Sep 14
Sinless, but in what way? (art. XV)
(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)
I start this post on Article XV slightly baffled as to what its doing there in the first place. As far as I know (which isn’t, in all honesty, all that far) there were no significant debates about Christ’s unique state of being without sin going on at the time. The precise issue of Mary’s possible sinlessness was a relatively erudite dispute between theologians that was nowhere near being settled or presented as anything other than a pious opinion. Questions of the possibility of Christian perfection were still centuries away. Neither the Augsburg Confession nor the Westminster Confession have anything really comparable. Anyway, here’s the article.
XV. Of Christ alone without Sin
Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh, and in his spirit. He came to be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world, and sin, as Saint John saith, was not in him. But all we the rest, although baptized, and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things; and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
There is a rather odd conflation of texts: Hebrews 4:15 and 1 John 3:5 are clearly referred to, although the article conflates 4:15, where Jesus “in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” with 2:17 “Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect.” This blurs a difference: the former refers to “being tested” and not sinning, the latter simply to sharing the same flesh and blood, with no mention of sin. Hebrews doesn’t share the view that sin is a sexually transmitted disease, and so does not conflate these two different statements. Then, linking and dominating the two explicit references is a traditional interpretation based on John that links Jesus to the Passover Lamb, and so transfers the physical quality of that sacrifice being without blemish into the moral quality of Jesus being without sin. It is an object lesson in the inseparability of tradition and reading.
There is not a straightforward doctrine of original sin in Scripture, at least not one which looks like Augustine’s, and which is presupposed here. (We are back, again, to some of the problems I noticed in dealing with the article on Original Sin which began this section). For Paul, who is intriguingly ignored in this article, human sinfulness seems to be primarily (not exclusively) being under the domination of a power which frustrates our desires and actions, as well as God’s calling to obedience. That power is perceived as having particular dominion in the “flesh” a term which characterizes non-eschatological this-worldly existence. It is doubtful whether Paul, or any of the NT writers, conceived of some kind of hereditary sinful nature in the way that Augustine does, although it is certainly possible to see how easily some texts led to Augustine’s interpretation, once that sinful nature had been deduced (partially from infant baptism). In the NT Christ’s sinlessness essentially means that he did not sin, and does not ask or answer questions about a sinful or sinless nature.
For people who, however loosely, conceive of themselves as children of the Reformation, that should stimulate possibilities of rethinking the question. If one takes Gregory Nazianzus’ maxim seriously: “What he did not assume, he did not heal” then we must (to speak in terms of the biblical narrative) ask whether Jesus took human nature as it was after the Fall, flesh under the dominion of sin (in Pauline terms) in order to live out the life of God in human flesh with,as it were, one hand tied behind his back. That does, of course, raise considerable problems with some expressions of traditional doctrine, mainly in its Western Catholic (post-Augustinian) form, as reflected in this article. It also suggest that this is, and needs to be the real bone of contention in disputing the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or at least its interpretation. Jesus does not need insulating from real human nature, and the Blessed Virgin does not need to stand as a genetic barrier between sinners and their Saviour.
September 15th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Your comments on the articles are quite something - do you still have to sign off on them as an officer of the Anglican Church? I was taught them in chatechism some 50 or so years ago. I must have learned something. But the reality of the relationship with God ‘by the blood of Jesus’ was many years coming to me. There must be still something wrong since I don’t feel the need to be all-comprehensive in words (though I do not deliberately fail them as a communications medium). Maybe it’s all those years communicating with precision in the programming world and realizing just how slippery even technical language is. It’s not just the language, it’s the representation of objects and the events surrounding them that even in the computer world are only partly determinable.
September 15th, 2007 at 6:44 am
The Augustinian and Calvinist idea of original sin asserts that infants are born spiritually dead and condemned to hell, but in Romans 7:9 Paul makes it clear that he was born spiritually alive “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” There is no room whatsoever left there for the false doctrine of original sin that is so prevalent. Paul is clearly teaching that no one dies spiritually or is condemned to hell until after they reach an age of reason when the law of God begins to apply to them for the first time.
