New Wine, New Wineskins

The problem with dualism (not the philosophical system per se, but that default, “either/or” epistemology that governs so much of our daily thought) is that it convinces us to see binary oppositions everywhere, even where they do not exist. Thus, things like “transcendence and immanence”, “conservative and liberal” or “human and divine” are commonly perceived of dualistically. This is why when dealing with concepts such as “transcendence and immanence”, the term that is often invoked is, “balance.”

Like those “warrior priests” from our favorite space opera, scholars, ancient and modern, have been called upon to “restore balance to the force.” For example, some two thousand years ago, there was an epistemological crisis triggered by the appearance of a certain Palestinian Jew named Jesus of Nazareth. In an effort to restore “balance”, an all out investigation ensued, one which is ongoing to this day. To begin with, the suspect was apprehended and brought down to “the station” for questioning as well as into the “laboratory” for a physical examination (the examination ultimately took the form of an autopsy).  Counsels and tribunals were assembled and the greatest minds of the day were gathered for the purpose of investigating this “alien” life form, a life form whose very existence threatened to expose the limits of human reason and the surety of man’s philosophical systems.

Christ was laid out on the examiner’s table and the scientists began to cut and probe their “subject”, anxiously looking for clues as to how they might identify and categorize this anomaly: they asked questions such as, “which are his human organs and which are his divine ones?”  Down at the “station” the inspectors were looking for answers as well and could be heard asking, “is he of this world or another?”  Occasionally they would address their questions to Christ himself, “how is it Christ that you exist?”  These “examiners” did not, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (D.B.) points out, ask the “who” question, but rather persisted in only asking “how” – “How is it Christ, that you are possible? How is it that you are both divine and human? How is it that you are transcendent and immanent”?

In his Christology lectures, D.B. contends that to ask the “how question” i.e., “How is it Christ that you are . . .?” is to ask “the serpent’s question” (CTC, 30), for it is the question of control – “tell me how it is that you are and I will tell you who you are” (31).  D.B. rightly contends that in contrast to asking “how” – the “religious question,” the question of faith and obedience asks “who” – who are you Christ?  Who are you Logos of God?  (31). The “who” question is the question of encounter, wherein we encounter “the other” and as D.B. says, “It is the question about the other person”, (31). We ask “who”, because the living Christ is neither an idea nor an ideal; he is not a theological abstract. Therefore, the language of personal encounter and the question appropriate to encountering Christ is only and always, “who”, “Who are you Lord?”  The problem with traditional theological investigation is that the Logos of God is made to be subject to the logos of men and until the order is reversed (where Christ addresses us), we are in constant danger of betraying him with a “theological kiss.”

The “question of the serpent” then cannot simply be refashioned or reasserted, as if the problem were merely a matter of arranging the words and making the right “confession.” The trouble with the “how” question is that it represents a pernicious strain of “scientism” and rationalism, one not easily dethroned, which is why D.B. tells us that even when we manage to ask the “who” question, we are still secretly asking “how?” Such a conflicted state is seen in “the theologian who tries to encounter Christ and yet to avoid that encounter” (35). In the name of “scholarship”, we often fail to acknowledge that every time we ask Christ “how”, we are as Bonhoeffer says, “going behind Christ’s claim and finding an independent reason for it” for “In that way, the human logos (is) claiming to be the beginning and the Father of Jesus Christ” (32).

In every generation, the church’s doctors stretch Christ out upon the “examiner’s table” (a “table” constructed of certain ethical or metaphysical a priori frameworks of our choosing) and the Logos of God is subjected to a thorough and “objective” examination. Tests are run, samples are taken and sent off to the lab for further study, and journals are written . . . this is a serious business.  Interestingly and somewhat conveniently, the doctors conducting the examination claim to be representing “the subject” as his guardian and advocate.  For example, acting as guardians, the examiners insist that the divine “subject” must at all times be kept in a fully “sterilized” and  “transcendent environment.” When certain observers objected to “the subject” being housed in a sterilized plastic bubble the doctors replied that under no circumstances must “the subject” be exposed to the corrupting influence of the temporal and the immanent.

Such “advocacy” on the part of well-meaning scholars presupposes that the eternal Logos is in need of human protection and that above all, his ultimate concern (though, “he loves you man!”) is to remain “apart from” in an ineffable, impassible, otherworldly state. The concern for protecting God’s transcendence against the corrupting influence of liberal immanence only leads to creating a series of equal and opposite errors. The fear that “our god” must not be too “common” or “earthy” invariably leads to placing God in a virtual “cosmic hazmat suit.”  But this is what happens whenever “transcendence” is conceived of spatially and moralistically (God up there, far away, in his holy heaven); we inevitably end up with an abstract, divine “speed limit”, one which supposedly corresponds to the Person that we encounter in the Old and New Testament. Rather than begin with our metaphysical a priori, D.B. reminds us that God’s “transcendence” is not a concept that can be rationally construed since “His transcendence comes from outside of study itself. His transcendence is guaranteed because he is a person.” And herein lies the “stumbling block” of the gospel – what Paul calls the scandalon of the gospel, namely, God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ is the given Logos of God!

Finally, the reason that the “who” question is the question of “faith and obedience” is because “The Logos with whom we are concerned is a person. This man is the transcendent one” (28). According to D.B. christology is “the discipline par excellence” because, “It has no proof by which it can demonstrate the transcendence of its subject. Its statement that this transcendence, namely the Logos, is a human person, is presupposition and not subject to proof. The transcendence, which we make subject of proof, instead of letting it be the presupposition of our thought, is not more than immanence of reason coming to grips with itself.”