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2008 73: 113Irish Theological QuarterlySusie Paulik Babka

Christology: When Popular Culture MeetsTertium QuidArius, Superman, and the

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Irish Theological Quarterly73 (2008) 113–132

© 2008 Irish Theological QuarterlySage Publications, Los Angeles, London,

New Delhi and SingaporeDOI: 10.1177/0021140008091695

113

Arius, Superman, and the Tertium Quid:When Popular Culture Meets ChristologySusie Paulik BabkaUniversity of San Diego

This article poses that the Christological problem of the tertium quid, or ‘third thing,’ isexemplified in the comic book hero Superman, who is an alien ‘savior.’ In this, the valueof popular culture’s contribution to academic theology is assessed, as is the value of theconnection made in popular culture between Superman and Jesus Christ. RegardingSuperman as a ‘Christ figure’ is essentially a misunderstanding of the doctrine of theincarnation, in which the eternal Son of God has assumed the full reality of humannature, which includes its weakness, vulnerability, and ordinariness, as well as its poten-tial for divine activity.

KEYWORDS: Arius, Jesus Christ, Popular Culture, Superman

In the 2003 film Kill Bill Vol. 2, written and directed by QuentinTarantino, David Carradine, as the character ‘Bill,’ employs superhero

mythology in the following monologue:

As you know, I’m quite keen on comic books, especially the ones aboutsuperheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fas-cinating. Take my favorite superhero, Superman … the mythology isnot only great, it is unique. A staple of the superhero mythology isthat there is the superhero and the alter ego. Batman is actuallyBruce Wayne, Spiderman is actually Peter Parker. When that char-acter wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on acostume to become Spiderman. And it is in that characteristic thatSuperman stands alone. Superman didn’t become Superman.Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in themorning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit withthe big red S—that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a babywhen the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Clark Kentwears, the glasses, the business suit—that’s the costume. That’s thecostume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is howSuperman views us. What are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s



114 IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

weak, he’s unsure of himself, he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’scritique on the whole human race.1

Tarantino here crystallizes the difference between superheroes in thecomic book pantheon: whereas Spiderman needed an external accident totransform him into a superhero (a bite from a radioactive spider), heresymbolized by ‘putting on a costume to become Spiderman,’ Supermanneeds no external event to make him ‘super’; he is born ‘super’ because heis not human. Superman is rather an alien who on our planet is ‘super’while living in this environment, and so is ‘super’ when compared tohuman beings. Upon first hearing Bill’s explanation of the characteristicsof the superhero, I wondered whether there might be somethingChristological in his description of ‘Superman.’ After all, when Jesus‘wakes up in the morning,’ he is ‘Word made flesh,’ and so does not relyon an arbitrary external event to make him God, or, ‘super,’ so to speak.Furthermore, Jesus appears to have ‘super powers.’ The stories surroundinghim speak frequently of the fantastic: he can control the forces of nature,wake the dead, dispel demons, and change water to wine. Tradition, basedon the observations of Paul, even speaks of his sinlessness, when sin seemsto be a part of human nature. Is not ‘to err’ human? It would appear thatJesus, even in his human life, has a ‘super’-natural advantage over the restof human beings. Is Jesus Christ to be understood as an alien on our planetin the way that Superman is an alien, a visitor from another world, who‘comes down’ (in vivid geographical image) to save us, and then returnsto his ‘home planet’ when his mission is complete? Is this why so many inpopular culture have made the connection between Jesus and Superman,from the costuming of the musical Godspell (the Jesus figure wears a t-shirtwith the Superman ‘S’) to the Superman movies of the 1980s starringChristopher Reeve, in which a star-shaped escape pod streaks across thenight sky to transport the infant Kal-El to earth, to Superman Returns of2006, in which a technical reprisal of Marlon Brando, as his father Jor-El,proclaims in a commanding, expansive voice: ‘Even though you were raisedas a human being, you are not one of them. They can be a great people,Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way.For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, myonly son.’2

If theology is a habitus,3 nuggets of discourse can be found everywhere,even in and through popular culture, and new modes of articulation helphone the often clumsy language inherited from far back in the church’s

1. Quentin Tarantino, writer and director, Kill Bill 2 (Miramax, 2003). The actor’s emphasis.2. Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, writers, Superman Returns, directed by Bryan Singer(Warner Brothers, 2006).3. See Edward Farley’s use of the term (Edward Farley, ‘Theology and Practice Outside theClerical Paradigm,’ in Practical Theology: The Emerging Field in Theology, Church, and World,ed. Don S. Browning [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983], 21–41).



ARIUS, SUPERMAN, AND THE TERTIUM QUID 115

4. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 6.5. Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God (New York: Arkana, 1991), 609.

history. Little, perhaps, do the purveyors of popular culture realize that thesuperhero mythology employed in the comic pantheon is the same soteri-ological mystique surrounding the popular theology that accompanies thedevelopment of Christological doctrine. The early Christological debates,juggling terminology and ideas, included experimentation with variousforms of the tertium quid, the ‘third thing,’ in which the person of Christis described as either deficient in humanity or deficient in divinity. Thetertium quid is thus a fusion of two disparate things that cannot be fullyeither. Christologies that tend to the tertium quid cannot locate Christ asan authentic member of either the human race or the Godhead, placinghim in an entirely new category.

Conceptual experimentation is an inevitable part of the process ofsharpening language about things essentially mysterious but which have agreater theological or soteriological motive. At issue in the Nicene churchis the dilemma posed between the philosophical conception of a Godunaffected by and uninvolved with creation, and the gospel testimony ofa savior who suffers. Arius, for example, like Justin Martyr, wished to pre-serve the absoluteness and self-sufficiency of the one God, incapable ofsuffering or change: the savior, coming forth from God at creation, acts asan intermediary between creation and God. For Arius, it seems, the sav-ior is deficient in divinity because he is capable of human experience, suf-fering and death; but as an intermediary, he is as close as humanity willever come to God the Father.

