Defining Christ

Niebuhr has a section on coming to a definition of Christ. This idea of defining Christ should be an important one for Christians, who claim to follow Him. In Mark 8, Christ asks Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" so Jesus must have thought it was important too.

The funny thing about defining people, as Niebuhr points out, is that when you use words to define someone you have to reduce the person to a set of propositions. We might define someone by what they do (their profession or hobbies), their personality (i.e., funny, cheerful), or their appearance, but all those attributes don't paint the complete picture of a person. People are more complex than words can describe.

So back to defining Christ. The Bible gives us a whole host of propositions or words we can use to understand who Christ is (The Way, The Truth, The Life, the Good Shepherd, the vine, etc.) . It's easy to rattle the list off, and it's easy to flippantly tell ourselves that Jesus says that he is so it must be true. But Jesus' question to Peter was "Who do you say that I am?" and that is the same question we must answer with some seriousness.

It seems to me that the way to move from knowing a set of propositions to knowing a person only comes through shared experience with that person. We only understand the propositions when we follow Him and see them played out. So there is this tension--we are called to follow Christ, but in order to understand who it is we're following, you need to follow Him.