![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2019\/10\/JesusofhistoryChrist-of-faith.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAs we blogged about,<\/a> the Italian journalist Eugenio Scalifari quoted Pope Francis as denying the deity of Christ, saying that\u00a0\u201cOnce incarnate, Jesus stops being a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross,\u201d and that \u201cJesus of Nazareth, once having become a man, was, though a man of exceptional virtues, not at all a God.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The Vatican, after a tepid first response, now denies that this is what the Pope said or believes.<\/p>\n Here is the Vatican statement, from the Catholic News Agency<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Holy Father never said what Scalfari wrote,\u201d Vatican communications head Paolo Ruffini said at an Oct. 10 press conference, adding that \u201cboth the quoted remarks and the free reconstruction and interpretation by Dr. Scalfari of the conversations, which go back to more than two years ago, cannot be considered a faithful account of what was said by the pope.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat will be found rather throughout the Church\u2019s magisterium and Pope Francis\u2019 own, on Jesus: true God and true man,\u201d Ruffini added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So good, though it would help to hear from the Pope himself, as well as Scalifari, on what was said in the conversation that he reported.\u00a0 Questions remain, but let\u2019s set those aside for now and put the best construction on everything.\u00a0 Roman Catholics and all members of the church catholic will be relieved to hear that the Pope holds to the teaching of historic Christianity, that Jesus is \u201ctrue God and true man.\u201d<\/p>\n The formulation in Scalifari\u2019s article, though, whether or not the Pope said it, raises some interesting issues in Christology.\u00a0 It states that Christ was<\/em> God, as the Second Person of the Trinity; then, with the Incarnation, He was \u201cnot at all\u201d God, but just a virtuous man; then, after His death and presumably His Resurrection and Ascension, He rejoins the Trinity and is God again.\u00a0 This does affirm Jesus being \u201ctrue God and true man,\u201d but not simultaneously, holding the two natures one after the other.\u00a0 So what\u2019s wrong with that?<\/p>\n I can\u2019t find this view, as such, in the Wikipedia list of Christological heresies.<\/a>\u00a0 It would seem to be a form of Monophysitism<\/a>, the view that Christ has only one nature, though it differs from the versions opposed by the Church Fathers, in saying that He has only one nature at a time.<\/p>\n In the discussion of my blog post, some readers thought the quotation reflects a perhaps garbled understanding of the doctrine of kenosis<\/em><\/a>, Christ\u2019s self-emptying as described in Philippians 2:<\/p>\n Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in\u00a0the form of God, did not count equality with God\u00a0a thing to be grasped, but\u00a0emptied himself, by taking the form of a\u00a0servant, being born in the likeness of men.\u00a0And being found in human form, he humbled himself by\u00a0becoming obedient to the point of death,\u00a0even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5-8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But if God emptied Himself to become a man, during the period of this Incarnation He was still a God who was emptied.\u00a0 Otherwise, if God changed Himself into a completely separate being, that would not be a true incarnation.\u00a0 Interestingly, another pope, Pius XII, in 1951 specifically repudiated<\/a> the Christology in the Scalifari article:<\/p>\n There is another enemy of the\u00a0faith of Chalcedon<\/a>, widely diffused outside the fold of the Catholic religion. This is an opinion for which a rashly and falsely understood sentence of St. Paul\u2019s Epistle to the Philippians (ii, 7), supplies a basis and a shape. This is called the kenotic doctrine, and according to it, they imagine that the divinity was taken away from the Word in Christ. It is a wicked invention, equally to be condemned with the\u00a0Docetism<\/a>\u00a0opposed to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In saying that this view is \u201cwidely diffused outside the fold of the Catholic religion,\u201d I suspect this Pope is referring to a teaching found in many liberal Protestant theologians (and some liberal Catholics) who distinguish between the \u201cJesus of history\u201d and the \u201cChrist of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n According to this view, the \u201chistorical Jesus\u201d was a human teacher who was crucified by the Romans for his radical ideas. Then, after his death, his followers had such a strong sense of his continued presence with them that they began to speak of his resurrection.\u00a0 This was the beginning of the church, which eventually formulated the \u201cChrist of faith,\u201d turning their former leader into a God, interpreting his death as a redemptive sacrifice, literalizing his resurrection, and inventing all of the other Christian doctrines.\u00a0 (These modernist theologians, of course, follow the historical-critical approach to Scripture, denying the historicity of the gospels, which they treat as accretions of the church as it constructs the \u201cChrist of faith,\u201d though one can still find in them clues about the \u201cJesus of history.\u201d)<\/p>\n Liberal theologians who become ministers can still sometimes sound somewhat orthodox when they lead a church service.\u00a0 They can speak of \u201cChrist,\u201d or even the divinity of Christ, as well as life-changing \u201cChrist events,\u201d similar to what transformed the disciples of the late Jesus.\u00a0 But this does not depend on the \u201chistorical Jesus,\u201d who did not rise from the dead or redeem the world, but can show us what true humanity looks like, give us an example of social radicalism, etc., etc.<\/p>\n Such theological liberals, in effect, treat \u201cJesus\u201d as just a man, but treat \u201cChrist\u201d as God, similar to what the Scalifari quote does, which, however, at least affirms Christ\u2019s pre-existence in the Trinity, something not always found in mainline liberal Protestantism.<\/p>\n Contrast this anemic faith with that articulated in the Athanasian Creed<\/a>, (quoted from the website of Faith Lutheran Church<\/a>, where one of my former students, the Rev. Gerhard Grabenhofer, is the pastor) which affirms the Two Natures of Christ (my bolds):<\/p>\n Therefore, it is the right faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time<\/strong> both God and man.<\/p>\n He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages; and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age:\u00a0perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh;\u00a0equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity.<\/p>\n Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ<\/strong>: \u00a0<\/p>\n Illustration:\u00a0 Book cover of Jesus Christ:\u00a0 Jesus of History, Christ of Faith<\/a> by J. R. Porter via YouTube.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Vatican has denied that the Pope said what journalist Eugenio Scalifari ascribed to him, that Jesus was not God during His incarnation, but became God after His death. This view would violate orthodox Christology, but it does have affinity with the distinction in liberal theology between the “Jesus of History” and the “Christ of Faith.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":45003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,47],"tags":[471,1290,2481],"class_list":["post-44907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christ","category-church","category-theology","tag-christology","tag-liberal-theology","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\n
\none, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh<\/strong> but by the assumption of the humanity into God;
\none altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n