Last night I was watching a YouTube video from the Biblical scholar Dr. James Tabor, who was reviewing historical critical scholarship to the effect that Jesus likely never claimed to be God. Indeed, the evidence seems to suggest that Jesus was a monotheist in the classic Jewish sense of believing that the Lord God is One. Indeed, Jesus emphatically emphasizes this when summarizing the essence of the Law:
29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
What Dr. Tabor was arguing was that the theological Christology of trinitarianism whereby Christ is identical to God is very likely a later theological accretion developed in the Christian tradition. According to the earliest sources, Jesus likely understood himself to be an agent of God but not identical to God.
What can we say then of orthodox Christian doctrines like the Trinity? Shall we not believe it? Does our faith crumble? Does this force us into heresy? Will our souls be damned to Hell forever because we have intellectual doubts about the exact theological nature of the Trinity and the solidity of its Scriptural support?
Does our eternal damnation really depend on whether we believe in the Trinity or not?
That is the key question. And I am skeptical of framing the core of Christianity in such terms. It does seem not critical to Jesus’ Gospel, which is about repentance, ethical behavior, and the Kingdom of God being at hand.
Indeed, the core of Jesus’ message was that we ought to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand and we will be judged accordingly. But judged on what basis? Will we be judged on the basis of whether we intellectually believe in orthodox propositions like the Trinity? Consider Matthew 25, where Jesus describes the coming Judgment of Nations, and look at the criteria He uses to judge people:
The Judgment of the Nations
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”
According to this Gospel, the Final Judgment is based on how we treat the sick and poor, how we treat “the least of these.” That is the key. It does not say, “those who believe in the Trinity will be righteous and have eternal life.” No, righteousness is based on our ethical actions, on how we treat the downtrodden. This is emphasized again in the Book of Revelations, where it says in Chapter 20 that “the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books.”
Indeed, it says the dead are judged based on their works and not their intellectual assent to certain orthodox doctrines.
Consider James who says in Chapter 2,
Faith Without Works Is Dead
14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?
What are these “works”? It is righteous action. It is ethical behavior. It is Jesus’ emphasis on how we treat the “least of these.”
But does orthodox belief not matter at all? Do the creeds not matter at all? Does the Trinity not matter at all? I do not want to go that far.
I do not want to make the mistake of reducing the entirety of Christianity to simply “be ethical.” I think it is importance to also, as Paul says, have faith and trust in the person of Christ as our Messiah. I do think it is important to believe, for example, that Christ conquered death in His resurrection. I think there is a great spiritual danger in saying all this is just a metaphor, it’s just symbolic, it’s just metaphorical niceties to motivate us towards being nice, and that Jesus was just a great ethical human teacher, and nothing more. For that is the road of atheism and naturalism.
But I think it is important to filter our theology through the lens of mysticism and contemplation. In other words, we ought to filter these theological and doctrinal beliefs in the creeds through the basic spiritual goal of theosis, of divination, of putting on the “mind of Christ.” Jesus quoted the Scriptures which say, “you are gods.” Which means humans have a spark of divinity inside of us. We are made in the image of God, and through faith in Christ, we have the potential to partake in the divinity of Christ, so that we are filled with the Holy Spirit and given power to be proper disciples of Christ, which is to be empowered to truly love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, to focus on “the least of these,” and overcome the selfishness of egoism baked into our natural enslavement to sin.
Indeed, it is only through the Grace of God, through the power of Christ, that we can put on the mind of Christ and therefore partake in the goal to bring the Kingdom of God into the Earth and transform it, which is to say, to embody the teachings of Jesus to repent, and focus on the poor and hungry, to focus on the neighbors who are “the least of us,” to love our neighbors as ourselves.
So, I do not want to reject the creeds. I do not want to reject the Trinity. I think orthodoxy is important. But I do not think the damnation of our souls turns on whether we can give full intellectual assent to this as a mental proposition. The more important point is not whether we intellectually believe in the Trinity, but whether our belief in the Trinity helps us in the process of theosis such that we are empowered to live out the command of Christ to repent and Love God fully and love our neighbor as ourselves.
Theological doctrines should not be an obstacle to faith. Our faith should be able to survive historical critical scholarship. For, indeed, it is faith. It is trust in Christ. It is a recognition that ultimately God is transcendent and Absolute, and utterly incomprehensible to the human mind. It is humility in the face of unknowing and intellectual doubt to continue trusting in God, to continue trusting that He so loved the world that He sent Christ to save us from death. The finer theological details of orthodox intellectual belief pale in comparison to a deeper mystical appreciation of this message in terms of using belief as a means to the greater end of theosis and divinization.
Christianity has a reputation for being an “intellectual” faith where apologetics and arguments and systematic theology reign supreme. While that is important, and while I do think it’s important to be able to give a rational defense of our faith, the rationality must be subservient to the more basic mystical attitude of negative theology, which recognizes that God is Absolute and incomprehensible and that ultimately how all this works in terms of the precise orthodox details of the Trinity, etc, are less important compared to the inner transformation of the spirit whereby we come to know God, and thereby become transformed and sanctified with the mind of Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to repent and engage in the “good works” of loving our neighbor, which Jesus says is the ultimate criteria by which we will be judged righteous.