Sons in the Son
God and Man in Early Christianity
by Leon J. Podles
Christianity was the fulfillment of Judaism. The masculinity and the patriarchy that Judaism cultivated were fulfilled in the revelation of a tri-personal God who was both Father and Son. All human beings, male and female, were invited to share in the inner life of God, to receive the Spirit and to be conformed to the Son. The early Church knew that the vocation of the Christian was essentially masculine. Later, the white martyrdom of the monk, the replacement and fulfillment of the hero, replaced the red martyrdom of the early Church. Femininity also received a new appraisal, as the godhead itself was shown to be a communion of persons, the unity and communion of all men, and indeed of all creation, accomplished by the divine Spirit himself. Only a few warning signs in the early Church, especially in the West, gave any indication that masculinity would one day find itself at odds with Christianity.
Masculinity in the New Testament
The God and Father of Jesus Christ is the same God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Although gnosticism has enjoyed a rebirth in the attempts to oppose an androgynous Jesus to the patriarchal Jehovah, such an interpretation must be ruled out at the start. From the very beginning Christianity distinguished itself from gnosticism. The God of the Old Testament is not the devil of the New Testament. The Jesus who walked the roads of Galilee is the same person as the risen Lord and Christ. His male body is risen from the dead; the masculinity of the Son reveals the Father.
The revelation of the Trinitarian life of God maintains the masculinity of each divine Person in relation to creation. That is, in relation to creation, each Person is creator, redeemer, and sanctifier. In relationship to creation, therefore, each Person is masculine, as Yahweh was in the Hebrew Scriptures. Only God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures gives us access to an understanding of his inner life, and the Scriptures constantly characterize the inner-Trinitarian relationship of God as masculine. The generation of the Son by the Father has the created analogue of parenthood. Although the human mother is more obviously a parent than the human father, the First Person nonetheless is called Father by the only one who truly knows him, Jesus. The First Person is Father, indeed Father specifies what he is, because he eternally begets the Son. Paul rejects the idea that the Father is a religious projection of patriarchal social structures. The reverse is true: the Father is, in terms reminiscent of Platonic archetypes, the model, and created fatherhood is the image: “Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood on earth takes its name.” Human masculinity, which has as its purpose the protection and provision of the community, finds its fulfillment in the one who is Lord because he is sacrifice and savior. In their conformity to the Son, all Christians, male and female, become sons of God, and are therefore called to be masculine. In his relationship to the creation, the Third Person is also consistently characterized as masculine, and in the new creation he is the Spirit of sonship, as he is within the Trinity. On the other hand, his inner-Trinitarian function of uniting the Father and Son explains the Spirit’s association with femininity as reflected in the Church’s unity. Mary stands as a sign of that unity.
The Masculinity of the Father and of the Son
Aquinas touches on the question of why the First Person is called Father rather than simply a gender-free Begetter. Rather than focusing on the paternal authority of the Father, Aquinas seems to imply that begetting, the proper action of a father, is a single act, while the role of the mother is a process.1 The Father is eternally not the Son, the Son is eternally not the Father. There was never a time when the Son was not; therefore there was never a time when the Son was part of the Father. This eternal and real distinction of the Persons creates, as it were, a space in the Trinity. The Son became incarnate because creation is analogous to begetting. The incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, is an icon of the Father, his perfect image. The image does not consist in a corporeal resemblance, since God does not have a body, but rather in the resemblance of their modes of action. The Son does only what he sees the Father doing; he does nothing of himself, but imitates his Father in all things. Jesus is therefore the perfect Son, differing in no way from his Father, although not the same as his Father. The Son, having become incarnate, can take the sinful creation and return it to the Father. Sin is an emptiness and a separation from God; since there is already a separation within God, that sinful separation can be inserted into the already existent separation of the Father and the Son, a space that is full of the Holy Spirit. In the return of the creation to the Father, when God will become all in all, the emptiness of sin is replaced by fullness, the pleroma.
Since the characteristic actions of God in the Old Testament involve separation, we should expect to see the same mode of action in Jesus. Jesus enjoys a unique freedom, unlike all other human beings, for he freely chose to enter life, as he freely chose to leave it. He was born not of the will of man, but of God; that is, he was virginally conceived. Born of a woman, from childhood he knew he must leave her to follow his Father. When he is lost in the temple and Mary expresses her distress, he answers that he must be about his Father’s business. At the beginning of his public life, he leaves his family, insisting that those who do the will of his Father are his brother and sister and mother.
Jesus, too, works by separating. He introduces a new principle of separation: no longer observance of the Law, but faith in him. Thus, Jesus exercises the divine prerogative of election. He chooses the Twelve from all those he knows and teaches them, although they do not understand his mission until after Pentecost. By his own account, Jesus comes not to bring peace but a sword. His presence provokes conflict, even when he is an infant: Herod destroys all the male children of Bethlehem in an attempt to destroy the rival king. Jesus does nothing to avert a growing conflict with the Jewish authorities and with many of the Pharisees and Sadducees and often speaks harshly to them: “Brood of vipers, fit for hell.” They accuse him of being possessed by demons, and of being a Samaritan, an apostate who mixes Judaism and paganism.
It is a misunderstanding to see Jesus and the God he manifests as masculine simply because they are powerful and authoritative. While God and Jesus have the right to exercise naked authority and demand obedience from creatures, they do not. In the Old Testament, God is shown as a lover and husband, stung by the infidelities of Israel. The prophet takes a whore as a wife, symbolically enacting the relationship of Yahweh and Israel. God’s heart is somehow wounded by the failure of Israel to respond to his love. In the New Testament Jesus has no wife because his spouse is the Church, redeemed humanity.2 His authority over the Church is like that of a husband over his wife. Paul assumes the sacrificial nature of masculinity in the passage (Ephesians 5:21–31) that has so troubled feminists. He commands husbands to love their wives, as Christ loved the Church, laying down his life for her. The husband has an obligation to imitate the divine Bridegroom, who sacrifices his life for his Spouse. The divine Bridegroom fulfills and perfects the created reality of masculinity, which is characterized by self-sacrifice unto death for the sake of others.3 The wife’s obedience to her husband has the same basis as the Church’s obedience to her Savior. The Church obeys Christ, not from slavish fear or a sense of duty, but from overwhelming gratitude for what he has done for her. The Bridegroom has given his utmost for his Bride, and she in turn obeys him and seeks to imitate his boundless self-giving, from a grateful love that knows no bounds. As Karl Barth correctly observes, the husband who is only human cannot be his wife’s savior in this full sense.4 But what Barth does not see is that the husband, by reason of his masculinity, is also called to be a savior in the realm of created realities. He is to be ready to sacrifice his life, whether in work or in death in battle, for his wife. Her obedience to him in turn is not that of a slave, but that of a grateful equal. She has no corresponding obligation to sacrifice herself for him. Her sacrifice is for her children. She obeys her husband because she knows that he always has her best interests at heart, that he is willing, without drama, as part of the normal course of life, to die for her at any moment.
Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, has worked as a teacher and a federal investigator, and is president of the Crossland Foundation. He is the author of The Church Impotent (Spence), Sacrilege (Crossland Press), and Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine Press). Dr. Podles and his wife have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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