the ancient world would recognize. The element offire certainly binds the two together, but there is another aspect by whichthese images are related: the burning torch is drawn from the fire pot’s flame.The first image, that of the fire pot, is the central source of fire for anentire household, used for cooking and heat and always kept alive in a bed ofglowing embers. Every other fire-bearing implement, in one way or another,draws its flame from there. The torch, then, shares the very same nature as thefire pot does—the flame itself—but it is customarily lit from the fire pot, andnot the other way around.

What we have here, then, aretwo divine images, which share the exact same nature in all of its qualities,but one is the Begetter and the other is the Begotten. This is not only the waythat the New Testament describes the relationship between the Father and theSon; it is also the way that the Nicene Creed articulates the divine nature ofChrist: “Light from Light.” It is perhaps no accident that the very function ofa torch was as a bearer of light, bringing the flame from the fire pot’s heartout into the darkness of a benighted world. The mystery of the Trinity, whichwe still speak forth in the words of Nicaea, written seventeen hundred yearsago, was played out before the patriarch’s eyes all the way back in the pagesof Genesis.

Come back once more to thestory of Abram’s covenant, then. We not only have a double theophany, in whichGod himself takes Abram’s spot. We can now describe the scene in even greaterdetail: the person of the Godhead who takes Abram’s spot in the ritual is noneother than the Son of God. Here God the Father and God the Son walk thecovenant pathway together, pledging themselves forever to Abram and his heirs,and it is the Son, moving second through the pieces, who assigns the penalty tohimself should any of the human parties fail. Jesus pledges to take thepunishment that should have fallen on us. This is a passion-play of Calvary,acted out by God himself two thousand years before the fact. Is it a strangestory? Certainly. But even in its strangeness, we catch clear-eyed glimpses ofa stranger story still to come: that the eternal Son of God, the Light from theFather’s own Light, would bear the curse of our darkness so that we mightinherit the promises of God.

(Click here for an introduction and previous installments of the Evangeliad)
Section 30:26-20 (corresponding to Matt. 22:10-14)
So the servants go out, the banquet is set,All those brought in, in the King's hall are met;They've responded in joy to His gracious call,Arrayed in obedience, one and all.
Except, as the King comes, He sees one man,Who gives no regard to the wedding-feast plan;That man is not wearing the feast's festive robes,No garment to answer the grace of the host.
The King says to him, 'Friend, how came you here,Without the robes in which my guests should appear?'But the man is silent; he gives no response;So the King tells his servants, 'Tie him in bonds.
Yes, bind up his hands and bind up his feet,And then toss him right back out in the street--Out in the darkness, where grief is profuse,For the called are many, but the chosen are few.'"

I'm going to begin this piece with a thesis that will sound perhaps a little radical:
- Any person in a public-facing Christian vocation should hope that they do not reach large-scale success or acclaim.
Musical artists? Give thanks for poor sales on your recent projects and at the difficulty of building any momentum in the touring industry. Pastors? Give thanks that your church does not grow to megachurch proportions (or even anything approaching that). Authors? Give thanks that your books sell poorly and that the publishing industry is stacked against you from the outset (I have a little personal experience of my own with that one).
A little radical, no? So much so, probably, that many people have already clicked away from this article because it sounds so off-kilter. "Why would I hope not to have success? Doesn't my success mean that more people are hearing about Jesus?" Well, maybe, but only in a very limited sense. Think of it this way: if you weren't successful, doesn't God have other means and other people by which he could also make the gospel known (1 Kings 19:14, 18)? Doesn't God have even greater resources for doing that than you have? If you fall short of celebrity status, it does not mean that the Kingdom of God has fallen short of its potential for growth.
