Christology

General Information
Although it is true that there was a basic difference between Jesus' message of the kingdom and the post Easter church's message of him as the saving act of God, all of Jesus' words and work imply a Christology. Thus the critical quest for the historical Jesus yields a sufficient basis for the message of the post Easter church and is therefore necessary to legitimate it.

Message of the Post Easter Church
The Christology of the earliest Palestinian Christian community apparently had two focuses. It looked backward to the earthly life of Jesus as prophet and servant of God and forward to his final return as Messiah (Acts 3:21). Meanwhile Jesus was thought of as waiting inactively in heaven, to which he was believed to have ascended after the resurrection (Acts 1:9).

Soon their experience of the Holy Spirit, whose descent is recorded in Acts 2, led the early Christians to think in terms of a two stage Christology: the first stage was the earthly ministry and the second stage his active ruling in heaven. This two stage Christology, in which Jesus is exalted as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God (Acts 2:36; Romans 1:4), is often called adoptionist. It is not the Adoptionism of later heresy, however, for it thinks in terms of function rather than being. At his exaltation to heaven Jesus began to function as he had not previously. Another primitive Christological affirmation associates the birth of Jesus with his Davidic descent, thus qualifying him for the messianic office at his exaltation (for example, Romans 1:3). This introduced the birth of Jesus as a Christologically significant moment.

As Christianity spread to the Greek speaking world between AD 35 and 50, further Christological perspectives were developed. The sending - of - the - Son pattern was one of them. This pattern is threefold: (1) God sent (2) his Son (3) in order to. . . (with a statement of the saving purpose - for example, Galatians 4:4 - 5). The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke combine the Davidic descent with the sending - of - the - Son Christology. Another major development of this period is the identification of Jesus as the incarnation of the heavenly wisdom of Jewish speculation (Prov. 8:22 - 31; Sir. 24:1 - 12; Wisd. 7:24 - 30).

Hence a three stage Christology emerges: the preexistent wisdom or Logos (Word), who was the agent of creation and of general revelation and also of the special revelation of Israel, becomes incarnate in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and then in the resurrection and exaltation returns to heaven (Php. 2:6 - 11; Col. 1:15 - 20; Heb. 1:1 - 3; John 1:1 - 14). With this three stage Christology there is a shift from purely functional interpretation to the question of the being or person of Jesus. Thus the later phases of the New Testament lay the ground for the Christological controversies of the Patristic Age.

Christological Controversies of the Patristic Age
The rise of Gnosticism as a Christian deviation began in the 2d century and led to the development of Docetism, the view that the humanity of Jesus was apparent rather than real. Catholic Christianity insisted on his true humanity - hence the statement in the Apostles' Creed, "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."
In the 3d and 4th centuries there were some who continued to question the full humanity of Jesus and others who questioned his full deity. When Arius (Arianism) denied that the preexistent Son, or Word, was fully God, the Council of Nicea (325) formulated a creed (the Nicene Creed) containing the phrases "of one substance with the Father" and "was made man." Next, Apollinarius, anxious to assert the Son's deity, taught that the Logos replaced the human spirit in the earthly Jesus (Apollinarianism). This teaching was condemned at the Council of Constantinople (381).

Next, the theologians of the School of Antioch were so anxious to maintain the reality of Jesus' humanity that they seemed to compromise his deity. Thus Theodore of Mopsuestia and his pupil Nestorius separated the deity from the humanity almost to the point of denying the unity of his person. To preserve this unity the Council of Ephesus (431) affirmed that Mary was the "God bearer" (Theotokos, later popularly rendered as "Mother of God"). Eutyches from the Alexandrian school then claimed that the two natures of Christ were, at the incarnation, fused into one. This view was ruled out at the Council of Chalcedon (451), which insisted that Christ was one person in two natures (divine and human) "without confusion, without change, without division and without separation."

Modern Christologies generally start "from below" rather than "from above," finding Jesus first to be truly human, and then discovering his divinity in and through his humanity: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19).

Bibliography
R H Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (1965); F Hahn, The Titles of Jesus in Christology (1969).

