Looking at Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road
Spoilers, including the final passage of the book. Beware.
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and tensional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
pg 287
For whatever reason I have always enjoyed the genre of the post-apocalyptic. There is some strange allure in seeing the last remnant of society struggle to carve out an existence in a world once tame now turned to a wasteland. There are great stories to be found in seeing the modern technical advancements of humanity rendered obsolete by some unforeseen and unstoppable disaster — The futility of the intellect and planning of man in the face of the inevitable.
Of course the genre runs the gamut, some showing a world dilapidated but very much in tack; the surviving members forming gangs and boasting weapons and renegade tech while others focus on the fallout of radioactive nuclear waste and fleeing masses seeking to outrun a toxic wasteland, the most ambitious taking it a next step further into the sci-fi and unreal — think The Matrix or Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Series. All of these isolating a different conflict facing humanity; focusing on the evil within our race, the monster they have created, or their fight against the brutal forces of nature.
None though stay so hauntingly true to there form as does McCarthy’s The Road. In searing stream of conscious the story goes from snippet to snippet of this last father and son as they vainly make there way towards the coast through the desolation of a waste-ridden continent. The tale gives us none of the information we would desire. The man does not know what happened to the world. He merely heard the concussions, began filling the bathtub with water and when it all settled found himself in a world filled with ash and no chance of recuperation.
In this world left hanging on, the questions of morality continues to stalk the father and son almost as much as the roving bands of cannibal gangs. The man continues to reassure his son they are “the good guys,” and that they “carry the fire.” It is a promise which is tested to the limits as again and again the man is pushed to protect the innocence, and safety, of a boy who cannot be kept from seeing the countless horrors which litter the landscape; be it a charred infant over a campfire, the soon to be devoured captives hoarded in a basement, or the bloated corpse bobbing in the tide. The boy continuing to stretch out his hand to help those few the come across and his father so soon to raise the barrel of their single-slug revolver. In this shell of a world does a single act of generosity matter anymore? The question goes unanswered though perhaps in the mind of the boy at least it is indeed the fire which he carries.
The books last lines perhaps bring together all the best and worse themes within the book. Throughout their journey the man struggles with the question of how much he should tell his son of the old world. It is not as if this ashen landscape is a dream from which he may wake, or even a prison which can be escaped. The world the man knew is gone and the one the boy grew up in can never go back to what it was. The man’s world is as much a dream as the nightmares he wakes up from every night, the creatures in them as much a figment of his imagination as is the society his stories would seek to describe. In the end the boy asks him to not to tell him any more stories, “they aren’t true.”
And yet the hopelessness of the tale is most profound here as well. The trout, the first true living thing seen in the story save the barking of some never-witnessed dog, map out in their backs “the world that is becoming.” They are the first sign of hope that this ash is merely a passing shadow which will awaken to some new age. Yet the world which was is never coming back, the scares never to heal, the wound the world suffered never to truly be remedied. This is The Road’s future without hope. The road goes down to the coast but there is no salvation in it, no way of return.
If the book is not about the loss of innocence, then perhaps it is about the arbitrary nature of it. So what if his wide-eyed wonder is preserved, it would not result in him returning to a world where such a thing as innocence can exist. There is no messiah in McCarthy’s world, only a woodsman with a wife, a son, and daughter; the promise that humanity might continue though to what end there is no mention. In this world what use is being the good guy if it does not put food in your belly, and what good is carrying the fire if it does not keep you warm.
McCarthy’s gospel is no gospel at all. Instead it is desperation which finds its satisfaction nowhere and in no one. The tale does not point a finger at the evils of humanity — there is no indication that their deeds caused the devastation — nor does it elevate their virtue, as even the son sharing with an old and dying man a few precious cans of food does not prove to be met with any form of thanks, not to mention reward or praise.
The tale may be about the environment — those of course who said it was the most important environmental work you will read certainly thought so — and it may be about humanity — though if so, what it is trying to say about them is as muddied as the water they drink. In then end it is simply about abandon in a world which no longer possesses any answers but instead simply is. The man does not know what happened, and after he is gone the son does not know what will be in the world to come. They merely follow on to the sea and find there that what hope there may be, survive or no, is no hope at all — but simply the hum of mystery.
1. Overviewing Bauckham’s Jesus and the God of Israel.
Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the God of Israel focus’ on exploring the way in which early church upheld the divinity of Jesus within the context of Second Temple Judaism without betraying the monotheistic faith which distinguished Judaism, and subsequently Christianity, from the pagan nations of the world. Along with N.T. Wright and others, Bauckham attempts to explore the “historical Jesus” while not only continuing to reaffirm orthodoxy, but also bringing radically clarity to New Testament Christology and the way in which it functioned in the early church. Seeking to challenge the prevailing trend within much Jesus scholarship of the recent decades, Bauckham’s main agenda is to challenge a view of Christology which would places the early church’s view of Jesus as fully divine at the end of a long series of Christological developments whereby through varying steps of deification Christ, over time, was elevated to a place of supreme divine status.
Bauckham seeks to primarily show that the divinity of Jesus is not a later development of Hellenized Christianity, nor is it explainable by a hypothesis of semi-divine intermediary figures within Second Temple Jewish literature creating precedent for Jesus being slowly be elevated to a place of supreme deity. Both concerns are answered when we understand the definitive way which Second Temple Judaism had to distinguish the unique divine identity from all other reality. Bauckham’s overarching premise revolves around his assertion that when viewed through this lens of Second Temple Judaism’s “clear concept of the absolute distinction between God and all other reality”[1] it becomes clear that from the earliest preaching of the apostles, Jesus was purposefully and methodically being placed within borders of the divine identity.
2. Examining the concept of suffering monotheism.
I would like to so briefly explore in this paper what I am referring to a suffering monotheism. The Hermeneutical key is found within the following expert from Bauckham’s God Crucified;
“…We have considered what the New Testament writers understanding of the relation of Jesus to God says about Jesus, we must now ask what it says about God. In other words, we must consider Jesus as revelation of God. The profoundest points of New Testament Christology occur when the inclusion of the exalted Christ in the divine identity entails the inclusion of the crucified Christ in the divine identity, and the christological pattern of humiliation and exaltation is recognized as revelatory of God, indeed as the definitive revelation of who God is.”[2]
Bauckham’s entire argument hinges on this point. Having meticulously labored to establish the way it which Second Temple Judaism understood the “unique divine identity of the one God”[3] and the way in which Jesus was included in the divine identity, Bauckham turns the argument back on itself and looks to explore the way in which God fits into the unique identity of Jesus. What then does Jesus say about the identity of God. Bauckham’s argument is that we should be cautious to not approach Jesus’ divinity with an a priori definition of what it means to be divine. We must let what we know of Jesus define what God is like just as much as we let what we know of God define what Jesus is like.
