Person and Work of Christ

Identity of Jesus Research Group

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The members of the Identity of Jesus Research Group are: Dale Allison, Gary Anderson, Markus Bockmuehl, Sarah Coakley, Brian Daley, A. Katherine Grieb, Robert Jenson, Joel Marcus, Walter Moberly, William Placher, Katherine Sonderegger, David Steinmetz, Marianne Meye Thompson, and Francis Watson. The group met in Princeton for three years, from 2003 to 2006

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Will the real Jesus please stand up?

(A Reveiw of the Identity of Jesus Research Group by Fleming Rutledge in Generous Orthodoxy)

"To all of you out there who are wondering if orthodox Christology can survive all the attacks being made on it, there is hopeful news. A research project has been completed at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, and its findings will be published in Seeking The Identity of Jesus (Eerdmans will ship in late September).

Those who have not necessarily been following the "Jesus wars" may not be aware of the intensity of the struggle to keep a door open for the ancient creedal and conciliar affirmations about Jesus Christ. The widespread attacks on classic Christology coming from the "Jesus Seminar" and other sources have been so pervasive, and in many cases so deceptively attractive, that they have taken over much of the preaching and teaching of the mainline churches without anyone noticing.

In the church today, there are two distinct ways of speaking about Jesus. We can call them the Jesus kerygma and the Christ kerygma (the Greek word kerygma means proclamation or announcement but is principally used in a theological context to refer to the gospel message).

The Jesus kerygma is familiar to those who hear sermons in most of the mainline churches, because the habit nowadays is to preach every Sunday from the stories in the Synoptic Gospels. Each of these Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) has a Christ kerygma, but one can easily miss it if sermons are focused essentially on such themes as Jesus' table fellowship with sinners, his welcoming of outcasts, his healings, his "inclusion" of women, his self-sacrificing style of life, and so forth. The effect has been to leave us with an impression of an extraordinary (but not necessarily unique) person who in some way reveals the love of God and inspires us to follow him in the practice of radical hospitality, willing service, embrace of the other. These are aspects of his ministry by no means to be downgraded, but when the high Christology of the Gospel of John and the Lordship of Christ in the epistles of Paul have gone missing, something less than the eternal Son of God is here.

Therefore it is very good news to hear of the Identity of Jesus Research Group. Beverley Roberts Gaventa of Princeton, co-chair of the group (together with Richard B. Hays of Duke) summarizes their conclusions in these words:

"The work of the project ranged across the biblical canon, church tradition, and contemporary Christian life, and no easy consensus has emerged. Yet the varying perspectives converged around the notion that historical investigation into the life of Jesus is necessary but not sufficient. While this group affirms the importance of historical work, especially work that situates Jesus in first-century Judaism, it differs from many recent approaches to Jesus in two ways:

"1) The group insists that Jesus is not reducible to what can be learned from historical research alone.
"2) The group contends that the Creeds of the Church are in continuity with the identity of Jesus as revealed in Scripture." more

Greek patristic foundations for a theological anthropology of women in their distinctiveness as human beings

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Theology Reader:

Person and Work of Christ: Reformation Christology

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Luther argued that the unity of Jesus’ two natures, divine and human, meant that every statement about Jesus applied to both of his natures at once. Thus, God suffered and died on the cross, and the humanity of Jesus was omnipresent. Luther insisted that Jesus’ bodily omnipresence entailed his real bodily presence in the elements of the offering (see transubstantiation). Calvin, in contrast, held that Jesus’ human nature had died on the cross and that Jesus was now at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit brought about Jesus’ spiritual but not bodily presence in the communion ceremon

Person and Work of Christ: Reformation Christology

Calvin Reformers Christology of atonement

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Calvin’s doctrine of the atonement conveys the coherence of Protestant teaching that Lutheran pastors should also
recognize as familiar to their own confession: 1) The starting point of the atonement is the freeove
of God in Jesus Christ; 2) The prerequisite of the atonement is the incarnation; 3) Christ hasa threefold office
of Prophet, King, and Priest; 4) Christ the obedient Second Adam; 5) Christ theVictor; 6) Christ our
legal substitute; 7) Christ our sacrifice; 8) Christ our merit; and finally9) Christ our example
(specifically, the supreme example of faith in God in the midst of human suffering).11All these are vital
themes of the atonement also in Lutheran theology.12 In fact, eventhe one issue that has come to characterize the
difference between Lutheran and Reformed theology regarding the atonement—namely the extent of its
significance—is a development oflater Reformed theology and is not worked out in the theology of Zwingli
or Calvin,13althoughin important ways the doctrine of predestination in these two Reformed theologians
perhaps leddirectly to this development. Nevertheless, both Zwingli and Calvin, like Luther, taught that the
atonement of the death of Christ was a universal and not a limited atonement.