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Christology

Advanced Information

NT Christology
In the NT the writers indicate who Jesus is by describing the significance of the work he came to do and the office he came to fulfill. Amidst the varied descriptions of his work and office, always mainly in terms of the OT, there is a unified blending of one aspect with another, and a development that means an enrichment, without any cancellation of earlier tradition.

Jesus in the Gospels
His humanity is taken for granted in the Synoptic Gospels, as if it could not possibly occur to anyone to question it. We see him lying in the cradle, growing, leaning, subject to hunger, anxiety, doubt, disappointment, and surprise (Luke 2:40; Mark 2:15; 14:33; 15:34; Luke 7:9), and finally to death and burial. But elsewhere his true humanity is specifically witnessed to, as if it might be called in question (Gal. 4:4; John 1:14), or its significance neglected (Heb. 2:9, 17; 4:15; 5:7 - 8; 12:2).
Besides this emphasis on his true humanity, there is nevertheless always an emphasis on the fact that even in his humanity he is sinless and also utterly different from other men and that his significance must not be sought by ranking him alongside the greatest or wisest or holiest of all other men. The virgin birth and the resurrection are signs that here we have something unique in the realm of humanity. Who or what he is can be discovered only by contrasting him with others, and it shines out most clearly when all others are against him. The event of his coming to suffer and triumph as man in our midst is absolutely decisive for every individual he encounters and for the destiny of the whole world (John 3:16 - 18; 10:27 - 28;12:31; 16:11; 1 John 3:8).

In his coming the kingdom of God has come (Mark 1:15). His miracles are signs that this is so (Luke 11:20). Woe, therefore, to those who misinterpret them (Mark 3:22 - 29). He acts and speaks with heavenly regal authority. He can challenge men to lay down their lives for his own sake (Matt. 10:39). The kingdom is indeed his own kingdom (Matt. 16:28; Luke 22:30). He is the One who, in uttering what is simply his own mind, at the same time utters the eternal and decisive word of God (Matt. 5:22, 28; 24:35). His word effects what it proclaims (Matt. 8:3; Mark 11:21) as God's word does. He has the authority and power even to forgive sins (Mark 2:1 - 12).

Christ
His true significance can be understood only when his relationship to the people in whose midst he was born is understood. In the events that are set motion in his earthly career God's purpose and covenant with Israel is fulfilled. He is the One who comes to do what neither the people of the OT nor their anointed representatives, the prophets, priests, and kings, could do. But they had been promised that One who would rise up in their own midst would yet make good what all of them had utterly failed to make good. In this sense Jesus of Nazareth is the One anointed with the Spirit and power (Acts 10:38) to be the true Messiah or Christ (John 1:41; Rom. 9:5) of his people. He is the true prophet (Mark 9:7; Luke 13:33; John 1:21; 6:14), priest (John 17; Heb.), and king (Matt. 2:2; 21:5; 27:11), as, e.g., his baptism (Matt. 3:13ff.) and his use of Isa. 61 (Luke 4:16 - 22) indicate.
In receiving this anointing and fulfilling this messianic purpose, he receives from his contemporaries the titles Christ (Mark 8:29) and Son of David (Matt. 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; cf. Luke 1:32; Rom. 1:3; Rev. 5:5).

But he gives himself and receives also many other titles which help to illuminate the office he fulfilled and which are even more decisive in indicating who he is. A comparison of the current messianic ideas of Judaism with both the teaching of Jesus himself and the witness of the NT shows that Jesus selected certain features of messianic tradition which he emphasized and allowed to crystallize round his own person. Certain messianic titles are used by him and of him in preference to others, and are themselves reinterpreted in the use he makes of them and in the relationship he gives them to himself and to one another. This is partly the reason for his "messianic reserve" (Matt. 8:4; 16:20; John 10:24; etc.).