Apollinarius makes the same mistake, but from a different angle:intending to extend the divine qualities of his savior in response to theArian heresy, he reduces the human qualities. The result is a Superman ortertium quid of a different stripe—or cape, as the case may be—who maybe God, but cannot be what we are. Apollinarius’ Christ assumes humanflesh as simply as Clark Kent dons his eyeglasses, rumpled suit, and timiddemeanor, in critique of the weakness of humanity, according to Tarantino.

Stories of the superhero are entrenched in North American popularculture. Since the introduction of Superman in 1938, the noble hero withextraordinary powers in the battle between good and evil has assumedhundreds of variations, human and non-human, including both sexes andseveral ethnicities, appearing in print and filmed media, toys and games,resulting in perhaps the first mythology woven from different elements inpopular culture. Mircea Eliade reminds us that myths are compellingbecause the actors in myths are ‘Supernatural Beings,’ representing ‘dra-matic breakthroughs of the sacred into the world.’4 Joseph Campbellpoints to Rudolf Otto’s definition of mythology as that which wakens anexperience of awe, humility, and respect, and in so doing, turns us towardan ultimate mystery.5 In other words, there is a reason that the superhero




6. See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis:Fortress, 1997), 27.

mythology has captured the human imagination: we are hungry, not onlyfor a good story, but for the fantastic, to be rescued from tedium, as well asfrom the tacit fear of the next tragedy.

Because superhero mythology is so prominent, even identified globally,it provides an excellent allegory for exploring the complicated and seem-ingly obsolete history of the development of Christological doctrine.Popular culture has made Superman into a ‘Christ figure’; but is this avalid portrayal? Superhero mythology provides a modern archetypeagainst which Christians might measure the sincerity of the doctrine ofthe incarnation of Christ, which must refer to more than the appearanceof a soteriological hero or a demigod cloaked in weakness. In other words,while popular culture has gleefully connected Superman and Jesus, as faras Christian doctrine goes, Superman provides a foil that uncovers whyChristologies of the tertium quid have ultimately failed in doctrinal devel-opment: if the Savior is an alien, either to humanity or to God or to both,then he does not bring human beings into the fullness of intimacy withGod. An alien savior reinforces human alienation from God, as well asGod’s remoteness from human beings.

In this article, I first consider the definition and value of popular cultureas a public matrix providing resources to understand faith, and assert thatit assists in the explanation and articulation of Christian doctrine, whichneeds to be fed new paradigms and new vocabulary, if it is to have any sortof impact. Next, I examine the history of the Superman character tounderstand its influence; finally, I briefly review the Christian church’sexperiment with the notion of a tertium quid as a way to explain Christ’sbeing, concluding with an evaluation of the Superman mythos as a motifwith which to compare the significance of Jesus Christ.

Art or Entertainment?

The definition of popular culture is part of the ongoing conversation asto what constitutes art. Typically, ‘high culture’ denotes works of highestquality or reverence: a Chopin étude or a Massacio fresco, the things thatseem the most worthy of scholarly notice and consideration. Things des-ignated as ‘pop culture’ are typically referenced as such because they areperceived to be lower in value or quality, and yet still pervasive enough tobe influential, such as situation comedies on television or comic books.

Hence, if ‘culture’ refers to the ‘way of life’—habits, behaviors, institu-tions, rituals—constructed by a particular society of human beings,6 then‘popular culture’ contains widely assimilated and accepted behaviors, lan-guage, rituals and the like, perpetuated through mass distribution. RusselNye writes, ‘popular culture describes a cultural condition that could not



have appeared in Western culture before the late 18th century.’7 Popularculture pertains to a degree of influence, and this influence makes it worthyof scholarly attention. Technologies of mass distribution only intensify theinfluence and widen the cultural sphere, blurring previously identified cul-tural boundaries. In relation to the ongoing conversation as to what consti-tutes ‘art,’ the majority appeal that characterizes pop culture has tended todevalue any contribution popular culture may make to academic theology.

This makes defining pop culture tricky: is it art or entertainment? Ismeaning to be found in its elements or is it merely distraction, shallow andunsubstantial? The 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, written by MarcNorman and Tom Stoppard, took license with the historical facts ofWilliam Shakespeare’s life, but accurately showed that his plays were ori-ginally intended for the masses, and their success depended on popularaffirmation. According to Martha Nussbaum, Greek Drama occupied afunction in society beyond mere entertainment: ‘To attend a tragic dramawas not to go to a distraction or a fantasy, in the course of which one sus-pended one’s anxious practical questions. It was instead to engage in acommunal process of inquiry, reflection, and feeling with respect to import-ant civic and personal ends.’8 Because it must be performed, theatre is theprimary artistic category requiring the public sphere; in this regard, theatreis, to an extent, distinguished from visual art, which in history—especiallyup to the Renaissance—tended to be restricted to more discrete facets ofsociety, such as a painting commissioned for a king’s private use, or devo-tional art. Today, filmed media comprise the bulk of artistic forms dis-cussed in public, and so the bulk of what becomes the fabric of publicdiscourse. This is noteworthy when considering Margaret Miles’s observa-tion that the value of images is located ‘in their importance at the centerof the affective life of the whole community.’9

Jesus himself illustrated his ideas in the form of parables as a way to helpthe community tangibly enter the abstract realm of the Reign of God.Parables were not only for disciples, the culturally elite or well-educated;the parable had the particular social function of uniting all listeners in theevaluation of its meaning. The parable is the central literary form in theNew Testament, the ‘way to the “gospel,”’ argues Sallie McFague, andGerhard Ebeling observes, ‘the parable is the form of the language of Jesuswhich corresponds to the incarnation.’10 Parables are meant to have wide


7. Russel Nye, ‘Notes on a Rationale for Popular Culture,’ in The Popular Culture Reader,ed. Christopher Geist and Jack Nachbar (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green StateUniversity, 1977), 10. Cf. Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings: FindingGod in Pop Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 18.8. Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 15.9. Margaret Miles, Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and SecularCulture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 29.10. Sallie McFague, Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology (Philadelphia:Fortress, 1975), 81.



appeal and accessibility; they work in images, because images can providegreater access to abstract thought than rational theories. Jesus, continuesMcFague, is the ‘parable of God’ because he is God’s Reign embodied:because of Jesus, we can experience the universal salvific will of God, wecan picture the outcast of society assuming a place at the table, and we cansee that the poor are living in a situation contrary to God’s will. BecauseJesus seems to prefer parable over proposition and formula (at least in theSynoptic Gospels), Jesus understands the value of image and metaphor inthe recognition of spiritual experience. The common, ordinary languageof a parable points to something greater.

