How does Teilhard’s lens show Jesus as ‘evolving’?

Today’s Post

Last week we continued our focus of Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ with a fourth relook at Jesus.  In the last two weeks we outlined how in Jesus can be seen as the manifestation of the first human awareness of how we should cooperate with the spark of universal being endowed by evolution in each of us if we would become more complete.

While the awareness that each person is intimately connected to this cosmic spark was stated unequivocally by John, the beliefs about such a God and the nature of Jesus continued to evolve in the first three hundred years of the new Christian church.  This week we will address a fifth perspective of Jesus: how this theological evolution unfortunately led to a continuation, even a strengthening of dualities which have plagued religion from its ancient beginnings.

Jesus, Religion and Duality

As we have seen, the dichotomy between orthogonal concepts, such as this world/the next, natural/supernatural, Judgmental God/Loving God, and sacred/profane can be seen in all philosophical and religious systems going back to the earliest written records.  In most cases, these dualities prevail, even though they are in opposition, in the form of ‘cognitive dissonance’.  In some cases, the level of dissonance fades as one side of the dichotomy slowly becomes paramount as society evolves.

For example, Thomas Cahill, reading Jewish scripture as “a documentary record of the evolution of a sensibility”, notes the evolution of the scriptural voice of God from the thundering apparition of Moses to the “still, small voice” of Kings.   Nonetheless, even though many of the dualities have evolved toward eventual cohesion, others persist in both religion and society today.

We have seen how the Gospel of John, for example, would seem to offer such a cohesion by declaring an ontological basis of unity between God and the human person.  However, many of the beliefs that emerged as a result of the three hundred years of strife that plagued the Christian church as it fought amongst itself to define orthodoxy, resulted in a strengthening of one of the most deep-seated dualities in Christianity, that which underlies the theory of ‘substitutionary atonement’.

As explained by Richard Rohr, in his book, “The Universal Christ”, substitutionary atonement is the teaching that was eventually invoked to bring an end to the most basic controversy of the early church: how could Jesus be God and Man at the same time?  There were many beliefs on this subject to be found among the diverse Christian communities that made up the early church, but they all boiled down to three:  Jesus was divine and not human, human and not divine and both human and divine.  Each side held strong reasons for their beliefs and offered many diverse ‘models’ of reality to support them.  The controversies were of such strength as to threaten to divide the new Christian religion.

At the same time, Christianity was poised to play a significant role in the expansion of the Roman Empire.   The emperor Constantine understood that its unique and unprecedented beliefs offered a potential basis of stability to the Roman Empire as it expanded into increasingly diverse cultures.  A division within Christianity, however, would compromise this potential, prompting Constantine to step into the controversy.  As Bart Ehrman relates it in his book, “How Jesus Became God”,

“The empire was vast and was culturally, politically, and religiously fragmented.  In contrast, Christianity emphasized oneness: there is one God, one Son of God, one church, one faith, one hope and so on.  Christianity was a religion of unity that Constantine believed could be used to unify the empire.

   But the problem was that this religion of unity was itself split; thus, he saw the need to heal the split if the Christian church was to bring real religious unity to the empire.”

As a result, Constantine ordered a ‘Council’ (The Council of Nicaea) to be called to establish a consensus on the ‘orthodox’ teaching of how Jesus could be both God and Man.  At this council, it was decided that the beliefs that Jesus was totally divine or was totally human were declared as ‘heretical’.  The belief that he was both at the same time was declared ‘orthodox’.

The deciding argument, however, put the theory of ‘substitutionary atonement’ squarely into the heart of Christian belief.

Against the belief that Jesus was totally divine or totally human, the argument was presented that neither of these states were possible if Jesus’s ‘sacrifice’ was to be successful in insuring salvation (or as one theologian has said, “Accomplishing his mission”).  Jesus had to be divine, for a human sacrifice would not suffice to atone for an offence against a divine God (the ‘sin of Adam’), and he had to be human because suffering was required for a sacrifice to satisfy the conditions for such an ‘economy of salvation’.

Thus, the teaching of ‘substitutionary atonement’ was inserted into Christian belief.  This is a truly profound dualism, between a God so intimate that “He who abides in love abides in God and God in him” and a God so distant that a painful and bloody sacrifice is necessary for ‘Him’ to ‘change his mind’ about man.  It has given rise to many dualistic threads in Christian expressions.  Two such dualities persist to this day.

As opposed to the teachings of Paul and the gospels, Jesus is seen as ‘closer’ to man than is God, more intimate, and necessary for humans to have a relationship with God. In many Christian expressions, (and in opposition to Paul and the Gospels) Jesus is prayed to, even adored, as a necessary intermediary to a distant God.   In some, even Jesus himself requires intermediaries, which is where the ‘intercession’ of saints comes in.  In others, reflecting Medieval royal hierarchies, such anachronistic terms as kings, queens and princes still can still be found today to describe the hierarchy of the ‘heavenly kingdom’, and thus continuing to dilute the potential relevance of religion to human life.

In this duality, the goal of human life is seen as ‘heaven’, a reward which only happens after death, leading to further distance from human life. As Brian McLaren sees it, “We made the Gospel largely into “an evacuation plan for heaven.”

A second duality which can be seen resulting from the theological process exemplified by the Council of Nicaea is that of deciding the theologically correct ‘words of belief’.  Articulating correct belief into theologically acceptable terminology is frequently seen as the ‘ticket to heaven’, and many wars have been fought over their expression.  This has been especially the case in the Christian West and contributes even today to the decreasing relevance of religion in Western culture.

As a result of Constantine’s political enlistment, Christianity quickly found itself installed as a structural hierarchy, rooted in society and government, in which adherence to doctrine and hierarchy was of increasing importance.  There’s no doubt that this ‘enlistment’ played a strong part in the phenomenal spread of Christianity, but there was a price to pay.  As Karen Armstrong sees it:

“Later Christians would set great store by orthodoxy, the acceptance of the “correct teaching”.  They would eventually equate faith with belief.  But Paul would have found this difficult to understand.  For Paul, religion was about ‘kenosis’ (the emptying of self, the dismantling of egotism) and love.  In Paul’s eyes, the two were inseparable.  You could have faith that moved mountains, but it was worthless without love, which required the constant transcendence of egotism.”

     Also from Armstrong:

“It is frequently assumed that faith is a matter of believing certain creedal propositions.  Indeed, it is common to call religious people “believers” as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity.”

The Next Post

This week we saw how the traditional dualities found in all religions developed new and sharper demarcations with the new Christian religion.  As we addressed in the series on psychology as secular meditation, such dualities have persisted even as the West became more secular.  They can be seen, for example, to have flowered in the orthogonal approaches of Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers.  We also saw how their conflicts play a part in the diminishment of the role of religion in Western life.

Next week we will move on to another facet of Western Christianity, that of the ‘second coming’ of Jesus.