imperfection-of-jesus

Deacon Douglas P. McManaman

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Doug, 

The “imperfection” of the Finding in the Temple (if any) was with Mary and Joseph – their imperfect understanding of Christ’s mission – certainly not with Christ. He was doing and revealing the will of the Father (not behaving like a child who takes a chocolate bar from a store without appreciating the wrongfulness of his action). If we take your “Christ-was-imperfect-just-like-us” to the next stage then even His public ministry, His crucifixion, His 7 last words, were imperfect. I think you misunderstand what is meant by “Christ was like us in all things but sin”. Yes He was fully man, but he was also God. He did not carry His divinity around like a wallet and pull it out from time to time as needed. He was a man without original sin – without any sin – hypostatically united to the divinity. Although “like man”, he was also unlike any man before or since. He was the perfection of man, if you will. So it is misleading to speak of Christ as imperfect.

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Dear _________:  It is certainly true that Mary and Joseph had an imperfect understanding of Christ’s mission. But Jesus too had an imperfect understanding of his mission at certain points in his early life–of course, I’m jumping from the frying pan into the fire here, so it’s better to stick with a simpler explanation. But Luke says it: he grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. That’s it. If he was “perfect” from the get go, he did not grow in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and man. The exact text is:

Jesus “progressed (proekopten) to wisdom (sofia) and to prime stature (hlikia) and to grace/favor (cariti) beside (para) God (theo) and man (anthropois)”. 

What is perfect does not require progress. Perfect means “made through”, the end has been achieved. Jesus was the perfect man, but what does it mean to be a perfect man? One cannot be a material organism without imperfection, and one cannot be a human being without imperfection, so a perfect human being will include imperfections. That sounds counterintuitive, but it really isn’t a contradiction. 

What struck me is that when I read the WPI finished version of my article, I felt that it read much better, much smoother than my original. Now, I edited that article many times and sent in my best version of it. Still, the editor was able to see more that needed to be done, she was able to see what I was unable to see, and thus she continued to edit the piece. That’s human existence. To be a person is to have a radical need for others. The human person only discovers himself via an exit-of-self in the other, or in others. A person is an ekstasis. Let me quote John D. Zizioulas here: “…personhood implies the “openness of being,” and even more than that, the ek-stasis of being, that is, a movement towards communion which leads to a transcendence of the boundaries of the “self” and thus to freedom. (The Meaning of Being Human (pp. 14-15). (Function). Kindle Edition). 

God is an eternal community of Persons, and the human person exists in the image and likeness of God, who is a Trinity of Persons. Man is a per sona, a “through sound”, that is, a communicator, a being who becomes what he is by entering into community, who can only become what he is meant to become in and through community (to communicate is to enter into community). We are conceived within a human person and born into a family, a community, and we depend in every way on that first community, but most of all our own personality development depends upon those relations. Outside of a healthy community, our personality does not develop properly. Every human being undergoes personality development, and that development depends on the specifics of personal relationships, on how much the person is loved by others and how much he or she learns to love, to exit himself or herself towards the other. All this Jesus went through. The hypostatic union is the union of the two natures in one Person, the Person of the Son, who is a subsistent Relation. He is the Second Adam. He is more than a role model, but that he is nevertheless–not merely an external role model, like the saints, but an internal one; for we are to become him. But our role model cannot be one who it is impossible to model ourselves after. Imperfection is my lot and your lot, not the imperfection of sin or moral imperfection, because that imperfection is self-destructive, but the imperfection that belongs to human material existence. At the temple, Jesus was not behaving like a toddler taking a chocolate bar off of a store shelf, rather, he was behaving like a 12 year old adolescent–with a single minded focus, without proper consideration of how his lack of communication might impact others. It wasn’t a sin, but it was an imperfection that is typical of adolescence, and he went through adolescence. He did not skip that stage of human development. Again, perfect things don’t develop. Jesus needed the guidance of Mary and Joseph. If he did not need their guidance, if he did not in any way benefit from the wisdom of his parents, then you are right, he is not like us in all things. But he is like us in all things, in every aspect of human nature: intelligence, will, emotions, human ignorance and the need to learn from experience, and above all the need to learn from others. You mentioned in an earlier exchange that he did not have a human personality. He certainly did have a human personality. He’s not a human being if he does not have a human personality. The hypostatic union means the two natures (divine and human) were united in the One Person of the Son; so he is not two persons, a human person and a divine Person, but One Person, the divine Person of the Son. Everything Jesus said and did and underwent was said and done and undergone by the Person of the Son. But he certainly had a human personality that developed (person is not the same as personality). His personality was the human personality of God the Son–personality is a complex phenomenon that includes human intellect, will, emotions, their interactions, human self-consciousness, etc. 

I don’t see how all this implies that his death on the cross or his 7 last words were imperfect. His passion and death were the perfect act of love, the perfect act of religion. The perfection of Jesus does not cancel or override the imperfection that is part and parcel of human experience. His was a moral and religious perfection. He sanctified material existence. He sanctified the imperfection that belongs to living human organisms, the imperfection that is part and parcel of our day to day human existence. He actually said: “Who touched me?” in the scene involving the woman with a hemorrhage. He said “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He experienced human desolation, darkness, despair, poverty and deprivation. He experienced frustration with his disciples: “How long must I put up with you?” That sounds like learning to me. In other words, his expectations were one thing, but the reality of the disciples’ sluggishness was another thing. 

I’m not sure what you mean by “He did not carry His divinity around like a wallet and pull it out from time to time as needed”.  Yes, all of Jesus was God the Son. Christ’s human nature was hypostatically united to God the Son, so everything he said, did, and underwent was said, done, and undergone by God the Son. From that hypostatic union, a number of paradoxes follow quite naturally: God died on a Cross; God suffered; Life Itself tasted death; God became a slave (Phil 2, 1ff); God progressed in wisdom and stature; God wept for John the Baptist; God was hungry and thirsty in the desert; and Mary is the Mother of God (Theotokos).