Son of Man
Jesus used the title "Son of man" of himself more than any other. There are passages in the OT where the phrase means simply "man" (e.g., Ps. 8:5), and at times Jesus' use of it corresponds to this meaning (cf. Matt. 8:20). But the majority of contexts indicate that in using this title Jesus is thinking of Dan. 7:13, where the "Son of man" is a heavenly figure, both an individual and at the same time the ideal representative of the people of God. In the Jewish apocalyptic tradition this Son of man is regarded as a preexistent one who will come at the end of the ages as judge and as a light to the Gentiles (cf. Mark 14:62).
Jesus sometimes uses this title when he emphasizes his authority and power (Mark 2:10; 2:28; Luke 12:19). At other times he uses it when he is emphasizing his humility and incognito (Mark 10:45; 14:21; Luke 19:10; 9:58). In the Gospel of John the title is used in contexts which emphasize his preexistence, his descent into the world in a humiliation which both conceals and manifests his glory (John 3:13 - 14; 6:62 - 63; 8:6ff.), his role of uniting heaven and earth (John 1:51), his coming to judge men and hold the messianic banquet (John 5:27; 6:27).

Though "Son of man" is used only by Jesus of himself, what it signified is otherwise expressed, especially in Rom. 5 and 1 Cor. 15, where Christ is described as the "man from heaven" or the "second Adam." Paul here takes up hints in the Synoptic Gospels that in the coming of Christ there is a new creation (Matt. 19:38) in which his part is to be related to and contrasted with that of Adam in the first creation (cf., e.g., Mark 1:13; Luke 3:38). Both Adam and Christ have the representative relationship to the whole of mankind that is involved in the conception "Son of man." But Christ is regarded as One whose identification with all mankind is far more deep and complete that of Adam. In his redeeming action salvation is provided for all mankind. By faith in him all men can participate in a salvation already accomplished in him. He is also the image and glory of God (2 Cor. 4:4, 6; Col. 1:15) which man was made to reflect (1 Cor. 11:7) and which Christians are meant to put on in participating in the new creation (Col. 3:10).

Servant
Jesus' self identification with men is brought out in passages that recall the suffering servant of Isaiah (Matt. 12:18; Mark 10:45; Luke 24:26). It is in his baptismal experience that he enters this role (cf. Matt. 3:17 and Isa. 42:1) of suffering as the One in whom all his people are represented and who is offered for the sins of the world (John 1:29; Isa. 53). Jesus is explicitly called the "servant" in the early preaching of the church (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30), and the thought of him as such was also in Paul's mind (cf. Rom. 4:25; 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:21).
In the humiliation of his self identification with our humanity (Heb. 2:17; 4:15; 5:7; 2:9; 12:2) he fulfills the part not only of victim, but also of high priest, offering himself once for all (Heb 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) in a self offering that brings about forever a new relationship between God and man. His "baptism," the fulfillment of which he accomplishes in his early career culminating in his cross (cf. Luke 12:50), is his self sanctification to his eternal priesthood, and in and through this self sanctification his people are sanctified forever (John 17:19; Heb. 10:14).

Son of God
The title "Son of God" is not used by Jesus himself to the same extent as "Son of man" (though cf., e.g., Mark 12:6), but it is the name given to him (cf. Luke 1:35) by the heavenly voice at his baptism and transfiguration (Mark 1:11; 9:7), by Peter in his moment of illumination (Matt. 16:16), by the demons (Mark 5:7) and the centurion (Mark 15:39).
This title "Son of God" is messianic. In the OT, Israel is the "son" (Exod. 4:22; Hos. 11:1). The king (Ps. 2:7; 2 Sam. 7:14) and possibly the priests (Mal. 1:6) are also given this title. Jesus, therefore, in using and acknowledging this title is assuming the name of One in whom the true destiny of Israel is to be fulfilled.

But the title also reflects the unique filial consciousness of Jesus in the midst of such a messianic task (cf. Matt. 11:27; Mark 13:32; 14:36; Ps. 2:7). This has the profoundest Christological implications. He is not simply a son but the Son (John 20:17). This consciousness, which is revealed at high points in the Synoptic Gospels, is regarded in John as forming the continuous conscious background of Jesus' life. The Son and the Father are one (John 5:19, 30; 16:32) in will (4:34; 6:38; 7:28; 8:42; 13:3) and activity (14:10) and in giving eternal life (10:30). The Son is in the Father and the Father in the son (10:38; 14:10). The Son, like the Father, has life and quickening power in himself (5:26). The Father loves the Son (3:35; 10:17; 17:23 - 24) and commits all things into his hands (5:35), giving him authority to judge (5:22). The title also implies a unity of being and nature with the Father, uniqueness of origin and preexistence (John 3:16; Heb. 1:2).

