Over at the ever-excellent Pontifications Al Kimel is examining the Logos Asarkos, the question of the status of the Son ‘before’ taking flesh (sarx) in the incarnation. Al says that the idea of the ‘pre-existence’ of the Son seemed obvious until Robert Jenson put it in question. So far Al has given us excerpts from Hans Küng and Herbert McCabe, and a tell-tale one-line intervention from Jenson has appeared in the comments box.
In my view we have to rely on this concept of the pre-existent Son only if we set out our doctrine of Christ before we turn to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. If we make the Holy Spirit central to our christology we will not have to rely solely on concepts of nature (the two natures doctrine) or a contrast between eternity and time (which is another version of the same doctrine). I have found it helpful to think this through in terms of language. Imagine that divinity (or equally love, or communion, or eternity) is the language spoken by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then imagine that the Father and Son invent another language – humanity (or perhaps better imagine that they speak the same language with a new accent). Humanity is then the language is which God is perfectly God, and God (freely) creates us by speaking us into being, and makes himself known to us by addressing us, and makes us known and reachable (incarnate) to one another, and finally makes himself known and reachable to us as Jesus.
This way of thinking about the issue is strange, of course, but as long as we insist on busting theology up into such static categories as nature, rather than allowing it a more dynamic and inter-personal logic (such as language) we will be stuck with such conundrums as the logos asarkos. Let me pursue this a little further.
The Holy Spirit supplies the whole resource of our creaturely life with God. The Father and the Son speak the Spirit. The Spirit is the language they speak. But the Spirit can speak and be many languages, without being less the language of the Son and Father. The Spirit extends their speech to create a new language, which the Father and the Son are content to speak. They speak humanity. Humanity is one of the modes in which they speak divinity to each other. Humanity does not give divinity something that it did not have before: it is not a reduction of, or addition to, their divinity. The Son is the first speaker and the native speaker. He speaks humanity perfectly, and is at home in the flesh, and in the flesh of humanity, he is perfectly at home with the Father. He is not impeded by, or disguised by, the flesh, for it is brought into existence by the speaking of the Son and the Father. The human entity and mode of being is spoken by that enfleshing word and utterance. Having spoken us into being, they also speak through us: the Son replies to the Father in the flesh. They make us speakers. Then they speak to us and so make hearers of us. They speak to us with the intention that we hear and receive one another. They speak to us one another, giving us in this speech one another as words and gifts from God. We are to learn to speak to one another and receive one another from them, with thanksgiving.
This humanity the Son receives from the Father, by the Spirit. The Spirit takes what the Father gives him, and gives it to us, in it making himself present to us (incarnation) and us to him (creation). The fleshly materiality of Jesus of Nazareth derives from, and is supplied by, the consummated materiality of the Spirit. As yet we speak humanity very badly. It is a language and a life we are scarcely acquainted with, so like any foreigner, we mangle this language, not because we are native speakers of some other language, but just because we are autistic, scarcely able to speak. But our bad performance of flesh does not make flesh problematic for God. The Father and Son speak the language of flesh perfectly, this language is sustained by their use of it, and they will enable us to be at home in it to them.