Although recognized as ‘high culture’ today, Shakespeare still blurs theboundaries between high and popular culture, as do other media, such ascomic books. While finding their beginnings in adolescent amusement,today ‘graphic novels’ are a recognized art form: Art Spiegleman’s Mausseries on his father’s experience as a prisoner and survivor of Auschwitzwon a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis serieson coming of age during the Iranian revolution was made into an ani-mated film which won the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes film festival.Both works betray a power rarely seen in other media.

Appropriate criteria for assessing the taste value of specific elementswithin the pop culture pie are a matter for another essay; suffice it to saythat we can no longer dismiss an idea, image, or genre simply because itcaptivates ‘the masses.’ Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor observe: ‘Thereis a conversation about God going on in popular culture that the churchis not engaged in and is often unaware of. If the Christian world continuesto view popular culture as degraded and superficial, then the gap betweenchurch and culture will continue to widen.’11 Extending theology’s out-reach to what shapes lived experience is typically the arena of practicaltheology, ‘with its penchant for dynamic categories of analysis and itsresponsiveness to the situations and needs of persons, promises … to closethe gap between theological truths and the texture of pain and confusionin society and in people’s lives.’12 In contemporary discourse, it is essentialto include public life and culture in all forms of academic theology, asmuch as it is to bring theology to public life. Jesus communicates the latterin the Beatitudes; writes Paul Tillich, ‘Jesus points to the situation in whichthe people are and in which they ask for the Kingdom of God. It is thenthat they can understand the answer, and hence are blest.’13

A Brief History of Superman

Dietrich Bonhoffer, observing the secularization of culture in thetwentieth century, wrote: ‘Man has learned to cope with all questions of


11. Detweiler and Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings, 23.12. James W. Fowler, ‘Practical Theology and Theological Education: Some Models andQuestions,’ Theology Today 42 (1985), 44.13. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1964), 207.



importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis. In ques-tions concerning science, art, and even ethics, this has become anunderstood thing which one scarcely dares to tilt anymore.’14 Related tothis is a ‘war against mystery and magic,’ as Polish sociologist ZygmuntBauman observed of modernity: secularization meant that ‘the worldhad to be de-spiritualized, de-animated, denied the capacity of the sub-ject … it is against such a disenchanted world that the postmodern re-enchantment is aimed.’15 Superman, born June 1938 in Action Comics1, represents the modern introduction of the fantastic into the secularsphere, occupying the place formerly reserved for the superstitious andmagical element in religion. Superman’s rapid rise points to the humandesire for protection and security, the dream of having a guardian anddefender who not only knows the morally right thing to do, but whoalso has the power and will to carry it out. In this sense, it is perhaps noaccident that Superman’s story gains momentum in escapism from theDepression, at a time when hard work did not necessarily mean pros-perity and the fantasy of a little supernatural prowess or luck to attaindesired ends was irresistible.16

In 1934, two 17-year olds from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,enthralled by the world of comic strips and pulp magazines (so-calledbecause of the cheap paper used in publication), tried to invent their ownstoryline. The central character came to Siegel during a sleepless night,‘a character like Samson, Hercules, and all the strong men I have everheard tell of rolled into one.’17 The publishers were skeptical as to thecredulity factor—the cover of the first issue showed Superman suspendingan automobile over his head—and so included an elaborate ‘scientific’explanation: ‘the lowly ant can support weights hundreds of times itsown.’18 By the seventh issue, Action Comics was selling over half a millioncopies a month. The following year, Superman was the first comic bookdevoted to a single character.19

Part of the attraction to Superman is his alter ego; this device was theinvention of Siegel and Shuster, and soon became a staple of the super-hero mythos. Siegel remarked: ‘Much of that premise came out of my per-sonal frustrations. I wore spectacles and … wrote for the school paper. …There were girls I admired from afar … if I could run faster than a train,lift weights easily, and leap over skyscrapers in a single bound! Then they


14. Dietrich Bonhoffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. and trans. Eberhard Bethge(New York: Macmillan, 1966), 195.15. As cited in Detweiler and Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings, 38.16. See Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture inAmerica (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 10–11.17. Richard Reynolds, Superheroes: A Modern Mythology (Jackson, MS: University ofMississippi Press, 1992), 9.18. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Action Comics 1, 1, reprinted in Superheroes: A ModernMythology, 11.19. See Wright, Comic Book Nation, 9.



would notice me!’20 The desire to be adored for hidden talents is under-scored by Eliade, who notes that the

humiliating camouflage of a Hero whose powers are literally unlim-ited revives a well-known mythical theme … the myth of Supermansatisfies the secret longings of modern man who, though he knowsthat he is a fallen, limited creature, dreams of one day proving him-self an ‘exceptional person,’ a ‘Hero.’21

This phenomenon of hidden identity was reflected in the lives of Siegeland Shuster: Rabbi Simcha Weinstein observes that the creators ofSuperman attempted to downplay their Jewish heritage in an anti-Semiticclimate by submitting their first efforts under ‘the none-too Jewish pseud-onym Bernard J. Kenton.’22

Weinstein delights in demonstrating connections between theSuperman mythos and the Jewish background of its creators. He finds thatSuperman’s origins are reflective of Moses’ origins: Moses’ motherJochebed sets him afloat on the Nile in a reed vessel to save him from thePharaoh’s henchmen. Similarly, Superman’s father Jor-El (‘El,’ of course,refers to God in parts of the Hebrew Bible, and is often attached to thenames of prophets, such as Elijah and Israel) launches a baby-sized rocketship cradling his infant son, Kal-El, to save him from the disintegratingplanet Krypton. Kal-El assumes another identity in order to assimilate intothe dominant culture, much as Moses grew up as an Egyptian. Weinsteinsees superheroes as extensions of the ‘superpatriarchs and supermatriarchsof the Bible and heroic figures named Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David andSamson.’23