Lord
Though Paul also uses the title "Son of God," he most frequently refers to Jesus as "Lord," This term did not originate with Paul. Jesus is addressed and referred to in the Gospels as Lord (Matt. 7:21; Mark 11:3; Luke 6:46). Here the title can refer primarily to his teaching authority (Luke 11:1; 12:41), but it can also have a deeper significance (Matt. 8:25; Luke 5:8). Though it is most frequently given to him after his exaltation he himself quoted Ps. 110:1 and prepared for this use (Mark 12:35; 14:62).
His lordship extends over the course of history and all the powers of evil (Col. 2:15; 1 Cor. 2:6 - 8; 8:5; 15:24) and must be the ruling concern in the life of the church (Eph. 6:7; 1 Cor. 7:10, 25). 2:6 - 8; 8:5; 15:24) and must be the ruling concern in the life of the church (Eph. 6:7; 1 Cor. 7:10, 25). As Lord he will come to judge (2 Thess. 1:7).

Though his work in his humiliation is also the exercise of lordship, it was after the resurrection and ascension that the title of Lord was most spontaneously conferred on Jesus (Acts 2:32ff.; Phil. 2:1 - 11) by the early church. They prayed to him as they would pray to God (Acts 7:59 - 60; 1 Cor. 1:2; cf. Rev. 9:14, 21; 22:16). His name as Lord is linked in the closest association with that of God himself (1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; cf. Rev. 17:14; 19:16; and Deut. 10:17). To him are referred the promises and attributes of the "Lord" God (Kyrios, LXX) in the OT (cf. Acts 2:21 and 38; Rom. 10:3 and Joel 2:32; 1 Thess. 5:2 and Amos 5:18; Phil. 2:10 - 11 and Isa. 45:23). To him are freely applied the language and formulas which are used of God himself, so that it is difficult to decide in a passage like Rom. 9:5 whether it is the Father or the Son to whom reference is made. In John 1:1, 18; 20:28; 2 Thess. 1:12; 1 Tim. 3:16; Titus 2:13; and 2 Pet. 1:1, Jesus is confessed as "God."

Word
The statement, "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14), relates Jesus both to the Wisdom of God in the OT (which has a personal character, Prov. 8) and to the law of God (Deut. 30:11 - 14; Isa. 2:3) as these are revealed and declared in the going forth of the Word by which God creates, reveals himself, and fulfills his will in history (Ps. 33:6; Isa. 55:10 - 11; 11:4; Rev. 1:16). There is here a close relationship between word and event. In the NT it becomes clearer that the Word is not merely a message proclaimed but is Christ himself (cf. Eph. 3:17 and Col. 3:16; 1 Pet. 1:3 and 23; John 8:31 and 15:17). What Paul expresses in Col. 1, John expresses in his prologue. In both passages (and in Heb. 1:1 - 14) the place of Christ as the One who in the beginning was the agent of God's creative activity is asserted. In bearing witness to these aspects of Jesus Christ it is inevitable that the NT should witness to his preexistence. He was "in the beginning" (John 1:1 - 3; Heb. 1:2 - 10).
His very coming (Luke 12:49; Mark 1:24; 2:17) involves him in deep self abasement (2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:5 - 7) in fulfillment of a purpose ordained for him from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). In the Gospel of John he gives this testimony in his own words (John 8:58; 17:5, 24).

Yet while his coming from the Father involves diminution of his Godhead, there is nevertheless a subordination of the incarnate Son to the Father in the relationship of love and equality which subsists between the Father and the Son (John 14:28). For it is the Father who sends and the Son who is sent (John 10:36), the Father who gives and the Son who receives (John 5:26), the Father who ordains and the Son who fulfills (John 10:18). Christ belongs to God who is the Head (1 Cor. 3:23; 11:13) and in the end will subject all things to him (1 Cor. 15:28).

