Friday 15 September 2017

JESUS: THE DEFINITIVE MAN

'It is not uncommon for those who are respectful of Christianity and eager to rescue some part of it from the assaults of rational skepticism to say Jesus was a great man, and no more than a man. A teacher, a martyr to intolerance, from whom we might learn compassion. He is defined in terms of an equivalence, his mystery anchored to what is assumed to be a known value. But what is man? What does it mean to say, as the Gospel writers say and insist, that Jesus was indeed a human being? What we are remains a very open question. Perhaps some part of divine purpose in the Incarnation of this Son of Man was and is to help us to a true definition.' 
Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things, p.257.