more

Jesus Seminar

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Jesus Seminar

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Christology Anabaptist Encyclopedia

Tom,Driver, Christ in a Changing World: Toward an Ethical Christology.

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Theology Today - Vol 40, No. 2 - July 1983 - ARTICLE - Theocentric ...

Driver, Tom, 1981, Christ in a Changing World: Toward an Ethical Christology. New York:

130 - Theocentric Christology

Theocentric Christology
By Paul F. Knitter

"Many Christian theologians have moved resolutely away from an exclusive Christology. Today Christology has become (or rebecome) inclusive…. The theocentric, non-normative understanding of Christ, proposed by the theologians we have studied, will be experienced by many Christians as a threat to the validity of their faith. Therefore, in exploring -the possibility of the theocentric approach to Christ, theological caution and especially pastoral sensitivity are necessary."

IN PETER SCHINELLER'S well-known survey of contemporary views of the uniqueness of Christ and the church, as well as in Lucien Richard's more recent review of the same issue, it is clear that many Christian theologians have moved resolutely away from an exclusive Christology. Today Christology has become (or rebecome) inclusive. In unpacking what such inclusivity contains, both of the mentioned studies indicate the breadth, as well as the limits, of contemporary attitudes toward Christ and toward the world outside of Christianity.

Inclusive Christologies tend to affirm a "theocentric universe," one in which God, with divine revelation and salvation, can be present beyond Jesus Christ, within all world religions. That's the breadth. But these Christologies, in different forms, still insist on the "normativity" of Jesus. That's the limit. Jesus constitutes the final, the definitive, the full and therefore the normative revelation of God. He is the "norma normans non normata," the norm beyond all norms. All other revelations and religions, rich and salvific as they may be, do not share this conclusiveness; they must be completed and "normed" by Jesus.

To move beyond such a normative Christology, the current consensus holds, would be either to abandon or to dilute an essential ingredient in Christian experience and tradition. Tom Driver, who, as we shall see, is making such a move, feels he is alone; he finds that even well known liberal theologians (such as Langdon Gilkey, Van Harvey, John Cobb,

Paul F. Knitter is Professor of Theology at Xavier University, Cincinnati. He received the Licentiate in Theoloqy from the Gregorian University Rome, and the doctorate in theology from Marburg. He is the author of Towards a Protestant Theology of Religions (1974) and numerous articles in journals on the relation between Christianity and world religions. This present article forms part of a book soon to be published by Orbis

131 - Theocentric Christology

David Tracy), who are eloquently sensitive to historical relativity and religious pluralism, still put "Christ at the center of things" (Driver, 73). Schineller also points out that while a "non-normative Christology" offers "an attractive position," it "seems somewhat ineffective in an age of pluralism since it affirms that we cannot make decisions among religions and religious savior figures" (Schineller, 565).

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Driver and Ruether maintain that the image of Jesus Christ as "central norm," as "the center of history," as the "one and only" incarnation of God in history has, consciously or unconsciously, caused or condoned a long trail of what must be called sinful attitudes or actions. The most glaring of such sins are the superiority, intolerance, rash judgments that have marked Christians' attitudes toward other religions. "The immoral factor in the 'scandal of particularity' today is its insistence upon a once-and-for-all Christ in a relativistic world…. It precludes Christianity's ability to affirm that all people have a right to their place in the sun.. . If the incarnation of God in finite humanity can occur but once, the religious value-of all-other human -history is nil" (Driver: 58, 60). If not nil, certainly inferior.

