In this issue we continue the study of the book Posthumous Works, published after Allan Kardec disembodied and containing texts written by him. The present work is based on the translation made by Dr. Guillon Ribeiro, published by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation. 

Questions for discussion 

100. "And the Word was made flesh". Does the passage of the Gospel of John - that states this phrase - is it the base of the dogma of the divinity of Jesus?

101. Jesus sometimes called Himself the Son of God, and then the Son of man. What do these names mean? 

Answers to the proposed questions 

100. "And the Word was made flesh". Does the passage of the Gospel of John - that states this phrase - is it the base of the dogma of the divinity of Jesus?

Here is the text attributed to John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and nothing that was done was done without Him. Life was in Him and life was the light of men; and the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not realize it. (…) And the word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we saw the glory, the glory that the only Son should receive from the Father; He, I say, dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”. (John, Chapter 1, v. 1 to 14).

This passage of the Gospel is the only one that, at first glance, seems to implicitly end a sense of identification between God and the person of Jesus; it is also the one on which it was settled later, the controversy on this point.

The question of the divinity of Jesus came gradually; it was born from discussions raised regarding the interpretation given by some to the words Word and Son. It was not until the fourth century that it was adopted, in principle, by a part of the Church. This dogma is therefore the result of a decision of men and not a divine revelation.

To begin with, the mentioned words are John’s and not Jesus’ and, even if they were not changed, they only express, in reality, a personal opinion, an influence derived from the normal mysticism of His language. They could not therefore prevail against the repeated statements of Jesus himself. But accepting them as they are, they do not solve in any way the question in the sense of divinity, because they would also apply to Jesus, God's creation.

Indeed, the Word is God, because it is the word of God. Having Jesus received that word directly from God, with the mission to reveal it to men, He assimilated it. The divine word, of which He had in Him, was incarnate in Him; He brought it with Him when He was born and it was correct for John to say: The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. Jesus could therefore be in charge of transmitting the word of God without being God himself, as an ambassador conveys the words of his sovereign, without being a sovereign. This idea has its foundation in the words of Jesus when He said, "I have never spoken of myself, but He, who sent me, determined, by His command, what I should say; my doctrine is not my doctrine, but His doctrine, of the one who sent me, the word which you hear is not my word, but of the Father, who sent me".

It is impossible to express more clearly and accurately. The quality of the Messiah or Messenger, which is given to Him throughout the course of the Gospel, implies a subordinate position with respect to the one who orders; the one that obeys cannot be equal to the one who gives the orders. John characterizes this secondary position, and therefore establishes the duality of people when he says: And we beheld His glory, such as "the only Son should receive from the Father", because the one that receives cannot be equal to the one who gives, and the one who gives the glory cannot be the same as the one who receives it.

The qualification of the Divine Messiah does not imply, therefore, the equality between the mandatory and the principal, in the same manner as a real messenger between the king and his representative. Jesus was a Divine Messiah for two reasons: he had the mission of God and his perfections put him in direct relationship with God. (Posthumous Works - Study on the nature of Christ). 

Editor's Note - To fully understand this aspect of John's Gospel, we must take into account what Emmanuel says in his book The Path to Light, a psychographic work by the medium Chico Xavier in the period from August 17 to September 21, 1938. In the text copied below, Emmanuel says who Jesus is, and what is task is as a leader of our planet. 

"The traditions of the Spiritual World say that, in the direction of all phenomena of our system, there is a Community of Pure Spirits and Elected Ones by the Supreme Lord of the Universe, in whose hands the life rules of all planetary communities are preserved. This community of angelic and perfect beings, of which Jesus is one of the divine members, as we are aware, has only met twice, near the Earth, to solve key problems regarding the organization and direction of our planet, in the course of known millennia. The first occurred when the terrestrial globe was coming loose from the solar nebula, so that it could cast, in Time and Space, the beacons of our cosmogonic system and the prodrome of life in ignite matter, the planet, and the second when it was decided the coming of the Lord to the face of the Earth, bringing the human family the immortal lesson of his Gospel of love and redemption" (The Path to Light, Chapter I - The Planetary Genesis). 

In the following text, Emmanuel speaks of the work of Jesus in relation to the formation of our planet:

"He had overpowered all the horrors of the unleashed energy; with His legions of divine workers He launched the chisel of his mercy on the block of formless matter that the Wisdom of the Father shifted from the Sun to His kingly and compassionate hands. He worked the geological sculpture of the ground of the orb, building the great and blessed school in which His heart would expand in love, clarity and justice. With His armies of devoted workers, he determined the rules of the Earth's physical phenomena, arranging their future balance on the basis of simple matter bodies, whose substantial unity the earthly spectroscopes could identify everywhere in the galactic universe.

He, Jesus, organized the scenario of life, creating, under the eyes of God, the essential to the existence of future beings. He made the air pressure appropriate for man, anticipating his birth in the world, in the course of millennia; he also established the major power centers of the ionosphere and the stratosphere, where the electrical phenomena of planetary existence harmonize, and built mills of ozone at 40 and 60 kilometers in altitude, so that they could conveniently filter the sunbeams, manipulating their precise composition for the maintenance of organized life in the orb. He set all progress lines of future humanity, creating the harmony of all physical forces that govern the cycle of planetary activities" (The Path to Light, Chapter I - The Planetary Genesis). 

101. Jesus sometimes called Himself the Son of God, and then the Son of man. What do these names mean? 

The title Son of God, far from implying equality, is the sign of a submission. Jesus is the Son of God, as all creatures; he calls Him his Father as we learned to call our Father. He is, however, the beloved Son of God because, having reached the perfection that brings him near to God, has all His trust and all His affection.

As for the title Son of Man that Jesus called himself on his mission, and that caused so many comments, it is necessary to better understand its meaning, to go back to the Bible, where it is given by himself to the Prophet Ezekiel.

Let's look at the text: "Such was the image of the glory of the Lord that was shown to me. Having, thus, seen these things, I launched my face to the ground. And I heard a voice speaking to me and said, Son of man, get up and I shall talk to you. And the Spirit, having spoken to me of my fate, came into me and made me stand on my feet and I heard what he told me: Son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel, to an apostate people, who withdrew from me. Up to this day, they violated the alliance I made with them!" (Ezekiel, Chapter II, v. 1, 2, 3).

The title Son of Man appears several times addressing Ezekiel and it clearly seems to mean: the one, who was born of man, as opposed to what is out of humanity. The Lord only called Ezekiel by this name, no doubt to remind him that, despite he had the gift of Prophecy, he was not more than the rest of humanity and he should not believe he was endowed with a special nature.

Jesus called himself in the same way with a remarkable persistence, because only in very rare circumstances does he call himself the Son of God, in order to remember that he also belongs to humanity. The way he insisted in calling himself the Son of man seems an early protest against the quality that he predicted that in the future would be assigned to him. (Posthumous Works - Study on the nature of Christ).