By Bill Leonard
“What was Jesus’ DNA?” That’s a question my Wake Forest University colleague, physics professor Jed Macosko, says someone once asked him. Macosko mentioned it while concluding a superb lecture on DNA, Darwinism and evolution offered in the School of Divinity as part of a new grant to promote dialogue between science and religion.
His presentation included animations depicting cell formation and function — visual replications of the organisms that appear to move in amazing symmetry within us, even locking out harmful organic “enemies” sustaining themselves by infecting us. While confessing my science-related awe and ignorance, the unanswered question about Jesus’ DNA captivates me, deepening with the Advent season.
The “Genetics Home Reference” webpage says that “DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus … but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria …. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people.” DNA is communal.
“Genome.gov” adds that DNA “contains the biological instructions that make each species unique. DNA, along with the instructions it contains, is passed from adult organisms to their offspring during reproduction. … In sexual reproduction, organisms inherit half of their nuclear DNA from the male parent and half from the female parent. However, organisms inherit all of their mitochondrial DNA from the female parent.”
And then there’s Jesus. “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” John’s Gospel declares, “and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Luke says the angel Gabriel tells a virgin named Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Matthew is even more graphic, noting, “When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). St. Paul doesn’t reference the birth narratives, but asserts, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Philippians 2:5-8).
Two millennia before DNA discoveries, early Christians struggled with the Incarnation dilemma by asking: Cur Deus Homo? Why the God-Man?
• Some (Justin Martyr) believed that Jesus completely incarnated the Logos, that eternal word that “enlightened” certain Jews — Abraham, the prophets — and certain pagans — Socrates, Plato — with divine but partial truth.
• Others (Arius) labeled him a “created being,” lacking eternal presence with and subordinate to the “Father.”
• Still others (Paul of Samosata) taught that Jesus was a “mere man” who was “adopted” into the Godhead at his baptism (“This is my beloved son ….”)
• Some (Eutyches) thought the divine DNA ultimately won out, that Jesus’ divine nature absorbed his humanity “like a drop of honey in the sea.”
• Ultimately, the Nicene Creed offered a kind of DNA orthodoxy by affirming that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”
And what of Mother Mary’s DNA amid the “science” of original sin? If Jesus received a human nature from Mary, how could he be sinless, since original sin contaminated the entire race? As John Calvin wrote, “Therefore original sin is seen to be an hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature diffused into all parts of the soul.”
Roman Catholics answered biological predicament with doctrinal immunity — the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, “by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God,” was “preserved untouched by any taint of original guilt,” from “the first instant of her conception.” Even Mennonites protected Jesus’ unique DNA through the doctrine of “celestial flesh,” by which his human and divine natures came completely from God. Jesus received no physical components from his mother, but passed through Mary “like water through a tube,” a fascinating bit of theologized biology then and now.
The Incarnation surely engages biology and theology, a paradox of redemption filled with questions of flesh and spirit, nature and grace, law and gospel, heart-pounding mystery and mind-expanding reason. Indeed, the postmodern among us might ask if the church and its innumerable dogmas have finally taxed even the Jesus Story to the limits.
Suppose we could discover Jesus’ DNA and it was indeed unique? Might he say, “See, I told you so?” But what if Jesus’ DNA turned out exactly like our own, and he said the same thing? “God was in Christ,” St. Paul wrote, “reconciling the world.” That possibility alone is worth one more trip to Bethlehem, bringing our rather unoriginal sins with us.