Ruether asks theologians like Hans Ming who proclaim that authentic humanity was realized only in Jesus whether they are aware how much such a belief feeds the attitude "that all other peoples have an inauthentic humanity." For Ruether the most convincing piece of evidence for the immorality of traditional normative Christology is Christianity's sordid history of anti-Semitism. "Theologically, antiJudaism developed as the left hand of Christology. Anti-Judaism was the negative side of the Christian affirmation that Jesus was the Christ" (1981: 31). Dorothee Soelle can even describe much of Christology as "Christofascism" in the way it has disposed or allowed Christians to impose themselves upon not only other religions but other cultures and political parties which do not march under the banner of the final, normative, victorious Christ (Driver: 3). Finally, Driver and Ruether would place at least part of the blame for the racism and sexism infecting Christian behavior at the doorstep of a Christology which holds that the perfection of humanity, the full and normative presence of God has been realized only, definitively, in a white male. If the medium is the message, the whiteness and maleness of the medium share in the normativity of the message (Driver: 20, 143: Ruetber, 1981: 45-56).

Even if only a portion of such charges are accurate, even if a normative Christology has only indirectly sanctioned, not caused, such unethical conduct, still, these theologians hold, such a Christology must be, at the least, highly suspect. So they call for a "paradigm-shift," in Christology and in Christian attitudes toward other faiths and ideologies. Their suggestions for how such a shift might begin reflect proposals we have already heard. Driver endorses Ruether's call to move Christ from the center of history," where he is "the embodiment of a humanity already made perfect in God," to "the lead edge of history," where he will serve as "a herald of the future" (40). Driver also reflects the views of Panikkar and Pawlikowski when he presents the divinity of Jesus as the realization of a given, ontological non-dualism between God and

143 - Theocentric Christology

world-a realization, however, that "does not indicate something done once and once only for all time" (54-65).

As already pointed out, an "ethical hermeneutics" colors the method of most theologians who are trying to reinterpret the uniqueness of Jesus in the light of interreligious dialogue. Such a hermeneutics is especially evident among missionary theologians like Duraisamy Amalorpavadas, Ignace Puthiadam, Henri Maurier, Eugene Hillman, Burlan Sizemore, all of whom have been engaged in the actual praxis of dialogue with people of other faiths. They have painfully witnessed how an absolutist or normative Christology has fostered the "cultural imperialism" of the West, how it has roadblocked dialogue and actually been "one of the principal reasons for the disappointing results of missionary work." In view of such unethical effects, these scholars, like the liberation theologians, are calling for a revision of traditional Christology (Geffre: vi).⁵

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Christofascism (the name being a portmanteau of Christianity and Fascism) is a concept in Christian theology first mentioned by Dorothee Sölle, a socially-engaged theologian and writer, in her book Beyond Mere Obedience: Reflections on a Christian Ethic for the Future in 1970. ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] To Dorothee Sölle, Christofascism was caused by the embracing of authoritarian theology by the Christian church. It is an arrogant, totalitarian, imperialistic attitude, characteristic of the church in Germany under Nazism, that she believed to be alive and well in the theological scene of the late 20th and turn of the 21st century.^[4]^[5]

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[edit]Theological viewpoints

Tom Faw Driver, Paul Tillich Professor Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary in New York, expressed concern "that the worship of God in Christ not divide Christian from Jew, man from woman, clergy from laity, white from black, or rich from poor". To him, Christianity is in constant danger of Christofascism, stating that "[w]e fear christofascism, which we see as the political direction of all attempts to place Christ at the center of social life and history" and that "[m]uch of the churches' teaching about Christ has turned into something that is dictatorial in its heart and is preparing society for an American fascism". Christofascism allows Christians, or disposes them, to impose themselves upon other religions, upon other cultures, and upon political parties which do not march under the banner of the final, normative, victorious Christ.^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]

George Hunsinger, director of the Centre for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, regards the conception of Christofascism as being an attack, at a very sophisticated level of theological discourse, on the biblical depiction of Jesus Christ. He equates what is viewed as Christofascism with "Jesus Christ as depicted in Scripture" and contrasts it with the "nonnormativeChristology" that is offered as an alternative by some theologians, which he characterizes as extreme relativism that reduces Jesus Christ to "an object of mere personal preference and cultural location" and that he finds difficult to see as not contributing to the same problems encountered by the Christian church in Germany that were noted by theologian Karl Barth.^[9]

