Scripture and God in Christianity

In view of what has been said, it becomes evident that the traditional Christian concept of deity is
anthropomorphic and corporeal, especially in terms of the language that has been used throughout
Christian history to describe these concepts. It is not only paradoxical, it is contradictory. It
does not solve the problem of Jesus' relationship with God, the problem for which it was invented.
Finally it does not explain or achieve salvation either. D. Sayers writes: "What are we to
make of that? ...if He was God and nothing else, His immortality means nothing to us; if He was
man and no more, his death is no more important than yours or mine." 784 It is notoriously difficult
to understand the two natures, one person, true human and true God, and the mode of union
between them. These are mere speculations having very little impact on the practical understanding
of the person of Jesus. They render, observes Sayers, "The Father incomprehensible, the Son
incomprehensible, and the whole thing incomprehensible. Something put in by theologians to
make it more difficult-nothing to do with daily life or ethics." 785 These kinds of contradictions or
mysteries might have been of some sense in the times of the early Church Fathers in the light of
Platonism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, or other trends or schools of that day philosophy. Our present
day knowledge and thought patterns make it impossible to understand literally the doctrine
of "Incarnation" without landing into crude anthropomorphism and polytheism, especially the
cross part of it. "That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression;
that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but
that man should play the tyrant over God and find Him a better man than himself is an astonishing
drama indeed." 786
These difficulties are recognized by a number of modern Christian theologians. R. Bultmann, for
instance, talking about traditional doctrine of `atonement' and 'salvation' argues, "How can the
guilt of one man be expiated by the death of another who is sinless-if indeed one may speak of a
sinless man at all? What primitive notions of guilt and righteousness does this imply? And what
primitive idea of God? The rational of sacrifice in general may of course throw some light on the
theory of atonement, but even so, what a primitive mythology it is, that a divine Being should become
incarnate, and atone for the sins of men through his own blood!...Moreover, if the Christ
who died such a death was the pre-existent Son of God, what could death mean to him? Obviously
very little, if he knew that he would rise again in three days." 787 He gets more emphatic in
regards to salvation theory, and describing the doctrine of God-man as Gnostic, argues that,
"gnostic influence suggests that this Christ who died and rose again, was not a mere human being
but a God-man....It is only when with effort that modern man can think himself back into such an
intellectual atmosphere, and even then he could never accept it himself, because it regards man's
essential being as nature and redemption as a process of nature." He further argues that "as far the
pre-existence of Christ, with its corollary of man's translation into a celestial realm of light, and
the clothing of the human personality in heavenly robes and a spiritual body- all this is not only
irrational but utterly meaningless. Why should salvation take this particular form?" 788 He declares
this as a `myth' and calls upon the Church to reinterpret this myth in the light of modern
knowledge and Kerygma. Though "Little we know of his life and personality" claims Bultmann,
"we know enough of his message to make for ourselves a consistent picture." 789 Without understanding
the New Testament mythology in the light of Kerygma the Christian message would be
unintelligible to the modern man. "The danger both for theological scholarship and for the
Church is that this uncritical resuscitation of the New Testament mythology may make the Gospel
message unintelligible to the modern world." 790
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