Church of the Holy City

This Is My Beloved Son

This Is My Beloved Son
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 19, 2011

2 Kings 2:1-12 Mark 9:2-9 Psalm 50

In our reading from Mark, something awesome happens on the mountaintop. Jesus’ clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus. A cloud envelops the mountain and a voice booms from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.” All of these things say something about who Jesus is. And in this question of who Jesus is, we confront a very difficult problem.
Swedenborg tells us that Jesus is the Word incarnate. Or should I say that the Gospel of John tells us that. John 1 reads,
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (1-2, 14).
So Jesus is the Word in the flesh. What does this mean? It means that all the wisdom taught in the Word, and all the good that the Word points us to is embodied in Jesus. The Word, in fact, came from God. It was God’s words to the prophets that became the prophetical books of the Bible, and it was the law given on mount Sinai by God that Moses wrote down. Taken together, the Law and the prophets mean the whole Bible. That is why Elijah and Moses appear with Jesus when He is transfigured on the mountaintop. Moses represents the Law, and Elijah represents the prophets. So the Bible contains God’s wisdom and goodness; it was given by God. And when Jesus came to earth, He embodied all God’s wisdom and goodness. And it was this wisdom and goodness that made Him radiate the brilliance that He did on the mountaintop.
As the embodiment of all God’s wisdom and goodness, Jesus was God in the flesh. As John tells us, the Word was with God and the Word was God. So the Word was God and Jesus was the Word in flesh. So Jesus is God. Thus far, we have been discussing Jesus’ identity according to Swedenborg’s understanding of the Bible.
But the language of the Bible can cause a vexing difficulty when it comes to who Jesus is. While Jesus is transfigured on the mountaintop, the disciples hear God’s voice, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.” This statement is similar to the one the crowds head when Jesus is baptized. Then, the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove, and we hear God’s voice, “This is my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). It is language like this that leads to the belief that Jesus is God’s Son–the Son of God. This is not surprising. The words of God are clear enough in the literal sense. God calls Jesus His Son. And the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that, “the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The difficulty with this Biblical language occurs when we apply ordinary human genealogy to this Biblical language. When I think that I am my father’s son, I am thinking about two different human beings. My father is a very different person than I am. There are two of us, and we are two different humans. This kind of thinking leads us to the Jesus problem when we think of Jesus as the Son of God. Thinking from mortal genealogy, there is a tendency to think of Jesus and God as two separate beings, as my father and I am. But things are very different if God is your Father and you have a mortal mother. Then you won’t have two humans as you would with ordinary human birth. If God is your Father and you have a mortal mother, then the child will be divine and the humanity from Mary will be as a sheath clothing God’s soul. Father and Son will not be two separate humans. Father will be the soul clothed in a human form. There will be a connection between Father and Son that isn’t the case between two mortals.
Thinking about Jesus from the perspective of human genealogy causes huge problems. If Jesus and God are two beings, like my father and I are, immense problems arise. I see two basic problems. Problem one arises when we think of Jesus as divine. If Jesus is God, and God is God; and if they are two beings, then we have two Gods. Problem two is just as bad. In order to reconcile God and Jesus, Jesus can get demoted to a status in which He is not fully God.
People don’t usually think critically about these problems. They call Jesus the Son of God, they see that Jesus prays to God, so they think that Jesus and God are two distinct beings. This is when Jesus can get demoted. By this way of thinking, Son of God means that Jesus isn’t God. I once asked someone who held this view if she thought that Jesus is divine. She said, “Yes, just not as divine as God.” I told her, “Then you’ve got a God and a half.” In fact, the Nicene Creed, which was developed in the fourth century AD, is a bit more complex when it comes to this question. When it comes to the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, the Nicene Creed says that the two are of one substance. It goes as follows:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. . . . And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father . . .
So the Nicene Creed says that Jesus and God the Father are of one substance. How two beings can be one substance is impossible to understand. I think that most people who ascribe to the doctrine of the trinity ignore the one substance part.
