What is Jesusolatry?

I'm reading Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology for a directed study. One interesting detail: Tillich maintains that Jesus is the final revelation of God (final as opposed to last in sequential time) because in his continual self-sacrifice of himself, culminating in the cross, he makes himself transparent to the Ground of Being (God). Jesus doesn't put himself or any aspect of himself forward to be idolatrously worshiped. Twice Tillich refers to that saying of Jesus in John 12: He who believes in me believes not in me (but in him who sent me). Because Jesus is a clear pane of glass through which we look at God, we need not, concludes Tillich, make a fetish out of any aspect of the historical life of Jesus. No "Jesusolatry."

Here Tillich sounds more like a 4th century theologian than a 20th century theologian. Augustine would warn his readers not to cling too tightly to Jesus' human nature but to ascend higher, to his divine nature. And one of the strange things about Athanasius' Orations Against the Arians is how, in divvying up the scriptural texts and words that pertain to the Son's human nature and those which pertain to the Son's divine nature, the man from Galilee seems to get lost in the shuffle.

Strange to me because the quest for the historical Jesus that Albert Schweitzer uncorked a century ago continues full speed ahead. You could make the argument that the quest in all its phases has been a more enduring intellectual movement than the usual suspects in modern Christianity.

So it strikes me that Tillich was swimming against a pretty strong tide when he wrote this. And I'm thinking that maybe he should have gone with the stream on this one. It seems like the danger of Tillich's Christology is to make Jesus a cipher into which we pour all our projections of whatever God we want to get in touch with out there.

My professor made a related point. Don't you have to look at Jesus in order to look through him? If he makes himself transparent to the Ground of Being, don't you have to look at how he does that before you see through him to the God who sent him?

Does anyone who's read Tillich before know what he means by Jesusolatry? Who's he have in mind when he faults a too literalistic identification with a detail of the gospels or the life and times of Jesus?

Some literalisms are bad, like the Westboro Baptist Church freak show that's coming to town this week. But some are good, aren't they? Like Francis of Assisi and his full body hug of Matthew 10: 9-10. And then there's Origen, so speculative in his exegesis, so literalistic in his sexual ethics. 

Where would we Christians be without all the crazy aunts and uncles in the attic?

Comments

[Jonathan Marlowe]

Mary Charlotte, the statement makes good sense to me. It is only because we know the Son that we know the Father, Son, and Spirit as one God. If the Son had not become incarnate, we would know nothing of the Trinity. The Son is the human point of contact in the relationship of love that we call Trinity. But hey, I'm a Methodist, so what do I know?

Marvin, don't you think Tillich may have Karl Barth in mind when he's talking about Jesusolatry?

[Lee]

It's been a while since I read Tillich, but I'd guess he was responding in part to the 19th and 20th c. liberal theology that tried to uphold Jesus as an ethical model while dispensing with all that metaphysical stuff. H. Richard Niebuhr also has some interesting things to say about what he calls a "unitarianism of the second person of the Trinity."

[Pastor Mack]

I think to solution is to leave Tillich behind and go to Barth instead. I have no interest in proclaiming or worshipping something called "the ground of being," but I do need a savior revealed as Jesus Christ.

As far as Jesus revealing the Trinity, I don't see the hangup. Through Jesus we have the most full revelation of God's nature and mission. The story of Jesus revealed in the NT, the God who is man and the man who is God, simultaneously reveals that God is three/one. When Jesus prayed to the Father, he was not talking to himself. The promised Spirit that descended at Pentecost was very much God, but not the Father nor the Son. That's not a full answer for the ordination board, but it is a start. They are right, at least, to insist that God is revealed through Jesus.

[Camassia]

I've never read Tillich so this is a total WAG, but could he have been thinking of something more basic, like the Apostle's Creed? I've heard various people object to the idea that belief in certain events in Jesus' life (born of the Virgin Mary, etc.) should be the litmus test of faith, as opposed to ethics or spirituality or something like that.

[Marvin]

@ Pastor Mack: I can't leave Tillich behind just yet, at least until I get a grade in the class.

I'm not in a position to evaluate Tillich v. Barth yet, but one reason why the Tillich talks about "Ground of Being" is because he thinks that if one calls God the "Supreme Being" then God is just one being among others, the highest species in a genus called "Being." In that case, God isn't God, Being is. So, God must be "being itself," or the Ground of Being to transcend all other beings. I don't think that preaches particularly well, but it is a good philosophical point.

@ Jonathan & Camassia: Tillich is critical of Barth but he's even more critical of Protestant Scholasticism in Europe and Fundamentalism in America. So it may be more along the lines of what Camassia mentions. Which relates to a joke my professor shared: Barth, Bultmann and Tillich were drinking beers in a pub when the daily paper landed on their table, whose headline read: BONES PROVEN TO BE THOSE OF JESUS. Barth throws up his hands and says, "That's it. We've all got to find something else to do." Bultmann replies, "No, no. The kerygma that gives Man courage against existential despair is what it's all about, and that can never die." Tillich says, "You mean Jesus was a real person?"

@ Charlotte: I think Jonathan is right. If it weren't for Jesus, those of us of northern European stock wouldn't be worshiping the Holy Trinity. We'd be worshiping some goddess who can change water into beer.

Oh wait. Never mind. :)