Superman, like Moses, does not exploit the possibility of grandeur forhis personal gain but is described by Siegel and Shuster in Action Comics1 as ‘champion of the oppressed, the physical marvel who had sworn todevote his existence to helping those in need.’24 Siegel and Shuster’s ori-ginal vision was that Superman be the moral catalyst in remedying society’sinjustices: he was an ethical messiah, one who embodies the particularlyJewish longing for righteousness and deliverance. With extraordinarypowers, he could speed the process of uncovering corruption, instigatingcontrition, and leap over bureaucracy in a single bound. In an early story-line, Superman rescues a trapped miner, who later tells reporter Clark Kentthat the accident could have been avoided had the owner and foreman


20. As quoted in Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, Up, Up and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture,and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero (Baltimore, MD: Leviathan, 2006), 23–24.21. Eliade, Myth and Reality, 185.22. Weinstein, Up, Up and Oy Vey!, 22.23. Ibid., 15.24. Siegel and Shuster, Action Comics 1, 1, reprinted in Superheroes: A Modern Mythology, 11.



paid attention to warnings about unsafe working conditions; Kent thenquestions the owner, who responds, ‘there are no safety hazards in mymine! But if there were, what of it? I’m a businessman, not a humanitar-ian!’25 Superman then ensnares the owner in a similar accident, the ownerrealizes the safety devices do not work, and sobs while confessing the neg-lect of his workers. Superman rescues him, and he vows to make his mines‘the safest in the country’ and his workers ‘the best treated.’26

That Superman was interested to channel his powers into justice andchampion the oppressed resonated in popular culture of the late thirties;this was a time, finds Bradford Wright, that celebrated the stick-to-it-iveness of the common man, as in the novels of John Steinbeck, the filmsof Frank Capra, and the symphonies of Aaron Copeland.27 Superman doesnot merely save individuals from obvious criminals, such as bank robbersor petty thieves, he sets out to ‘repair the world,’ tikkun haolam, the processof reuniting the broken vessels of creation with their divine source,according to the Lurianic Kabbalah.28 In Action Comics 8, January 1939,Superman even destroys urban slums, in defiance of the National Guardand police, proclaiming to the neighborhood boys, ‘It’s not entirely yourfault that you’re delinquent—it’s these slums—your poor living condi-tions,’ at which point the government responds by building impressivenew public housing.29

After World War II, the popularity of the superhero declined. Perhapsit was because popular culture was filled with images of working peopleand soldiers as heroes, from Rosie the Riveter to G.I. Joe. Commonpeople, combined with technology in the form of atomic weapons, hadtriumphed over the enemy; fantasies of alien saviors were not as evocative.Consequently, Superman’s character changed significantly in the late1940s: the original creators, Siegel and Shuster, had been effectivelyejected from Superman’s development by DC Comics, and with themwent much of their original premise that Superman champion theoppressed. Under the creative direction of DC editor Mort Weisinger,Superman’s powers were grossly exaggerated in an attempt to renew inter-est: he survives an atomic blast, flies through suns, pushes planets throughspace, and manipulates time.30

Interestingly, the farther away Superman strayed from the originalvision of his creators, the less relevant he has been in popular culture.Wright observes, ‘as the series veered ever further into flights of unreality,so too did its ability to work within a social context.’31 Rather than strive


25. See Wright, Comic Book Nation, 11.26. Ibid., 12.27. Ibid., 10.28. See Weinstein, Up, Up and Oy Vey!, 28.29. Wright, Comic Book Nation, 12–13.30. Ibid., 60.31. Ibid., 61.



for equanimity and justice as champion of the powerless, Superman in the1950s became the icon for the preservation of the status quo, defending,for example, American security against the threat of communism.Granted, a society weary from war welcomed the comfort of a trustworthygovernment; causing disorder and upheaval to correct injustice was notwhat those in the post-war era desired. The sixties, however, saw aSuperman who was as internally conflicted as an America that wasdivided over civil rights and the Vietnam War. But the comic book appealof Superman waned in the sixties and seventies. The Superman mythosgained a new following with Superman: the Movie (1978) and the sequelsof the eighties. In the fall of 1992, DC Comics announced the death ofSuperman, primarily for profit. The issue sold six million copies, the lastpage depicting that Superman has sacrificed his greatest effort against thevillain Doomsday, and he dies in the arms of Lois Lane, in a pietà-likepose. The story, of course, does not end there: Superman later returns,deconstructed into four personifications, the alien, the inhuman, the ado-lescent, and the outsider.32 The history of the Superman character suggeststhat the icons of popular culture need to respond to changes in society inorder to stay alive in public consciousness.

The problem, ultimately, with Superman’s connection to the people isthat he will always be an alien: many of the stories revolve around hisquest for belonging, the desire to assimilate into ordinary society andmarry Lois Lane, his longing for the life he might have had on Krypton,what he must do to fulfill Jor-El’s expectations. Superman is caughtbetween wanting to be human and average (another explanation for theClark Kent persona) and enjoying his super status, having the sort of powerthat can immediately instigate transformative change, the sort of power thatsaves—from evil, from corruption, from unsafe mine conditions. Butperhaps the decline in Superman’s popularity is due to the credibilityfactor that so concerned the original publishers. Somewhere inside, weknow that a hero with ethical intentions and supernatural ability is notgoing to swoop down and save the world.

Arius and the Alien Savior

According to Epiphanius, Arius was born in Libya. Given that therewere no Libyan bishops who opposed him, and Emperor Constantineimplies Arius is in Libya in a letter written in 333, we can presume this isaccurate. He was most likely born sometime before 280, and accomplishesmost of his preaching as a presbyter at the parish of Baucalis inAlexandria. His only surviving writings are three letters and some frag-ments, reproduced by Athanasius, of his only known theological work, the


32. See Reynolds, Superheroes: A Modern Mythology, 123.



Thalia, verses written in Sotadean style.33 Other ideas are found in the writ-ings of those who opposed him, namely, Alexander, bishop of Alexandria,and Athanasius of Alexandria.

