from Bonheoffer's lectures on Christology, 1933; collected in *Christ the Center*, 1960: pp104-05, 107
This is what I found on the pages from the reference you listed. Can you point to what it is you find objectionable?
p. 104
Jesus Christ is not God in a divine nature,
ousia, substance, being, nor is he God in a way that can be demonstrated or described, he is God in faith. There is no such thing as this divine being. If Jesus Christ is to be described as God, we may not speak of this divine being, nor of his omnipotence, nor his omniscience; but we must speak of this weak man among sinners, of his manger and his cross. If we are to deal with the deity of Jesus, we must speak of his weakness. In christology, one looks at the whole historical man Jesus and says of him, that he is God. One does not first look at a human nature and then beyond it to a divine nature, but one has to do with the one man Jesus Christ, who is wholly God.
The accounts of the birth and of the baptism of Jesus stand side by side. In the birth story, we are directed totally towards Jesus himself. In the story of the baptism, we are directed towards the Holy Spirit who comes from above. The reason why we find it difficult to take the two stories together is because of the doctrine of the two natures. The two stories are not teaching two natures. If we put this doctrine aside, we see that the one story concerns the being of the Word of God in Jesus, while the other concerns the coming of the Word of God upon Jesus. The child in the manger is wholly God: note Luther’s christology in the Christmas hymns. The call at the baptism is confirmation of the first happening, there is no adoptionism in it. The manger directs our attention to the man, who is God; the baptism directs our attention, as we look at Jesus, to the God who calls.
If we speak of Jesus Christ as God, we may not say of him that he is the representative of an idea of God, which possesses the characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence (there is no such thing as this abstract divine nature!); rather, we must speak of his weakness, his manger, his cross. This man is no abstract God.
Strictly speaking we should not talk of the incarnation, but of the incarnate one. The former interest arises out of the
p. 105
question, ‘How?’ The question, ‘How?’, for example, underlies the hypothesis of the virgin birth. Both historically and dogmatically it can be questioned. The biblical witness is ambiguous. If the biblical witness gave clear evidence of the fact, then the dogmatic obscurity might not have been so important. The doctrine of the virgin birth is meant to express the incarnation of God, not only the fact of the incarnate one. But does it not fail at the decisive point of the incarnation, namely that in it Jesus has not become man just like us? The question remains open, as and because it is already open in the Bible.
The incarnate one is the glorified God: ‘The Word was made flesh and we beheld his glory’. God glorifies himself in man. That is the ultimate secret of the Trinity. The humanity is taken up into the Trinity. Not from all eternity, but ‘from now on even unto eternity’ ; the trinitarian God is seen as the incarnate one. The glorification of God in the flesh is now at the same time, the glorification of man, who shall have life through eternity with the trinitarian God. This does not mean that we should see the incarnation of God as God’s judgement on man. God remains the incarnate one even in the Last Judgement. The incarnation is the message of the glorification of God, who sees his honour in becoming man. It must be noted that the incarnation is first and foremost true revelation, of the Creator in the creature, and not veiled revelation. Jesus Christ is the unveiled image of God.
The incarnation of God may not be thought of as derived from an idea of God, in which something of humanity already belongs to the idea of God - as in Hegel. Here we speak of the biblical witness, ‘We saw his glory’. If the incarnation is thus spoken of as the glorification of God, it is not permissible to slip in once again a speculative idea of God, which derives the incarnation from the necessity of an idea of God. A speculative basis for the doctrine of the incarnation in an idea of God would change the free relationship between Creator and creature . . .
p. 107
doctrine of the incarnation and the doctrine of the humiliation must be strictly distinguished from each other. The mode of existence of the humiliation is an act of the incarnate one. Of course, that does not mean that one can separate him temporally from the act of incarnation. Rather, the God-Man in history is always and already the humiliated God-Man from the manger to the cross.
In what way does this special mode of existence of the humiliation express itself? In this way, that Christ takes sinful flesh. The humiliation is necessitated by the world under the curse. The incarnation is related to the first creation; the humiliation is related to the fallen creation. In the humiliation, Christ, of his own free will, enters the world of sin and death. He enters it in such a way as to hide himself in it in weakness and not to be recognized as God-Man. He does not enter in kingly robes of a
morphe theou (Greek, ‘form of God’). His claim, which he as God-Man raises in this form, must provoke contradiction and hostility. He goes incognito, as a beggar among beggars, as an outcast among outcasts, as despairing among the despairing, as dying among the dying. He also goes as sinner among sinners, yet how truly as the
peccator pessimus (Luther, Latin, ‘the worst sinner’), as sinless among sinners. And here lies the central problem of christology.
The doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus is not one locus (Latin, ‘position’) among others. It is a central point at which all that is said is decided. The question is: Has Jesus as the humiliated God-Man entered fully into human sin? Was he man with sin as we are? If not, has he then really become man? If not, can he then really help? And if he has, how can he help us out of our trouble, while he is set in the same trouble?
Here it is necessary to understand what the
homoioma sarkos can mean. What is meant is the real image of human flesh. His
sarx is our
sarx. It is of the very nature of our
sarx that we are tempted to sin and self-will. Christ has taken upon him all that flesh is heir to. But to what extent does he differ . . .