Tag Archives: Sinlessness of Jesus

The Sinlessness of Jesus 4: Karl Barth

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Karl Barth approaches this question not as an issue to be explored in and for itself, but as part of his discussion of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. Specifically, his treatment comes in Church Dogmatics I/2, section 15.2 “The Mystery of Revelation: Very God and Very Man.” Barth’s exposition in this subsection is a meditation on John 1:14 “the Word became flesh,” and in this portion specifically (15.2.ii; pp. 147-159), Barth is considering what is meant when Scripture speaks of the divine word becoming flesh.

That the Word was made “flesh” means first and generally that He became man, true and real man, participating in the same human essence and existence, the same human nature and form, the same historicity that we have. God’s revelation to us takes place in such a way that everything ascribable to man, his creaturely existence as an individually unique unity of body and soul in the time between birth and death, can now be predicated of God’s eternal Son as well (147).

For Barth, the Johannine phrase means first and primarily that the Word became “participant in human nature and existence”; that is, in the humanitas by which humanity is distinguished as human as opposed to God, angel, or animal (149). Since, however, human “nature” cannot be real in an abstract sense but only in the concrete reality of an actual person, the Word became not simply “flesh” but an existing person, a single individual, the man Jesus Christ. “Thus the reality of Jesus Christ is that God Himself in person is actively present in the flesh. God Himself in person is the Subject of a real human being and acting” (151).

Barth goes further, however, to consider the nature or quality, as it were, of the “flesh” that the Word appropriated:

But what the New Testament calls σάρξ [sarx, “flesh”] includes not only the concept of man in general but also, assuming and including the general concept, the narrower concept of the man who is liable to the judgment and verdict of God, who having become incapable of knowing and loving God must incur the wrath of God, whose existence has become one exposed to death because he has sinned against God. Flesh is the concrete form of human nature marked by Adam’s fall … The Word is not only the eternal Word of God but “flesh” as well, i.e., all that we are and exactly like us even in our opposition to him. It is because of this that He makes contact with us and is accessible for us (151).

Here Barth argues at some length from both Scripture and the history of theology, that the Word became “fallen flesh,” that is, he partook of fallen human nature. “He was not a sinful man. But inwardly and outwardly His situation was that of a sinful man. He did nothing that Adam did. But He lived life in the form it must take on the basis and assumption of Adam’s act” (152). This is precisely what Donald Macleod cannot and will not say. For Barth, though, this is a key distinguishing feature between Christianity and other religions both ancient and modern, which also include instances and concepts of incarnation. In Christian faith, God did not merely become human, and did not come as a hero figure—something found in the other religions, but took the nature identical to ours in the light of the Fall (153).

But this is necessary not simply as an apologetic point. More important is the fact that if the Word has not come to us—actually come all the way to us—then we still reside in the darkness, untouched by the light which has come into the world and which, shining in the darkness, enlightens every person (John 1:5, 9), untouched by revelation and reconciliation. God’s Son has come all the way to us, not only assuming our nature but entering “the concrete form of our nature, under which we stand before God as men damned and lost” (153). Only thus can Christ be “like us” and so represent us before God.

True, the Word assumes our human existence, assumes flesh, i.e., He exists in the state and position, amid the conditions, under the curse and punishment of sinful man. He exists in the place where we are, in all the remoteness not merely of the creature from the creator, but of the sinful creature from the Holy Creator. Otherwise His action would not be a revealing, a reconciling action. He would always be for us an alien word. He would not find us or touch us. For we live in that remoteness. . . . Therefore in our state and condition He does not do what underlies and produces that state and condition, or what we in that state and condition continually do. Our unholy human existence, assume and adopted by the Word of God, is a hallowed and therefore a sinless human existence; in our unholy human existence the eternal Word draws near to us . . . supremely and helpfully near to us (155-156).

