Saturday, June 6, 2020

The Humanity of Jesus and His Being a Mediator

Many formulations of Trinitarian Christology tends to pay lip service to the true humanity of Jesus, and as many (including Robert Bellarmine) have noted, much of Protestantism is, functionally, Nestorian. For a discussion of some of the problems, see Latter-day Saints have Chosen the True, Biblical Jesus. Commenting on this vis-à-vis the mediatorship of Jesus (cf. 1 Tim 2:5), one 19th century Unitarian critic of the Trinity wrote:

 

What, says Unitarianism, are the moral wants of man? Consequently, what is the mediator he requires?

 

Religion, we maintain, was made for man, and not man for religion. The mediator, therefore, which we require, is one who would guide and not confound our nature; who would ennoble but not perplex it. We would look for a mediator by whom we should receive the light and truth of God and heaven to our souls. We need to see the capacities, the duties, and the destinies of our kind, in one who is perfectly, but yet simply, of ourselves. Our sorrows, our sufferings, and our darkness, we regard as but so many reasons why our Redeemer and Saviour should be entirely our own kind. We require one who would manifest to all that God is really interested in us. We require one who would show that we are not shut out from communion with the infinite, the invisible, and the future. We require one who would correct our evils, and ye resolve our doubts. We require one who could sympathize with our weakness. We require one who would show us of what our nature is capable, and thus flash upon us the guilt of our deficiencies, or inspire us with the hope of advancement. We are feeble, and need strength; we are tempted, and need support. Jesus proves to us that the strength is in us, if we use it; and that the support is at hand, if we choose to apply it. In our transgressions, we are but too much inclined to yield to, or justify ourselves with, a guilty sophistry; but our views of Jesus leave us no room for such delusion. Whilst Trinitarianism places most of our religious wants afar of and outside us, Unitarianism fixes them within us. Whilst Trinitarianism demands a Christ which shall reconcile God to us, Unitarianism holds a Christ which shall conform us to God:--to us his word and work is a spirit of life, his word and work to them but dogma or mystery. (Henry Giles, Lecture IV: “There is One God, and One Mediator Between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus,” pp. 26-27, in Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures By Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool: In Reply to A Course of Lectures, Entitled “Unitarianism Confuted,” By Thirteen Clergymen of the Church of England [Liverpool: Wilmer and Smith, 1839], 264-65)

 

Latter-day Saints are in the enviable position of allowing, unlike Giles (who rejected such) can affirm both the doctrine that Jesus had a personal pre-existence and hold to his complete humanity without the dogma of the Hypostatic Union; indeed, we can answer the likes of Anthony Buzzard and others who argue that one cannot claim Jesus’ experience of humanity is the same as ours if he had a “pre-human existence.” On this, see:

 

The Christological Necessity of Universal Pre-Existence