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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 2, Number 2
 July 1991 
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ISN’T JESUS LESS THAN DIVINE?
Q: Philippians 2:6 says Jesus didn't seek after equality with God. How does this square with belief in his divinity?
A: You left out the part of the passage which speaks of Jesus as having been "in the form of God" before the Incarnation. This makes all the difference in the world in understanding what Paul is writing about.
Apparently the apostle is quoting a primitive Christian hymn contrasting Adam and Christ. Adam, who was the "image of God" but not equal to God, tried to be equal to him (Gen. 3:5). Christ, who was in the "form of God" and thus equal to God, didn't think the prerogatives accompanying this equality were something to be "tenaciously held on to" (the Greek word used by Paul is harpagmon), but surrendered them to take on human nature and die on the cross (Phil. 2:7-8).
Paul goes on to note how God has bestowed on Jesus "the name that is above every name" and how "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on Earth and under the Earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9-11).
This is a paraphrase of Isaiah 45:23, where God says, "To me every knee shall bend; by me every tongue shall swear." By applying this to Jesus, Paul isn't undermining the divinity of Christ, but acknowledging it.
Q: As a Bible-believing Christian, I think the Catholic claim to interpret the Bible infallibly is false. This is just what the Watchtower claims for itself.
A: You cannot deduce from the the Watchtower's false claim to interpret the Bible infallibly that the Catholic Church's claim to do so is also false. (Analogously, the disproof of the claims of false Messiahs doesn't disprove the claims of the true one, Jesus Christ.)
Yes, there are superficial similarities between the Catholic Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses, but so what? There are also similarities between the Witnesses and so-called "Bible-believing Christians." Does this automatically refute the claims of people who believe as you do? Certainly not.
What's important isn't how the Catholic Church and the Witnesses are similar, but how they're different. While there's a good historical case for the Catholic Church's claims (the Catholic Church and its doctrines can be traced back to the beginning of Christianity), the same can't be said of the Watchtower, which didn't exist before 1879.
Q: Sometimes I don't know what to think about the Bible. Should we take it literally or symbolically?
A: It depends on the intent of the particular biblical author. If he intended what he wrote to be taken literally, then we should take it literally. If he meant for it to be taken symbolically, then that's how we should take it. Although this principle is easy to state, it isn't always easy to apply.
Some things in the Bible, such as the parables of Jesus, are clearly symbolic, but what about other things, such as Christ's words about the Eucharist? Are they to be taken literally or symbolically? Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, many Lutherans, and many Anglicans take them literally. Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and other Protestants do not.
Yet all Christians claim Christ's words, as well as the tenor of the New Testament, support their belief, and all claim to know what Christ intended when he spoke them. How do we decide who's right?
Based on literary and historical analysis, scholars often can determine how the biblical writer wanted his words to be understood. This is why in studying Scripture we should familiarize ourselves with its literary and historical background.
Still, scholarship alone can't solve all of our interpretative problems. There are scholars, for instance, who affirm the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and those who deny it, just as there are those who think the New Testament teaches distinctively Catholic beliefs and those who don't.
Because of the possibility (and frequency) of such scholarly impasses, the Catholic Church insists that Christ established the Magisterium--the teaching authority of the Church--to propound biblical truth infallibly. The authentic explanation of the biblical message has been left neither to our own meager interpretive abilities, nor to the greater, yet still finite, exegetical skills of scholars, but has been safeguarded by God himself.
Q: We don't need all the ethical rules of organized religion. I think all we need to know about how to live is summed up in the Golden Rule.
A: If so, you disagree with the one who gave us that rule. Christ never confined moral truth to this principle, as important as it is. Treating others as you'd like to be treated isn't enough. If it were, a masochist would be justified in inflicting pain on others simply because he derives pleasure from receiving it himself.
Jesus made it clear that sin can be committed even when no action against another is involved. In his teaching about lust, for example, he said you don't have to commit adultery with another to be guilty of the sin. Merely to look lustfully on a woman is to commit adultery with her in your heart (Matt. 5:27).
Q: If Jesus didn't believe the Bible was the sole rule of faith, why did he quote it in his disputes with the Pharisees and the Sadducees?
A: The mere quoting of the Bible as authoritative doesn't imply the quoter thinks only the Bible is authoritative. Catholics, after all, cite Scripture in support of their views, yet this doesn't mean they believe the Bible to be the sole rule of faith.