September 15th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Now, when Hebrews 4:15 says that Christ “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” does it not imply that he could have sinned? How can you be tempted to sin if sin is a total impossibility for you? Unless he was able to sin, the fact that he didn’t sin doesn’t mean much, because he could not have truly been tempted as we are unless he was as able to sin as we are. For temptation to have taken place, the possibility that he could have sinned had to exist. Otherwise, Jesus would have essentially been a robot or a cheater. And furthermore for it to be true to say that he was tempted “like as we are” and especially “in all points tempted like as we are” he would have to have the same exact human nature as us, including the same bent towards sin, and yet for it to be said that he was “yet without sin” he would have to perfectly resist all those temptations. But to say that God cheated by having Jesus be born without original sin (which he certainly could do without having any need to have Mary be born without original sin, for if he could make her be immaculately conceived, he could also skip her altogether and make Jesus immaculately conceived without her being so first)–but if God cheated by having Jesus born with a different human nature than ours, then he cannot say that he was tempted in all points like as we are.
September 15th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Bob, for the status of the articles, and how I have to “sign up” to them, see this discussion. I entirely agree with you about the slipperiness of words, but they’re pretty much all we have for the task at this level.
September 15th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Josh, a couple of points. First on Hebrews and Christ being tempted, the argument is between those who say (speaking in narrative terms) that he was able to be tempted as Adam and Eve were before they ate the fruit, and those who say he was able to be tempted as we are, following on from this first sin. Hebrews can be interpreted either way, since it doesn’t refer back to this.
On Romans 7, you pick one of the most controverted passages of Paul: commentators increasingly agree that Paul is using a rhetorical device of speech in character – prosopopoieia but disagree whether “I” refers to Adam or Israel. I tend to think it is Adam, but like many others agree it is not Paul’s autobiography, so your point doesn’t apply. And whatever else Paul is doing in Romans 7, all commentators agree he isn’t “teaching clearly”
September 15th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
if God cheated by having Jesus born with a different human nature than ours, then he cannot say that he was tempted in all points like as we are.
Good point, Josh. What is more, this denies both the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ (no real human nature) and our salvation (“What he did not assume, he did not heal”). The Augustinian doctrine of original sin has to find contorted ways to get round this.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:21 am
“On Romans 7, you pick one of the most controverted passages of Paul: commentators increasingly agree that Paul is using a rhetorical device of speech in character…I tend to think it is Adam…all commentators agree he isn’t “teaching clearly” :-)”
All the commentators merely refuse to see the obvious truth because they want to hold on to a false theory of original sin. What he is saying is quite obvious and there is no way he is speaking as though he were someone else.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Josh, these scholars see genuine problems of interpretation, don’t share the same view of original sin in any case (some don’t believe it), and are well aware that when someone states that something is “quite obvious” it’s usually because it isn’t. An argument is always going to be more persuasive than an assertion. Please be more careful in your comments, and more courteous
September 19th, 2007 at 3:47 am
“For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” (Romans 7:9)
Paul is asserting that a sinful nature was inherited by himself, and that this nature was dormant until revived by the opportunity that the coming of the commandment provided. This proves conclusively that Paul is not pretending to be Adam, for it cannot be said that the coming of the commandment to not eat of the tree awakened a dormant sinful nature in Adam without accusing God of being the direct author of sin. Nor could it be that Paul pretends to be Moses, who clearly sinned greatly before the revelation of the Law in slaying the Egyptian. Nor could it be Israel, who at the very beginning in the persons of the 12 patriarchs committed murder, adultery, covetousness, etc. Rather it is clear that Paul speaks of himself, as he has been throughout the chapter and continues to do, as is clearly cemented as fact by verses 24-25 particularly, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” Would Adam or Moses or national Israel have known the name of the Lord if Paul were impersonating them, saying what they might have said in the past when they lived in the flesh? Of course not, and yet he speaks as a man still in the flesh, saying “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” This is proof that Paul speaks as Paul.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:44 am
I prefer to interpret ἀνέζησεν by the context than to interpret the context by ἀνέζησεν: “revived” is a possible meaning, but not the only possible one.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:15 am
Whether it “revived” or “sprang to life” it had to be there first, so I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference here.