Patristic Christology
In the period immediately following the NT, the apostolic fathers (A D 90 - 140) can speak highly of Christ. We have a sermon beginning: "Brethren, we ought so to think of Jesus Christ, as of God, as the Judge of the quick and the dead" (2 Clement). Ignatius with his emphasis on both the true deity and humanity of Christ can refer to the "blood of God." Even if their witness falls short of this, there is a real attempt to combat both Ebionitism, which looked on Christ as a man born naturally, on whom the Holy Spirit came at his baptism, and also docetism, which asserted that the humanity and sufferings of Christ were apparent rather than real.
The apologists of the next generation (e.g., Justin, c. 100 - 165, and Theophilus of Antioch) sought to commend the gospel to the educated and to defend it in face of attacks by pagans and Jews. Their conception of the place of Christ was determined, however, rather by current philosophical ideas of the logos than by the historic revelation given in the gospel, and for them Christianity tends to become a new law or philosophy and Christ another God inferior to the highest God.

Melito of Sardis at this time, however, spoke clearly of Christ as both God and man, and Irenaeus, in meeting the challenge of Gnosticism, returned also to a more biblical standpoint, viewing the person of Christ always in close connection with his work of redemption and revelation, in fulfillment of which "he became what we are, in order that he might make us to become even what he is himself." He thus became the new Head of our race and recovered what had been lost in Adam, saving us through a process of "recapitulation." In thus identifying himself with us he is both true God and true man. Tertullian also made his contribution to Christology in combating Gnosticism and the various forms of what came to be known as monarchianism (dynamism, modalism, Sabellianism), which has reacted in different ways against the apparent worship of Christ as a second God beside the Father. He was the first to teach that the Father and Son are of "one substance," and spoke of three persons in the Godhead.

Origen had a decisive influence in the development of Christology in the East. He taught the eternal generation of the Son from the Father and used the term homoousios. Yet at the same time his complicated doctrine included a view of Christ as an intermediate being, spanning the distance between the utterly transcendent being of God and this created world. Both sides in the later Arian controversy, which began c. 318, show influences which may be traced to Origen.

Arius denied the possibility of any divine emanation, or contact with the world, or of any distinction within the Godhead. Therefore the Word is made out of nothing before time. Though called God, he is not very God. Arius denied to Christ a human soul. The Council of Nicaea (325) condemned Arius by insisting that the Son was not simply the "first born of all creation" but was indeed "of one essence with the Father." In his long struggle against Arianism, Athanasius sought to uphold the unity of essence of the Father and Son by basing his argument not on a philosophical doctrine of the nature of the Logos, but on the nature of the redemption accomplished by the Word in the flesh. Only God himself, taking on human flesh and dying and rising in our flesh, can effect a redemption that consists in being saved from sin and corruption and death, and in being raised to share the nature of God himself.

After Nicaea the question was raised: If Jesus Christ be truly God, how can he be at the same time truly man? Apollinaris tried to safeguard the unity of the person of the God - man by denying that he had complete manhood. He assumed that man was composed of three parts: body, irrational or animal soul, and rational soul or intellect (nous). In Jesus the human nous was displaced by the divine Logos. But this denied the true reality of Christ's humanity and indeed of the incarnation itself and therefore of the salvation. The most cogent objection to it was expressed by Gregory of Nazianzus: "The unassumed is the unhealed." Christ must be true man as well as true God. Apollinaris was condemned at Constantinople in 381.

How, then, can God and man be united in one person? The controversy became focused on Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, who refused to approve the use of the phrase "mother of God" (Theotokos) as applied to Mary, who, he asserted, bore not the Godhead but "a man who was the organ of the Godhead." In spite of the fact that Nestorius clearly asserted that the Godman was one person, he seemed to think of the two natures as existing side by side and so sharply distinguished that the suffering of the humanity could not be attributed to the Godhead. This separation was condemned, and Nestorius's deposition at the Council of Ephesus (431) was brought about largely by the influence of Cyril in reasserting a unity of the two natures in Cyril in reasserting a unity of the two natures in Christ's person so complete that the impassible Word can be said to have suffered death. Cyril sought to avoid Apollinarianism by asserting that the humanity of Christ was complete and entire but had no independent subsistence (anhypostasis).