If then Jesus suffers, God suffers. If he feels weary, indeed God feels weary. If he experiences pain, so too the Eternal One. If Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, so too was not YHWH[4]. Jesus, in his unique ministry and history, redefines the divine identity not it that he takes away from what it means to be divine, but that he redefines it around his unique personhood and revelatory program. Just as in creational monotheism, where the singular act of YHWH’s sole creative work distinguishes his unique divine identity from all other reality, now Jesus establishes a sort of suffering monotheism, wherein YHWH’s suffering becomes a way of distinguishing him from all the no-gods who do not suffer. This is done in such a way as to make it imperative that just as the one who is not the creator cannot partake in the unique divine identity, so too cannot the one who has not suffered. The pattern of, as Paul establishes, humiliation which brings about exaltation[5], or as John puts it, humiliation which indeed is exaltation,[6] is assumed within the divine identity and the revelatory nature of the person of Christ brings near to us a God who suffers.
Bauckham sums this up so succinctly, saying, “[The] point of [Jesus'] radical identification with those who suffer and die in God’s absence is actually the climax of the revelation of his divine identity.” [7] God’s identity became knit to an event which was cataclysmic in the life of the godhead and in the revelation of God to man. The crucifixion of Christ became the event around which the identity of God is redrawn and established. In a shocking way, the identity of YHWH remains constant, his deity unchallenged, even when coming to the lowest place and taking on the position of a servant. Bauckham continues, “Jesus is no less divine in his identification with the godforsaken than he is in his exercise of divine authority or the coming theophany of his divine glory.”[8]
At the heart of Second Temple Judaism’s understanding of the unique divine identity of God was the passages from Deuteronomy and Deutero-Isaiah which most clearly defined that which distinguished the unique divine identity from all other reality.[9] With the inclusion of Jesus into that identity, the history of Jesus, who suffered and died, became a part of the history of YHWH. While Israel understood itself as the Servant of Deutero-Isaiah,[10] considered “stricken, smitten by God,”[11] in an unexpected event YHWH himself, in the crucifixion and death of Christ, comes to his people and rather then be manifest as somehow separate from their plight, he takes on the very identity of Israel and assumes the role of the suffering servant. As Abraham Heschel stated “Israel’s suffering is God’s grief.”[12] The writers of the New Testament go farther Israel’s suffering is God’s suffering.
Fully identifying with the history of his people, with the “forsaken Israel”[13] and with all humanity exiled from Eden, the Theoantropos himself is taken from the garden and exiled outside the camp upon the tree.[14] The identity of YHWH is seen as one who sits with his creation in suffering, not just as Lord over it, but as companion in it. Where as in “Man’s religiosity” humanity “looks in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer so poignantly said, “The Bible directs us to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.”[15]
The relationship between the identity of YHWH and the identity of Jesus, as Bauckham attempts to maintain, is not just a one-way street. It is not enough to merely assign Jesus the identity of the divine, we must assign to the divine the identity of Jesus. More than a spokesman for God, Jesus is the perfect revelation of God. As such his program, obedience, servanthood, suffering, and death are indicative of what it means to be divine. Jesus fully identifies with Israel’s history, walking out their particular story in such a way as to assume the whole of who they were called to be and then, at their own hands, experience the very suffering which was upon the whole nation.[16]
Suffering Monotheism then helps us to hold in one thought the transcendence of the creator on one hand and the nearness of him in the experience of humanity. YHWH is the one who “dwell[s] in the high and holy place,” but who, in coming low as a human in Jesus, is present “with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.”[17] God is seen then as one who suffers with humanity. Far from being the aloof absentee god of the deists, YHWH is seen as “overwhelmingly real and shatteringly present”[18] in the midst of our suffering, pain, plight, and godforsakenness.
Suffering monotheism is the identity of the God who embraces weakness. Within the unique identity which comprises God is the reality that he is one who becomes susceptible to our plight, the fatigue of humanity, the wearisome soul-space of one not shielded from the weight of the fallen world, the fierce brutality of the hands of our bondage and depravity. To reference Moltmann, “God heals the sicknesses and the griefs by making the sicknesses and the griefs his suffering and his grief. In the image of the crucified God the sick and dying can see themselves, because in them the crucified God recognizes himself.”[19] The true weight of the divine identity is found as YHWH is revealed, and indeed his identity redrawn around him being one who suffers. Hauntingly real, Jesus established definitely that to be what constitutes as unique and divine is to suffer.
In this way the early Christian testimony of Jesus was a radically novel development in the knowledge of God, while simultaneously remaining consistent with the previous revelations of God in the Old Testament. The scandal of the cross, which early church embraced was this “cult of a crucified man.”[20] The crucified God was a radical development in that it was the fullest identification, the clearest revelation of the unique divine identity of the one true God. By radically clarifying himself in the person of Jesus Christ, YHWH assaulted the powers, principalities and “pagan gods who are no-gods”[21] by participating in that singular experience which all the idols of the nations and the Hellenistic deity of Platonic monotheism never had: the agonizing soul-anguish of human suffering.
3. Summarizing a Response to divine identity.
Baukhams’ concept of the divine identity is in perfect keeping with the holistic faith imperative to understanding the meta-narrative under which the biblical testimony operates. Seeking to answer the same question — “what did first century Jews, including Jesus and his first followers, mean by ‘god’?” (as well as others) — as N.T Wright, — who responds with the “single phrase: creational and covenantal monotheism,”[22] — Bauckham seeks to expound upon the way in which Jesus’ identity is upheld and enriched by studies in Second Temple Judaism and the cultural milieu into which Christianity was birthed.
While the concept of the divine identity is something which, as Wright states, “neither the study of the OT nor the study of the Fathers would have taught me,”[23] I have found the concept very congruous with the direction in which I was already developing my particular views on the knowledge of God and deity. This view of Jesus rightly aligns with the key concepts of meta-narrative, and understanding the concepts of “story, symbol, and praxis”[24] which so permeate the holy scriptures. When we rightly place Jesus at the focal point of the divine drama we can better understand the way in which his identity and program, far from being an isolated event cut off from the drama of Israel and indeed the world’s redemption, is actually an integral part — a grandiose retelling and drawing together — of all things in and through the person of Jesus Christ who brings to a close both Israel and all humanities’ “story in search of an ending.”[25]
Divine identity, as portrayed by Bauckham (which I would argue differs in several respects from the concept of the divine identity seen in Venable), therefore further solidifies a concept of divinity which I had been playing at for sometime, and yet lacked the precise language and familiarity with Second Temple Judaism to rightly articulate. Over the six months since my formal introduction to the concepts of divine identity found in Bauckham and Wright, I have given much though and writing to better understanding the way in which this view of God not only clarifies the Old Testament’s view of YHWH, but also simplifies our way of approaching the deity of Jesus. Freeing us from slavish dependence to questions of ontic quantities, the divine identity allows Jesus to freely roam the Judean countryside — through the temple courts and bloody up the hill to Golgotha — unhampered (but not, I would contend, unhelped) by the “hostages of fortune”[26] afforded Christology by Nicea and Chalcedon.