Thus although the Word came in sinful flesh, he did not do what we in the flesh do; he committed no sin. Again Barth turns to Scripture, this time to Romans 8:3, to argue that there

In the likeness of flesh (unholy flesh, marked by sin), there happens the unlike, the new and helpful thing, that sin is condemned by not being committed, by being omitted, by full obedience now being found in the very place where otherwise sin necessarily and irresistibly takes place. The meaning of the incarnation is that now in the flesh that is not done which all flesh does (156).

Jesus Christ did not sin, and it was impossible actually that he could for, as we have already noted above, in Christ “God Himself in person is the Subject of a real human being and acting” (151). God is the subject of this genuinely human life, something Barth will go on to explore and exposit in the following paragraphs.

Finally, Barth goes as far as to identify what constitutes Jesus’ sinlessness: standing where we stand in the state and position of fallen humanity Jesus bears the divine wrath which must fall upon sinful humanity.

He judged sin in the flesh by recognising the order of reconciliation, i.e., put in a sinner’s position He bowed to the divine verdict and commended Himself solely to the grace of God. That is His hallowing, His obedience, His sinlessness. Thus it does not consist in an ethical heroism, but precisely in a renunciation of any heroism, including the ethical. He is sinless not in spite of, but just because of His being the friend of publicans and sinners and His dying between the malefactors. . . . This is the revelation of God in Christ. For where man admits his lost state and lives entirely by God’s mercy—which no man did, but only the God-Man Jesus Christ has done—God Himself is manifest (157-158).

Several things are clear in Barth’s exposition. First, he adopts an Alexandrian christology in which the Word assumes human nature, though he goes beyond what the Fathers taught by insisting that it is a fallen human nature. Second, he understands Jesus’ sinlessness as the New Testament portrays it: the fact that Jesus did not sin, rather than in terms of an ontological sinlessness located in sinless flesh. Third, his exposition is shaped by his commitment to the priority of divine grace in salvation, and indeed his exposition serves the proclamation of the gospel of grace, for there is no place here for a Pelagian moral heroism, or for works-righteousness. Rather, the way of Christ as presented by Barth, is the way of salvation for all: a humbling acknowledgement and acceptance of the right of divine justice by which we are condemned as sinners—slain by the word of divine judgement, and yet marvellously and miraculously raised by the mercy of God into the newness of life.

Jesus did not run from the state and situation of fallen humanity, nor seek to bargain with God about the justice or otherwise of his situation, nor sought to improve his situation through his own attempts at moral goodness, but bowed under the divine judgement, and bore it “in solidarity with us to the uttermost,” so that there was done which we do not do: the will of God” (158).

The Sinlessness of Jesus 3: Wolfhart Pannenberg

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In his classic work Jesus – God and Man (German original 1964) Wolfhart Pannenberg argues for the sinlessness of Jesus, as most of the Christian tradition has done.

Pannenberg begins his treatment of the topic with a survey of the doctrine in the history of theology, beginning with the New Testament texts which affirm Jesus’ sinlessness. These, Pannenberg argues, together with the earliest Patristic theologians, assert that Jesus did not sin, although his humanity was like ours in every respect. Later Christian theology shifted this understanding of Jesus’ sinlessness, however, to an affirmation of his impeccability: the idea that Jesus could not sin, and so that his humanity was decisively different to ours. Augustine explained this with recourse to the ideas of original sin and virgin birth, and the conciliar tradition with recourse to the impersonal humanity of Jesus in the anhypostasia-enhypostasia doctrine.

In the nineteenth, however, the idea of human personality and agency, along with questions about the doctrine of orginal sin, led some theologians to locate Jesus’ sinlessness in his “inner life,” or his “moral exemplarism.”

Pannenberg rejects all these options, and develops his argument in three moves. First, he follows the witness of the New Testament and the earliest theologians, that Jesus’ sinlessness is to be understood as his “not committing any sin” during his earthly life, rather than any concept of his incapacity to sin. He rejects these later views because they render the biblical testimony to his temptations and struggles impossible to understand, and so his humanity as qualitatively distinct from normal human life.