My thesis is put in striking terms to make a point, but it's not really that different from the apostle Paul's counsel: "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life" (1 Thess. 4:11). And with regard to giving thanks for a lack of success? - "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:16). Nor is this thesis different from the actual practice of our Lord Jesus, who based his ministry in what was essentially a rural backwater province and who invariably slipped away from the crowds whenever the specter of celebrity raised its head; in one instance he even seems intent on whittling his core of followers down in numbers, not building it up (John 6:60-66). The picture of ministry that emerges from the New Testament is small, communal, and local. This is true even in the exciting days after Pentecost--the church of Jerusalem, from what we can discern, was not today what we would call a megachurch, but seems to have operated on a flexible model as a network of house churches (see Acts 2:46). Further, the "celebrity" leaders of the early church lived lives more marked by persecution, imprisonment, and martyrdom than by any kind of popular acclaim. Indeed, that seems to be more along the lines of what Jesus expects a "successful" ministry to look like, rather than high sales and surging crowds. 
With that thesis in place, let's go back to what prompted this train of thought. Why am I up on this particular soap box right now? This week has seen another grievous set of revelations from the contemporary Christian music world (CCM)--Michael Tait, the frontman for the Newsboys (and former member of DC Talk), has been outed for a long-running double life while on tour, a story marked with drug abuse, alcohol-fueled parties, and sex abuse. A few other voices who know the CCM world well have spoken up to say that this was something of an open secret and a pattern that is not infrequent in the industry. This news hits hard to someone of my generation, who grew up loving Christian music in the '90s and early 2000s, when the Newsboys and DC Talk were at the forefront of it all. But is it surprising? No, it's not.
CCM has consistently shown itself to be a remarkably poor subculture for promoting spiritual maturity. This should have been obvious all along: to take musically gifted young men and women and dump obscene levels of popularity and acclaim on their heads, set them in front of roaring crowds, interview them as if they have deep personal insights on Christian living, put them on tour where they are disconnected from their own families and churches for large chunks of the year--this is a recipe for almost certain failure. We are uprooting them from their support networks and surrounding them with pitfalls and temptations. It is not a favor we do them by making them celebrities; it is an act of thrusting them into grave spiritual danger. I grieve for them, and I regularly remind myself and others that these are among the last people we should look to for teaching on the gospel or wisdom about the Christian life. They are in a place of dangerous prominence, both for themselves and others.
And it's not just Michael Tait; this is a story we've seen played out several times. Another of my favorite bands, NeedtoBreathe, has also been pierced by accusations of sex abuse and betrayal. Other prominent Christian musicians have gone apostate, either leaving the Christian faith entirely or "deconstructing" their faith--Hawk Nelson, Kevin Max (another DC Talk member), a Hillsong frontman, Audrey Assad, and others. Now, that's not to say that every CCM artist or band falls in this category--the majority, by all appearances, are well-rooted enough and put enough safeguards in the practice of their vocation so as to handle it well. But the dangers are very real, and we should be aware of them.
We can go further, and say that it's also not just a CCM problem. It's a pastor problem, too. This is especially the case in megachurches, but it really applies anywhere, even in small churches, if a pastor is surrounded by people who prefer to pretend he's not a sinner. Every Christian communion deals with this issue at some level--it's something we saw in the shockingly public outing of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy (and the continuing echoes of it, both in their communion and those of other denominations, from the Eastern Orthodox to the Southern Baptists). It's something we see even in small ministries, where too much trust is given to fallible, broken, sinful human beings (a category which includes all of us). And it's something we see in a grossly inflated form in evangelical megachurches (the list of megachurch leaders and celebrity pastors that have fallen from grace for sexual misconduct, abusive leadership practices, financial crimes, and other reasons would run for pages). 
Megachurches are perhaps the easiest target for this critique. And I'll say up front that I don't mean to imply that God doesn't use megachurches to accomplish great good--He certainly does, just as he's used CCM artists to do the same. But the leaders in these ministries must always be aware that they are walking through valleys where temptation is going to be on every side, temptations that have mastered and overpowered better Christians than they themselves are. They need to resolve to live radically self-effacing lives, to reject celebrity status with their words and their deeds, and to surround themselves with strong networks of support and rigorous accountability. Otherwise, they are very likely to find themselves in the category of those who have gained the whole world and lost their own soul. I know a man whose side-ministry was, for decades, to serve as a pastoral counselor to megachurch pastors in crisis, many of whom were still in active ministry, and his conclusion is that megachurches are bad for the spiritual health of pastors, period. 