The Jesus of the divine identity is able to become a three-dimensional character richly interacting with the world, rather then the Jesus of modernity always struggling between his humanity being truncated by Apollinarianism on one hand and his deity being robbed by Arianism on the other. Instead of being the mediator who librates us from the unique history, the aforementioned meta-narrative, of the Jewish faith, Jesus can be richly appreciated as the one who broke down “the dividing wall of hostility”[27] and welcomes us to the table of what was always meant to be the international family of Abraham.
[1] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids. 2008. pp. 18
[2] Ibid. pp. 33
[3] Ibid. pp. 16
[4] Cf. Matthew 4:1, Psalm 78:41 nasb
[5] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids. 2008. pp. 41-45
[6] Ibid pp. 46-57
[7] Ibid. pp. 266
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid pp. 9
[10] cf. Wright, N.T. “The Servant and Jesus: The Relevance of the Colloquy for the Current Quest for Jesus.” Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins. ed. William H. Bellinger, Jr. and William R. Farmer. 1998, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. 281–297
[11] Isaiah 53:4 esv
[12] Heschel, Abraham. The Prophets. pp. 192
[13] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids. 2008. p. 261
[14] cf. Wright, N.T. “The Servant and Jesus: The Relevance of the Colloquy for the Current Quest for Jesus.”
[15] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison, New York, Macmillan, 1972. 316
[16] cf. Wright, N.T. “The Servant and Jesus: The Relevance of the Colloquy for the Current Quest for Jesus.”
[17] Isaiah 57:15 esv
[18] Heschel, Abraham. “The Prophets.” New York, Harper Perennial. 1962. pp. 286
[19] Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Fortress Press, 2001. pp. 191
[20] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids. 2008. pp. 146
[21] Ibid. pp. 29 cf. 34
[22] Wright. N.T. Jesus And The Identity Of God. (Ex Auditu 1998, 14) 42–56.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Wright, N.T. “The Servant and Jesus:The Relevance of the Colloquy for the Current Quest for Jesus.”
[25] Ibid.
[26] Wright. N.T. Jesus And The Identity Of God. (Ex Auditu 1998, 14) 42–56.
[27] Ephesians 2:14 esv
This is the final post (at least presently) of a series on Monotheism, you can click the sub-headings to see the corresponding previous posts
As we turn the pages from the revelation of YHWH seen in the Hebrew Bible to the person of Jesus seen in the Christian New Testament the climax of the Divine Identity comes into sharp focus. It was one thing to understand YHWH as god as he was seen throughout Israel’s history but to then take that same name and apply it to a man was to take a step which is seemingly impossible within the Greco-Roman worldview. Yet, when we understand how YHWH was understood within Second Temple Judaism as the one true god we are better prepared to see the way in which the New Testament writers make the drastic shift of equally assigning divinity to Jesus of Nazareth.
If the god which the New Testament is claiming Jesus to be is that of Hellenistic thought and Platonic Dualism, then the philosophical gymnastics required to make the phrase “Jesus is God” plausible in any metaphysical or ontological way approaches impossibility. That deity is simply too far removed from the space-time continuum of human affairs to come into any real contact with the spatial realm. We are left standing with Arius and Docetism and Gnostics trying to somehow philosophize a way in which Jesus could somehow accomplish that which he is said to have accomplished without Jesus being that which Platonic thought made an impossibility, namely being equally fully human and fully divine.
We must have a shift in worldview though. Those writers, and indeed those disciples who first believed in Jesus as divine and later wrote about him, were not unaware of how radical it was to incorporate a man into Deity, and yet without seemingly any philosophical or theological conflict as to betray their strictly monotheistic consciousness, they do exactly that. In the worldview of these rigidly Monotheistic Jewish men who left their livelihoods to followed after this carpenter turned Rabbi, the concept of incorporating a man into the Identity of Divinity was perhaps improbable but ideologically not impossible.
What must be understood, as we have looked at in the previous posts, is that within the Hebraic worldview there were clear boundary lines which defined that which was divinity and that which was not. Where Greek though identified God by that which he was not, and characterized him by his removal from the visible world, in the minds of first century Jews, and indeed in the minds of those very ones who followed Jesus and later wrote of him, deity was divined by actions and the one who had done certian things was divine. Therefore had Jesus, though now being a human, been participatory in the actions that characterize the Identity of the Divine, then in must follow that he himself must in fact be divine.
Creational Monotheism
What is perhaps the clearest action the New Testament writers apply to Jesus is his participation in the creative event. Continually throughout the Old Testament the action of creation, as we have seen, is ascribed to YHWH alone. The claim that it was Jesus who had been active in the event of creation makes him synonymous with the creator himself and clearly identifies him as one with the Divine Identity. If it is YHWH only who created the heavens and earth and Jesus is said to have created the heavens and earth than Jesus must be YHWH.
Three of the clearest New Testament passages concerning the personhood of Jesus, each from the pen of three different writers; Paul, John, and the author of Hebrews, attest to Jesus’ unique identity in creating all things. They not only set him apart as creator, but establish that his creation of the world means that he himself was not a created being. Jesus is placed up and above all the created order in a way which monotheism would have dictated pure idolatry be it ascribed to any other figure, be that man, angel, animal or demon.
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:3
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
Colossians 1:16
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
Hebrews 1:1-2
Sovereign Monotheism
The second distinctive of divinity which we have discussed previously and we find throughout the New Testament readily applied to Jesus is the subject of his rule over all things. This is commonly talked about by reference to his ascension over or above “all things” and his position at the “right hand of God.” What was clear in the early Jewish context was that this was not merely an exaltation of a human figure to a function of deity, but that this was in fact an open declaration of what had been true concerning Jesus all along, namely that he was YHWH, the only one who could sit above all and be on the divine throne,
Even as early as the first Christian sermon at Pentecost a mere fifty days following Jesus’ resurrection we see the apostle Peter preaching a fully formed Christology of the exalted Christ. Jesus resurrection was not viewed as merely an external work of God resuscitating a human figure from the dead, but was seen as a definitive act of declaring Jesus’ identity to be fully divine. When he was declared to be above all things, Jesus was understood to share in the sovereign rule of YHWH over the whole earth. Since only one could be the supreme ruler over all other rule and power, then Jesus having this position would necessarily require that he was a part of the divine Godhead itself.
This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God… For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’
Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”Acts 2:32-33, 34-36
that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Ephesians 1:20-23
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Matthew 28:18
For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.”
II Corinthians 15:27
…his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things… After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Hebrews 1:2, 3
…Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2
Covenantal Monotheism
Though perhaps not as immediately evident, the New Testament is replete with references to Jesus’ participation the acts of YHWH in the old Testament, specifically those acts related to YHWH’s covenants with Abraham and Israel. Jesus is seen as being one who not only had himself personally entered into covenant with Israel and preformed such ransom acts as rescuing Israel from Egypt and sustaining and chastising them in the wilderness but who also initiates Covenant with Israel.