Second, while he rejects the Augustinian doctrine of original sin as an explanation for the transmission of sin to each succeeding generation, he finds in it a valid description of the empirical existence of humanity, if not a description of human essence.

If sin is not associated with the essence of the divine destiny of man, but with the structure of present human existence, one cannot conceive of a natural sinlessness of Jesus. It is inconceivable that Jesus was truly man, but that in his corporeality and behavior he was not stamped by the universal structure of centeredness of animal life that is the basis of the self-centeredness of human experience and behavior, but which becomes sin only in man. The conception that at the incarnation God did not assume human nature in its corrupt sinful state but only joined himself with a humanity absolutely purified from all sin contradicts not only the anthropological radicality of sin, but also the testimony of the New Testament and of early Christian theology that the Son of God assumed sinful flesh and in sinful flesh itself overcame sin (362).

Thus Pannenberg argues that the eternal Son did indeed take sinful flesh (Romans 8:3) when he became human, and hence faced the kind of temptation and struggle that all humans face. And it was from within this solidarity with humanity generally, and not exempted from it, that he overcame sin. That he did so is known – both to himself and to us – only in the resurrection.

This is Pannenberg’s third move. It is pointless for us to try to prove the sinlessness of Jesus on the basis of his virgin birth, or his “inner life,” or his moral superiority. The testimony of his life, like that of every person, is ambiguous. Only in the light of the resurrection can we assert Jesus’ sinlessness, and apply it retrospectively to his life on the basis of the divine vindication expressed in this event.

The Sinlessness of Jesus 2: Hendrikus Berkhof

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Although I cannot agree with some aspects of Berkhof’s christology, I have long appreciated his brief chapter on Jesus’ Life and Humanity (Christian Faith, 293-299).

In the history of theology the life of Jesus has always stood in the dark shadow, on the one hand of the two-nature doctrine, on the other of the doctrine of reconciliation.  … Even today in all kinds of orthodox instruction in the faith the impression is given that Jesus came to earth only to suffer and to die. The fact that the Apostles’ Creed has no article about Jesus’ life, but immediately moves from “born” to “suffered” is also responsible for that. 

Berkhof is correct to insist on the theological significance of Jesus’ life, and not simply his “humanity” understood in a vague or abstract way. Perhaps in the history of theology, it is the Anabaptists who have best understood this. That Jesus was born, grew up as a child, as part of a family, that he worked, hungered and thirsted, loved and served, taught and healed, had compassion, had friendships, suffered and prayed, fasted and went to synagogue, and so on, cannot be incidental to theology, to an understanding of his person and work, or our own person and work.

For Berkhof, Jesus is representative humanity, himself truly human and exhibiting a truly human life. This life was exemplified in his love for and obedience to the Father, and his passionate willing of the Father’s will. As representative humanity, Christ accomplished a kind of priestly work, establishing the covenantal order between God and humanity in his own person, and bringing forgiveness and healing to guilty and wretched humanity.

As such the truly human life is one bound to God in love, fellowship and obedience, and as such, truly free.  Jesus enjoyed, on the basis of his fellowship with the Father, an utter freedom,

with respect to the temple and the cult, synagogue and commandment, priests and scribes, sabbath and government, mother and brothers, food and clothing, property and money, popularity and the power of the state. … It was the fruit of a strong carefreeness, which in turn was born from the absolute priority of the Father and his gracious lordship” (296-297, original emphasis).

Again,

here is the complete structure of what it is to be man, in his threefold relationship to God, the neighbor, and nature. Here is also the highest quality of what it is to be man, as love and freedom. Here human existence has reached its full maturity and therefore has fully become God’s partner and instrument.

Berkhof notes that this account of Jesus’ humanity is typically summed up in the term “sinlessness.” Berkhof considers this an “unfortunate” term as it is “too negative, too static, too limited” (297). He does, however, insist that Christian faith

stands or falls with the belief in Jesus’ sinlessness. But like us all, he had to become what he was. … Jesus did not know that in advance and he felt the full impact of the opposing forces. He had no idea of his sinlessness on which he, encouraged by it, could fall back. … Instead of the negative “sinlessness,” we have in the heading used the word humanity to express the core of Jesus’ life (297).

