With hindsight, we can look back at the early Christological and Trinitarian debates, and see how confused and confusing the different sides and positions were. Everyone agreed there was something special about Jesus, and they all wanted to be his true follower. Somewhere along the line, following Jesus became more of an issue of being right in one’s conventions for talking about Jesus than it was by following the path of charity that he encouraged his followers. Understanding the person of Jesus became more important than doing the work of Jesus. He had told his followers if they loved him, they would follow his commandments. While he did ask people to identify him, he also remained, in his own teaching, very enigmatic about himself. He knew that whatever he said could be easily misinterpreted. The conventions used for the messiah were right, if understood and used properly, but wrong in how they were understood by most. Thus, he took those conventions and he turned them upside-down. He knew one of the most popular convention is that the messiah would be a political ruler who would come into power by force – and so he had to tell his followers not to use the sword, especially if they want to help him bring about the messianic kingdom.[1]
When we look at those who did come to an understanding of Jesus, it is quite telling that Jesus tells them to be silent. Once they have come to know who he is he tells them to go back into the world, to live and interact in it, but also to tell no one about Jesus himself.[2] Was this because Jesus did not want people to know who he was? Certainly not. It was because if they talked, they would be misunderstood. The fullness of his revelation had yet to be achieved. But there is something about this silence which we should continue to contemplate as we seek to describe him today. Whatever is said about him is still liable to bring someone or another to an erroneous understanding of who he is. The conventions we want to impute on him are nothing in comparison to the full reality of who he actually is. He does not reject conventions, he knows them well enough that he can and did use them to fit his purposes. But he wants to remind us that there is something deeper, beyond all conventions. Only by knowing that all conventions fail can we engage in the world of experience, of true experience beyond conceptions and imputations, and then return back to the normal, everyday existence, and fill it with what we have gained from our transcendent experience. Only then can we interact with others, and see, if they fail to understand one sequence of conventions, how another sequence (as long as they are used properly, and point to the same reality) can lead them to Christ.
Asanga said that all dharmas are at their root, inexpressible. But he also said, “Now, since all dharmas have thus inexpressible essential nature, why is expression at all applicable? Verily, because without expression, the inexpressible true nature could not be told to others, nor heard by others.”[3] Our faith rests upon what is inexpressible, it rests upon that which is silent, but this silence is not enough – we must point to that inexpressible truth; as St Francis of Assisi told us, we are to show it to others by our deeds, but if necessary, we will use words. It is only after experiencing the truth in silence that we understand that the words we use can only be pointers to the truth. They are not the truth in themselves. After his silence, Jesus did speak – and told us to speak out as well.[4] In this way, we can understand that Christology is itself not a vain subject, but rather, we must understand its root and purpose—we must get to the spirit of the message and not be caught up with a literalistic interpretation of the words which have been used to describe him. Only then will the words we use to describe him be of value.
Footnotes
[1]See for example Matthew 26:52;Luke 22:49-51; John 18:10-11.
[2] See for example Matthew 8:4; Matthew 9:30; Luke 9:21.
[3] Janice Dean Willis, On Knowing Reality: The Tattvärtha Chapter of Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhümi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 166.
[4] Thus we have the “Great Commission” after the resurrection – see for example Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:14-18; Luke 24:45-49.
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