For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
I Corinthians 10:1-4
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
Jude 1:5
Perhaps the strongest argument of Jesus participation in Covenantal Monotheism, and as such in the divine identity, is his enactment of the New Covenant with his followers. Whereas Moses served merely as an intermediary, going between God and Israel to enact the Mosaic Covenant, Jesus acts unaided when at the Last Supper he explicitly enters into a New Covenant with his disciples. The imagery could not have been stronger, the bread his flesh, wine blood and the twelve disciples mirroring the twelve Israelite tribes, all pointing to the fact what Jesus was doing was something which only YHWH could do. Jesus was, unaided and singularly, rewriting the Covenant between God and Israel around himself and thus redefining who the covenant people were and how that covenant was entered. To those early Jewish believers, and those present at the table that night, this was a clear sign that Jesus was in fact fully divine, fully YHWH, the covenant keeping God.
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Luke 22:20
Eschatological Monotheism
One of the strongest ways in which Jesus is included within the divine identity is the way in which the New Testament authors hold Jesus as the one to which all creation will look and acknowledge as Lord and God. Jesus is seen as the object of the Eschatological day and when he is vindicated before the nations as truly being YHWH then monotheism itself would be vindicated. Jesus was given not only the right to judge the world, but the promise that he would be the one to which all creatures would look and acknowledge as God.
Jesus himself claimed that Judgment of the world had been given to him, and the New Testament authors upheld this belief as they proclaimed that the one who was raised from the dead was indeed to be the one at the end of all things who passed judgment on the whole earth. This act as a eschatological judge clearly stated Jesus participation in an event which was to be the vindication of YHWH alone above all others. As such Jesus is necessarily included within that identity as being YHWH.
The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son,
John 5:22
because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Acts 17:31
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
Revelation 19:11
What is more though, is that Jesus is accorded that highest place of being the one to which all the nations look and acknowledge as YHWH at the Eschatological day when the God of Covenant at last confronts the nations of the earth. The one who the Hebrew Bible declared the gentile nations would look to and recognize as the one true God who is over, above, and uttering shames their no-god idols the New Testament declares is no other than this Jesus of Nazareth. The reorganization of Jesus as God is an event none other than the eschatological vindication of monotheism, and subsequently Israel at the end of the age.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11
And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Revelation 5:13-14
Cultic Monotheism
With the assertion of the previous categories of divine identity in place it is no wonder than that the response we see given to Jesus is that which would be expected of a deity. Jesus is accorded worship by those who followed him. Though the act of falling prostrate in front of a figure, (the meaning of the word, proskuneo, translated in most English translations as “worship”) does not, in the first century context, necessarily mean ascribing deity to n object (as it could mean simply honoring an authority), the way in which the writes of the New Testament speak of Jesus shows that their devotion exceeded that of merely an honored figure. Their response to Jesus is emblematic of belief in his worth of receiving the honor which was accorded to YHWH alone.
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.
Matthew 28:16-17
The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
John 5:22-23
To Jesus staunchly monotheistic Jewish followers there appears to be no contradiction in applying that same honor and laud which was expressly forbidden to be given to any but YHWH to Jesus. What is more, it would seem that to the early church, to refuse to give this worship to Jesus was in fact to be outside of the family of God. Worship of Jesus was as such that worshiping him did not take away from the sole worship accorded to YHWH alone and failure to worship him resulted in failure to worship YHWH at all.
Cultic adoration of Jesus was what distinguished the Early Church from both first century Judaism and the pagan world of the Greco-roman empire. While Judaism looked at Christians as idolaters for worshiping one they considered to be other than YHWH, the Rome condemned Christianity for their refusal to worship any other. It was this cult of the crucified man which distinguished Christianity and ultimately attests to a early view of Jesus as being fully divine and as such fully worthy of such adoration.
And again, when he brings the firstborn (Jesus) into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.”Hebrews 1:6
And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Revelation 5:13-14
The Divine Name
The final issue with grasping a Christological Monotheism is to see the way in which the divine name was applied to Jesus in the New Testament and the teaching of the early church. While a shift in language (from the Jewish scripture being written in mostly Hebrew and some Aramaic, to the New Testament writings being in Greek) and the hyper-legalism of Second Temple Judaism (the Tetragrammaton [YHWH] was not spoke aloud and had been replaced by a interposed letters of the Hebrew Adonai in the Hebrew holy texts) obscure the usage of the divine name in reference to Jesus, its usage is not totally lost. It is still possible to detect clear ways the apostles and the early church assigned the divine name to Jesus.
The change in languages in Israel led to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek and the predominate language of religious writing following suit. When the Tetragrammaton was recorded in the Greek Septuagint it was either rendered as the four Hebrew characters, the Greek equivalent (ΠΙΠΙ) or a Greek transliteration (IAΩ).[1] While none of these translations were used in the writing of the New Testament, what was used was the Greek Kurios. Kurios became used as the representative replacement for the Tetragrammaton in Greek copies of Jewish religious writings of the first century A.D. While Kurios can carry a range of meanings, not necessarily referring to deity and could identify merely and authority figure such as a governor or Caesar, the New Testament writers contunially extend its meaning to include much more.
One of the clearest ways in which this is seen is the through the way the word Kurios is uses in the place of YHWH in the New Testament’s quotations of the Old Testament. These quotes and allusions, two of which we will examine below, take the Greek word Kurios, emphatically apply to it the full weight of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, and then even more emphatically, and without hesitation apply its meaning to Jesus.
The first passage to look at briefly is the famous passage in Philippians 2.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord (Kurios),
to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11
Paul describes the exaltation of Jesus, interposing his own unique Christological interpretation with a clearly monotheist quotation from Duetero-Isaiah.
“Turn to me and be saved,
the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.’
Isaiah 45:22-23
Within this context the name given then to Christ, and the force of the confession of all in heaven, on earth and under the earth that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” is more than a mere kingly authority as might be appropriate to give an earthly deity. The interposed quotation, coupled with the monotheistic declaration of Jesus as Lord show that Paul intended that Kurios carry the full meaning of the divine name YHWH.[2]
The second scripture to be considered is Paul’s uses of the Shama, (“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” Deut 6:4) the quintessential monotheistic declaration of Judaism as well as established language of creational monotheism to assert Jesus’ participation in the unique divine identity. In a passage addressing the participation in food sacrificed to idols, Paul asserts a typical Jewish statement of their belief in one god, and yet extends its bounds to include Jesus into that definition of one god.
Richard Bauckham lays out the verse as follows to best show the way in which Paul echoes established monotheistic identity to include Jesus within the bounds of Jewish Monotheism[3]
a) yet for us there is one God, the Father,
b) from whom are all things and for whom we exist,
c) and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
d) through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
I Corinthians 8:6
Lines a) and c) reproduce all the words to the Shema and yet rearranges them to reflect both an assertion of one God and of Jesus being within that unique identity of one God. Therefore to Paul, there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Thus the word God (Greek [I Cor. 8:6]: Theos, Heb[Deut 6:4]: Elohim) is applied to the Father, and the word Lord (Greek [I Cor 8:6]: Kurios, Heb [Deut 6:4]: YHWH) is applied to Jesus. The Shema then becomes divided in a way to apply both to Jesus and the Father while still maintaining a belief in one supreme God.