Douglas John Hall, Professor of Christian Theology at McGill University, relates Sölle's concept of Christofascism to Christomonism, that inevitably ends in religious triumphalism and exclusivity, noting Sölle's observation of American fundamentalist Christianity that Christomonism easily leads to Christofascism, and that violence is never far away from militant Christomonism. (Christomonism, also known as Unitarianism of the Second Person, accepts only one divine person, Jesus Christ.) He states that the over-divinized ("high") Christology of Christendom is demonstrated to be wrong by its "almost unrelieved anti-Judaism". He suggests that the best way to guard against this is for Christians not to neglect the humanity of Jesus Christ in favour of his divinity, and to remind themselves that Jesus was a Jewish human being.^[10]^[11]^[12]

A Quest for Historical Jesus By Albert Schweitzer

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Synopsis
n the last decades of the eighteenth century, old arguments about what constituted true Christianity resumed with the newly refined tools and methods of linguistics, history, and comparative literature. The most sensitive questions sought to probe through the centuries and discover the original Jesus. Why, scholars asked, is the New Testament silent about most of Jesus's life? Why didn't Paul say more about the life of Jesus? To what extent was Jesus Jewish? How significant were the differences among the Gospels? What evidence could be trusted and what views justified? As scholars sought to discover and describe what they thought the "true"Jesus might be, they proved that Jesus could be many things. In this broad survey of the efforts to establish, amend, or deny the historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer presents the history of a debate about what mattered most to millions of people: If God had entered human history, what could history tell about it? Throughout the course of this heated and prolonged dispute, one retelling of the life of Jesus followed another, enjoying -- in Schweitzer's phrase -- "the immortality of revised editions".Lesser writers might consider differences of opinion as signs of a hopeless enterprise, but Schweitzer instead finds immense value in the differences. Approaches and conclusions may differ, he concludes, but the quest for the historical Jesus has provided ample testimony to the importance of the effort and the rewards of the experience.

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Albert Schweitzer’s ‘consistent eschatology’

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Kwang Kyung Hoon
TOWARDS A MOSIM CHRISTOLOGY: A KOREAN RESPONSE

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Geza Vermes classifies the various discussions regarding the reign of God:

Albert Schweitzer’s ‘consistent eschatology’ (konsequente Eschatologie) assigns it to the near future. C.H. Dodd places it in the present time in the form of a ‘realized eschatology.’ Joachim Jeremias compromises, and with his ’sich realisierende Eschatologie,’ eschatology in process of being realized. He allots it partly to the present and partly to the future" (Vermes 1983:37).

Vermes points out the weakness of these eschatologies. He says that the chief weakness of the Schweitzer-Dodd-Jeremias’ school of thought is that it applies ordinary time-concepts to Jesus’ eschatological outlook. He insists that Jesus himself holds out the fact that the hour of the reign of God is unknown, citing Lk 17:20, "The reign of God is not coming with signs to be observed." Even Jesus does not know it. In other words, Jesus interpreted it not as the harsh judgment of a terrifying God but as the intimate presence of a loving Father (59).

Sheehan stresses that by the reign of God, Jesus meant the immediate presence of God as a loving Father. He explains that the reign of God has nothing to do with the fanciful geopolitics of the apocalyptists and messianists or with the juridical, hierarchical church. Nor was it any form of religion. The reign of God, Sheehan asserts, was the Father himself given over to his people.6 Given that the reign of God is the Father himself and is entirely and purely God’s gift as invitation, what remains for humans to do is to respond to the invitation. Sheehan picks up forgiveness, justice and charity as ethical virtues with which people can and must respond to God’s gift. He says that this mutuality—eschatology as the ground of ethics, and ethics as the realization of eschatology—is what made Jesus’ moral demands so radical (Kasper, 63).7

While Sheehan stresses practicing the ethical virtues, James Dunn emphasizes Jesus’ total surrender to God in the kingdom. Dunn sees that abba became the expression of the complete surrender of Jesus as Son to the Father’s will. Jesus’ self-surrender to God’s will is based on the intimate relationship of Jesus to God. The complete surrender of Jesus which was geared to his mission should be found in the fact that Jesus’ sense of being God’s son was an existential conviction, not intellectual belief. In other words, as Dunn explains, Jesus’ consciousness of an intimate relationship with God is not an awareness of metaphysical sonship, nor of a ‘divine consciousness’ (second Person of the Trinity). Dunn stresses that the only words adequate to express the experience of the relationship of sonship were that of Father and Son. By the experienced relationship of sonship, Dunn means that Jesus felt intimacy with God (abba experience), he had the approval of God (from Jesus’ baptism onward), dependence on God (Jesus’ total surrender and mission) and responsibility to God (Dunn, 383).

