Every year near Easter there is a series of stories in the media about whether Jesus actually lived, or whether someone has been able to find definitive evidence to support some claim about Jesus. They all boil down to one question: Who is Jesus?
Who is Jesus? Is Jesus a great teacher, a prophet, a wonder-worker, a political revolutionary, a wise man, a martyr, a saviour, a god, or some combination of these things?
The question itself is not a new one. Even during Jesus’ earthly life the question of his identity was tossed about. Jesus himself asked the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27) The answers the disciples reported represent a variety of laudable responses: John the Baptist, the prophet Elijah or one of the other prophets. But the crucial question Jesus asked his disciples was, “Who do you say that I am?” This remains a vital question that we each must answer in some way, not just because we need to have good information, but also because a great deal hangs in the balance on the answer we give.
Luke Timothy Johnson, a widely-respected New Testament scholar, argues that how we answer the question “Who is Jesus?” depends in large measure upon the answer we give to another basic question, “Is Jesus dead or alive?” In his book, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel, Johnson argues that if Jesus is dead, then it is appropriate to examine his life and significance as we would that of any other person from the past. If Jesus is dead, then his story has ended and his continuing influence is just a pale shadow of his earthly life as a human being. If Jesus is dead, then he shared the fate of all other humans and is little more than a deceased religious teacher.
But on the other hand, if Jesus is alive then his story continues to unfold. If he is alive, Jesus still acts and speaks; Jesus still works miracles and is among us. If Jesus is alive and experienced as such by those who follow him, then we are in a whole different ballgame; his story is not over and his continuing presence affirms for us that Jesus is more than a human being constrained by the limitations of time and space. According to Johnson, the effort to argue that Jesus was just another human being is flawed because it does not take into account who Jesus is as he continues to be experienced by those who know him to be alive and present with them.
The claim that Jesus lives has always stood at the centre of the Christian faith and is critical for the answer we give to the question of Jesus’ identity. The New Testament authors wrote with the underlying conviction that Jesus of Nazareth, whom so many had encountered during his earthly, physical life, was not dead even though he had been put to death and had died. In some remarkable way, Jesus was still with them, not as a ghost or a fading memory, but as a living person. Their affirmation, “Jesus is Lord” was a confession that the same Jesus who had walked among them was there and then, still speaking to them and present with them—even after his death. The same Jesus who had instructed them was still teaching them through the Holy Spirit. The same Jesus who had healed the sick and had transformed lives with his presence, was still the great physician and was still changing lives even after his crucifixion.
Out of this intense experience of the living Jesus—not a dead Jesus—Christians began to develop new ways of speaking of Jesus. The first Christians knew that Jesus had been a human being who had walked among them, who had eaten with them, who had talked with them, and who had journeyed with them. They saw his humanity up close, so there was no doubt that Jesus was a human being. But more tricky for them was to find ways to express another dimension of their experience of Jesus; for the earliest followers of Jesus came to the conclusion that in the living Jesus they met not just another human being, but someone who was more. So the early Church developed language to describe this Jesus of Nazareth who at one and the same time had been flesh and blood like them, but yet who was also so much more than flesh and blood; Jesus who was like them in so many ways and yet in other profound ways so different from them; Jesus who was human and yet divine—Son of Man and Son of God.
This desire to capture the complex reality of Jesus’ identity is reflected throughout the New Testament. One of the most influential passages in the Church’s reflection on the mystery of Jesus’ identity is John 1:1-18. In these few verses John sets out a sketch of what Christians believe about Jesus. First, Jesus is identified with the Word (or, in Greek, logos) of God (John 1:1). This Word of God is one with God. That is, the early verses of John’s Gospel assert that the Word is fully divine and was with God from the beginning. As the passage progresses, we find that it claims that this divine Word came into the world as flesh and blood, that is, as a human being (John 1:14). Incarnated (that is, made flesh and blood) in Jesus Christ, the Word revealed God in a unique way (John 1:18). Further, this Word of God, come in the flesh, brought salvation into the world (John 1:12-13). Throughout the gospel, John strikes a delicate balance between affirming that Jesus is the divine Word of God on the one hand, and a flesh and blood human being on the other.
In the history of the Church the delicate balance between the divinity of Jesus and his humanity has often been tilted to one side or the other. One tendency that has persisted in the life of the Church is to sacrifice the humanity of Jesus in order to preserve his divinity. In the second century, an influential group of Christians known as Gnostics (i.e. wise or knowledgeable ones) claimed that if Jesus was in fact divine, he could not have been a true human being. They thought that there was a fundamental incompatibility between the divine and the human; that being flesh and blood would compromise Jesus’ divinity. If Jesus was the divine Word of God, then his humanity must be incomplete, his body a phantom, and his earthly life a charade. In order to protect the divinity of Jesus, the Gnostics sacrificed his humanity.
The Gnostic understanding of Jesus was rejected by the Church because early on it was recognized that if we are to have a Saviour, that Saviour must be fully human—that is, truly and properly human. For Christians, salvation is not just extrication from our human frailties or removal to the next world; it is also “the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23), salvation of the whole human being. For such a whole salvation, the Saviour must share our humanity in all its essential characteristics. An old axiom of the Church clarifies this: Jesus saves only those parts of our humanity that he shared with us. Therefore, to be truly and properly our Saviour, Jesus must be “truly and properly human.” Anything less jeopardizes our salvation.
In contrast to the tendency of the Gnostics, there have been those who would downplay or deny the divinity of Jesus and focus on his humanity. This is a very ancient as well as a modern inclination. In our time, every year as Christmas and Easter draw near, the press publishers articles and broadcasts television programs that purport to answer the question of Jesus’ identity. In recent years, claims have been made that there is “proof” that while Jesus may have been a uniquely virtuous and holy human being, he was nothing more than that. When this is done, we are left with Jesus as a great teacher or a moral example. We may be able to learn from the way he lived his life, we may even seek to follow in his way, but ultimately he was only one of us. His example is powerful, but fundamentally no different from that of other virtuous human beings.
However, something essential is lost if we set aside the divinity of Jesus and see him only as a human being. Early on the Church recognized that our human condition is such that we cannot lift ourselves to salvation; we cannot save ourselves. We are so trapped within the constraints of our humanity, of our sinfulness and our pride that we cannot find our own way home to God. Our salvation requires an act from beyond ourselves. God must act to deliver us from our slavery to sin. Christians affirm that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Thus, if Jesus is not fully divine, he cannot save us. So the Church affirmed that for there to be a true and proper salvation, Jesus must be “truly and properly God.”
In essence, nothing less than the salvation of the world hangs in the balance when we answer the question, “Who is Jesus?” For without a Saviour who is “truly and properly God and truly and properly (hu)man” we are still lost in our sin. Only a Saviour who is one with us and yet also one with God is able to provide us with true salvation.
Can we understand fully how Jesus can be both human and divine? No! That is why we refer to the "mystery" of the incarnation. Answering Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” requires more than an act of understanding. It is also requires an act of faith that calls us to entrust ourselves to God and to the salvation that God has provided through Jesus Christ.