This point is only strengthened by Paul’s interposing of traditional assertions of creational monotheism (lines b) and d)) which applies the participation in the creative work equally to both the Father and Jesus Christ. Paul thus extends the meaning of both allusions in such a way as to make it clear that Jesus is to be understood as YHWH himself. Jesus is not one merely bearing e separate identity apart from YHWH the Father but he is indeed YHWH himself manifest to the world. With the application of the divine name YHWH to Jesus the New Testament writers where making the unabashed claim to Jesus indeed being fully included in the unique monotheistic identity and thus fully divine, and completely God.
Conclusion
The treatment of Jesus within the New Testament is unique not in that it shrinks back from making clear statements concerning Jesus’ identity, but in that it uses, when looked at within the first century Jewish cultural, some of the clearest distinctions to apply to Jesus the full identity of God. Using the concept of divine identity, that is, defining God in the way in which the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism (the context in which Christianity was birthed) defined him, it becomes easy to see the clear ways in which the earliest Christians understood Jesus’ participation in that identity of the one true God.
The identity of Jesus − far from being an ambiguous subject slowly developing to maturity with a fully divine Christ somewhere after the council of Nicaea − was well established and firmly rooted in the Jewish context of the early church almost as soon as Christ ascended from amongst them. The earliest Christians understood Jesus as sole creator, sovereign ruler, the maker of covenant with Israel, subject of the eschatological vindication of monotheism, the only one due all worship, and the bearer of the divine name YHWH. In this way Jesus was clearly seen as with the boundaries of the unique divine identity and this fully-divine himself.
From this perspective the New Testament authors were able to clearly communicate Jesus as God without having to perform philosophical gymnastics of Greek thought in order to maintain Jesus deity without effectively nullifying his humanity while at the same time not reducing Jesus to a quasi-divine demigod or mere human. These Jewish categories allow us to appreciate Jesus in his full historical context, in the way in which he presented himself and the way in which his earliest followers understood him, without the weight of baggage brought on by such Greek philosophical approaches concerning metaphysical distinctions and ontological qualifications introduced and maintained by Origen, Augustine, and (perhaps unknowingly) Nicaea and Chalcedon. In this way we can once more into the eyes of that Jewish carpenter and see reflected there the true Messiah, fully God and fully man, and say along with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.”[4]
[1] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans. Grand Rapids. 2008. 190
[2] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans. Grand Rapids. 2008. 37-38
[3] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans. Grand Rapids. 2008. 27-28
[4] John 20:28
November Newsletter (PDF)
O the leadership of this Crucified One
O the leadership of the Lamb
and he’s plotting my death
and he’s digging my grave
O he works all things for good.
The other week found me singing this simple chorus in my car and, now, at the end of our Christology class a month later, I find it to be the perfect summary of all that encompasses the beauty of this most excellent man. He, Jesus Christ, who is the sum of our thoughts, our obsession, our meditation, and as Paul puts it so elegantly “who is your life” (Col. 3:4) is the most perfect of leaders, the most radiant of companions and the most excellent of friends.
“This is my beloved and this is my friend” (Song 5:16) the maiden calls out and we the Church, his body, call him our head (Col 1:18). He is the “captain of our salvation” (Heb 2:10), the “author and finisher of our faith” (Heb 12:2) and it is fitting that he would be called also in his life and death the “last Adam” (I Cor. 15:45) and with glory in his resurrection, the “second man” (I Cor. 15:47).
The program of the Son of God was not merely the improvement of humanity through a social program to rehabilitate them from sin. Christ instead came to put the race of Adam in the ground for all eternity. Humanity was married to Sin and any attempt to leave her husband and be united to another was adultery. The plight of all the sons of Adam and all the daughters of Eve was their marriage to sin and their bondage to death (Rom. 7:1-6). Jesus Christ came to put to death all the Children of Adam, that through our union to his death and resurrection, we might pass from death, our marriage to sin, to life, our union to him.
The Mystery then is that every son of Adam will lie locked in the grave and burn in the Lake of fire. Jesus came as the last of that race to put an end to its progeny. What is more mysterious is that whenever anyone is “in Christ there is a new creation” (II Cor. 5:17). When he arose with light and the glorious splendor of resurrection power, Christ was shown to be the second man. He is the firstborn and father of an entirely new Humanity and those united to him are a part of a new race of mankind.
While it may not look like it presently, there are two races of Humanity walking upon the surface of the earth; one is of Adam, destined to destruction, and the other is of Christ, destined for a resurrection such as his. The mystery of the gospel is that, right now, those in Christ, those walking around unified in to death and resurrection do not now know what they will be. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God”
(Col 3:3), because you “died with Christ” (Rom. 6:8) and the life you now live you “live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal 2:20) and so it is that “when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4).
And so, as I drive to class, as we got throughout our lives; face circumstance, hardship, suffering disappointment, joys, and elation, I entrust my life and my song to the leadership of this most glorious One. Our Resurrection is as sure as his was, our vindication as confident as the Son of God’s, our hope as sure as his. He came to put Adam in the grave, and it is all unto my good, that I might shed my linage, be “born again” (John 3:3), become a “[child] of God”(John 1:13), a member of the New Humanity — a new creation (II Cor. 5:17) — and ultimately rise in “the image of the heavenly man” (I Cor. 15:49).
The Departure of the Apostles to Preach the Gospel
The supremacy of Jesus is the issue at the end of the age. Though all sorts of secondary issues may assail the church as to distract us from this plain truth, the New Testament is clear that the most important confession concerning a believer is that concerning the person of Jesus Christ. While we might be tempted to move on from what some would consider the “elementary doctrines of the faith,” Paul makes it irrevocably clear that if we move ahead and build upon “any other foundation than that which is in Christ Jesus” then we are in danger of joining the way of unbelievers.
The testimony of the preaching of the early Church is the same as that which is to be preached in the context of the end of the age. When Peter stood up at Pentecost (Acts 2) the whole diving focus of his preaching was that God had exalted Jesus and “made him both Lord and Christ.” For the early church this was no light thing. The revelation of the New Testament was that a man now shared the divine throne and that this one who had been crucified in their midst was that same Lord of Glory who had created the Heavens and the Earth. Paul and Peter both use the same Old Testament concept that “whoever calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2) to declare that it is Jesus Christ who one must acknowledge as the Lord in order to be saved.
The reason which the church must have clarity concerning Jesus Christ is that he is the active participant in the drama of the end of the age. That which the Old Testament tells us YWH will do at the end of the age is what the New Testament reveals Jesus will do at the end of the age. The event of the end times are meant to confront the earth with the Identity of YHWH, and the name which that Identity carries is ‘Jesus.’ He is the one to whom all the nations will bow and whom they will confess as Lord. If the church does not have clarity concerning this man then we too will be deceived into offense at the way by which YHWH confronts the nations and forces them to reckon with his identity.