A controversy arose over one of Cyril's followers, Eutyches, who asserted that in the incarnate Christ the two natures coalesced in one. This implied a docetic view of Christ's human nature and called in question his consubstantiality with us. Eutychianism and Nestorianism were finally condemned at the Council of Chalcedon (451), which taught one Christ in two natures united in one person or hypostasis, yet remaining" without confusion, without conversion, without division, without separation."

Further controversies were yet to arise before the mind of the church could be made up as to how the human nature could indeed retain its complete humanity and yet be without independent subsistence. It was Leontius of Byzantium who advanced the formula that enabled the majority to agree on an interpretation of the Chalcedonian formula. The human nature of Christ, he taught, was not an independent hypostasis (anhypostatic), but it was enhypostatic, i.e., it had its subsistence in and through the Logos.

A further controversy arose as to whether two natures meant that Christ had two wills or centers of volition. A formula was first devised to suit the monothelites, who asserted that the God - man, though in two natures, worked by one divine - human energy. But finally, in spite of the preference of Honorius, Bishop of Rome, for a formula asserting "one will" in Christ, the Western church in 649 decreed that there were "two natural wills" in Christ, and this was made the decision of the whole church at the sixth ecumenical council at Constantinople in 680, the views of Pope Honorius I being condemned as heresy.

Further Development
The theologians of the Middle Ages accepted the authority of patristic Christology and allowed their thought and experience to be enriched by Augustine's stress on the real humanity of Christ in his atoning work, on his important as our example in humility, and on mystical experience. But this emphasis on the humanity of Christ tended to be made only when he was presented in his passion as the One who mediates between man and a distant and terrible God. In their more abstract discussion of the person of Christ there was a tendency to present One who has little share in our real humanity. The humanity of Jesus, however, became the focus of mystical devotion in Bernard of Clairvaux, who stressed the union of the soul with the Bridegroom.
At the Reformation, Luther's Christology was based on Christ as true God and true man in inseparable unity. He spoke of the "wondrous exchange" by which, through the union of Christ with human nature, his righteousness becomes ours, and our sins become his.

He refused to tolerate any thinking that might lead to speculation about the God - man divorced either from the historical person of Jesus himself or from the work he came to do and the office he came to fulfill in redeeming us. But Luther taught that the doctrine of the "communication of attributes" (communicatio idiomatum) meant that there was a mutual transference of qualities or attributes between the divine and human natures in Christ, and developed this to mean a mutual interpenetration of divine and human qualities or properties, verging on the very commingling of natures which Chalcedonian Christology had avoided. In Lutheran orthodoxy this led to a later controversy as to how far the manhood of the Son of God shared in and exercised such attributes of divine majesty, how far it was capable of doing so, and how far Jesus used or renounced these attributes during his human life.

Calvin also approved of the orthodox Christological statements of the church councils. He taught that when the Word became incarnate he did not suspend nor alter his normal function of upholding the universe. He found the extreme statements of Lutheran Christology guilty of a tendency toward the heresy of Eutyches, and insisted that the two natures in Christ are distinct though never separate. Yet in the unity of person in Christ, one nature is so closely involved in the activities and events which concern the other that the human nature can be spoken of as if it partook of divine attributes. Salvation is accomplished not only by the divine nature working through the human but is indeed the accomplishment of the human Jesus, who worked out a perfect obedience and sanctification for all men in his own person (the humanity being not only the instrument but the "material cause" of salvation). This salvation is worked out in fulfillment of the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.

There is here a divergence between the Lutheran and Reformed teaching. The Lutherans laid the stress upon a union of two natures in a communion in which the human nature is assumed into the divine nature. The Reformed theologians refused to think of an assumption of the human nature into the divine, but rather of an assumption of the human nature into the divine person of the Son, in whom there was a direct union between the two natures. Thus, while keeping to the patristic conception of the communicatio idiomatum, they developed the concept of the communicatio operationum (i.e., that the properties of the two natures coincide in the one person) in order to speak of an active communion between the natures without teaching a doctrine of mutual interpenetration.

