Christmas sermons: variations on a theme

Christmas is approaching. For those who are called to preach with Christmas, it means a time of (sometimes desperately) searching for creativity. How do you tell the very well-known story of Christ’s birth this time again? One option is of course to larder one’s sermon with all kinds of moving stories and anecdotes. That would not be my choice. On the contrary, in this post I will argue for a moment of reflection on the motivation for the Incarnation. Why did Christ came to us? Why was he born in Bethlehem?

The answer seems maybe obvious. The standard answer many of us would be inclined to give goes something like this: Christ had to come in order to save us. Take a look of your own Christmas sermons or those of others and you will find out that this is the basic scheme of nearly all of these sermons. That is, the motivation for the Incarnation is explained in terms of our fallen condition. In other words, this is an infralapsarian scheme. Last year I offered an example of such a sermon, from Karl Barth. No one will deny its truth and its worth in telling the story of Christmas. But is it the whole story? Asking this question means – in theological terms – asking whether Christ became man exclusively because of our sins. Would he have become man if the Fall had not occurred? Put differently (and less speculatively): can we offer other motives for the Incarnation, independent from our sinful condition? This is, of course, a supralapsarian take on the Incarnation. In the remainder of this post, I will offer two examples of this supralapsarian variation of the story of the Incarnation. Of course, these are offered by way of example, in order to point a direction, instead of fleshing out arguments.

In her book Christ and Horrors. The Coherence of Christology (2006), the late Marilyn McCord Adams (1943-2017) defends the thesis that Christ’s mission is not so much saving us from our sins, but rescue us from horrors. Christ as our horror-defeater. Note that the motivation for the Incarnation here is indeed sin-independent, since McCord Adams holds that ‘horrors cannot have its origin in misused created freedom’ and that ‘humans were radically vulnerable to horrors fron the beginning, even in Eden’ (p. 36 – italics original). A Christmas sermon along these lines will posit Christ’s birth as a participation in our horrors. Moreover, it will not explain his participation in our horrors in terms of sharing our guilt, but in terms of sharing our situation by which we are ‘overpowered’. You might even want to go as far McCord Adams by suggesting that this is what God, as our Creator responsible for our vulnerability to horrors, owes us… Note, that McCord Adams’s proposal is indeed sin-indepent, but it is still ‘problem-driven’, the problem now being our vulnerability to horrors… Although I admire McCord Adams ingenious book, I am not completely convinced.

So, is there another variation available? Yes, I think so. Let’s consider a proposal from Edwin Chr. van Driel in his Incarnation Anyway. Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (2008). In this monograph he develops three arguments for a supralapsarian Christology, in conversation with Schleiermacher, Dorner, and Barth. One of his arguments is the Argument from Divine Friendship. My rendition here does not justice to the richness of his thoughts. However, it will hopefully serve to see the supralapsarian logic at work. ‘Friendship’, Van Driel says, ‘is motivated by a delight in and a love for the other’. Of course, he explains, friendships can be in danger, be under pressure, and so on. Friends, real friends, will look of course for reconciliation. However, that means that the wish for reconciliation is prompted by a deeper motivation: the longing for friendship, for community, for mutual love. That is what is at stake in the Incarnation. God is not merely solving ‘our problem’. His goal is friendship with us. This might sound rather familiar to you. Yet it could lead be translated into a rather different Christmas sermon. To illustrate what I have in mind, I can suffice with pointing to a sermon of Samuel Wells, which offers an eloquent illustration. Wells very convincingly points out that the heart of God’s reaching out for us can not be captured (only) in the word ‘for (God did this for me)’, but rather in the word ‘with’ (God wants to be ‘with us’). If you look for inspiration for your Christmas sermon along these supralapsarian lines, you might watch this video. Anyway, my Christmas sermon of this year will follow the trail set out by Van Driel en Wells.

Hans Lassen Martensen: Kierkegaard’s opponent

Recently, May 5th, it was 200 years ago that the famous Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was born. Kierkegaard is still widely read and his birthday has been celebrated, also in the blogosphere. For example at Jason Goroncy’s blog Per Crucem ad Lucem, with a guest post of Andrew Torrance. Kierkegaard is well-known for his fiery attacks on the church of his days, especially in its official forms. For Kierkegaard the embodiment of all the wrongs in the church of his days was Hans Lassen Martensen (1808-1884). Martensen was lecturer and later professor in theology in Copenhagen. But in 1854 he became bishop in Zealand, as successor of Jacob Peter Mynster (1775-1854), who had just died that same year. In fact, the eulogy of Martensen upon Mynster became the immediate cause of the quarrel between Kierkegaard and Martensen.