The crisis of the Western Church today is that almost everything else is preached except Jesus. Whereas in the New Testament writings, Christology is the predominate theme which is addressed — his preeminence being established in almost every circumstance, doctrine, and teaching — today in the church the topic of Christ is rarely preached with its full weight. We are satisfied to let Christ simply remain a peripheral issue, a figure relegated to the sidelines and left in the shadows while the Church pursues a Christless and often unscriptural spirituality devoid of any transformative power and all to often “without God in the world.”
Instead of our lives, confessions, songs, preaching, meditation and practice being consumed with the glory of this man it is all to often consumed by almost all other form of distraction. Preaching is often centered instead around how Christianity can perhaps garner us comfort is this lifetime, this next year or even this next week, rather than preaching Christ and the splendor of his glory in the hope which is to be revealed. The central indictment of Evangelical Protestantism in the earth today is that it is shallow, baseless, and often unspiritual all because it lacks the foundational rootedness in the person and work of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
The New Testament writings make it clear that the wave of delusion which is going to come upon the whole earth is to begin in the Church first. Whereas in the last days an ultimate man will arise and lead the nations into apostasy, long before that takes place the crises facing the nations will be the delusion which will sweep through the Church of Christ. When the true gospel and the centrality of Jesus are not preached and upheld the very bedrock upon which the Christian faith is built erodes away and gives rise to delusion within the body of Christ.
The supremacy of Christ is answer to all the perpetual woe of the Church. All our rootless spirituality, our endless neurotic striving for the “next thing” which will placate our hearts and sooth our souls finds answer and satisfaction in gazing upon this one most beautiful God-man. He, himself; the knowledge of him, the pursuit of him, intimacy with him, is the whole of the Christian faith. He is the substance around which all our desires and wants find fulfillment.
The apostle John writes of Christ by saying “in him was life” (John 1:4) but it is the apostle Paul who takes this reality one step further and expounds on our relationship to Christ in the most absolute of terms. In Colossians 3 we find that that our very lives are hidden in Christ. The mystery then is that we do not even know what our life is outside of Christ. The very sum total of our existence is summed up in him. What we truly are, our desires dreams and plans are all hidden in him.
Paul goes on to call Jesus “Christ, who is your life.” The totality of our existence, the whole of everything that makes up what it means to live, to be human, to exist, from the most complex and lofty thoughts of hope, love, and joy, to the most simple and base activities such as simply breathing are summed up, contained, transcended and find fullest expression in Christ Jesus the Lord. There simply is nothing other than him.
He is the fullness of deity dwelling bodily, the most elegant revelation of who the eternal one is. To see him is to see God, because he is God. There is no other obsession which should captivate the heart of a believer as meditating on this most beautiful one should. He is the fairest of ten thousand, the sum of all our thoughts, and the heart of our dreams, desires and goals. Outside of him is only darkness, in him is only light. Christ Jesus must be out preeminence. He will be our preeminence or we will not be his. As the apostle said, the Lord has “fixed a day” (Acts 17) to judge the earth by this man and in that day there will be no question as to his identity. He will be shown as YHWH to the whole world. “Come; let us press to know the Lord” now so that that day does not come upon us like a trap.
The Resurrection of the Dead in Michelangelo's Last Judgement
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
- John 6:40, 54
One of the driving questions of Christianity in last 2000 years has been “Where will you go when you die?” (I might of made up the “last 2000 years” part, so if you feel particularly perturbed by that, you can substitute any number that is at lest over 200). In fact, forget Christianity, it has been the driving question of the West for centuries. Thanks to our Judeo-Christian roots almost everybody thinks of their future life in the terms of “going” and “dying.”
This of course would be okay (in fact excellent for evangelism since even the non-Christian were already spouting out your own lingo, hopes and questions) if this was the language the bible used to speak about the afterlife. The problem is, other than the fact that the Bible doesn’t use the word ‘afterlife,’ is that the Bible does not really speak of ‘going’ either. While we all talk about “going to heaven,” “going to hell,” the “sweet chariot coming for to carry us home,” and being a “pilgrim in the earth” (a word that has picked up a little too much baggage ever since the Mayflower but nonetheless vouches for the fact that Catholics were not the only ones to wear funny hats) the bible is more ready to speak of “waiting” “coming” and the really kicker; “resurrection.”
In a manner which is about as foreign to us as ancient Greek or Hebrew (though I will praise Richard Liantonio for trying to make ancient Greek all a little less foreign to us all), the Bible presents the future hope not that someday you will die and your ‘immortal soul’ will be whisked to that “Spirit in the Sky” but that instead when you body hits the grave it won’t stay there but on a glorious future and eschatological day (actually ancient Greek, from eskhatos ‘last,’ referring to the study of the last things. I could write a whole post on how that word can be used) a trumpet will sound and all those whose hope was in YHWH, maker of heaven and earth, will arise from the dead to new glorified bodies that do not know death, darkness, sin, or decay.
Now, you might say, everyone believes that, it’s in the creeds, (First Council of Constantinople 381 AD “we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”) my response to that would be “you know the creeds?” (Extra points if you come from a non-liturgical Protestant or Charismatic background). So yes, it turns out that the resurrection is in the creeds, but most do not think of it as their primary hope. The Resurrection of the Dead is sort of like the lollipop the waiter brings you after the meal, its an add-on to the real reason you came, and since no one can look cool sporting a dum-dum sticking out of their mouth, it tends the evoke the response of “now what do I want this for?”
The resurrected body sort of becomes that moth eaten suit of your grandpa’s that you have to lug around everywhere because your mother won’t let you throw it away, even though no one really wants and is darn ugly to boot (a corduroy suite, seriously?). When all we have been told about life after death is some cloud covered place of gold, whiteness and light screaming of a bad gospel music video from the eighties it might come to quite a shock that this is not really the way in which the “place Christians go when they die” looks like (mostly because that is not really something the bible talks about that much). Whatever the intermediate state (that time between when you buy the farm and that Resurrection Day) looks like, the bible seems to make it rather clear (based on its relative silence on the intermediate state) that it is not the Christian hope.
Course, the problem about actually saying this is rather obvious, the Christian hope then, unfortunately is, well, not the Christian hope. And as it turns out, when people spend their whole lives hoping for something they seem to respond a little strongly when you tell them the thing they are hoping for is, well, not what the Bible tells them they should be hoping for. So more than telling people just that their hope is wrong, let us introduces, as Hebrews says, not just a different hope, but a “better hope” (pretty sure I am taking this phrase out of context, check out Hebrews 7:19 to prove me wrong).
And that is the thing; the Resurrection is a better hope. The reason, because it addresses one of the fundamental problems concerning the Christian hope: that, well, it was dubious whether or not it really should be called hope. Lets just admit it, we saw the pictures, heard the stories; the white flowing robes, the clouds, the harps, all that gold, and while the choir got up to sing another song about our heavenly abode we smiled, sang along, and pushed to the back of our minds that voice screaming “I never want to go there.”
