Humanity Of Jesus Research Articles

A Call to Authentic Discipleship: Pope Benedict XVI, Kierkegaard and Entweltlichung

The article pursues the aim of demonstrating that both Pope Benedict XVI and Søren Kierkegaard call for genuine Christian discipleship. They apprehend in Christianity ever anew the danger of a bourgeois accommodation of the Christian gospel to the prevalent Zeitgeist. In the first part of this article the author presented the views of Kierkegaard, for whom threat comes from the state-established Danish Lutheran Church. The second part of the article discusses the viewpoint of Joseph Ratzinger. In his opinion, the threat may also come from a close relationship between Christianity and the state. The real danger in the 20th century was graver than that in 19th century Denmark. It comes from secularised Christology, from emphasis being put on the humanity of Jesus which ignores His divine personhood and nature. The last part of the article draws attention to the essential differences between the approaches adopted by both thinkers and the solutions proposed by them, which, however, only accentuated the greatness of these intellectuals. In his own words, Kierkegaard will always remain “a little pinch of cinnamon.” In contrast to the Danish radical Christian, by writing seminal texts from within the wisdom of the ever self-same Catholic Church, Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, especially on account of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy, inaugurates à la longue an epochal Christocentric shift. Assuredly, posterity will honour him with the title "Doctor of the Church."

A critical assessment of Bruce L. McCormack's christological proposal

AbstractBruce L. McCormack's recent christological proposal intends to move beyond the apparent impasse in theological discourse between God's aseity and God's world relation. In describing the second mode of divine being as personally constituted by receptivity to the human Jesus of Nazareth without losing the logos asarkos, McCormack's proposed christological innovation offers a way to consider relation to the world as proper to God through the Son, without absolute pronobeity coming to dominate in the doctrine of God. This being said, his christological proposal, as it stands, implies both that election is antecedent to triunity and that the person of Jesus of Nazareth is antecedent to the act of the incarnation. With the former comes the problem of sequence in the priority of divine act over divine being. With the latter comes the problem of offering a unified account of two agencies. As such, while ontological receptivity continues to hold significant possibilities for the doctrine of God, it requires more careful coordination to the relation of passive generation as such.

Doktrin Kristologi: Apologetika Natur Keallahan, Kemanusiaan, dan Kemesiasan Yesus berdasarkan Markus 9:2-13

Throughout the church's history, the debate on Christology has been an important and controversial topic. One is about the Divinity and humanity of Jesus, which has been a long debate in the history of Christianity. Jesus' divinity and humanity are essential because they relate to the foundation of the believer's faith. In addition to the debate about the Christology of Jesus among Christians, there is another debate among the Jews about the person of Jesus himself, namely that Jesus is not the Messiah. Although many biblical texts have been used to defend the issue of Christology, there are still other biblical texts that have not been studied as a basis for discussing the issue. The purpose of this study is to add primary biblical references to the apologetics of Christology. The biblical basis for examining the nature of Godliness and humanity and the Messiahship of Jesus is the Gospel of Mark 9:2-13. The method used is the exegesis method. This method is suitable for finding a clear meaning of the word to be analyzed. The result of this study is that the words Transfigured (metamorphoo) , Son (huios), and Man (anthropos) explain that Jesus is a true man and a true God and as Heir, that is, the anointed Messiah of God.

THE HYPOSTASIS OF JESUS AND HIS REFLECTIONS FOR CURRENT BELIEVERS

The emergence of several cults that exist as evidence of the difficulty of understanding the concept of Christology as a whole. Therefore, theologians have tried to explain the concept of Christology using a tool, namely the concept of Hypostasis. The concept of the Hypostasis of Jesus is not easy, especially when describing the person of Jesus in terms of his existence as God and man. It is not too easy to understand the concept. Therefore, researchers are trying to find and see the background of concept building and its implementation for believers. From the background description, the following questions emerge: Is the concept of Jesus Hypostasis able to answer the different views on the divinity and humanity of Jesus? How understand the background concept of Jesus' Hypostasis as a theological struggle and its implementation for believers? The research method used is qualitative by applying the theological systematic analysis method. The results of his research show (i) The background of the emergence of heresies that existed at that time encouraged the emergence of the Jesus Hypostasis Concept as an explanatory model for the Christology concept, especially in explaining the divinity and humanity of Jesus; (ii) the concept of Hypostasis as an answer to the unity of nature between God and man in the person of Jesus, without overlapping nature and how it works; (iii) An effort is needed to explain and implement the concept of Hypostasis to believers.

