“It cannot be like that with you.”
Most of us
have heard of the contrast between “Christology from below” and “Christology
from above.” This opposition sneaks into most theological
discussions, whether they are about dogma, scripture, morality,
mission, or salvation.
Most of us are not theologians, but we can still sense what it is all about.
The “above” emphasizes the divinity of Christ, the transcendent; the “below” emphasizes
the full humanity of the Jesus of history.
Christology from above is the “old” way of thinking. It presumes that
God, from above, enters history in Jesus, the eternal Word made flesh. Its strongest
insights support our intuitive recognition of human inadequacy. It demands an
admission that we are not enough. It calls for intervention and assistance from
a reality beyond our own.
In its deficits, Christology from above so fixes on the divinity of Jesus that
he looks like some kind of organic automaton, manipulated by a divine nature
that knows everything in advance and feels nothing in actuality. All is fixed,
tidy, and predicted. All is planned, neat, and efficient. Jesus is so utterly
different from us, so remote and unapproachable, that we imagine him moved to
compassion only by the pleading of his mother.
An equally oversimplified version of Christology from below stresses his humanity
so much that you start wondering about that divinity stuff—whether Jesus
pre-existed as the Word, whether he did miracles, whether he was raised from
the dead, among other things.
It is easy for us to foul it all up, especially since we have big problems with
notions of “from above” and “from below.” Those who are above
are the top dogs. They call the shots. They lord it over the rest of us. They
pull the strings. When we feel below, we tend to resent those above. Or wish
we could get to their status. Then we could dominate. Then we could control things.
Most of our notions of authority are rooted in this supposition. Those who have
it, lord it. They take the first place. They put us in our place. Those who do
not have authority easily resent it or hunger for it. (If only we could call
the shots.)
There seems to be a strong tendency, consequently, to resist the authoritative
aura of Jesus—although almost everyone who encountered him acknowledged
his authority in word and deed. If we have nagging suspicions about “aboveness,” we
may insist on a Jesus from below. Little that we are, it is not pleasant to imagine
anything greater than us. We love the below—as long as it can aspire to
greatness and power. Even Jesus could make it as a self-made man.
Paradoxically, Jesus was very unlike us—both in his aboveness and his identity
with our lowliness. Not only is he unlike us in being God, he is unlike us in
being human. After all, we tend not to be very good at being humans, much less
gods.
We construe our humanity in terms of mighty aspirations. But the human Jesus
aspired to smallness. Oddly, even his divinity sought to be emptied out.
The Letter to the Hebrews reaches for this paradox. We have a “great” “high” priest.
But he was strangely compassionate, fragile, and subject to the very trials we
abhor. Isaiah warned of the fact. This savior would be afflicted, would suffer,
and would even bear guilt. We want no afflictions, no suffering, and will admit
no culpability. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize
with our weaknesses, but one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet never
sinned.”
This is a strange fix. Like Zebedee’s sons, we aspire to sit at his right and
left, but we do not know what we are asking for. It is a cup of pain and suffering.
It is an emptying-out. It is a descending.
The great joke on us is that the mighty God above goes down below, even below
us, proud of ourselves for not needing anything other than ourselves.
What would it be like if we exercised our aboveness, our authority, in the manner
of the God we profess to believe in? “You know how among the Gentiles those
who exercise authority lord over it them: their great ones make their importance
felt. It cannot be like that with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness
must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs
of all. The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve—to give his
life as a ransom for many.”
People in authority—even the churchly kind—may love exercising it.
But they mistake the authority, the aboveness of God. If we feel excluded from
authority, we may crave it. But we misunderstand the authority of Jesus.
Those who are above should go below. So it was and is with our God. Those who
are below need not hunger for the heights. We need only enter more deeply into
what we are, our humanness, to receive from the One above the message that even
in our smallness the grandeur of love is revealed.
|
|
Father Kavanaugh is a professor of Philosophy at St. Louis University in St. Louis.
Copyright © 1996 by John F. Kavanaugh. All rights reserved.
Used by permission from Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545-0308
THE WORD ENCOUNTERED: Meditations on the Sunday Scriptures
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York (1996), pp. 114-116.
To purchase or learn more about other books written by Fr. Kavanaugh,
go to http://www.maryknollmall.org/ and type "Kavanaugh" next to the "SEARCH" button
|
Art by Martin Erspamer, O.S.B.
from Religious Clip Art for the Liturgical Year (A, B, and C).
Used by permission of Liturgy Training Publications. This art may be reproduced only by parishes who purchase the collection
in book or CD-ROM form. For more information go to: http://www.ltp.org/
|
|
 |