The reason I long for the resurrection is because it is not some ethereal pie in the sky neverland where I am suppose to be happy and yet have no basis for why other than the fact that Jesus is there. And while being in a 4×4 cell in complete darkness with Jesus would be better than all the beautiful glorious wonders of the world without Jesus, that doesn’t keep me from wanting to avoid incarceration as much a possible. I long for resurrection because as much as I sometimes am frustrated with my body (I am sort of sick as I write this) I still love the physical world, I love texture and feeling and rough sawn wood and nature glens and rivers and sun and stars and somehow being with Jesus without those things wouldn’t really be like being with Jesus, mostly because it wouldn’t be like being.
We need to forget the old hope our hymns, gospel songs, and old-time preachers were trying to sell us and embrace an older, better hope that the bible talks about. We sang “Give me that Old-Time Religion” but the religion that was “good for the prophet Daniel” was the resurrection from the dead. Death is not just a transition to a better world; it is an unnatural terrorists which violently rips the fabric of reality. Going to haven does not make death better, because death is not something that can just be merely redefined. The Lord came not just to save souls, but to save people; body, soul, and spirit. He did not come to redefine death but instead to destroy it. The resurrection of the dead is, at the end of the day (and the beginning of a new day) the destruction of this last enemy which is death. The Hope of Humanity is not going away to escape a world of death, it is New Creation, Resurrection, invading the present age and destroying that last enemy named Death.
The Wild Thing who wanted a King and the Boy pretending to be a Wolf, pretending to be a King
Family is hard.
— KW
Where the Wild Things Are might catch some people off guard. What was believed to be a children’s book turned movie on the joys of imagination turns out to be more about divorce and loneliness than a ‘wild rumpus” of childhood fun. Of course these themes were hinted at in the book, yet it is in a bold move (or perhaps not so bold considering the trend) that Spike Jones elevates the themes of existential angst to the forefront in a way that, more than inviting us into an imaginary world to forget all our troubles, reminds us perhaps too clearly of our own childhoods and the weight of cosmic longing.
Somewhere early in the film as Max’s cried for attention amidst a world that is suddenly far too grown up for him, his mom’s would be boyfriend says what might be one of the most naive and insightful statement in the whole film. In the chaos, as Max bites his mom and then runs for the door, her boyfriend responds with something to the effect of; “he can’t treat you that.” And that is perhaps exactly the point. In a perfect imaginary world, where the sun isn’t going to die and Max’s father isn’t gone and his mom doesn’t have to hold a job, try to make a relationship work, and take care of a highly-imaginative son all at the same time the boyfriend is right; Max can’t treat his mom like that. But that is not the world Max lives in and though it does not make it right, this is the world that they find themselves, and, be it this world or any other, relationships are messy and all to often someone bites someone — if not flat out eats them.
In his escape, Max finds himself on the other side of the sea with the wild things. And they are indeed wild; running through the woods, throwing dirt clods, sleeping in piles, howling, and building fortresses and fires, and unfortunately eating their kings and alienating their loved ones. Max becomes their King and he is expected to do what all kings are expected to do — fix things. But as Douglas eventually notes, Max is no king; he is just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be a king. And that is what the story is about, pretending. Because the truth is that everyone is walking around pretending that the things that are wrong aren’t and that someone else can fix the problem.
Carol wants a king, but perhaps not because he knows what a king is, but rather because he doesn’t know what love is. He wants a king to make things right, because things being right should mean that KW likes him, or that he isn’t sad, or that they are started living life family. And Max can’t do those things. Max wants to be their king for the exact same reasons they want him to be their king — so that things can be right and so someone will like him, perhaps most of all himself. Carol discovers a king cannot fix his problems, and Max discovers that imagination cannot fix his loneliness, because no matter how big a fort they build, his mom does not have time to come and see it, and the wild things are not sleeping in one big pile. Max is just as powerless in his own imaginations as he is in the real world he is running away from.
In the end everyone wishes Max was a king. Wouldn’t it be great if his powers were able to set things right and fix everything that was broken in the world. The truth is though; the problem is not ‘out there’ as everyone might wish it to be. Max could not just fix the sadness because the sadness was in his soul, not just something separate from himself, out there in the world that got only came around every once in a while.
Max might have been the first king that they didn’t eat, yet that is more to their ability to finally see what they had been blinded too all along — that Max was no king (and neither were any of the other folks they had thought were their king) and more importantly, that it wasn’t a king that could fix what needed fixed. What was broken was their own hearts, their own selfishness. Carol was waiting for the perfect world to come where everything would be okay but he was unwilling to realize, until perhaps the end, that the perfect world was had not come and he had to stop being so angry waiting for it to come so he could learn to love the people around him, even if they didn’t always love him back.
In the end KW was right. Family is hard. As long as people are broken, relationships are broken too. What Carol, Max, and really all of us have to learn is that we can’t just run from hurt. Nobody gets healed but running, it is only in coming home, quietly walking through the door and creeping down the hallway afraid of what we will find that we have the opportunity to meet the ones we bit waiting there for us, with a hot plate of food and a piece of chocolate cake, just grateful we made it home safely.
Christ Offers To Redeem Man
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9
There is no adequate way by which to talk about the poverty that our Lord Jesus Christ embraced to carry out his messianic mission. There is no comparison within the totality of human experience, how ever monumental or drastic, which would even come close to being synonymous with the depth of poverty to which the God/Man descended for the sake of his redeemed. The choice was not one of passing whim, or curious wonder, or quaint self-sacrifice, like some rich kid from the suburbs spending a night sleeping in a cardboard box downtown or a homeless shelter in the ghetto to ‘experience’ what poverty is like.
What Christ entered into was a permanent and ontological altercation in fabric of Triune God. From this point on a member of humanity would be incorporated into the Identity of Deity. The Trinity, the eternal fellowship of loving communion, would now include one who had passed through the waters of the womb and walked the earth in the obscurity of humanity. Had Jesus mission been merely to live among his creation and never extend himself in ministry then his presence amongst his people would have gone without notice altogether. So ordinary, so painfully mundane he became that no observer of his appearance would ever have arrived at the conclusion that he was anything other than an ordinary man.
The mystery of the incarnation is not that the metaphysical cloud of boundless energy which philosophy labeled Deity somehow shrunk himself into the minuscule form of a man. This, while perhaps perplexing the mind, does not move the heart, and does nothing to come close to the reality of what took place in this awe-inspiring incarnational event. The mystery at its heart is that YHWH, the God of Israel who was exalted above all else and separate from all other reality came near to his people in a way which would have held in stunned wonder all who beheld it.
God had always sought to draw near to his people. Throughout their history, the God of Israel had established a form of worship, a tabernacle and then a temple, by which he could enter into dynamic relationship with his people, but never before had the Holy One of Israel come this close. In one glorious step from the highly exalted riches, comfort and pomp of the heavenly courtroom to the zygote in the water’s of a virgin womb, the God of the cosmos lowered himself to enter into the human experience in an unprecedented way.
