Recently, a fellow spiritual publication came to me wanting my view of Christology. I answer here.
In particular, do you think Jesus’ interior condition was transformed radically at his death, so that ‘his’ post-Resurrected condition was utterly different from his pre-Resurrected condition?
No.
Do you posit a physical Resurrection of the man?
Yes.
If so, what is the significance of that?
Believing in the supernatural, among many other things. That’s a topic for an entire book.
While those simple answers are all true, to simply leave the blog post at that would be lazy.
So, what is Christology? The field of study within Christian Theology that deals with the nature of Christ, or, more exactly, the ontology of Christ. Was Jesus fully God? Was Jesus man and God? Wait, this getting confusing already. Yet Systematic Theology gets even more intricately complex. And Systematic Theologians could make mince-meat out of me, not because they are stronger athletes, but because we play a different sport. Contemplative Light deals mainly with practice, and as such, our understanding of Christology is an experiential one. Why try to match up understanding a character, Christ, in a book, The Bible, on the terms of the bible? That’s literary criticism. That’s not religion. If there really is no God, then what are we doing? And if there is a God, do you not think we can experience him, here, now, as you’re reading this? (oh, did you hear that?)
So we focus on the contemplative path of waking up to God’s Presence everywhere all the time. And our perception of Jesus and Christ changes. One was human, born in Nazareth. One has been here since the beginning. When did they become one? When did you become one with air? When you take your first breath, no, no, before that even. The Same is true for Jesus, he is both road through the contemplative process and the culmination of the contemplative process. One essentially moves from having a god without to having more of a god within. And looking at it that way is just the tip of the iceberg. In for Christians to wake up on the contemplative path, I believe it is helpful to hold a rather fluid grasp of Christology. The phrase, “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” applies here. A mystic never goes wrong in Divine Mystery, and a contemplative never goes wrong to admit their own uncertainty.