Schillebeeckx also focuses on the relation of Jesus as son and God. He notes that in Jesus’ time what the abba signified for him was authority and instruction: the father is the authority and the teacher. In other words, being a son meant ‘belonging to’ and one demonstrated this sonship by carrying out the father’s instruction. Schillebeeckx stresses that Jesus uses the familial term abba in addressing God and that shows the quite natural expression of the very core of his religious life: ‘Not my will, but your will, Father’ (Lk 21:42, Mt 26:42). According to Jewish spirituality, that is ‘doing God’s will,’ the familial concept of father and son can be applicable to the relationship of Jesus towards God who is understood as abba (263). Schillebeeckx also stresses that the soul, the source and ground of Jesus’ message, praxis and ministry as a whole served to illuminate the exceptional and peculiar character of the abba experience (266). Therefore, we suggest that the event of God’s reign must be considered in the light of Jesus’ response to God’s pure gift as invitation.

Being the sons and daughters of God in this sense expects filial piety of us. In the Korean cultural religious tradition we call this filial piety mosim, or reverence. We show this piety and reverence by doing ‘hyo,’ filial piety and we show this piety towards our parents or elders. We would like to suggest that Jesus who addressed his Father as Abba and who’s life was spent in bringing about the reign of God is the model of doing mosim whose filial piety, passion, mission. His whole life clearly shows it more than anyone else.8 more

Christology Schweitzer

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Albert Schweitzer, the world famous theologian and missionary, has traced in a well-known book published in 1906 the progress of Christology from Hermann Samuel Reimarus, who wrote in the middle of the eighteenth century, to Wilhelm Wrede whose book on this subject was published in 1901. "The study of the Life of Jesus," he says, "has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour..."51 Coming to the "Results", he mourns, "There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. This image has not been destroyed from without. It has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to the surface one after another, and in spite of all the artifice, art, artificiality, and violence which was applied to them, refused to be planed down to fit the design on which Jesus of the theology of the last hundred and thirty years had been constructed and were no sooner covered over than they appeared again in a new form.."52 He concludes, "We thought that it was for us to lead our time by the roundabout way through the historical Jesus, as we understood Him, in order to bring it to the Jesus who is a spiritual power in the present. This roundabout way has now been closed by genuine history."53

James P. Mackey confirms Schweitzer. "It was just about two centuries ago," he says, "that people began to pride themselves on the bringing at last to academic Christology the scientific methods of the historian. Previous to the eighteenth century, it was felt, people had built their portraits of Jesus from all kinds of unscientific assumptions. Small wonder if false Christs had appeared in Christian devotion and Christian literature. Small wonder if different Christs had appeared at different times and places or in different Christian traditions. The modern quarters set out with the calm confidence that by the use of the trusty methods of scientific history the real Jesus could at last be made to stand up. And with the same calm confidence they produced first one portrait of Jesus... and then another... and then another, each disturbingly different from the one before... Pessimism spread far beyond the confines of professional scholarship: the 'real Jesus' could not really be found..."54 more

A Christological Hermeneutic by Donald G. Bloesch

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return to religion-online

: Crisis and Conflict in Hermeneutics

Donald G. Bloesch, Ph. D., is Professor of Theology Emeritus, Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa. Among his most significant publications are: Crumbling Foundations, Zondervan, 1984; The Future of Evangelical Christianity, Doubleday, 1983; The Struggle of Prayer, Harper & Row, 1980; Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Harper & Row, 1978-1979; Jesus Is Victor!, Abingdon, 1976; The Ground of Certainty, Eerdmans, I971; and The Reform of the Church, Eerdmans, I970. The following was Chapter 5 in Robert K. Johnston, The Use of the Bible in Theology: Evangelical Options, John Knox Press, 1985). The following was Chapter 5 in Robert K. Johnston, The Use of the Bible in Theology: Evangelical Options, John Knox Press, 1985).