He was in possession of all the power in the universe, the ability to do whatever he pleased and yet he determined not to use his power to do anything that might preserve his own right or promote his own agenda. He established in himself that with all the right, privilege and power he possessed he would uses it only to further the advancement of his creation. Being in the form of God; exalted, revered and regarded by all who saw him as the Holy One who was due all worship and adoration, he bowed low and chose, rather than to use his identity as claim to privilege, that he would make himself nothing, of no reputation, and embrace instead a life of servanthood, suffering, and being mistreated, abused and hated by those who saw him.
This is what it means that he became poor. He was the one with all the wealth of the world at his disposal, all power to accomplish anything, demand anything, cause anything he desired. Had he longed for comfort, luxury and ease he could have demanded it at any time. He could have lifted his voice and all of the arsenal of heaven would have been set against any who opposed him. Yet when the garrison came to take him away he went quietly, before the court he stood silent, and when the nail head and the hammer came to meet his flesh, which he could have easy rendered impenetrable with but a thought, the iron barb pierced skin, flesh, and tendon to fasten his bleeding frame to the cruel tree.
His consideration was never for his own needs or to placate any desire for ease and comfort. When presented with the choice to remain away in heaven unblemished by the assaults of his creatures and insolated from the pain and suffering of humanity his response was a resounding ‘no.’ His actions seem foolish; casting off care and restrain, recklessly loving without counting the cost, giving all with no thought to reward, with pure abandon embracing a world which answered up with but a crown of thorns.
He had spoke the world and it was, brought low mighty Egypt with a fierce blow, the horse and the rider sank in the sea, before him kingdoms fell and at his voice all the cycles of nature hold their rhythm, he raised up kings and tore down rulers, before him all humanity laid bare and but by his word not one breath beat of a heart takes place and yet he gave himself to the ransom of humanity. When the kingdoms of the earth advanced by violence, the gears of the war machine greased with blood and swear of slaves, his kingdom was advanced by love, his rule carried forward by the sweet surrender of servanthood.
He who could have made in an instant the whole of the cosmos bow before him instead bows before his disciples to wash their feet. His way was that of poverty, of laying down his rights of embracing a lifestyle that not even the weakest of the weak would ever consciously choose. He entered into the human experience at the least opportune of times, in a nation of national unrest, to a people group despised by their overlords, to a poor family without even the means to offer a proper temple sacrifice for the dedication of their son.
His sojourn amongst his people was mundane and tenuous. Rather than his identity affording him any comfort or accommodation, he was instead the object of scorn, disbelieved by his brothers, abandon by his followers, betrayed by the closest of friends. This was the poverty which the Lord of Glory embraced for his people. That in all his being poor he might ransom for himself a people who are rich in faith, in love for God, and who stand before him fully forgiven. His shame became our glory, his humiliation our exaltation, his passion our redemption. In all the history of all the worlds there has never been one such as this who bowed so low in love that the object of his affection might be lifted so high.
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Matthew 9:35-37
There is a richness to the emotional life of the God-man that is unparalleled in all the writings of all the languages. Here is truly the only selfless man. For whatever other personality which might captivate the public attention and seek to whoa away her heart, there has never been one so pure in his attentions, so enlightening in his countenance, so radiant in his personhood as to approach the excellence of this Man, Jesus the Christ. When all the heroes erected by culture crumble and fall, there is left only this one stalwart pillar of purity left to her. All the mudslinging of all the generations has not stuck to him. Just as in the Jewish Sanhedrin court two thousand years previous, so it is true to today that while many may come wishing to besmirch his image or tarnish his name, none of their stories align and while the public might slouch away disbelieving of his testimony or even turn to the streets shouting with the rest, “crucify,” they are still left with that sinking feeling that no accusation; however strong, however brazenly convincing in the adrenalin-rush heat of the moment, is adequate to truly deface his most holy visage.
All others are mere shadow men compared to the hot-white light of his towering humanity. He walks head and shoulders above all the giants of history. Mother Teresa is forgotten at his sight. All her good deeds, her compassion, tenderness and kindness fails to elevate her life to even a pale glimmer of a refection of his goodness. As a speaker, all the best orators of history, from antiquity; Thiruvalluvar, Julius Caesar, Quintus Hortensius; to modernity; Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr.; fail to compare to his ability to capture the attention of his audience. Had he put a pen to the page surely all the writings of the best poets, bards and novelists in the world have been put to open shame; the tales of Homer would have lost their flavor, the plays of Shakespeare would ring as hollow, the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy and Hemingway be counted as rubbish beside his works.
And at the center of this one true Man was his emotions. None has felt even close to that which he felt. None so opened their soul to those who surrounded them as this man did. Every public figure has had their secret life. Every politicians has retreated to their private getaway and eluded the masses by shrewd means and hiddenness. In the history of humanity there has never been one who walked so unguarded as this man, so open to every type of individual. He ate with the wealthy aristocrate and prostitute alike and rather than participate in the graft of the former or the immorality of the latter he instead turned both from their wickedness. His heart was open to all the cries of humanity and his ear attentive to all their needs. He raised no wall between their prodding and himself, no barrier between their inquisitiveness and his open heart beating with compassion.
All the other greatest lovers of the human experience, those who are elevated as gems within the human experience for their selfless capacity and altruistic nature, are revealed as selfish, arrogant and base in light of this burning pillar of affection, joy and compassion. None cared as he cared. None were moved as he was moved. None even approached the capacity of ‘soul-space’ necessitated to feel the way in which he felt. To be of the race of Adam was to have a truncated soul unable to feel in the way in which this bright light of the New Humanity felt for the entirety of his days. There was in him no hindrance to his body, mind, or soul to keep him from loving with the deepest of feelings, the most ardent of emotions.
Yet never did his emotional attachment — his self-giving love, compassion and joy —approach that tainted manifestation to which the basest of human attentions so readily given. Never did a touch of the hand over-extend its supposed intent to betray an ulterior motive luring under the surface. Never did a piercing look metamorphosis into the scandalous gaze as to reveal some dark flight of fantasy behind the before innocent face. Never did the weight of authority his words carried transform to some macabre demand for fulfillment of the fallen lusts which, with an iron grip, held all other humanity captive. His love was pure, his gaze altogether clean and holy. There was in his interactions no spot, taint, or question as to accuse his motives of being anything but pure.
Truly “in him was life and that life was the light of all humanity.” He was the bright beckon to which all others would be drawn. His personality was of the rarest bread. Truly he was the first of his race, the firstborn from the dead and the first of all creation, for he shows all of the Adamic race what true humanity reborn is meant to be. He was more than a man, he was YHWH in the flesh, and yet he was no less than a man. He was the singular personality shining above the darkening din of all human history. In him was wrapped all the charisma of history’s most luminous persons, wells of compassion deeper than the most altruistic of men and women, joy beyond the most radiant of individuals, hope inexpressible, purity unmatched, love defined in servanthood, heart wide open in ardent desire. In Christ Jesus the Lord was found a singular entity unmatched in all human experience and not to be out shown in all ages since or to come.