Christianity seen by Muslims and Islam seen by Christians in the Period of Early Islamic Rule in the Middle East

Abstract This paper highlights a context where Christians lived under Muslim rule. Muslim critique of Christianity was widespread, and Christians had to react to Muslim dominance by finding ways of responding to criticisms without incurring punishment for rebellious attitudes to their rulers. In the first two centuries after the Arab conquest of the largely Christian Middle East, Muslims viewed Christians as needing correction for their mistaken beliefs about the oneness of God in their deviant Trinity, about the humanity of Jesus in their insistence on his divine status, about the death of Jesus by crucifixion when this had not happened, and for their failure to recognise the finality of the Prophet Muḥammad in their suppression of testimony to his coming in the Bible. Christians viewed Muslims as heretics who had diverted from the true Christian faith in the Trinity and the divinity and crucifixion of Jesus and who looked for prophecies of Muḥammad in the Bible that did not exist. Muslims and Christians searched each other’s scriptures to persuade the other that their interpretations might need correcting. As the centuries passed in the Middle East, Christians steadily embraced Islam. By the time of the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, the vast majority of the population were Muslims.

BUKTI-BUKTI KEILAHIAN DAN KEMANUSIAAN YESUS DALAM PERJANJIAN BARU

This research examines the evidences of the divinity and humanity of Jesus in the New Testament. These two natures of Jesus have often been debated among Christians throughout the history of the church. Evidenced by the emergence of four popular views such as: ebionism, Arianism, docetism, apolinarism. By using qualitative research, the researcher examines, analyzes and elaborates literature, articles and studies from experts to find interpretations of the New Testament texts in order to produce valid and reliable views and be held as truth. The conclusion of this study is that the New Testament evidence shows that Jesus was true God and true man.

‘But this soil, I know!’: Materiality, Incarnation, and the Earthiness of Popular Belief and Practice

AbstractTaking its cue from the story of a Cretan peasant who was reluctant to let go of a handful of his native soil in order to enter heaven, this article begins by exploring ideas concerning the afterlife in which this world is contrasted with the world to come. It then proceeds to discuss how Christians historically have frequently understood themselves to be in the world, but not of it; how dualistic tendencies have often pitted the soul against the body, and how such views have had an influence on how we understand the person of Christ, often preventing Christians from fully accepting the implications of the Incarnation. The article examines instances of a lingering docetic streak within Christianity, which lies uncomfortably with its central claim that God became fully human. Notwithstanding the difficulties some Christians may have with the idea of a fully human Jesus, there is also a very rich tradition within Christianity of bodily engagement with the material world, not only sacramentally, but also within many popular religious practices, including pilgrimage and relic veneration. Finally, the revival of interest in sacred natural sites, even in areas where church attendances continue to fall, is investigated.

Taking the Divinity from the Divine: The Interaction Between Death Concerns and Religiosity on the Evaluation of a Human Jesus.

Quest religiosity is characterized by an openness toward religious doubt and uncertainty as a way to grow existentially. The current paper examines how death awareness contributes to quest (vs low quest) Christians' reactions toward a Jesus depicted as doing biologically human actions (e.g., vomiting, bleeding). Study 1 evaluated quest persons' reactions to either a humanistic Christ or a neutral Jesus passage. Essay evaluations were examined in Study 2 as a function of quest and mortality salience. Study 3 measured death-thought accessibility following a creaturely Jesus prime for quest individuals. Participants who scored low on quest were more negative toward a creaturely, rather than neutral, Jesus. These effects were exaggerated following thoughts of death. Finally, low quest persons reported heightened death thoughts due to incarnational ambivalence. Theimplications are discussed.

Communal Incarnation: The Corporate, Collective Jesus of Paul’s Letters

Abstract In his authentic letters, Paul describes a historical, human Jesus, but is strangely silent about the events of Jesus’ life. At the same time, Paul describes the figure of Christ using participatory language, and provides no reason to think that this collective embodiment of Christ does not also apply to Jesus’ historical body. I propose that Paul’s historical Jesus was therefore a corporate figure, embodied by the Jewish, pre-Christian community to which Jesus the Nazarene belonged. I present the literary background for this proposal, and explain how the evidence in Paul for a historical Jesus should be interpreted in a corporate or collective sense. I also provide a typological derivation of the name ‘Jesus’ in Paul.