The importance of the communicatio operationum (which also came to be taken up by Lutherans) is that it corrects the rather static way of speaking of the hypostatic union in patristic theology, by seeing the person and the work of Christ in inseparable unity, and so asserts a dynamic communion between the divine and human natures of Christ in terms of his atoning and reconciling work. It stresses the union of two natures for his mediatorial operation in such a way that this work proceeds from the one person of the God - man by the distinctive effectiveness of both natures. In this light the hypostatic union is seen as the ontological side of the dynamic action of reconciliation, and so incarnation and atonement are essentially complementary.

Since the early nineteenth century the tendency has been to try to depart from the Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures on the ground that this could not be related to the human Jesus portrayed in the Gospels, and that it made use of terms which were alien both to Holy Scripture and to current modes of expression. Schleiermacher built up a Christology on the basis of finding in Christ a unique and archetypal consciousness of utter filial dependence on the Father. In Lutheran Christology there was a further important development, the attributes of the humanity of Jesus being regarded as limiting those of his deity, according to the "kenotic" theory of Thomasius. On this view, the Word, in the incarnation, deprived himself of his "external" attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, yet still retained the "essential" moral attributes. Though always remaining God, he ceased to exist in the form of God. Even his self consciousness as God was absorbed in the single awakening and growing consciousness of the God - man.

Ritschl, too, stressed the importance of the ethical attributes of the person of Christ and of refusing to speculate beyond the revelation of God found in the historic Jesus, who must have for us the value of God and whose perfect moral nature is both human and divine. Early in the twentieth century modern conceptions of personality and scientific and philosophical doctrines of evolution enabled theologians to produce further variations in the development of nineteenth century Christology.

The middle years of the twentieth century saw a return to the use of the Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures, particularly as interpreted in the Reformed tradition, and a realization that this apparently paradoxical formula is meant to point toward the mystery of the unique relationship of grace set up here between the divine and human in the person and work of the God - man. This mystery must not be thought of apart from atonement, for it is perfected and worked out in history through the whole work of Christ crucified and risen and ascended. To share in this mystery of the new unity of God and man in Christ in some measure is also given to the church through the Spirit. This means that our Christology is decisive in determining our doctrine of the church and of the work of sacraments as used in the church. Our Christology must indeed indicate the direction in which we seek to solve all theological problems where we are dealing with the relation of a human event or reality to the grace of God in Christ. In this Christological pattern the whole of our theological system should find its coherence and unity.

Nor must this mystery be thought of in abstraction from the person of Jesus shown to us in the Gospels in the historical context of the life of Israel. The human life and teaching of the historical Jesus have to be given full place in his saving work as essential and not incidental or merely instrumental in his atoning reconciliation. Here we must give due weight to modern biblical study in helping us to realize both what kind of a man Jesus was and yet also to see this Jesus of history as the Christ of faith, the Lord, the Son of God. Through the study of his office and work we come to understand how his humanity is not only truly individual but is also truly representative.

Modern theological discussion continues to be a witness to the centrality of Jesus Christ himself in matters of faith and is dominated by the two closely related questions: "Who is Jesus Christ?" and "What has he done for the world?" The context in which these questions are raised has, however, changed. In the nineteenth century many of the radical restatements of Christological belief were often felt to imply a rejection of orthodox faith, and were argued for as such. It is often claimed today, however, that restatements of this type, if they arise from a sincere response to Jesus, deserve to be regarded as valid modern interpretations of the same truth to which the older statements bore witness in their day. Those who formulated the earlier creeds, it is held, were expressing in their statements simply their own contemporary experience of being redeemed by Jesus. Their statements need not be interpreted literally in order to be confessed truly, even if their language continues to be occasionally used.