But ignoring the one substance part of the Nicene Creed leads to the worst possible conclusion. If Jesus is God and if God the Father is God, and if they are two beings, then there are two Gods. This is a huge problem. Everybody knows that there is only one God. Swedenborg thought that Christians, in their hearts, really believed in three gods. They said one God with their lips, but in their hearts they thought of three gods, God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I said this in a religious studies class at Urbana University a few years ago, and the teacher emphatically agreed with me. He said that most Christians, and he was one, uncritically think of three gods when they use the language of the trinity. I think that other religions like Jews and Muslims think the same about Christians. I remember in Boston I saw graffiti spray painted on the sidewalk in front of a Christian church. It read, “You worship gods I cannot understand.”
To resolve these difficulties, we need to use reason. One way to resolve these difficulties is by not taking the language of the Bible literally. This will give us one way to preserve God’s unity and Christ’s divinity. “Son of God” must be taken symbolically. In fact, in the original Aramaic language, “Son of God” doesn’t even mean God’s Son. It means God Himself. In Biblical Aramaic we also find the words “Son of Man.” This doesn’t mean “Man’s Son.” It means “a man.” So “Son of God” is how you say, “God” and “Son of Man” is how you say “Man” in Biblical Aramaic. So in the original language, by calling Jesus “Son of God,” the writer is actually calling Jesus “God.”
But this doesn’t solve the whole problem. There are times when Jesus prays to God. There are times when Jesus calls God His Father. There are times in the Bible when it looks like Jesus and God the Father are two different beings–which cannot be. Swedenborg has an answer to this problem. Whether it satisfies is up to you. Remember, Jesus took on flesh in Mary’s womb. And according to Swedenborg, Mary was an ordinary human. By taking on flesh in a mortal woman, Jesus had a human nature that partook of ordinary humanity. Swedenborg calls this the Mary humanity. Jesus had a human nature that He took from Mary. Jesus was both fully man and fully God. He had a human nature and a divine nature. When His Mary humanity, or His human nature, was in charge, Jesus saw His divine nature as different from who He was. These were times when His humanity overwhelmed His Divinity, and Jesus’ divine origins were obscured. When He looked up from His Mary humanity, He called out to His divine nature as to His Father.
We can understand this by reflection on our own spiritual evolution ourselves. The process by which Jesus became united to God is analogous to our own regeneration. We will find that for us there are times of ecstasy. Ecstasy literally means “standing outside one’s self.” And in moments of ecstasy, we feel filled with God to the extent that we feel not to be ourselves. These are times when we seem filled with God’s divine love and we are lifted up out of what Swedenborg calls our lower self, what is our own, or the proprium. Then there are times when our lower self, what is our own, our proprium overwhelms us, and our higher nature seems distant. Jesus went through processes like this. He had times of ecstatic union with His divine origins. And He had times when the Mary human obscured His divine origins. But Jesus became fully united with the God of His origins. We will never be one with God in this way. We are only vessels that receive God’s life and love. Jesus and God became one. We will always be in relation with God as finite to infinite.
The complete union of Jesus and God in one Person is clear in some of Jesus’ statements. For instance, in Matthew 28: 18 Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” How could all authority in heaven and earth be given to Jesus unless He is God? Then there is Jesus statement in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” However we might interpret this statement, the Jews who heard it wanted to stone Jesus because He claimed to be God (John 10:33). Then, finally, Jesus claims that seeing Him is seeing the Father. This could only mean that Jesus is the Father in human form. Jesus says, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen Him” (John14:7).
There is one very practical application for all this difficult theology. In the life of Jesus we have a model for all we need to do to be saved. By learning about Jesus’ ways, we learn about what God would have us do to be saved. By imitating Jesus, we will come into heavenly love and joy. We don’t really need to fully understand the complexities of the trinity. All we need to do is to worship, love, and imitate Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John14:6). Those of us inclined to theological inquiry can discuss, analyze, and reason about the trinity. But for salvation, the simple stories Jesus told and the simple narratives about His life are all we need. I recall the words of one of my theology teachers named Stanley Hauerwas. Professor Hauerwas enjoys a powerful reputation in the world of Christian ethics. He is the Dean of the Divinity School of Duke University. He is respected and learned. When he introduced himself to a friend of mine, all he said was, “I just love my Jesus.” He could have said something about Immanuel Kant, Karl Barth, Aristotle, William James, Thomas Aquinas, Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Iris Murdoch or any of the plethora of theologians and ethicists he was expert on. Instead, he said the words we can all take to heart, “I just love my Jesus.”