The Father of Modern India and the Son of God: Rammohun Roy's Jesus Christ

Rammohun Roy, often hailed as the “Father of India,” was a key figure in the early internationalisation of religion who embraced Western critiques of Hinduism while holding fast to what he viewed as the Vedas' revelation of a single Supreme Spirit. The Precepts of Jesus was central to the theological and philosophical system he sought to create in dialogue with fellow Indians and Westerners alike. On one hand, Roy sought to present Jesus to the Indian public as a universal religious figure. On the other hand, his portrayal of a decidedly human Jesus strengthened ties with British and American unitarians while challenging the particularist foundation of trinitarian Christianity's claims to universality: the divinity of Christ and his unique atoning work. In response to Christian attacks on his booklet, Roy defended his views using careful exegesis of the biblical text, critiquing evangelical views using the very source of evangelical authority: the words of Jesus himself. Even as he undermined the evangelical identity of Jesus, Roy's decision to make Jesus Christ a significant person to educated Indians established a precedent for viewing Jesus as a universal religious figure unconstrained by the confines of Christianity.

The Son as a Torn Veil: The Mysteries of Jesus According to J. Ratzinger-Benedict XVI

J. Ratzinger-Benedict XVI relates theological cognition to following Jesus and going in His footsteps. He emphasizes the inseparable, mutual, servant-like relationship between academic theology and Christian praxis, Christological hermeneutics with the existential basis of faith. Intellectual and spiritual understanding of the mystery of Jesus depends on intimacy with Him and grows on this path: only the Son can show the Father because he knows Him in a way that defines his existence as the Son. The eternal inter-Trinitarian conversation with the Father – the prayer of the Son, His sonship-obedience – finds its corporal expression in history, and the humanity of Jesus, whose culmination is the cross, remains His prayer. The earthly life, and finally the Passover of Jesus, introduces into the human, vague concept of God the experience of the loving Father, thus making the course of history definitively meaningful and fulfilling, and the faith legitimate. Ratzinger defends Christology as a conceptual understanding of the truth of the Gospel, the depth and integrity of which Christology guards and to which it refers. Disregarding in faith the cognitive achievements and heritage of systematic theology leads to depriving faith of its most important contents, without which it starts to look in the dark for justifications which are subjective as well as fuzzy.

The Body Upon the (Lynching) Tree: the Humanity of Jesus in James Cone and Reinhold Niebuhr

Abstract In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone addresses Reinhold Niebuhr’s complicated record on the so-called ‘Negro Question’. Although Niebuhr was keenly aware of and sensitive to black suffering and the systemic injustices which produced it, he failed to see any explicit relationship between the crucifixion of Jesus and the lynching of black persons. But what accounts for this failure? While Cone rightly posits Niebuhr’s limited theological imagination and sparse contact with African Americans as contributing factors, this essay argues, first, that Niebuhr cannot connect cross and lynching tree because of an anaemic and implicitly docetic Christology. It then suggests, second, that only an anti-docetic Christology with a robust account of Jesus’s humanity, such as Cone’s, can interpret black suffering christologically. To state the thesis in Niebuhrian idiom: Niebuhr takes the humanity of Jesus literally, but not seriously, whereas Cone takes the blackness of Jesus’s flesh seriously, but not literally.

World Christianity as ‘Human Universal Making’ Activity: The Contribution of African Christian Potential

The study engages Alain Badiou’s philosophical concept of ‘immanent exception’ to establish the special potential embedded in African Christianity for engendering human universal (Umuntu). It argues that African Christian experiences inform their interpretations of Jesus Christ as the answer to all human existential concerns. This approach forces them to ‘exceed’ in the locations and spaces of their imaginations of suffering by embracing ambivalent localizations (through a constant oscillation between local and un-local) in search to transcend, not escape, in thought and practice their negative realities. Thus, they transcend unitary Christian boundaries and integrates critical elements of African spiritual systems to build human universal within the paradigmatic universal humanity of Jesus. The study underlines that grasping African Christianity through immanent exception could contribute to empowering not only African Christians, but also world Christians to seek new ways of becoming human universal for global struggle against death dealing forces such as COVID-19. The study concludes by calling for the need to engage how World Christianity in its particularities is shaping life today and how local churches are participating in constructing what it means to be part of God’s mission to build a human universal in active search for global justice.

