Book Study, Virtually Christian, Chapter Five

Chapter Five is the book's "Dilithium crystals" of Startrek fame, the essential energy source at the core of all our crazy explorations through space and time. But we could never discover this precious ore unless we had first set out on the journey, the voyage through culture. Finding the source depends on the journey, but taking the journey also depends on the source.

This is a chapter on Christian doctrine, the classic Christian teaching on the two natures of Christ and the three persons of the Trinity. The ancient formulations run the risk of making the good news of Jesus an abstract scheme with little or no value to average humanity, except those initiated in seminary. The purpose here is to reveal their vibrant basis in human fact.

In so many words, there is a radical intervention made in our human situation by Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth. Jesus showed a complete absence of violence in his relationship to the Father and followed it through with a consistent practice of forgiveness and love, all the way to the absolute nonretaliation of crucifixion and its raising up in resurrection. Without this existential reality at thier root the development of the high doctrines is incomprehensible.

The absence of violence is the key. In all of our relationships there are elements of violence. Not in this one! Here there is full trust, peace, love, surrender...the core practice of Jesus which enables us have any concept of the Trinity at all.

The question is approached in three stages, under the title of "sign". "Sign" is the essential method of the book because sign is flexible and dynamic, allowing for human change. Beginning from fixed intellectual categories assumes we can get into this through our minds, but it will only get us hopelessly lost. We get to the truth in as much we are changed by it...by the signs associated with it which liberate us into a new reality.

The sign of Christ, the sign of the human, the sign of God.

The sign of Christ refers to the way Jesus changed the meaning of human existence, from inevitable violence, to one of absolute relationship in acceptance and love. As already said, it is Jesus' total relationship to the Father insisting on the endless forgiveness and nonviolence of God which is then raised up in resurrection. This total relationship becomes a real existential possibility for all human beings...communicated by signs. When Thomas finds it difficult to believe at the end of John's gospel Jesus shows him physical signs of crucifixion made into meaningful signs (of love) by being raised up. Thomas does not actually put his finger in the wounds--really a further act of violence if he were to do it--but he is invited imitatively into that space. His neurons are literally tuned in to the Risen Crucified. (On this also see below.) And the cry that is then wrung from him--"my lord and my god"--is not a metaphysical claim, rather it is pure exclamation at the total change that Jesus has brought in Thomas' awareness of everything, including God.

It is this experiential basis resonating through the centuries that produces the formulae of Nicaea and Chalcedon, claiming Jesus is of "one substance" with God and his "person and hypostasis" is the eternally begotten Son. In this latter case we have in fact the invention of a completely new concept, "person". It is twinned with the other word "hypostasis" to give it the strength and depth that it didn't have then (it meant "face", "mask" or "role"). Hypostasis meant "independent existence" but can today be translated better by "underlying identity" because of its association with person. And now of course person means a relational being deserving of absolute respect and value.

This then is the sign of the human. We can share the underlying identity of Christ because we are neurally imitative, able to pick up all the way to our depths the changed human value of Christ. The chapter describes this in terms of compassion, the "other" radical possibility of imitation, alternative to rivalry and violence. Because we are neurally imitative the response of Christ can be downloaded into any human being who pays attention to the system of signs associated with Jesus--the stories, the meals, the preaching, and all their repercussions in art, movies, songs etc.

It means that in and through Christ we can share the same "hypostasis" as Jesus, i.e. become "children of God" as the gospel of John asserts. The "sign of the human" becomes deeply Christian, the way human beings through the risen Christ can begin to take on the same divine nonviolence found in Jesus.

And finally it means a deep change in the "sign of God". God also imitates the hypostasis of Jesus, or the Son generates the Father as a human being! This has to be the case for two reasons.

One, the logic of the Trinity itself. To be equal in love they each have to give themselves completely and each following the other. As the books says, equality in love means that there is there is an undecidable priority in the Trinity: they all go first, and they all go last.

Two, Jesus demonstrates precisely this on the cross. "Abandoned" by the Father means that he entrusts himself without guarantee, without support, into an abyss. And the abyss becomes love for the other. This is indeed what it means to generate the other, letting the other be because of your absolute gift. And it means that the Father can do no less than imitate Jesus, abandoning himself/herself in love. Even so Jesus generates the Father on earth. But at the same time the Father generates the Son who is Jesus.

In this way the earth itself becomes part of the eternal dance of God!