This is a test of The discipline of biblical hermeneutics, which deals with the principles governing the interpretation of Scripture, is presently in crisis. For some time it has been obvious in the academic world that the scriptural texts cannot simply be taken at face value but presuppose a thought world that is alien to our own. In an attempt to bring some degree of coherence to the interpretation of Scripture, scholars have appealed to current philosophies or sociologies of knowledge. Their aim has been to come to an understanding of what is essential and what is peripheral in the Bible, but too often in the process they have lost contact with the biblical message. It is fashionable among both theologians and biblical scholars today to contend that there is no one biblical view or message but instead a plurality of viewpoints that stand at considerable variance with one an other as well as with the modem world-view. more

2008-10-07T10:36:00.000+05:30

http://www.theologicalstudies.org.uk/god_christology.php

Christology Theological Studeis. org

Post-Enlightenment Christology

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The scholarly reinterpretation of Jesus in the Enlightenment was not formally endorsed by any ecclesiastical tradition. Rather, it was the personal opinion of theologians that began to reorient Christian thinking about Jesus. The official teachings of all Christian churches, Protestant and Catholic alike, about Jesus remained largely unchanged. Christological reflection in the 19th century was encumbered by the critiques of the Enlightenment—the repudiation of the supernatural elements in the Gospels, the challenge to metaphysical thinking and to the notion of revealed morality. This assault on traditional views raised fundamental questions for the entire Christian religion and had substantial implications for Christology. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) focused on what classical Christology would have called the human nature of Jesus and argued that Jesus had a unique consciousness of God as well as ethical self-consciousness, the latter theme carried forward by Protestant theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) and Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922).
Scholarly reflection on the historical Jesus continued in the 19th century with the work of David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), whoseLife of Jesus Critically Examined (1835) rejects both the supernatural and the natural interpretations of Jesus in favour of a “mythical” interpretation, according to which the story of Jesus illustrates timeless truths (“myths”) but not historical facts. In a brilliant study, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), Albert Schweitzer, later to gain fame as a missionary doctor in equatorial Africa, argued that the pursuit of the historical Jesus depended on a preconceived notion of Jesus as moral teacher that left the apocalyptic aspects of his message completely unconsidered. Schweitzer’s book, along with neoorthodoxProtestant theology (teachings that reaffirmed traditional Protestant Reformation creeds and rejected biblical literalism), cast grave doubt on the notion that it was possible to arrive at a historically objective portrait of Jesus. Nevertheless, the project was continued in the work of scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), who attempted to “demythologize” the New Testament, and E.P. Sanders (for an example of this approach, see Jesus), who adopted a minimalist stance about what can be said about the historical Jesus.
Roman Catholic Christological reflection since the 16th century has sought to come to terms with the challenges of the Enlightenment, especially as these have been raised by Protestant theology. Catholic discourse, all the same, has not had a distinctly Catholic orientation but sought to deal with issues germane to Protestant theology as well. Catholic post-Enlightenment Christology, more so than Protestant reflection, has encountered problems posed by the tension between historical-critical scholarship and dogmatic pronouncements; the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church has sometimes set narrow parameters, such as in the Modernist Controversy of the late 19th and the early 20th century, for what was permissible historical scholarship. The Catholic understanding of the development of dogma as the unfolding of implicit prior affirmations suggested that the formation of the Christological dogma was the development of historically demonstrable claims as well as the self-understanding of Jesus. At the same time, Catholic theologians such as Karl Rahnerand Edward Schillebeeckx have acknowledged the historicity of the dogmatic pronouncements and have insisted on allowing for new and fresh interpretations without forfeiting their essential content... source