A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. By J. R. Daniel Kirk. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016. Pp. vii + 638. $60.00.

A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. By J. R. Daniel Kirk. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016. Pp. vii + 638. $60.00.

Classifying Cerinthus’s Christology

ABSTRACTIn the academic study of Christian origins, scholars have classified various christological systems of thought as “gnostic,” “docetic,” “adoptionist,” or “separationist.” This article will explore to what extent each of these taxonomic categories or ideal types corresponds to Cerinthus's postulation of the temporary union of the human Jesus with the divine Christ. It will further defend the accuracy of Irenaeus's description of Cerinthus's theological and christological positions and how they differed from those of the Jewish-Christian Ebionites on the one hand and a demiurgical theologian such as Carpocrates on the other.

A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, by J. R. Daniel Kirk

<i>A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels</i>, by J. R. Daniel Kirk

CHRISTOLOGIES AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF NDIA IN KIRINYAGA WEST SUB-COUNTY OF KENYA

The study evaluated Christologies among the Christians of Ndia, Kirinyaga West sub-county, Kenya. The objectives of the study were: to explore ontological Christologies; to investigate popular soteriological Christologies; to establish social, political and economic functional Christologies among Ndia Christians and; to examine the question of Christodicy in Ndia Christianity. 232 Christians were randomly selected to participate in the study. Questionnaires were issued to the participants. A 95.45% response rate was realized. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The data showed that ontological Christologies among the Ndia Christians ignored the humanity of Jesus and elevated him to the position of the traditional Gikuyu deity, Ngai, while soteriological Christologies were well balanced. Functional Christologies and the question of Christodicy were too spiritualized and Satan was given too prominent a position such that devil worship could result from glorification of Satan as a very powerful being who is able to oppose and cause Jesus to fail in his duties. The study recommends that churches in Ndia should teach sound doctrinal positions emphasizing on the humanity of Jesus, encourage people to appreciate the relationship between work and wealth and medicine and healing, avoid giving Satan a prominent position and to reinterpret the Gikuyu deity,Ngai, to take the place of God-the-Father as opposed to the place of God-the-Son for construction of a “wholesome” Gikuyu theology. The study will be useful to social workers, scholars, churches and government agencies working with the Ndia.

Book Review: A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels

Book Review: A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels

Preaching Prophets: Upton Sinclair and The Moslem Sunrise

In 1920, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq (1872–1957) arrived in America to spread the message of Islam. Two years later, he founded The Moslem Sunrise. The October 1922 issue included a review of Upton Sinclair’s (1878–1968) serialized story “They Call Me Carpenter.” In Sinclair’s work, Jesus, or Carpenter, returns to live amongst modern Americans. This article explores the theological and cultural contexts that led The Moslem Sunrise to find an affinity in Sinclair’s work. It explores how and why The Moslem Sunrise and Sinclair each addressed the Christology of a human Jesus, the perceived failure of the Church to teach his social gospel, the concept of human brotherhood, and the perceived need to masculinise religion—and even Jesus himself and his associated ethnicity. It reveals a previously unacknowledged relationship between Islam and Sinclair and demonstrates how quite different processes can sometimes lead to unity and to a shared direction.

Intrinsic religiosity protects believers from the existential fear of a human Jesus

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the role of internalised religious beliefs in defending against existential concerns aroused from a creaturely Jesus. Prior work has found that biologically human traits (e.g., vomiting, sweating, etc.) can increase death concerns when applied to both humans and a god. Intrinsic beliefs, however, have been shown to reduce mortality awareness. In the current study, religious participants were primed with thoughts of either a human or neutral Jesus followed by a single item measure about fear of death. A moderated regression analysis found that whereas high intrinsic individuals were buffered from existential concerns, low intrinsic individuals experienced a greater fear of death when primed with a human Jesus. These results replicate prior work within terror management theory and the psychology of religion suggesting that internalised beliefs serve a protective function against existential anxieties.