African Americans throughout their nearly 400-year history have wrestled with how to understand old ideas regarding the nature and mission of Jesus. From the beginning, Christological reactions toward Nicean/Chalcedonian orthodoxy among slaves ranged from ambiguity and ambivalence, on the one hand, to full articulation and adoption on the other. But in either case, African Americans felt the escalating pressure to identify and apply the teachings of Jesus to their condition as chattel and their aspirations as men.

Over time, that pressure to apply Jesus to their situation resulted in an impulse to invent something "new." Until the generation following Emancipation and Reconstruction, the old orthodoxy stood strong, even if there were certain differences in ethical and political inferences drawn by African Americans and White Americans. But, after Reconstruction and with the rise of a new black consciousness and cultural ideology, a new Christological orthodoxy gained footing.

The new Christology of [Marcus] Garvey, [Howard] Thurman, [James] Cone, and womanist writers like Kelly Brown Douglas deemed Nicea and Chalcedon irrelevant to the aims of Black people and proclaimed that Jesus was on the side of the poor and oppressed and that liberation was his work.

These thinkers stressed Jesus' ethnicity and national origin rather than his divine nature. They underscored his earthly ministry more than his incarnation or resurrection. Consequently, two hundred years after Jupiter Hammon published his first works, the orthodoxy he drank as naturally as water evaporated into a misty silhouette of the Jesus he preached.

But does Christian theology, Black or White, really leave room for an "out with the old, in with the new" attitude toward the doctrine of Christ? Is one left to simply choose or fashion an understanding of Jesus' life, ministry, and being as one chooses? Are there no consequences for what position a person takes? Moreover, can any source for developing a Christology be used as if it is equal with or determinative of the meaning of any other source?

While all people are equal, made in the image of God, and therefore of infinite worth, not all ideas are true or worth believing. And if, as Jesus teaches, the critical question is "Who do you say that I am?" then the stakes for answering correctly are extremely high. In the High Priestly prayer of John 17, Jesus defines eternal life as knowledge of God the Father and of Himself, who the Father sent (John 17:3).

Moreover, in his discussion with the Samarian woman at the well, Jesus makes it plain that accuracy in our knowledge of God is one of two determining factors in God-satisfying worship. The Father seeks those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4:21-24). All other worship violates the first and second commandments, which prohibit both the carving and the mental fabrication of idols to worship.¹

The genius of Thurman and Cone lie in their insight that slave ambivalence toward an "academic" doctrine of Jesus Christ occurred because of their preoccupation with the relevance of Jesus for their present suffering. This led them to emphasize the concrete historical existence of Jesus as a disclosure of God's will to be with the oppressed and to include them in his plan of redemption.

Thus emerged new boundaries for political and ethical discourse on the meaning of both the crucifixion and resurrection and the earthly ministry of Jesus.

These writers were correct in their assertion that Western theology failed to address the gospel to the condition of the poor and oppressed. To the extent that Black Theology called attention to these concerns, it made an important advance beyond the old orthodoxy. However, this achievement in the doctrine of Christ came with significant problems outweighing any advance.

First, the Christology that evolved over the course of African American Christian history unnecessarily and dangerously ignored or rejected the biblical teaching and long-standing consensus that Jesus Christ is both fully man and fully God. Thurman, Cone and Douglas arrived at their conclusions by emphasizing the humanity of Jesus. This, they reasoned, yields greater hope for the afflicted.

But one might ask, "Why does emphasizing the humanity of Jesus require the de-emphasis or denial of the deity of Jesus?" And, "would not coupling the humanity of Jesus with the deity of Christ, as orthodox Christology does, exponentially multiply the hope and certainty of liberation offered to the oppressed?" The price of liberation seems to be the Godhood of Jesus.

A theology ceases to be Christian and biblical at the point that it relegates Jesus to ordinary human status. As Karl Barth proclaimed, "one cannot speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice." In some quarters of African American Christianity, this is precisely the error that reigns.

Second, and following from the first point, the decline in African American understandings of the doctrine of Christ positions many unsuspecting and sincere people to fall into idolatry. God does not exist — and Jesus did not tabernacle among men, suffer the agony of crucifixion, and was not raised from the grave — to affirm the ethnic sense of identity and self-worth of any single people. Nor does God so identify with a people, even his sovereignly elected people Israel or the Church, to the point that he becomes one with that people without regard for their holiness and proper worship.

The Lord God proclaims through the prophet Isaiah, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," and "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9). The easy identification of God with the designs and intent of men obscures his holy transcendence and omniscience.

The history of African American Christology is partly a history of selective Bible reading. The Christ that appears in the writings of many is an idol of their own making, a god graven with the tools of self-esteem and self-promotion. Unsuspecting Christians are vulnerable to imbibing idolatrous errors and offering to God fetid praise instead of worshipping Him in Spirit and in truth. A cult of the group self or a materialistic bellhop God displaces true worship of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

Third, some depictions of Jesus set the affections of the would-be worshipper on "things below" and "not things above." Does the fact that Jesus was born a Jew during the Roman occupation of Israel really warrant identifying Him as "black" in the sense that Black Theology prescribes? While Jesus was a Jew, and Jerusalem was controlled by the Roman Empire, Jesus never acted in a way that suggested a political liberation for his contemporaries — to the consternation and disappointment of many would-be followers of his time and ours (John 6:14-71).

The Jesus of Scripture always sought to do the Father's will and to point men to spiritual realities beyond and above this life's circumstance. He did not come to "set the captives free" in any political or military sense. Neither does Jesus enter human history to purchase material possessions and opulent lifestyles for the "faithful." Jesus gives his life for a far more fundamental problem — the sin that ruins all of human kind and incurs the holy wrath of God.

There is a place in Christian theology — stemming from a deep reflection on the Person and work of Christ — for radical jeremiads against bigotry, injustice, and oppression of all kinds. The earliest African Americans understood this and, consequently, were able to hold both a conventional Christology and an active political praxis. The two are not mutually exclusive, and yet, the theological trajectory followed in the last seventy-five years seems to treat them as such.

To the extent that African American thinkers obfuscated the centrality of Jesus' spiritual mission to purchase a special people for Himself, then they participated in that grand lie of the serpent in the garden that promised knowledge beyond imagination but only ended in the destruction of souls.

This is no victimless crime. Materialism and black nationalism masquerading as Christology overthrow the faith of many — shrouding the cross of Jesus in the temporal affairs of this world, which in turn choke the seeds of the Gospel.

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1. See Exodus 20: 3-6. For an excellent discussion of the first and second commandments' prohibition of mental images, see, J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), pp.43-51.