The Jews of Jesus' day quoted the Bible to defend their beliefs, but they also followed their traditions (Matt. 15:2). Some were legitimate, some not. Look at Jesus' attack on one of the illegitimate traditions: the Pharisees' custom of the Corban (Matt. 15:4-9).
His attack is taken by some as a rejection of all tradition and as an affirmation of sola scriptura, but it really shows only that he opposed human traditions which contradicted Scripture, not that he rejected all tradition. You can't conclude, then, from Jesus' mere citing of the Bible, that one needs to believe only in the Bible or that the Bible is the sole rule of faith and all tradition must be rejected.
Jesus quoted the Old Testament because it's the Word of God and as such is authoritative for settling the theological questions it addresses. Furthermore, because Scripture was accepted by both Jesus and his opponents, he could appeal to it as common ground between them. Here he followed his usual practice of using what his enemies, in theory at least, would accept as binding.
Consider his dispute with the Sadducees in Matthew 22:23-33 over the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees, who accepted as inspired only the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), didn't believe in the resurrection of the body.
In refuting them, Christ quoted only from the Pentateuch (Ex. 3:6), not because he didn't acknowledge other Old Testament books which explicitly mention the resurrection of the body (such as Daniel 12:2, 13), but because the Sadducees didn't accept these other books. An appeal to an authority which they didn't accept would have been useless, so Jesus proved his point by referring to one the Sadducees would affirm.
Q: Does the Catholic Church believe in the devil? I saw on television a priest who said this isn't official Catholic teaching.
A: The priest you saw on television, if he said what you say he said, is mistaken. Based on the teaching and example of Jesus (Matt. 4:1-11; 12:22-30; Mark 1:34; Luke 10:18; 22:31; John 8:44), the Catholic Church has always held that the devil is real, not a mythical personification of evil. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), in its decree condemning the Manichaean dualism of the Catharists, taught that "the devil and the other evil spirits were created good in nature, but they became evil by their own actions."
The Church's teaching on the subject is clear from its liturgy. At baptism, those to be baptized are called upon to reject Satan, his works, and his empty promises. The Church provides an official rite of exorcism, which presupposes, of course, the existence of Satan.
In 1975 the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship issued a document called Christian Faith and Demonology. It explained the Church's teaching on the subject. This document quotes Pope Paul VI's teaching regarding the devil:
"It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the devil's existence; to regard him as . . . a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes. . . . Exegetes and theologians should not be deaf to this warning." Presumably this exhortation extends to priests who appear on television.
More recently, Pope John Paul II, in his general audience of August 13, 1986, expounded at length on the fall of the angels and, in speaking on the origin of Satan, said, "When, by an act of his own free will, he rejected the truth that he knew about God, Satan became the cosmic 'liar and the father of lies' (John 8:44). For this reason, he lives in radical and irreversible denial of God and seeks to impose on creation--on the other beings created in the image of God and in particular on people--his own tragic 'lie about the good' that is God."
Q: Where did the idea come from that Jesus was a carpenter? My Bible says this was Joseph's profession and that Jesus was regarded as "the carpenter's son" (Matt. 13:55). Do we have any reason, apart from tradition, to believe Jesus took up Joseph's trade?
A: Yes. The Bible says so. In Mark 6:3, the people of Nazareth, Jesus' hometown, astonished by the way he spoke with authority, ask, "Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary?" Jesus is spoken of here as "the carpenter," rather than as the "the carpenter's son," as in the passage you cited.
Q: Why does the pope kiss the ground after he disembarks from an airplane? My friend considers this practice to be nothing but superstition.
A: Your friend is reading too much into the gesture. The act of kissing the ground of a country one has just set foot upon, whether done by the pope or any other world leader, isn't superstitious. It's merely a way of expressing love and respect for the country and its people.
Q: I keep hearing about "social sin" and "structural sin." Whatever happened to personal sin?
A: Nothing. Unfortunately, it's alive and well. The Church hasn't abandoned the idea we commit personal sins. "Social sin" and "structural sin" are legitimate terms, but shouldn't be interpreted as negating personal accountability.
In his encyclical on social justice, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Pope John Paul II says "social sin" or "structural sin" proceeds from the accumulation of personal sins. It is, says the Pope, "a question of a moral evil, the fruit of many sins which lead to 'structures of sin.'"
Since the source of "social sin" or "structural sin" is personal sin, the solution to it rests with our personal actions. We must do more than change "the system," as important as that may be. We must change ourselves.
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