It should be noted that ‘Arianism’ as regards the crisis in fourth centurytheology carries the burdens of bias as well as over-simplification. Arius’surviving writings point neither to a systematic argument, nor to thedesire to establish a sect, which means that ‘Arianism’ generically refers tocertain Christological ideas that were only beginning to be developed dur-ing the time of the Council of Nicaea. Arius did not want to make himselfan opponent to the Church and passionately argued against his ownexcommunication by Alexander. Rowan Williams asserts that theConstantinian interest to enforce unity in the Empire meant the begin-ning of the end for academic pluralism in the Church: ‘Arius may standfor an important dimension in Christian life that was … unfortunatelycrushed by policy or circumstance and yet may stand in other ways for atheological style doomed to spiritual sterility.’34

In a letter written about 318 to his ally Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia,Arius attempts to clarify his teaching:

What have we taught and what do we teach? That the Son is notunbegotten or a portion of the unbegotten in any manner … but bythe will and counsel of the Father he subsisted before times and ages,full of grace and truth, God, only-begotten, unchangeable … beforehe was begotten or created or defined or established, he was not. Forhe was not unbegotten.35

Arius strongly argues against the idea that Christ is in any way co-eternalwith the Father, primarily because he understands God to be ‘mostalone,’36 monadic, absolutely indivisible, and without emanation. Arius isfaithful to both the biblical distinction between Creator and creature, andthe philosophical claim that perfection by nature is unaffected by any-thing imperfect. Plato in the Timaeus also refers to absolute, eternal being


33. R.P.C. Hanson notes that Athanasius reproaches Arius for using this meter, whichmimics the Greek poet Sodates. ‘Arius chose this form in order to make his propaganda morepopular and more effective. Sodates had written verses of a humorous, sarcastic and some-times obscene type’ (R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God [GrandRapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005], 10–11); See Athanasius, Orationes con Arianos I.2.Alexander, in his Letter to Alexander of Thessalonica, paints the followers of Arius as wild,‘tearing Christianity into pieces by the indecent running around of their young women onevery street’ (The Trinitarian Controversy, trans. and ed. William G. Rusch [Philadelphia:Fortress, 1980], 34). By several accounts, Arius was a popular preacher and had a wide fol-lowing; he seemed to know how to appeal to people’s understanding. There are even reportsof demonstrations on the streets of Alexandria in Arius’ support, chanting his aphorisms.Further study is warranted of the appeal of Arius to the popular culture of the time.34. Rowan Williams, Arius: History and Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 91.35. Arius, Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, in Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy, 29–30.



as ‘alone,’ leaving unresolved the question as to whether what becomeseven has being.

Arius contends in his Letter to Alexander of Alexandria that God creates‘the ages and everything’ through the Logos, as ‘an immutable andunchangeable perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures—anoffspring, but not as one of those born … created by the will of God beforetimes and ages,’ who received ‘life, being, and glories from the Father asthe Father has shared them with him.’37 Arius’ language is imprecise, to besure, but he conveys that while the Logos or Son is a creature, he is not acreature in the way that human beings are creatures. The graces and giftsbestowed on the Son surpass those of any in creation. This means, how-ever, that the Son receives immutability as a gift from God, such that it isnot natural to his being: even the Son of God cannot reach the utter tran-scendence of God. As Arius writes in his Thalia, ‘The Father is alien inbeing to the Son, and he [the Father] has no origin.’38 Arius and his fol-lowers, therefore, accepted the pre-existent Son who becomes ‘incarnate,’but this Son was deficient in his divinity, a lesser god whose character, andperhaps reason for existence, is marked primarily by obedience to theFather’s will. R.P.C. Hanson notes, ‘The inferiority of the Logos to Godthe Father was necessary for a communication, and particularly for anIncarnation, to take place at all.’39 Because God can have no direct con-tact with the world, there must be a mediator who will do the Father’s bid-ding in creation: a Superman who saves, even if as an alien.

Arius’ ideas were not new. Justin Martyr believed that God as perfectlyself-sufficient and utterly transcendent is incapable of contact with mater-ial and temporal reality; the Logos, coming forth from God at creation, isthe one who acts as an intermediary between creation and God.40 Theproblem with Arius’ thinking is that the distance between creation andthe one true God remains as irreconcilable as it does in early Greek phil-osophy. Hence, even the Son, the highest being in creation, is ‘alien’ tothe Father, and the absence of a doctrine of an incarnation of God meansthat true divinity is remote from creation.

Arius and those who took up many of the themes in his thought, suchas Eudoxius, bishop of Antioch 357–359, emphasized the compositenature of the incarnation in Jesus: he was flesh, but the Logos replaced the


36. Arius, Letter to Alexander of Alexandria, in ibid., 32.37. Ibid., 31.38. Athanasius, Syn. 15 in Aloys Grillmeier, S.J., Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, trans.John Bowden (Atlanta: John Knox, 1975), 224.39. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 100.40. On this point, see Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame,IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 85–88. Justin’s understanding of the Logos asintermediary echoes Philo’s understanding of the Logos, and Plato’s understanding of theDemiurge, although Justin’s Logos is more resonant with the term ‘person’ than Philo’sLogos. On Philo’s Logos, see Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 79–81.



human soul. In his Rule of Faith, Eudoxius writes: ‘We believe in oneLord, the Son, who became flesh, but not human, for he took on nohuman soul, but became flesh so that God was revealed to us through theflesh as through a curtain, not two natures, since he was not a completeman, but God in the flesh instead of a soul.’41 Hanson observes that theArians did not accept salvation through a ‘mere man’; but the suffering ofChrist confirmed in the Gospels pointed to a necessary deficiency ofdivinity in the Son.