Enlightenment Christology

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Traditional Christology, as expressed in the Nicaean and Chalcedonian creeds, was based on the belief in the sanctity of the New Testament, which was held to contain divinely revealed truth as represented in the accounts of eyewitnesses or divinely inspired authors. The Christological reflections of the Protestant reformers—including Luther,John Calvin, and even the anti-Trinitarian Faustus Socinus—took for granted the traditional view of the Scriptures and thus added little to the positions of earlier centuries. Beginning in the mid-17th century, however, a growing chorus of voices insisted that, because other writings of the past were not allowed to press supernatural claims, the same stricture should be applied to the Old and the New Testament. This rational and critical approach to the Scriptures became the basis of a new understanding of the nature and truth of Christianity that came to be known as Deism. The English adherents of Deism, includingJohn Toland (1670–1722), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), and Thomas Morgan (d. 1743), undertook to present Christianity as a rational natural religion, and they increasingly defined authentic Christianity as a religion bereft of superstition.
A key assumption of Enlightenment Christology was that theologians and clergy through the centuries had systematically perverted the true and authentic Christian religion and, in so doing, had obscured the true nature of Jesus. The task of modern theologians, therefore, was to remove these falsifications and to recover what would subsequently be called the “historical” Jesus—that is, the Jesus who actually existed.
These thinkers subjected the New Testament—particularly the four Gospels—to severe scrutiny. Relying on critical principles that were becoming standard in many areas of historical scholarship, they concentrated on two central claims about Jesus in the New Testament: that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that he performed miracles to vindicate his divine mission. English Deist writers such as Toland, Thomas Woolston (1670–1733), and Thomas Chubb(1679–1747) argued vigorously that the authors of the Gospels reported incidents that they themselves had not witnessed and relied on accounts of dreams—such as Joseph’s dream about being commanded to flee Bethlehem for Egypt—that were inherently unverifiable.
From these reflections there emerged a picture of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not a divinity. With this as his premise, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733) argued in his book Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) that Jesus had preached a gospel of “nature” that all of humankind could understand, were it not for the perversions introduced by priests and other religious functionaries. Other Deist interpretations of Jesus were Chubb’s The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (1739) and theWolfenbütteler Fragmente (“Wolfenbüttel Fragments”) of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), which triggered an enormous controversy when it was published posthumously in the 1770s. Its rejection of all the supernatural elements of the Jesus stories was consistent with attempts by other writers, such as the German philologist Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), to “cleanse” the New Testament of religious interpretation and to distill its historical core.
It may be argued, therefore, that both the consolidation of Christological dogma between the 4th and the 7th centuries and the dissolution of this dogma in the 18th and 19th centuries were affected by important cultural factors. In the first period theological reflection was influenced by Greek philosophy, in the second by the rise of science. ...source

Reformation Christology

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The Reformation

Much like the medieval period, the 16th-century Protestant Reformation was characterized by the restatement of earlier Christological positions rather than by the development of new formulations. Thus, the major Protestant reformers dissented from the orthodox Christological tradition mainly in matters of emphasis, as in their delineation of the doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus: prophet, priest, and king.
The controversy among the reformers over the Last Supper, which centred on the question of Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine of theEucharist, echoed debates that had begun as early as the 9th century. It quickly became apparent that different Christological assumptions underlay the positions of the two protagonists, Huldrych Zwingli andMartin Luther. Luther argued that the unity of Jesus’ two natures, divine and human, meant that every statement about Jesus applied to both of his natures at once. Thus, God suffered and died on the cross, and the humanity of Jesus was omnipresent. Luther insisted that Jesus’ bodily omnipresence entailed his real bodily presence in the elements of the offering (see transubstantiation). Calvin, in contrast, held that Jesus’ human nature had died on the cross and that Jesus was now at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit brought about Jesus’ spiritual but not bodily presence in the communion ceremony.
In Christological discourse outside the eucharistic controversy, Luther followed Augustine in emphasizing Jesus’ human nature. Luther was particularly fascinated by the humility of Jesus; the fact that the ruler of the universe had been born in a stable was, for Luther, profound proof that the humble could be elevated and even the worst sinners forgiven. Jesus’ cry on the cross that he had been forsaken by God signified that Jesus shared the lot of “the forsaken, the condemned, the sinners, the blasphemers, the accursed.” Indeed, this was the meaning of the Incarnation: that God, through Jesus, had chosen to experience the fullness of human despair. By embracing this vivid conception of the human Jesus, Luther arguably came closer to Sabellianism than he knew.
The Anabaptists (members of a Reformation movement that was the precursor of the modern Mennonites and Quakers) did not challenge classical Christological dogma but emphasized, in ever-changing ways, the Christian imperative to “follow” Jesus. This meant not only observing Jesus’ moral teachings as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount but also sharing in Jesus’ suffering. Suffering, for the Anabaptists, was the hallmark of the genuine follower of Jesus. As the Anabaptist Hans Schlaffer wrote in a 1527 treatise: “Christ suffered for us, leaving us a model or example that we should follow in his footsteps” (1 Peter 2:21).
The anti-Trinitarians, beginning with the Spanish physician and lay theologian Michael Servetus (d. 1553) and ending with the Socinianmovement which followed the teachings of the Italian-born theologianFaustus Socinus at the end of the 16th century, enunciated a Christology that returned to views that had been condemned as heretical in early Christianity. They rejected orthodox views that God existed in three persons and that God assumed human form in the Incarnation; their position was essentially Arian adoptionism. Thus, theRacovian Catechism (1605), the doctrinal statement of the Minor Reformed Church of Poland, asserted that Jesus had no divine nature. He was given divine power and authority by God to act on God’s behalf.
Enlightenment Christology