Berkhof opts for a functional kind of sinlessness in which Jesus did not sin, rather than Jesus was “without sin” (he compares the AV with the RSV to illustrate this difference). It may be that with respect to his being, Jesus was constitutionally unable to sin (this is my language, not Berkhof’s), but “human existence realizes and discloses itself only in a series of choices whose outcome is also for the chooser uncertain in advance, but which in retrospect yields a coherent life pattern” (299).

To consider the question otherwise, suggests Berkhof, is to render Jesus less than human with respect to our perspective of him. This is a pastoral issue, but perhaps also an accurate representation of the New Testament witness with respect to Jesus’ sinlessness.

The Sinlessness of Jesus 1: Donald Macleod

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For Donald Macleod, Jesus is ontologically sinless and so incapable of sin. Jesus’ humanity is genuine in every respect, but also utterly sinless. The human nature and flesh assumed by the eternal Son in the incarnation was a sinless human nature, sinless flesh. As such, Jesus Christ was free of both actual sin and inherent sin (Macleod, The Person of Christ Contours in Christian Theology, IVP, 1998, 221).

There was no lust. There was no affinity with sin. There was no proclivity to sin. There was no possibility of temptation from within. In no respect was he fallen and in no respect was his nature corrupt (222).

Macleod develops his own position in dialogue with, and refutation of, Edward Irving’s doctrine, whom he accuses of a Nestorian separation of the human nature from the person of Christ. He rejects Irving’s idea that in the incarnation, the Son assumed a ‘fallen’ human nature on the grounds that “it is impossible to maintain a distinction between ‘fallen’ and ‘sinful.’ Fallen Adam is sinful Adam. Fallen nature is sinful nature, dominated by ‘the flesh’ and characterized by total depravity” (228). According to Macleod, it is not enough to say that Jesus did not sin; one must go further and insist that he was unable to sin.

The crucial issue is whether Christ could have willed to sin. The answer rests entirely on his identity. He was the Son of God, ‘very God of very God’. If he sinned, God sinned. At this level, the impeccability of Christ is absolute. It rests not upon his unique endowment with the Spirit nor upon the indefectibility of God’s redemptive purpose, but upon the fact that he is who he is (229-230).

This is not to say that Jesus knew and relied on his sinlessness. Indeed, faced with temptation, he utilised every resource also available to Christians generally, in order to overcome temptation: scripture, the Holy Spirit’s presence, etc. By standing against and resisting temptation, Jesus serves as an example to all believers.

Macleod’s doctrine raises certain questions. Perhaps most importantly is his view of Jesus’ temptations which he limits to what he calls “sinless human weaknesses”: although Jesus could be tempted by such things as hunger, there was nothing within his person that could issue in temptation. If it is the case, however, that Jesus “was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), Macleod’s proposal is too narrow, fails to do justice to the portrayal of Jesus’ temptations in scripture, and leaves us with a sense that in fact, Jesus was not really like us at all, and thus not really equipped to be the kind of faithful and sympathetic high priest that Hebrews describes.

Another concern is Macleod’s rejection of Gregory Nazianzus’s teaching that “what is not assumed is not healed.” Macleod rightly notes that this teaching arose with respect to Gregory’s rejection of Apollinarianism, but then proceeds to insist that it can have no relevance beyond that provenance. Is it actually “quite perverse to suggest that ‘the unassumed’ in this statement is ‘fallen human nature’” (224), as Macleod insists? In fact, Apollinaris’s reason for rejecting the idea that Jesus had a human mind was because the mind was “filthy,” a great source of sin.

In the end, Macleod fails to convince. In seeking to say more than what scripture says, he ends up saying less, and in so doing, diminishes the glory of the gospel and the comfort believers can gain from it.