Martensen called Mynster a witness of truth. Interestingly enough, Kierkegaard’s father had been befriended with Mynster. But Kierkegaard  was nevertheless very critical on the theology of Mynster and Martensen. In Kierkegaard’s opinion both Mynster and Martensen were deeply influenced by the contemporary idealistic philosophies of Hegel and Schelling. He detested their tendency to mysticism and speculative theology. Kierkegaard opted for a personal (some may call it ‘existential), critical and ethical way of life. The christian faith is to be lived out in concrete and responsible commitments. Only then you can properly speak about being a witness of truth. The Danish Church lacked, in his opinion, the faith to be such a witness. And hence his fiery criticitisms of Mynster and Martensen. Kierkegaard died shortly after the launch of his attacks on the speech of Martensen, in 1855.

What to think about these opponents of Kierkegaard? Recently, I bought and read (parts of) Martensen’s Christian Dogmatics. He wrote this work in 1849 in Danish (Den christelige Dogmatik). The English translation (1866) of the book is based upon his own German translation. Not only Kierkegaard was critical, in general the reception of Martensen has been pretty dismissive. He has been said to be very speculative, a mediation theologian (Vermittlungstheologie) and not to be an original thinker. The reading of this book, however, surprised me in a positive sense. Let me give three illustrations of that.

1. Although Martensen certainly seems to be indebted to the philosophies of his days, he is critical in his adherence as well. He is arguing not only with Hegel or Schelling, but also with Schleiermacher. He is critical on the tendency in their systems of thought to a form of pantheism. Martensen argues that the christian faith in a personal God, is not compatible with any form of pantheism. So, he develops a way of understanding our knowledge of God, by falling back on the (classical) notion of ‘con-science’. That however, does not imply an uncritical appeal to revelation as source of inviolable knowledge. The content of revelation is open to human (dialectial) reasoning and argumentation. In short, Martensen tries to find a middle course between the subjectivism and objectivism of his days.

2. In his Christian Dogmatics Martensen frequently touches at the old discussions between lutherans and calvinists. For instance, as he deals with sacramental theology, his sympathy is with the lutheran camp. Throughout the book, he appears to be  especially critical on the calvinistic version of predestination. But that’s not all that has to be said. Surprisingly for a Lutheran, he insists on the continuance of the eternal Logos alongside the incarnate Logos, which seems to imply an acceptance of the so-called doctrine of the ‘extra-calvinisticum’. He seems to have been a ‘mediation theologian’  (Vermittlungstheologe) in more than one respect. In this light, we begin to understand why his thoughts were so deeply despised by Kierkegaard, whose thought was characterized by paradoxes.

3. The contrast between Kierkegaard and Martensen strikes the eye particularly in Martensen’s articulation of the motivation for the Incarnation. Martensen is, to use a phrase coined by Marilyn McCord Adams, an ‘Incarnation anyway’ theologian. He holds – as many theologians in the 19th century in Schleiermacher’s trail do – that Christ would have become incarnate, even if the Fall wouldn’t have happened. What arguments does Martensen bring forward for this supralapsarian Christology? In § 130 he stipulates that the world-redeeming Mediator must have a necessary and eternal relation of perfect fellowship both with the Father and with the human race. In the next paragraph he concludes that:

“… sin alone cannot have been the ground of His revelation, for there was no metaphysical necessity for sin entering the world, and Christ could not be our Redeemer, if it had been eternally involvoed in His idea that He should be our Mediator. Are we to suppose that that which is most glorious in the world could only be reached through the medium of sin? That there would have been no place in the human race for the glory of the Only Begotten One, but for sin?”

Unlike Schleiermacher, Martensen denies the necessity of the entrance of sin in our world. But like Schleiermacher, he emphasises that Christ would have become man, irrespective of the Fall. If humanity is destined to bear the image of God, to be filled with God, must we not – he asks – assume that this fullness of God must be exemplified in perfection: the true and complete God-man? It is, I suppose, not the best argument for a supralasarian Christology, but it certainly is intriguing and worth pondering.