Brent Coffin’s Reflection
Lenten Conversation Week 5
21-28 March 2015
Is He Really Divine?
Given that Jesus was fully human, how do we understand the divinity of Jesus Christ? The
question prompted a rich exchange in the 10 Hour last Sunday. Karin followed it with a sermon
that moved from the ancient creeds to the ordinary realities of daily life: Word by word…bread
by bread…cup by cup.1 And, with this question in mind, we concluded the final evening
discussion of James Carroll’s book Christ Actually. At the very end of the evening, one person
made a frank observation. “What really is the ‘divinity’ of Christ? I don’t think we’ve answered
the question.” Of course, she was right.
Is Jesus Christ human and divine? My answer is unequivocal. Yes and no.
It all depends on what we mean by ‘divinity’. If ‘divine’ is an adjective that ascribes an attribute
to Jesus--the ‘divine’ Christ—my answer is no. Or if ‘divine’ is a noun that defines a category of
something into which Jesus fits—Jesus Christ is ‘divine’—then again, my answer would be no.
The problem here is not how to understand Jesus Christ. It’s what we claim to know when we
call him ‘divine’. If we’re careful with the word ‘divine’, then we are mindful that it means ‘of
God’. And God is…well…God is…Mystery.
The idea of mystery can be used as an intellectual copout. If we’re talking about something that
can be empirically measured—say what to pay on my income tax—then to say, “well, it’s really
a mystery” is to stop looking for an informed, verifiable answer. In such cases, resorting to ‘a
mystery’ is seeking refuge from intellectual honesty. My tax return may be a puzzle to me, but
the IRS won’t let me get away with calling it a mystery.
But how much of the world can we reduce to empirical knowledge devoid of mystery? Can my
one-year old granddaughter be empirically explained? Can you or I? Actually, no. And therefore
mystery is not a cop out—just the opposite. Our capacity to experience mystery opens us—opens
us to curiosity and awe, wonder and humility, doubt and creativity. Mystery opens us to what is
beyond our explanatory powers…and our control.
In his classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James observes that it’s “as if there
were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception
of what we may call ‘something there,’…a sense of present reality more diffused and general
than that which our special senses yield.”2
Karin Case quoting James Carroll in her sermon, “Bread by Bread”, 22 March 2015.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 55,
59; emphasis in original.
1
2
Is Jesus Christ ‘divine’? I’d say no, if it means we are ascribing to him an identity we know or
a category we can explain.
Is Jesus Christ ‘divine’? Yes, I believe, if it means we experience mystery as enduring, elusive,
Transcendent Presence—drawing us out of the confines of a reductionist world… opening us to
the sense of unseen order and purpose…connecting us across chasms of then and now, us and
them, self and other. Yes, if the surest evidence is not explanatory knowledge, but knowing
ourselves to be-in-loving-relation.
Understanding metaphor is what makes meaning visible, I affirm Jesus Christ is the human face
of God-with-us. And to say we know what this means is to miss his opening us to endless
mystery, beckoning us to endless meaning. “We are offering interpretations of bottomless
mystery, ever to be plumed, never mastered,” Carroll reminds us.3
Nor is it about Christ alone. Again Carroll: “Jesus reveals humanity as much as he reveals
divinity [translation: the infinite mystery of God]. Indeed, what Jesus, when taken to be Christ
reveals is that divinity [translation: the infinite mystery of God] abides not just in him but in all of
us.”4
Is Jesus Christ divine? If it means we are defining him to explain the mystery God, I have to say
no. If it means we are probing, with mind and heart, the bottomless mystery of God-with-us to
find unlimited meaning, then I say yes.
Yes: He beckons us to know our need for one another. Yes: He poses the living questions, and
calls us to listen to one another, ourselves continuing the Great Conversation. Yes: He summons
us to chart his way in the 21st century, doing so together, even in our solitude. Yes: his Story
inspires us to see how we can complete our own.
And yes: beyond all the complexities, He shows us a stunning simplicity. Dare to love Holy
Mystery. Remember daily, we are being held in love, and so behold one another. And as we
do, we can take him at his word. Even though things are never clean and simple in Cambridge,
we’re not far from the Kingdom of God.5
3
James Carroll, Christ Actually: The Son of God for The Secular Age (New York: Viking Press, 2014), 275.
Ibid., 271.
5
Mark 12:28-34.
4