And I include myself in this critique too, by the way. Praise the Lord, I live in an area which, demographically speaking, is unlikely to produce a megachurch. My church draws attendance at a higher percentage of the population of my city (about 3.5%) than most megachurches do of their cities, and yet we're just a bit above 100 on a good day. I honestly wouldn't want to be in another context; bigger churches have come courting on occasion and I've turned them down. If it sounds like I'm wagging my finger at megachurch pastors, it's actually much more of a sense of "There but for the grace of God go I"--I sincerely thank God that he has put me in a place where I can't become a celebrity, because it would probably be my downfall, too.
But the issue isn't just a problem with the size of the church, either. There are dangers associated with the levels of money and elite status-brokering which come with the celebrity life. We don't take seriously enough just how frequently an attachment to money is presented as a tremendous spiritual danger in the gospels. Having more money than you need is perilous for the soul. Even if you can handle it well, living a life of simplicity and generosity, just having it there keeps alive its cancerous potential to befoul the spiritual growth of your children and grandchildren (and I actually know a few Christian families for whom, sadly, that has been the story). As for the status-brokering--getting into social circles with other influential people--our culture has decided to call this "networking" as if it's something good rather than an amplification of the dangers involved, most frequently leading to the sin of pride and a sense of apathy regarding one's own perilous spiritual condition. Remember that we follow a Lord who networked with the ones that nobody else even bothered to care about, and shunned the company of influential people.
Further, the whole nature of evangelical church life has, unfortunately, set up the pastorate as a vocation founded not on spiritual maturity, but on the exercise of natural gifts. A charismatic communicator can draw thousands, even if he is in a wretched spiritual state. Evangelical worship, unfortunately, has degenerated to the place where many people come to church to enjoy the exercise of natural talents--primarily, musical abilities and public speaking--and not to encounter the living presence of the Lord in their midst. I'm not suggesting this is an easy problem to solve; it's not. The exercise of natural gifts is part of this vocation, and one that God has ordained. But there is a danger involved which we must always be aware of--are the people coming to hear me, or to meet with God? That ought to be a conscience-striking question for any pastor with gifted communication skills. 
As I said, I don't have easy answers, other than to say we need two things: a way of grounding our worship services less in the natural gifts of those up front, and more in the presence of God; and a way of seriously ensuring that we are cultivating deep-rooted spiritual maturity for anyone placed in a position of leadership or trust. For me, a lover of the early church, I would say we should bring back the Eucharist as a celebration of our weekly participation in Christ the Great High Priest's eternal presentation of his sacrifice in heaven (thus putting the focus squarely on him), and we should make prospective Christian leaders spend significant seasons before their ministries (and probably during their ministries, too) in places of complete self-renunciation, like a monastery. But I acknowledge that probably won't work for everyone.
My guess is that, in the end, our celebrity culture in American Christianity has almost no grounding in reality. When we look back at this age of the church, viewing it from the perspective of eternity, almost all of the true giants of God's Kingdom will be names we won't recognize at all. I expect that megachurch pastors and Christian music artists will be very poorly represented, except for those few who were able to survive the dangers of their vocations by a sustained practice of humble self-renunciation. The saints who knew God best and were of greatest use to his Kingdom will be, in large part, ordinary people that were unknown beyond their own hometowns, people whose examples of virtue rang out so loudly in the courts of heaven that their smallest, most unnoticed acts will resound through eternity. Those ranks will be especially filled with workers for the Kingdom who labored in almost complete anonymity from the world's gaze, people serving the Lord in places of persecution and suffering, living lives marked by the quiet, patient work of planting seeds in the darkness. I've known a few in my travels, and I did not deserve to stand in their presence. Those are the ones who deserve the acclaim, and one day they will get it, and we who received too much acclaim here on earth will probably just make it to the other side "as one passing through the flames" (1 Cor. 3:15).