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Doctrine Matters with Kevin DeYoung
What Is Divine Self-Consciousness, Kenosis, and Spirit Christology?
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- [00:04]
Kevin DeYoung
Hello and welcome to Doctrine Matters, a weekly podcast exploring the rich theology of the Christian faith. Each week we want to take hold of one aspect of our faith and try to understand theological concepts that sometimes have been debated, controversial, or maybe just hard to understand. And hopefully we can look at them in a way that is clear, concise and accessible. The goal is that believers would be encouraged and edified and that God would be glorified so we can love him more, know him more, enjoy him forever. I'm Kevin DeYoung, your host and teacher, and this is Doctrine Matters.
- [00:46]
Co-host or Guest Speaker
We're continuing with our study of Christology on Doctrine Matters, having looked at various heresies and leading to the Chalcedonian definition, once we talk about the hypostatic union that is the two natures in the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to try to work through a series of other issues questions. Let's see how many we can get through. Here's one. Christ's divine self consciousness. And here's how you might put the question. How much did Jesus know about who Jesus was? There are some people who would argue, argue that it wasn't until the very end, or maybe even at the end of his life, he wasn't still sure. Or does it somehow, and these people might even have an orthodox view of the person of Christ. Not always, but they might and yet insist that Christ perhaps had to be taught or he had to learn, or someone had to tell him his divine message in his identity. And it is a little bit of a tricky question because certainly we need to affirm the Bible does that Jesus as a human being learned things. We know that he increased in wisdom and stature among men. And so he didn't come out of the womb speaking every language. He didn't come out of the womb and immediately start doing miracles and prophesying. He had to learn letters. And at what point did people think this child is special? Well, we certainly know that as a young boy he's understanding what the elders did not understand. And this 12 year old is dazzling the teachers in the temple. This is more than just a prodigy who can, you know, play the piano really well. But this is someone who understands at the deepest level the things that the most educated teachers of the law did not understand. Now, the clear picture in the Gospels is that people were fuzzy on his identity, including his parents. So it wouldn't make sense to think that there's somebody else who has a clearer sense of his identity and that Jesus had to learn it from someone else. There's no one in the Gospels who really has a clear sense of it throughout his ministry, more so at the end and certainly after the Holy Spirit comes. So Jesus understood his own identity from himself. He goes up to the mount of Transfiguration, knowing who he is and what will be revealed. He says before Abraham was I am. He tells people they must believe that I am He. In other words, Jesus understood that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of man, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, the one who would stand in judgment upon all people, the one who is deserving of worship, the one who must die, the one who would be raised to life on the third day, the one who would die for the sins of his people, the one apart from whom there is no eternal life. The one who has been with the Father from the beginning and on and on. Now, when did he come to this awareness? Again, we're not told, so it must be that the Holy Spirit didn't think we needed that information to know at what point but we see Him. The first we see Christ ministering in any way in saying anything is at age 12 in the temple. And there certainly seems like he is aware of his identity. Now, that's a little bit by implication, but we certainly know that he knows more than the leaders and the chief priests. So Christ understood his own identity. On all the pages of Scripture where we see him ministering at the same time, we do want to affirm that Christ experienced a twofold consciousness, meaning it's not like he's toggling back and forth, but he can experience a divine perception or a human perception. He can say I and the Father are one. And he can say in human consciousness, I thirst. Some theologians have said that in this complex person of Christ there is a fluctuation of this consciousness according to his divine or human nature. So Christ has a divine self consciousness, and as the incarnate Son of God, he also has a human self consciousness. So that's one issue. Here's a related issue. It goes under the theological term kenosis, and this comes from Philippians chapter 2. Though Christ was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself. There's the Greek word echinosan by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men. In the 19th century, the question of kenosis and here this word means Christ's self emptying became a topic of fierce debate. Now part of the background is there was a desire to explain how the results of higher Criticism could square with the depiction of Christ in the New Testament. Specifically, Christ sure seems to assume all the things about the Old Testament that really we ought to believe Christ believed them. Moses wrote the Pentateuch, there was only one Isaiah, Jonah was true history. Old Testament chronology is straightforward. All of that's probably obvious to us. But higher critical scholars argued that, no, there was actually two or three Isaiahs, and actually Moses didn't write the Pentateuch. And actually the history doesn't unfold in straightforward chronology. But different parts were written later to seem like they were earlier. And Jesus doesn't adopt any of that. And so some of these more liberal theologians were left saying, well, how do we understand that about Christ? Because we don't affirm what he's affirming about the Old Testament or seems to assume about the Old Testament. And so the kenosis theory was helpful to these theologians in part that they could say, well, Christ must have been devoid of some of the divine attributes. And this explains why he didn't understand everything that we now understand about the Old Testament. Now, hopefully you can hear this is already getting into really troublesome waters to say, well, Jesus, you didn't quite know the Old Testament as well as we know. Why? Well, because you emptied yourself of some of the divine attributes. These so called kenotic things theories were not all the same, but they at one level or