Was Jesus "God who became Man", or a "Man who reflected God fully"?

 January 7, 2024

In my reflection on the Gospel of January 1, I had spoken of how the Church was struggling to articulate in words their experience of Jesus. Clearly, they had absolutely no doubt that the Jesus they knew was a MAN, and yet it was also clear to them, as the Gospel today states, that in this Jesus, they saw the glory “as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”.  This exploration of WHO this Jesus is, is known in theology as Christology, and today’s Gospel gives us a great opportunity to explore this.  

Today’s Gospel tells us : “And the Word became flesh and lived among us”. For most of us,  this WORD is identified with Jesus and so it clearly seems to speak of Jesus, as one “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Phil. 2:6-7).  

However, there are other passages in the New Testament which give us a different picture of Jesus.  The same Paul quoted above, also speaks in today’s second reading of “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,” leading us to ask the simple question: How can one God have another God?  Then we have Peter, the closest friend of Jesus and the leader of the twelve Apostles, who had himself confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, saying in his first sermon: “Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst,….. This Jesus, God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. (Acts 2: 22ff). So here we have the picture of Jesus as a Man who was raised up by God.

In fact, we find these apparently contrary perspectives also put into Jesus’ own mouth by the Gospel writers.  So at one point we have Jesus saying: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11), while in another part of the very same Gospel, Jesus says: "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God"   John (20:17), which seems to indicate that Jesus clearly makes a distinction between God and himself.  

Obviously, this need to articulate this experience of Jesus and the difficulty in doing it only increased once the disciples who actually knew Jesus died. Finally, four hundred plus years later, at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), the Church ended up declaring that Jesus was Fully God and Fully Man, without trying to choose between these two different perspectives of Jesus that we find in the New Testament. These two perspectives or types of Christologies are commonly named Descending Christology (i.e. Jesus was fully God and came down to become fully Man) and Ascending Christology (i.e. Jesus was fully a Man, in whom we experienced God fully).  Which interpretation then should we hold on to?  

But before I answer that, allow me to use a metaphor to try and explain the Apostles’ experience of Jesus.  This will help us see how it was that both ‘interpretations’ (ascending and descending christologies) of Jesus were possible.  

Anybody who has a background in science (physics, in particular) would know that no mirror FULLY reflects the light that falls on it.  There is always some loss in the light that reflects off a mirror, the loss being proportional to the reflecting ability of the mirror. In Paul’s time, for instance, mirrors were basically polished metal pieces, and so when Paul is talking about our understanding of  divine things and writes that “for now we see as in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face”(1 Corinthians, 13:12), he is talking about the mirrors of his time and their limited reflective ability.

Keeping this principle of physics in mind, let us assume that each human being is a mirror that reflects the light of God to different degrees, so that some (like the saints) reflect God’s light more than others.  Growing in the grace of God, then, is our effort, over the short span of our lives, to keep ‘polishing ourselves’ so that we reflect more and more of the light of God in our own lives.  So whether we believe Jesus came into this world as a completely polished mirror (Descending Christology), or as one who, over the span of  his life, “grew in wisdom and favour with God” (Luke 2:52) (Ascending Christology), or in other words, kept growing and polishing the mirror of his very self to such a degree that finally his mirror reflected not just 70% or even 90% of God’s light, but the full 100% of the light that fell on it, it doesn’t take away from the metaphor of the mirror.  What we can say is that at the point when the mirror reflects 100% of the light that falls on it, we can look at that mirror and say with absolute conviction that all we can see is only light, even as we know it is still genuinely a mirror.  In other words we can say that the Jesus- mirror was 100% mirror and at the very same time 100% light.  This is a metaphor to explain the complex experience of the early disciples. They were absolutely clear that Jesus was not a mythological figure (like Hercules and Perseus), and was truly a flesh and blood person like themselves, but it was also true that in him,  as today’s Gospel tells us, they felt God was fully reflected.  And that is precisely what the Council of Chalcedon tried to articulate by saying he was Fully (100%) Man and  simultaneously Fully (100%) God 

Incidentally, such an acceptance of Jesus being 100% mirror, and simultaneously 100% light , does not exclude or stop God from shedding God's light on other mirrors at other times and in other cultures, (after all who are we to control God?) and so we do not have to claim that no one else could have become such a perfect 100% mirror - for we do not know enough about others.

So, whatever the interpretation of the Chalcedonian dogma that we choose, we must remember that both options are a possibility.  I like what Tony D’mello said in his book, The Song of the Bird, when he says that THEOLOGY is the art of telling stories about the Divine and also the art of listening to them.  Consequently, whichever ‘story’ helps us to experience the God whom Jesus introduced us to, that is what we need to hold on to.  

In reality, it would seem that the majority of Christians are more comfortable with the Descending Christology perspective, because this ‘story’ draws strength from the belief that Jesus, since he was originally God, and now back with his Father, will take care of us and support us and guide us as we walk our pilgrimage - and so they feel safe in the palm of his hand.  On the other hand, there are those who find that the Ascending Christology ‘story’ can offer us immense strength in our own struggle through life, in a manner quite different from what the  Descending Christology perspective  offers us. Because if we read the Gospels from this perspective, we can see Jesus struggling, like all of us, to find God’s will and follow it. He is tempted like us. He doesn’t want to be crucified as he prays in the Garden of Gethsemani that this cup of pain and sorrow be taken away from him. He is deeply troubled and sad that one of his chosen twelve betray him (John 13:21) or desert him and run away (Matthew 26:56) or even just sleep (Mathew 26:40), when he is in most need. And he struggles to remain true to his vocation as he saw it, despite his own family feeling he had gone mad, so much so that his mother and brothers come to take him home (Mark 3:21ff), and so on and so forth. If, then, one looks at Jesus’ story as recounted in the Gospels from this ascending Christological perspective, we will see a different kind of ‘struggling’ Jesus emerge – "one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).  And seeing his struggle, we too can find strength to walk our own pilgrimage towards fulfilling our true vocation - and his example and presence will support us.

Again, as I have said before, each believer may be at a different place on the pilgrimage towards God and may find different paths useful at different times. As Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians: When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things (1 Cor.13:11ff). Our life is always a pilgrimage towards God, and we have to keep growing as we go along, finding new ways in which to explore this relationship with the Absolute.  And in that exploration, there are times when the descending Christological ‘story’ may be what appeals to us, and at other times, the ascending Christological one.

So choose the ‘story’ you find most helpful, but remember the story is meant to point us in the direction in which to walk, - and not to be used as a comparison with others, to show how ‘my’ story is superior to, or more right than, yours.  

First Reading: Ecclesiasticus  24:1-2, 8-12

Wisdom praises herself
    and tells of her glory in the midst of her people.
In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth,
    and in the presence of his hosts she tells of her glory:
“Then the Creator of all things gave me a command,
    and my Creator pitched my tent.
He said, ‘Encamp in Jacob,
    and in Israel receive your inheritance.’
Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me,
    and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.
In the holy tent I ministered before him,
    and so I was established in Zion.
Thus in the beloved city he gave me a resting place,
    and in Jerusalem was my domain.
I took root in an honoured people;
    in the portion of the Lord is my inheritance.

 Second Reading: Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-18

 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 

Gospel   John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being  in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.