Chapter Seven  SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY

In beginning the preceding chapter on the nature of divine harm, we emphasized that we were there treading on holy ground, and that is also the proper and circumspect way to preface the remarks that follow.  The studies that we in our age combine together under the general term ‘theology’ the ancient Greek fathers divided into two distinct branches, οἰκoνομία and  θεολογία.  The former, as its name suggests, refers to the plan by which God orders and rules His household; it includes the means whereby God ransoms from sin, and the distribution of the gifts and graces of the Spirit which form part of the Divine domestic ordering.  The latter directed itself to the contemplation of Christ’s eternal Being – His relation to God and God’s Spirit in the realm of eternity.  That latter is the holy ground upon which we again now venture, and we must again do so for obvious reasons with the utmost humility.  What we are now about to say has as its warrant only that it follows from a sincere and pious employment of the God-given instrument of human rationality, and as its prayer only that the theological speculation it offers provide no offense to the source and substance of all Truth.

*****

The man, Jesus, accomplished divine forgiveness of sins.  The man, Jesus, was incarnate divinity.  Therefore, that which of divinity became incarnate in Jesus is that which accomplishes forgiveness in heaven.  That is our argument, in a nutshell.

The considerations that led us to affirm the first premise are provided in Chapter Four of this book.  Scripture reports examples of Jesus, as a man, exercising an authority available only to divinity, that of forgiving the harm occasioned in heaven by human sin. 

The second premise simply formulates the central conviction of orthodox Christian faith, expressed most succinctly in the opening verses of John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  And it is the received truth of that conviction that makes the first premise intelligible:  Because Jesus was divine as well as human, he was able both to experience and absorb divine harm.

The conclusion follows from the truth of those two premises, and we may rest in its truth, while making no further claim to understand the nature of God.  Whether the nature of God be Trinitarian or Unitarian or something else altogether of which religious speculation has not yet conceived, we may, I believe, postulate with the complacency of uncomplicated faith, that the following must be true: that which of divinity became incarnate in Jesus is that which, as divinity, accomplishes forgiveness in the eternity of heaven.

We may put this another way:  That which of God forgives human sin in eternity became flesh and dwelt among us, and, as a man, accomplished that same forgiveness.   If we may, in addition, give the name of Christ to that which accomplishes forgiveness in heaven, then we may put the same point this way: Christ became flesh and dwelt among us, and accomplished Christ’s work on earth.

We will now step even further into the theological hallowed ground, and with the same prayer.

Whatever God does flows inevitably from God’s own perfect nature, and is in that sense necessary.  That of God which forgives human sins – what we are calling Christ – must

therefore do so necessarily, meaning that, without Christ, God could not forgive sins.  To employ the imagery we’ve used from the beginning, Christ carries God’s burden of forgiveness, Christ relieves God of its burden.  But we remember what forgiveness is, the acceptance and absorption of harm, in this case the harm done to divine parental love.  The heavenly status of Christ, therefore, its privileged position, is to relieve God’s parental suffering in eternity. 

One last point before we conclude this theological speculation.  We don’t know what ‘time’ means when used in reference to God, and a fortiori what it means for something to be the case ‘in eternity.’  These and their related locutions are phrases of the human vocabulary derived from the human experience, and applicable to spiritual reality only by a sort of blind fling into a darkness beyond human ken.  We must refrain from thinking that we are flinging light into that darkness by using such terms.  To say that God exists ‘outside of time,’ or that the things of heaven are ‘timeless,’ or anything else along those lines, is equally futile in advancing human understanding into the realm of the divine.  Our aim must never be to encompass God by human reflection; but always rather to trust in God’s condescension to our honest attempts to find guidance in our human reality using only the tools available to that situation.  We have the assurance of our inspired human record that Jesus forgave people their sins at certain times in human history, as humans reckon time and history.  We have the assurance of faith that Christ’s forgiveness is accomplished in the divine counterparts of time and history.  More than that we cannot say, nor should we.

But if we may grant only that much, then I think we may proceed to an understanding of the nature and importance of Christian forgiveness, both in the life of the individual Christian, and in God’s project of reconciling creation to Himself.   So let us proceed at last to that investigation.