God Glorifies Himself in the Human
God Glorifies Himself in the Human
God Glorifies Himself in the Human: A Christological Anthology
This is the start of a new series, a Christological anthology, highlighting what I regard as essential passages. I will also offer some brief reflections on the passage, including suggestions for teaching it.
The first entry, which gives the anthology its title, is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1933 lectures on Christology, specifically from the section entitled “Positive Christology: The One Who Became Human.”
Who is this God? He is the God who became human as we became human. He is completely human. Nothing human is foreign to him. The human being that I am is what Jesus Christ was also. We say of this human being, Jesus Christ, that he is God. This does not mean that we already knew beforehand who God is. It also does not mean that the assertion that his human being is God adds something onto his being human. God and human are not thought of together through a single concept of nature. The assertion that this human being is God means something else altogether. This person's being God is not something added onto the being human of Jesus Christ. It is not a continuum, into which Jesus Christ just manages to extend himself, but rather this assertion that this person is God is the vertical Word from above that neither takes anything away from nor adds anything to Jesus Christ but rather qualifies this entire human being as God. It is God’s judgment about this human being! It is God's Word, which takes this human being Jesus Christ and qualifies him as God. But the essential difference (between him and all other human beings) is that the Word of God that comes from above is at the same time right here in Jesus Christ himself. Because Jesus is himself God's judgment about him; he points both to himself and to God.
This does away conclusively with the attempt to unite two isolated existing realities. We believe that Jesus the human being is God, and that he is so as the human being, not in spite of his humanity or beyond his humanity. It is Jesus Christ the human being who ignites faith. Jesus Christ is God, not in a divine nature, but rather God in our faith alone, thus no longer in a way that we can touch and describe. If we are to describe Jesus as God, we would not speak of his being all-powerful or all-knowing: we would speak of his birth in a manger and of his cross. There is no "divine nature" as all-powerful and ever-present.
We have the reports of Jesus's birth and of his baptism side by side. [In the] birth narrative, the focus is on Jesus himself; in the baptism story, the focus is on the Holy Spirit coming from God. The difficulty in thinking of both these stories together, of birth and baptism, is in the doctrine of the two natures. If we leave that out, then we are speaking in the one instance of the Word of God being in Christ, and in the other of the coming down of the Word of God spoken over Christ. The child in the manger is God. The naming of Jesus as God's son at his baptism is the confirmation of the earlier event. If we speak of the human being Jesus Christ as we speak of God, we should not speak of him as representing an idea of God, that is, in his attributes as all-knowing and all-powerful, but rather speak of his weakness and manger.
We should speak not of God becoming human but of the God who became human, for the former is a "how" question, to be found in the old doctrine of the virgin birth. The biblical witness is uncertain with regard to the virgin birth. If the biblical witness really [gave] this as a fact, the dogmatic lack of clarity about it would have nothing to say. The doctrine of the virgin birth is supposed to express how God becomes human. But does it not result in the decisive point being missed, that Jesus became like us? This question remains open because the Bible leaves it open.
God who became human is the God of glory. God glorifies himself in the human. This is the ultimate mystery of the Trinity: From "now unto eternity” God regards himself as the God who became human. God’s self-glorification in the human is thus the glorification of the human, which shall have eternal life with God the Three in One: Therefore, it is not right to see God’s becoming human as judgment upon humankind. God remains human even after the judgment. God’s becoming human is God's message about the glorification of God, who honors himself by being in human form.
God's becoming human means first of all simply the revelation of the Creator through the creature. It is wrong to derive the God's becoming human from an idea, such as the idea of the Trinity. When we speak of God's becoming human as glorifying God, we are not talking about a speculative idea of God. Every idea of God on which the doctrine of God's becoming human could be speculatively based is impossible, because the relationship of the Creator to the creature is conceived [as] a necessity. Why does that sound so improbable and strange to us? Because God's becoming human in Jesus Christ does not visibly glorify God; because God who became human is the Crucified One.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin 1932-1933 (DBW 12; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 353-355.
A few reflections:
In teaching this passage, the crucial passage, IMO, is the second one. Jesus’s divinity is seen in his humanity, not despite it, especially when he’s at his weakest, including the moment of his birth and the moment of his death (what Bonhoeffer calls his weakness and his manger).
We cannot remind ourselves of this truth too often, which is right at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s Christology: the incarnation is not a humiliation for God; it is a revelation of God, an epiphany. In Bonhoeffer’s words, God honors himself by becoming human.
We have a difficult time believing God is glorified by becoming human because, as Bonhoeffer suggests, we’ve already assumed we know what a “divine nature” entails—what is and is not possible for a being such as God. It is not far from the truth to say that all of our theological confusions arise from the absolutizing of our abstractions about “nature,” whether divine or human. Thus, if we hope to think Christianly, we must resist thinking about omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience as realities that essentially detract from or even cancel out the authenticity of Jesus’ human experience. Instead, as Bonhoeffer says, we need to recognize that God’s power, presence, and knowledge are realized and revealed precisely in what Jesus says and does and feels and thinks, as well as in what happens to him—what is given to him, what is taken from him.
Bonhoeffer is wrong about the virgin birth, I believe, although he is certainly right to suggest that much of what has been said about it has veered too far into speculations about a “how” that distracts from the “who.” In truth, the doctrine of the virgin birth is not intended to explain how God becomes human but what God’s becoming human means for our humanity. His most human moments, so to speak, are also for that reason also the most divine.
God glorifies himself in the incarnation and he also glorifies us. This, too, is a truth we have to keep remembering: God means to make us his equals. We are not Christ’s servants, but his friends, his bride, his body. We are not his slaves, but his co-heirs. Everything, truly everything, the Father means for the Son is intended also for us.
When Bonhoeffer says Jesus’ humanity “ignites faith,” he does not mean faith in human potential, considered in abstraction. He means faith in the God whose strength is made perfect in our weakness. Jesus is not an example of the kind of life we could live if we only knew the secret. His life becomes ours for the living.