another argued that there were some kinds of attributes that Christ held onto and there were other attributes he emptied himself of or were suspended in some way, and that Christ therefore didn't know things. Now, to be sure, there is a way that Christ is all knowing. He's the Son of God and must learn. He's omnipresent and localized. He is all powerful and he embraced a life of finitude. Certain activities can be predicated of his human nature and others of his divine nature. But these canonic theories go further than that, further than the communication of idioms we saw with Cyril. They say he truly emptied himself. So we're not just talking about certain modes of expression or certain things attributed to Christ in one nature or another, but they're saying he actually emptied himself of some divine attributes. He set aside these attributes. Now there's all sorts of problems with that. You get to the simplicity of God, every attribute is essential. So you can't. It's not. Here's 15 attributes on a shelf and Christ can say, well, I'm going to leave four behind. That's not how attributes work. God is whatever he has, all of them are essential. It's not a composite of several. So to lay aside any one of those attributes, the second person of the Trinity would have been something less than the second person of the Trinity. So how do we understand then this self emptying? Because that word echinosin, I mean kenosis in one level is a biblical idea. What we want to say is Christ did not cling to into his Godhood as something to be used for selfish gain. Rather, he set aside divine rights as God and came to earth as a servant. He emptied himself not of the divine nature nor of divine attributes, but we ought to say of divine prerogatives. As God, Christ had certain rights, privileges exclusive to deity. But as God in the flesh flesh, he often set aside those rights. Another word that is helpful to understand kenosis. Sometimes theologians say, well, we need to think of knosis as crypsis. Crypsis means hidden. And that is helpful that Christ emptied himself insofar as his divine glory was for a time veiled, obscured, hidden. Think about the mount of transfiguration. It's not that the mount of transfiguration Christ was now transforming into super God and he's putting on new attributes. He wasn't becoming something he was not, but rather he was being revealed to be who he was all along. The disciples now could see who he really was in his glory. So the Incarnation, the Son of God became what he was not a man without ceasing to be what he was fully God. It was a temporary self abasement by assumption of a human nature, not by subtraction. All right, we have maybe two, three more minutes for one other area of Christology and this you may not have heard this term and yet the ideas. I was just reading it in a popular lay level book just in the last few days. Go under this heading of Spirit Christology. Spirit Christology is an umbrella term given to a number of theologies that put the Holy Spirit at the center of our understanding of the person and work of Christ. Now we need on the one hand and on the other hand. So on the one hand it is true we sometimes overlook how Jesus is presented in the Gospels as one supremely full of the Holy Spirit. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit as at baptism the Spirit descended on him. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He returned in the power of the Spirit. He launches his public ministry announcing the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. So yes, this so called Spirit Christology can be helpful insofar as it emphasizes the work of the Spirit in the life of Christ and Spirit Christology also underscores the true humanity of Christ, that Jesus was not some superhero who in a pinch simply switches over to his divine nature. And therefore he doesn't really have human weakness and he's just kind of sliding through life because he's God Spirit. Christology wants to emphasize he's doing all of this with dependence upon the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Spirit. All of that is to the good. On the other hand, there are a number of dangers. It's sometimes said that Christ's miracles can't be used as proof of Christ's divinity. After all, Elijah and Elisha did miracles. They multiplied food, they raised the dead. So no, all these miracles, they weren't a proof of deity. They were just in the power of the Spirit. Now sometimes that leads in charismatic circles to say, well, if you have the same Spirit, you can do those same miracles, you can do even greater things. And I don't think that's what Jesus meant by the greater things. Greater things is the greater spread of the Gospel and growth of the church and faith reaching Jews and Gentiles. But we see often Gospel of John, for example. These signs are explicit pointers to his messianic identity. When Jesus feeds the 5,000, they say, this is indeed the prophet who has come into the world, the disciples and the boat, who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him. So all throughout the Gospels we see these miracles are on a different level, of a different kind and frequency and power and effectiveness that they do speak to his divine identity. There are theological dangers too. We can so emphasize the role of the Spirit in Christ's life. We end up with a functional kind of kenosis. He's really emptied himself of all divine power or even end up with a kind of adoptionism that he didn't really function as the Son of God, but was only adopted as such. And with a human Christ so dependent on the Spirit that there is no demonstrable evidence of divinity, we can also overemphasize the agency of the Spirit. That undermines the traditional notion of inseparable operations in the Trinity can also run counter the Spirit Christology to the priority given to Christ in the trinitarian work of redemption. In other words, yes, the Holy Spirit was integral to every part of Christ's work of salvation. And it was still Christ who accomplished our redemption, not the Spirit. And the work he accomplished could not have been fulfilled had he not been fully God.
- [14:44]
Kevin DeYoung
Thanks for listening to Doctrine Matters with me.
- [14:48]
Co-host or Guest Speaker
Kevin DeYoung.
- [14:49]
Kevin DeYoung
Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to doctor Matters through Spotify, Apple Music or however you listen to your podcasts. And if you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine, can ask your pastor for good resources. Or check out my year long mini systematic theology book, Daily Doctrine, which is available in print or audio@crossway.org until next week.
- [15:21]
Co-host or Guest Speaker
Thanks for being with us.