Chapter 1 — Critics of the Incarnate Christ
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
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"Everyone is free to understand Jesus in his or her own way. And Americans have exercised that freedom with wild abandon."
That's from the religious scholar Stephen Prothero, and it names a real problem. In our culture, Jesus keeps getting reinvented. But if Jesus really is who the New Testament says he is, our freedom to reimagine him doesn't change who he actually is. Opinions don't change the weather either.
Before we can defend what Christians believe about Jesus, it helps to understand what others believe. The authors of The Incarnate Christ and His Critics identify seven major alternative views of Christ that are common today. Each one contradicts the traditional Christian doctrine of the incarnation in its own way, and surprisingly, most of them claim to be honoring Jesus while they do it.
Here's a brief tour.
1. The Skeptic's Jesus: a Myth
Some scholars and popular writers argue that Jesus never existed at all, that the Gospel stories are borrowed from pagan mythology with no historical grounding. This view, called "mythicism," is a minority position even among atheist historians, most of whom accept that a historical person named Jesus of Nazareth lived in first-century Judea. A more moderate version just treats the Gospels as legendary embellishments with little historical value. Either way, the conclusion lands in the same place: the miraculous, risen Jesus of Christianity isn't the real Jesus.
2. The Muslim Jesus: a Prophet
Islam holds Jesus in high regard, as a miracle-working prophet, born of a virgin, and honored by God. But Islam firmly denies that Jesus is the Son of God or divine in any sense. The Quran explicitly rejects the Trinity and the idea that God could have a son. For Muslims, exalting Jesus to deity isn't just wrong, it's blasphemy. The Islamic Jesus is a great messenger, but a man nonetheless.
3. The Progressive Jesus: a Mystic
Progressive Christianity, represented by figures like John Shelby Spong and Marcus Borg, tends to view Jesus as a wise spiritual teacher, a sage who showed humanity what it looks like to live in union with "God" (often understood not as a personal being but as a ground of being or spiritual reality). The resurrection often gets reinterpreted as a metaphor. Jesus matters not because he was God incarnate, but because his teachings and example can still inspire us today.
4. The Unitarian Jesus: the Greatest Man
Biblical Unitarians believe Jesus was a uniquely gifted human being, the greatest man who ever lived, but not God. He was exalted to a position of cosmic authority after his resurrection, but he began his existence at his birth like the rest of us. Unitarians typically argue that the early church's faith was much simpler and more human-centered, and that later tradition dressed Jesus up with a divinity he never claimed for himself.
5. The Jehovah's Witness Jesus: Michael the Archangel
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus is the archangel Michael, the first and greatest being God ever created. He's called "a god" (with a lowercase g) but isn't God Almighty. Before becoming Jesus, he was the greatest of spiritual beings; after his resurrection, he returned to being Michael. This is perhaps the most carefully worked-out of the alternative Christologies, with an elaborate system of biblical interpretation built to support it.
6. The Latter-day Saint Jesus: One God Among Many
Mormon theology teaches that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, but that even Jehovah is one of many gods. The Father (called Heavenly Father or Elohim) is a separate, exalted divine being with a physical body. Jesus is God in one sense, but not in the same way classic Christianity means it. The universe of LDS theology contains many gods, with the Father being "our" God.
7. The Oneness Pentecostal Jesus: the Father in the Flesh
Oneness Pentecostalism holds that Jesus is the Father incarnate, that "Jesus" is simply the name given to the one God who appeared in human form. There's no distinction of persons within God on this view; the Trinity as traditionally understood is rejected. It does affirm Jesus' full divinity, but it collapses the distinction between Father and Son in a way the New Testament doesn't support.
What All These Have in Common
Each of these views, in its own way, makes Jesus smaller than the New Testament presents him. Most of them, all except the mythicist view, acknowledge something real and important about Jesus: his moral greatness, his role as teacher, his miracles, or his unique relationship with God. C. S. Lewis was right that non-Christian views of Jesus don't have to be entirely wrong. But when they contradict the historic Christian claim that Jesus is the eternal God come in the flesh, they get something essential wrong.
What's also striking is how much these alternatives disagree with each other. Critics of orthodox Christology often talk as though the choice is simple: either Jesus is fully God as the church teaches, or he's "just a great man." But these seven views can't all be right. A mythical Jesus can't also be a prophet. A Jesus who is the Father incarnate can't also be one creature among many.
In the end, the diversity of these alternatives is itself an argument. The truth about Jesus isn't obvious or self-evident to those who reject the incarnation. The church's historic confession, that Jesus is Lord, eternal God come in the flesh, isn't an overcorrection. It's the consistent testimony of the first witnesses.
Let's take that testimony seriously.