Ironically, Apollinarius’ Logos-sarx model undervalues the humannature of Christ in the same way that Arius’ Logos-sarx model undervaluesthe divine nature, because they both make the same mistake about thepossession of a soul. Apollinarius (c. 310–390) Bishop of Laodicea, taughtthat Christ had a human body and a lower soul (or psyche, seat of anima-tion and emotion) but the divine Logos replaced the higher, spiritual, orrational soul (nous). Originally a close friend of Athanasius, Apollinariuswas later condemned for this teaching by synods in Rome (374–380) andConstantinople, 381. The rationale for the Logos-sarx model of Christrefers to the early efforts to explain the unity of divinity and humanity,with the intent to keep the divine nature free of the suffering inevitablein the human nature. Athanasius even prefigures Nestorius when heasserts: ‘human were the sayings “Let the cup pass” and “Why have youforsaken me?” and divine the act by which he himself caused the sun togrow dark and the dead to rise.’42

Because of the allegiance by both Arius and Athanasius (as well as theirsupporters) to the philosophical axiom of divine immutability, the result-ing Christology limped through hundreds of years in a failure to envisionthe possibility that perhaps ‘incarnation’ includes change, suffering, anddeath assumed into God’s own being. If God is never quite affected by, orparticipates in, the passion of Jesus of Nazareth, then either the Son’sdivinity is reduced because the Gospels say he suffers or the Son’s human-ity is reduced because what defines ‘full humanity’—namely a body and asoul—cannot occupy the same person with the Son. To this, JaroslavPelikan observes: ‘The divine and human in Christ could not be thoughtof as equal components of his incarnate being; rather, the Logos, by unit-ing himself with a body, was still “one nature.”’43

Both Arius and Apollinarius attempted to articulate the person of JesusChrist by turning him into a tertium quid. For Arius especially, Jesus isSuperman, and saves creation because he is created, the manifestation ofthe Father’s will. God’s identity as supremely unknowable and incapableof involvement or relationship with creation remains intact. What we


41. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, 244.42. Athanasius, Orations against the Arians 3.57, in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of theCatholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 245.43. Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 248.



know of God is entirely contained in the revelation of the Son, who mani-fests the glory of the Father without being able to fully know the Fatherhimself, or be in any way what the Father is. Catherine LaCugna pointsout: ‘Arius concluded that the subordination of Christ to God accordingto the economy (kat’oikonomian) implied subordination at the level ofGod’s being (kata theologian).’44 Arius’ ontological subordination of Son toFather is justified in Scripture, such as Proverbs 8:22, ‘The Lord createdme as the beginning of his ways.’ Clearly, both Arius and Apollinariuswere well-intentioned, using Scripture in their preaching, as well asNicene orthodoxy, in Apollinarius’ case.

However, the failure to recognize the reality of God incarnate in JesusChrist leads to a disquietingly empty understanding of God in relation tothe world. Because the Arian scheme requires an intermediate entity,Walter Kasper observes, ‘Arius really did not take seriously the radical dis-tinction between God and the world with which he had begun; he over-looked the fact that there can be no mean between God and creatures, butonly an either–or.’45 It is precisely in this distinction that God acts tobecome incarnate. Rahner writes:

The difference between God and the world is of such a nature thatGod establishes and is the difference of the world from himself, andfor this reason he establishes the closest unity precisely in the differ-entiation. For if the difference itself comes from God, and, if we canput it this way, is itself identical with God, then the differencebetween God and the world is to be understood quite differentlythan the difference between categorical realities. Their difference isantecedent to them because they presuppose as it were a space whichcontains and differentiates them, and no one of those categoricallydistinct realities itself establishes its difference from the other or isthis difference.46

For Rahner, God constitutes the otherness as well as being the transcend-ent other. God does not participate in creation; creation participates inGod. Hence, we do not say that God is infinite merely because we arefinite, or eternal because we are temporal; God is rather the ground of theexperience of being finite and temporal, the horizon of infinity and eter-nity which we imagine, and beyond this horizon, inexhaustible. But Arius’is an apophaticism not only of epistemological humility, in the sense thatwe are incapable of comprehending the divine nature, but of an ontological


44. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco:HarperCollins, 1991), 35.45. Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (New York:Crossroad, 2000), 257.46. Karl Rahner, Foundations of the Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York:Crossroad, 1990), 62.



distance, an impenetrable gap between what is divine and what is created,impenetrable, it seems, even for God Godself. For Arius, because God issimple, there can be no such thing as a substantial sharing of the divinenature; because God is eternal, nothing created, nothing that has an ori-gin to its existence, can be eternal.

The ontological distance between creation and divinity is later sug-gested by St Thomas’s distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘logical’ todescribe the relation between God and creation, a distinction employedto avoid the subordination of the Son to the Father. Wanting to avoidArius’ assertion that the Son is less divine than the Father, Thomas arguesthat the begetting of the Son is necessary to the being of God, and so is anecessary or ‘real’ relation, but because creation is not necessary for Godto be God, it is merely logical to say that God creates the world. Thomasalso employs the distinction between real and logical relationship in theperson of Christ: human nature has a real relationship to the Son, but theSon has only a logical relationship to the human nature. Because of this,the assumption of human nature by the Son in the incarnation producesno change in God.47 As to whether the incarnation affects a substantialchange in the Word, Thomas says: ‘no change was made in the Word ofGod Himself, but only in the human nature which was assumed by theWord, in accord with which it is proper that the Word was both tempo-rally generated and born, but to the Word Himself it is not fitting.’48

Thomas wants to preserve the eternity of the Word when the Word entershistory; but Thomas also wants to show that the Word’s becoming humanis primarily a choice made in divine love, since it is not necessary to theexistence of the divine nature. Although Thomas locates the activity ofthe incarnation in God’s work of love, rather than in the necessity of thedivine nature, he argues against those who would make Christ morehuman than divine (such as Paul of Samosata49) with the same vigor thathe argues against those who would make Christ more divine than human(such as Apollinarius50).