It is held, moreover, that modern man with his secular and scientific outlook cannot possibly be asked seriously to think of the universe as providing the background necessary to give credibility to talk of a preexistent Son of God descending into our midst from heaven and finally ascending. The early church, when it affirmed such things of Jesus, was simply using the pictures given by current religious myths of the time in order to give expression to the new liberty and self understanding given to them as they found themselves addressed by God as Jesus, especially in the proclamation of his cross. Some church theologians believe that what the early witnesses meant by their statements can today be adequately reexpressed without recourse even to talk of an incarnation. Discontent continues to be expressed, exactly as it was in last century, with words like "essence," "substance," and "nature." It is claimed that these are now mere dictionary terms of no current use in making meaningful statements.

In the midst of such desire to express the meaning of Christ in new ways, Jesus is often spoken of simply as an agent through whose mediation and example we are enabled to find authentic self expression and new being, and enter into a meaningful experience of reality and the world. Doubt is raised about our need for his continuing work and ministry. Even when we are directed to his person, it is as if to One who is symbolic of something else, and who points entirely beyond himself. We seem at times to be confronted by an Arianism content to affirm that the Son is simply "of like substance" with the Father, at times with a docetism for which the reality of the human nature is of little importance.

Much recent NT study has, however, been undertaken in the belief that the Gospels do provide us with sufficient historical detail about Jesus to give us a reliable picture of the kind of man he actually was. The importance of regaining such a genuine understanding of his humanity as a basis for our Christology has been stressed. Wolfhart Pannenberg has criticized Karl Barth and others who have followed him for beginning their Christological thought from the standpoint of God himself: i.e., by first assuming the Trinity and the incarnation, and then arguing downward, viewing the humanity of Jesus against this transcendent background. Pannenberg himself believes that such initial presupposition of the divinity of Jesus will involve us inevitably in a Christology marked by disjunction and paradox, and will pose insoluble problems in relation to the unity of his person. Moreover, it will obscure our understanding of his true humanity.

Pannenberg seeks to form a "Christology from below," moving upward from Jesus' life and death toward his transformation in his resurrection and exaltation through the grace of God. Pannenberg believes that there are legendary elements in the Gospel history (e.g., the virgin birth). He stresses the need to interpret Jesus and his death from the standpoint of our own experience of history as well as from the standpoint of the OT. Karl Rahner, on the Roman Catholic side, also pursues a Christology beginning with the humanity of Jesus and based on anthropology.

We have to question whether the NT accounts of Jesus allow us to make such a one sided approach and to follow such a method. Consistently Jesus is presented in the Gospels as one who is both truly man and truly God. The first witnesses did not try to present him to us in a manhood existing apart from the mystery of his unique union with God. It does not seem possible, therefore, that we ourselves should have access to the reality to which they are pointing unless we try to gasp him in the strange interpenetration of these two aspects that seems to mark their accounts of him. That the "Word became flesh" seems to imply that we cannot have the flesh apart from the Word nor the Word apart from the flesh.

What the Gospel writers intended to give us in their witness must therefore determine both our own approach and the method we adopt in our investigation. Hans Frei has more recently produced a study in Christology in which he attempts to face the problems of our approach to the Gospel narratives. He insists that Jesus Christ is known to the Christian believer in a manner that includes personal knowledge but also at the same time surpasses it mysteriously. Moreover, "we can no longer think of God except as we think of Jesus at the same time nor of Jesus except in reference to God." Frei also insists that while we can think of other people rightly without them being present, we cannot properly think of Jesus as not being present. We cannot indeed know his identity without being in his presence.

R S Wallace
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
H R Mackintosh, The Person of Christ; D M Baillie, God Was in Christ; O Cullmann, The Christology of the NT; E Brunner, The Mediator; L B Smedes, The Incarnation, Trends in Modern Anglican Thought; H Relton, A Study in Christology; K Barth, Church Dogmatics; R G G , I; H Vogel, Gott in Christo and Christologie; M Fonyas, The Person of Jesus Christ in the Decisions of the Ecumenical Councils; W Pannenberg, Jesus, God and Man; H W Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ; E Schillebeeckx, Christ, Jesus, and Jesus and Christ; R A Norris, The Christological Controversy; J A Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ.

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