Sinful Flesh

Thomas Weinandy’s In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ is a lucid, concise, yet comprehensive study of an issue that has become controversial. He states his thesis clearly at the outset: “While Christian theologians have stressed that the Son of God became like us in every way, what they have almost universally neglected and ignored, both in the present and the past, is that in the Incarnation, the Son took upon himself,not some generic humanity, but our own sinful humanity.While he never sinned personally, or . . . had an inner propensity to sin (concupiscence), nonetheless his humanity was of the race of Adam and he experienced, of necessity, many of the effects of sin which permeate the world and plague human being’s hunger and thirst, sickness and sorrow, temptation and harassment by Satan, being hated and despised, fear and loneliness, even death and separation fromGod. The eternal Son of God functioned from within the confines of a humanity altered by sin and the Fall. ‘He was both God and the son of Eve.’ This then is what we mean,when throughout this study, we speak of ‘Jesus’ sinful humanity,’his ‘sinful flesh/’ or his ‘sinful human nature’ (18).

Weinandy finds a few ambiguous allies in the tradition, especially Anselm and Aquinas, but almost none that develop the point. When he turns to the New Testament, he claims that the Son’s assumption of Adamic nature is essential to the gospel that Paul proclaims and defends.

Commending on the baptismal passage in Romans 6, he writes, “If our old self was crucified with Christ, as Paul proclaimed,then Jesus must have partaken of our sinful human condition.His humanity must have been of the sinful race of Adam. IfJesus did not possess a humanity scarred and tainted by sin,then our ‘old self’ or ‘sinful body’ did not die. Some other humanity may have died, but not one like our own. But that is precisely what Paul said must die and did die. Clearly, Paul predicated his theology of baptism upon the premise thatJesus, in the Incarnation, assumed a humanity like our own (75).

After examining the first verses of Romans 8 and Paul’s claim that Jesus “became sin,” Weinandy concludes that “Jesus, in offering his human life on the cross asa holy and loving sacrifice to the Father, not only reconciled us to the Father, but, simultaneously, actively put to death our sinful flesh . . . .The cross graphically illustrates that, while we were indeed redeemable, we could be salvaged only through the actual putting to death of the humanity inherited fromAdam. Sin had so thoroughly penetrated and contaminated our humanity that it had to die and be re-created. The cross,the putting to death of the flesh (sarx), is then the hermeneutical principle for understanding the radical sinfulness of our human condition” (83-4).

He concludes with this wonderful summary: “When the eternal Son of the Father entered into our world, under the then-present conditions, he came to exist as man touched and altered by the reality of sin. He was a son of Adam. He assumed our sinful flesh.Within this humanity, the Son lived an obedient life under the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit, fending off all temptation, and thus fulfilling all righteousness. His righteous,loving obedience culminated on the cross where, through the offering of his holy and innocent life, he both reconciled us to the Father and put our sinful nature to death. So pleased was the Father that he raised his Son to glory, giving him a complete and incorruptible humanity. Through conversion, faith, and baptism, we experience what happened to Jesus, our sinful flesh shares in the death ofJesus and we participate in his new humanity. By the Spirit, we come to live in Christ, the new Adam. By coming to live inChrist, we become sons and daughters of the Father. We become members of the Church, brothers and sisters inChrist’s body. We take on the holiness of God, becoming temples of the Holy Spirit. We are thus transfigured into the very likeness of Christ, anticipating the fullness of glory in heaven. We look now for that promised us when the inheritance will be ours” (149).

Weinandy thinks that the affirmation that the Son entered into and lived obediently as a member of Adam’s race is important for several reasons. First, it “captures a fresh authenticity” because it insists that “the eternal Son does truly know our human condition, in all its frailty.” Second, it heals the divorce of Christology and soteriology that has marked some of the Christian tradition, and advances an understanding of the incarnation that leads into a “theology of the cross and resurrection.” Weinandy emphasizes the role of the Spirit in Jesus’ ministry, arguing that “only through the Spirit could he defend himself against temptation and only in the Spirit could he remain faithful to the Spirit’s anointing, that of being the Servant/Son.” Thus this view closes the gap between Christology and Pneumatology. This thesis underscores the fact that “Jesus substantially changed reality” but putting sinful, Adamic flesh to death on the cross. Finally, this emphasis on the humanity of Jesus and His participation in “flesh” in the fullness sense identifies “the absolute definitiveness of Jesus.” He is the only Savior because in Him alone is Adam put to death and raised to new life (150-2).