Christian orthodoxy, for all its twists and turns of articulation andemphasis, has always adhered to the spirit of the idea that what is trulyGod is united to what is truly human in the incarnation. In this sense, asBrian Hebblethwaite advises, although we would not wish to beg thevalue of the doctrine of the incarnation as the only reason for belief in its


47. St Thomas states: ‘Furthermore, we observe that whatever receives something anewmust be changed, either essentially or accidentally. Now certain relations are predicated ofGod anew; for example, that He is Lord or Governor of this thing which begins to existanew. Hence, if a relation were predicated of God as really existing in Him, it would followthat something accrues to God anew, and thus He is changed either essentially or acciden-tally; the contrary of this having been proved in Book I’ (Summa Contra Gentiles II, 12, 5).48. SCG IV, 49, 3.49. See SCG IV, 28, 3 and 4.50. See SCG IV, 31, 2.



validity, ‘it is not unreasonable to suppose that its perceived value may bean indication of its truth.’51 The vigor with which the church through thecenturies has defended the orthodoxy of ‘fully human, fully divine,’ even ifupon later reflection various attempts at articulation are found to be inad-equate, provides an insight into the conviction of the church that if Jesusis our savior, we cannot compromise either his divinity or his humanity.

Jesus and Superman

Any Christology that cannot admit the unique fullness of divine beingin Jesus, or any Christology that sees Jesus’ humanity as substantially dif-ferent from our humanity (whether in ability, knowledge, freedom, or indegree of suffering), that views Jesus as without sexuality, or as manipulat-ing the forces of nature, considers Jesus a ‘third thing.’ Christologicalaffirmations of Jesus’ super-human ‘humanity’ make him an alien droppedinto our environment for the purpose of intervening in the lives of a fewto save them from evil. If Jesus never experiences sexual desire, for ex-ample, Jesus is not human; if Jesus is able to walk on water, he is nothuman. The value of the Christian affirmation of the incarnation is pre-cisely that God the Son becomes what is authentically human, not theappearance or veneer of humanity.

But Christologies of a tertium quid still have a remarkable influencetoday. We see this especially in the idea that the ‘superhuman’ actions ofJesus described in the Gospels are the primary locus of salvation, whenhe saves through superior moral example and/or through extraordinarypowers. As to the former, some forms of Christianity after Kant downplayChrist’s incarnation and the eternity of the Son, emphasizing instead anarrow portrayal of salvation in Christ as constituted by the imitation ofChrist’s ethical action. Among such emphases seem to be a secret know-ledge of what is ‘truly’ moral that only comes with a literal reading of theBible; often this includes the arrogant assumption, for example, of theChristian Religious Right that Christians are more righteous than otherreligious groups.52 As to the latter, the ‘miracles,’ ‘wonders,’ or powers


51. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology (Cambridge: CUP,1987), 27.52. This attitude has been especially disturbing as regards the explicit criticism of Islam byrepresentatives of the Christian Right in America such as Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson,Jerry Falwell, et al. But equally disturbing is the implicit assumption of Christianity’s super-iority to Islam, as seen in a recent issue of Christianity Today, which reported the results ofa recent study of Muslim converts to Christianity. As ranks the reasons for conversion, afterthe ‘lifestyle of Christians,’ the ‘next most important influence was the power of God inanswered prayers and healing. Like most of the factors that former Muslims list, experiencesof God’s supernatural intervention often increase after Muslims decide to follow Christ’ (theauthors’ emphasis); for example, ‘In Pakistan, after a pilgrimage to Mecca did not cure a dis-abled Shiite girl, she was healed following Christian prayer’ (Christianity Today [October2007], ‘Why Muslims Follow Jesus,’ by J. Dudley Woodberry, Russell G. Shubin, andG. Marks, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/42.80.html).



displayed by Jesus ‘prove’ he is the messiah. Jesus does what no otherhuman can do, and so saves only those who believe in him. Jesus can per-form extraordinary actions because he is divine and as such manifests anunattainable humanity: his apparent celibacy means that he is beyondsexuality, he manipulates nature by calming storms and walking on water,and he never makes a mistake or says anything wrong. He saves us primar-ily through unwavering obedience to the Father’s will (which can be con-strued as Arian); he is ‘born to die’ and saves by being the blood sacrificerequired by the Father to forgive sins, as seen in the Mel Gibson-directedPassion of the Christ, when Jesus endures suffering as no mortal could.

Adherence to the spirit of the doctrine of the incarnation, however,attempts something much different: Jesus Christ can no more be an aliento human beings than to God the Father. If the humanity of Christ is sub-stantially different from that of the rest of us, if he can do something ofwhich no other human being is capable, or has the potential to fulfill,whether it be to heal, to raise the dead, or to live a sinless life, then Christis not human. If Christ can heal, for instance, it is because it is withinhuman capability to be able to heal. If Christ is sinless, it is because it iswithin human capability to be posse non peccare (possible not to sin).Christ’s ‘power’ to heal or be sinless comes from his humanity in relation-ship with God, but it is still a potency possible in all human beings. Onthe other hand, if Christ’s ‘divinity’ is alien to God’s, as Arius thought,then God is remote from creation, and the concept of the incarnation ismeaningless. If this is the case, the image of a savior either dropping downfrom the sky or ascending up to it is appropriate, since the spatial distancedepicted reflects the ontological distance. More importantly, if Christ’sdivinity is somehow alien to God’s, then the suffering of Christ on thecross is peripheral to God, a matter more for pity or sympathy from Godthan solidarity with those who cry out to God in the midst of catastrophe.

If contemporary Christian theology persists in the claim that Jesus ismore prophet than God, whether in acquiescence for the sake of inter-religious dialogue or simply because the idea belongs to a more magicalage, and so is no longer relevant to the modern, scientific mind, then wewill have lost not only the particularity of Christianity, but the basis forthe belief that God has given us nothing less than God’s very self inChrist. According to Karl Rahner, God ‘does not merely indirectly givehis creature some share of himself by creating and giving us created andfinite realities through his omnipotent efficient causality. In quasi-formalcausality he really and in the strictest sense of the word bestows himself.’53

For Rahner, the concept of revelation as an essential ontological categoryof the existence of God constitutes the economy as the starting point of


53. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 36, Rahner’semphasis.



the theology of the Trinity.54 The revelation of Jesus as the Christ of Godmeans that we must find a language that provides the possibility of God’sincarnation, and hence the entry of God into the real suffering and deaththat are inevitable to human being.

