I avoid referring to Jesus as a mediator
between human beings and God because the reference is burdened with meanings
derived from its use in transcendentalist theologies. In its own right, however, it offers a clear
illustration of the import of Wittgenstein's insistence that the meaning of a
word depends on its use in a distinctive form of life.
Working from
Wittgenstein's insight, I suggest that the hollow center of a hierarchically
structured transcendentalist theology is filled a distinction between some
version of emptiness and some version of immediate presence, fullness and
totality. In the misplaced debate
between Catholic and Protestant theologians, the antagonists share a
meta-narrative which implies that Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross offers
the reparation needed to restore the relationship between God and humans
severed by the sin of Adam. In this
context, the strand in the Catholic theological tradition targeted by Luther
and Calvin argued that the repository of grace merited by Jesus' sacrificial
death on the cross was dispensed by a hierarchically structured ecclesiastical
institution. To eliminate all such
mediations, Luther formulated a doctrine of faith alone which implied that
Jesus was the sole mediator, while Calvin's more political bent drew a fusion
of a political theocracy and a doctrine of eternal predestination from an
emphasis on God's absolute dominion over all.
As my analysis of
the meta-narrative shared by Aquinas and Luther shows, the polemical structure
of the misplaced dispute over Jesus' role as a mediator is grounded in the
assumption that the eternal Word would not have become incarnate if Adam had
not sinned. In far too many instances,
it is supplemented by stories inscribed in the Jewish Scriptures which depict Israel 's God as
a jealous and wrathful God. And as a
result, it depicts the Incarnation as a response to sin in a way that defines
Jesus' saving (or justifying) activity as a sacrifice offered to appease divine
justice and restore the relationship between Creator and creature severed by
Adam's transgression.
In an equally
literary context, however, the Prologue of John echoes the Heraclitian
metaphor which depicted the whole of reality as a dynamic operation of a divine
Logos in a hymn which places the eternal Word at the center of life in the
Trinity, the act of creation, the course of human history and the lives of each
and every unique individual. This hymn
formulates the seminal Trinitarian theology which provided the meta-narrative
which generated the doctrinal assertion that the incarnate Word is both fully
God and fully human. On its part, the
meta-narrative attributes the act of creation to an outpouring of divine
love. In this context, the obvious
willingness of the Word to become fully human reveals the longing on the part
of each of the divine Persons to be intimately involved with human beings. And when this revelation is supplemented by
the statement in John, "I have come that you may have life and have
it more abundantly", the Incarnation reveals that each Person in the
triune God is actively involved in urging flawed human beings to embrace the
quest for a more fully human and uniquely personal existence.
In this
incarnational theology, Jesus' passionate involvement with each individual
urges finite and flawed human beings to discern the Father's providential
activity in all events in their personal histories and the Spirit's word of
love spoken in their tangled depths. And
the Father and Holy Spirit, in turn, urge these same individuals to allow Jesus
to love them into a more fully human existence characterized by responses
witnessing to personal integrity.
In this quest,
Jesus is a mediator of sorts between the Father and Spirit, on the one hand,
and finite and flawed human beings, on the other. With a passionate, vulnerable, respectful and
faithful love, he willingly accompanies them on a quest for a fully human and
uniquely personal existence in this life.
On the journey, those who discern and respond to his activity and that
of the Father and the Holy Spirit experience that graced moments that reveal
his longing to usher us into the divine life of the Trinity at the end of our
journey. But experiences processed by
the language generated by this incarnational theology also reveal that Jesus
comes to us through one another. He is
not a jealous Savior who insists that he is the sole mediator between the
triune God and human beings. And he
rejoices in the longing of the Father and the Spirit to be intimately involved
in our flawed interactions, our journeys down paths which lead to dead ends,
and even the events which bring out the worst in us.
Regarding the
passage from this life to the next, the incarnate Word reveals to us that we
can spend an eternity there in the most passionate involvement with the triune
God and the communion of saints and never exhaust an infinity.
In sum, Jesus is the
way to intimacy with the Father and the Holy Spirit and to the intimacy with
loved ones called for by his commandment, "Love one another as I have
loved you." If the metaphor of the
"way" is mapped onto the metaphor of "mediator", he is
mediator because he is fully human, not because he offered a sacrificial death
on the cross.
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