Despite the origins of Christianity in the Hebrew theology of the Godwho dwells intimately with creation, the persistent influence of philo-sophical principles that maintain incompatibility between perfection andchange eclipses the identity of God in Christ not only for Arius, but formany who attempted to refute him. Arius’ error is the belief that the eter-nal God can have no direct contact with, or investment in, the world;whenever we construct Christologies of a ‘third thing,’ we create a realmof mediation that intercedes for salvation, also manifested in angels orsuperheroes or in ‘super’-saints, a realm that relies on the spectacular orsupernatural to convince us that the God ‘in the great beyond’ cares.

The persistence of viewing the person of Christ as neither fully divinenor as fully human stems from a failure of the imagination to envision thatGod’s grace is greater than a philosophical principle or that authentichumanity is capable of profound union with God. The mystery of theincarnation will always transcend language; but hopefully it will never beso far out of the reach of the imagination that Christian faith continues toreturn to a tertium quid Christology, which diminishes not only the valueof humanity to God but also the power of God, who chooses to suffer insolidarity with the beloved. In other words, if God is ‘incapable’ of thechange incurred in the incarnation and the suffering of the cross, thenMother Teresa, whose commitment to the oppressed and forgotten attimes surpassed her own faith in a compassionate God, is a more effectivelover than God. She so closely identified with those she cared for that sheexperiences their forsakenness, ‘The loneliness of the heart that wantslove is unbearable.—Where is my faith?—even deep down, right in, thereis nothing but emptiness & darkness.’55

Teresa’s experience of isolation from God is echoed by Christ’s aban-donment by God on the cross. Because of the cross, writes JürgenMoltmann, ‘all disaster, forsakenness by God, absolute death, the infinitecurse of damnation and sinking into nothingness’ are ‘in God himself’56;no longer must we conclude that we are alone in suffering or wonderwhether God is present with us in our death. The cross makes salvation—the restoration of human beings to the communion of the divine life—manifest because God has taken up the history of catastrophic suffering asGod’s own history by becoming one of us.


54. See John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church,(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1993), 45.55. Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. (New York:Doubleday, 2007), 187.56. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, trans. R. Wilson and John Bowden (Minneapolis:Fortress, 1993), 246.



In this sense, Superman, while concerned with human justice and thealleviation of human suffering, can only act externally toward the repairof the world, as an outsider, but not as one of the world. WhateverSuperman is, since he is not human, he can never be what we are. Thisultimately limits the efficacy of his ethical activity because his actions areimpossible for us to imitate; Superman’s interpretation and implementa-tion of justice cannot be established by anyone other than Superman him-self. Superman defies gravity, physical capability, even time: whatever isassociated with Superman acting ‘super’ is entirely removed from the ‘real’world in which human beings must act. Does Christ also act in a world ofhis own, a world in which physical laws are manipulated, in which divinejustice for the oppressed is only a ‘super’-natural dream? The idea that thesavior acts in a world of his own is lamented by Dostoyevsky’s IvanKaramazov, when he tells Alyosha: ‘In my opinion, Christ’s love forpeople is in its kind a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But weare not gods.’57 The unfeasibility of acting as Christ acted, of workingto establish the Reign of God, seems to render us passive, waiting for the‘super’ hero to save us from the complicated tangles of injustice.

Is Christ’s humanity so different from our own that we see his actions as‘miracles impossible on earth’? Jesus is not ‘sinless’ because he is God;rather, he is sinless because he has fully actualized human nature as cre-ated in the image of God.58 ‘To err,’ in terms of sin, is theologically to beless than human, not a demonstration of human nature. Human beings donot fulfill their free will by choosing what is contrary to their createdintent. Authentic freedom is conformity to that for which we are created;life, love, and union with God. Sin is the result of a free choice, butbecause it is that which chips away at the human potential for God, eventhreatening to destroy it, sin is not a movement toward the realization ofhuman nature. The choice to sin is therefore not a demonstration ofauthentic human freedom, which can only be what it is in communionwith God. Jesus is sinless because he demonstrates the fullness of humanfreedom in his actions, which is action in conformity to the God he knewthrough the prophets and through his own relationship with God, evi-denced by an unwavering commitment to the poor, oppressed, and outcast.

Authentic human action is how God establishes justice, whether in theactions of Jesus or Mother Teresa or Aung San Suu Kyi. In the assumption


57. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and LarissaVolokhonsky (San Francisco: North Point, 1990), 237.58. John Meyendorff points to the Monophysite bishop Julian of Halicarnassus andthe Aphthartodocetae in the sixth century, who believed that Jesus’ humanity was sinless at birth and consequently incorruptible. Even moderate Monophysites rejected this.But Julian understood original sin as a corruption of human nature and wanted to pro-tect Jesus’ human nature from this, thereby altering Jesus’ humanity and making him intoa tertium quid. See Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, New York:St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1987), 87–89.



of the human need for justice and the human potency to act justly, God iswhat God is; the limitations of the human person are not an obstacle todivine presence or divine activity. In other words, God’s advancement ofjustice and liberation of the oppressed are not external to the particularworkings of finite existence originally established by God.

Our Christological efforts are best spent in developing new languageand imagery that brings us deeper into the mystery of God’s involvementin humanity, and indeed, all creation. Otherwise, we fail to see that theincarnation of the Son of God was the fulfillment of God’s decision to cre-ate a receiver of divine self-communication. In the creation of a receiverof divine self-communication, we see most clearly the identity of the Godwho creates. Hence, in distinction to the forelocked, muscled, and span-dexed superhero, Robert Farrar Capon writes, ‘Jesus is born among us asClark Kent; he lives among us as Clark Kent; he dies as Clark Kent, andhe comes forth from the tomb as Clark Kent, not as some alien hotshot inblue tights who junks his Clark Kentness in favor of a snappier, non-human style of being.’59

SUSIE PAULIK BABKA received her PhD from the University of NotreDame and has taught there and at the Catholic Theological Union inChicago. She is currently Assistant Professor of Theology at theUniversity of San Diego and is working on a book entitled, Christology ofthe Gnadenstuhl: Art and the God Who Suffers. Address: Department ofTheology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego, 5998 AlcaláPark, San Diego, CA 92110, USA. [email protected]


59. Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in theParables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 34.



Documents

Irish Theological Quarterly