Traditional Christology, as expressed in the Nicaean and Chalcedonian creeds, was based on the belief in the sanctity of the New Testament, which was held to contain divinely revealed truth as represented in the accounts of eyewitnesses or divinely inspired authors. The Christological reflections of the Protestant reformers—including Luther,John Calvin, and even the anti-Trinitarian Faustus Socinus—took for granted the traditional view of the Scriptures and thus added little to the positions of earlier centuries. Beginning in the mid-17th century, however, a growing chorus of voices insisted that, because other writings of the past were not allowed to press supernatural claims, the same stricture should be applied to the Old and the New Testament. This rational and critical approach to the Scriptures became the basis of a new understanding of the nature and truth of Christianity that came to be known as Deism. The English adherents of Deism, includingJohn Toland (1670–1722), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), and Thomas Morgan (d. 1743), undertook to present Christianity as a rational natural religion, and they increasingly defined authentic Christianity as a religion bereft of superstition.
A key assumption of Enlightenment Christology was that theologians and clergy through the centuries had systematically perverted the true and authentic Christian religion and, in so doing, had obscured the true nature of Jesus. The task of modern theologians, therefore, was to remove these falsifications and to recover what would subsequently be called the “historical” Jesus—that is, the Jesus who actually existed.
These thinkers subjected the New Testament—particularly the four Gospels—to severe scrutiny. Relying on critical principles that were becoming standard in many areas of historical scholarship, they concentrated on two central claims about Jesus in the New Testament: that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that he performed miracles to vindicate his divine mission. English Deist writers such as Toland, Thomas Woolston (1670–1733), and Thomas Chubb(1679–1747) argued vigorously that the authors of the Gospels reported incidents that they themselves had not witnessed and relied on accounts of dreams—such as Joseph’s dream about being commanded to flee Bethlehem for Egypt—that were inherently unverifiable.
From these reflections there emerged a picture of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not a divinity. With this as his premise, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733) argued in his book Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) that Jesus had preached a gospel of “nature” that all of humankind could understand, were it not for the perversions introduced by priests and other religious functionaries. Other Deist interpretations of Jesus were Chubb’s The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (1739) and theWolfenbütteler Fragmente (“Wolfenbüttel Fragments”) of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), which triggered an enormous controversy when it was published posthumously in the 1770s. Its rejection of all the supernatural elements of the Jesus stories was consistent with attempts by other writers, such as the German philologist Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), to “cleanse” the New Testament of religious interpretation and to distill its historical core.
It may be argued, therefore, that both the consolidation of Christological dogma between the 4th and the 7th centuries and the dissolution of this dogma in the 18th and 19th centuries were affected by important cultural factors. In the first period theological reflection was influenced by Greek philosophy, in the second by the rise of science. ....source

Reformation Christology

2008-09-30T11:05:00.001+05:30

Reformation Christoilogy PDF Format

http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/files/pb/2062

Post-Reformation Christology Schleiermacher and others

2008-09-30T10:27:00.001+05:30

Christology:

The Person of Christ

Our focus here is on the more significant post-reformation developments in Christology, specifically, the person of Jesus Christ. We begin by noting several important developments in 19^th century German thought.

A. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Schleiermacher, often referred to as the father of modern liberal theology, sought to relocate the focus of true religion away from cognitive affirmation of orthodox dogma and place it in universal human “feeling” and “intuition”. Schleiermacher “tried to show that the essence of religion lies not in rational proofs of the existence of God, in supernaturally revealed dogmas or in churchly rituals and formalities, but in a ‘fundamental, distinct, and integrative element of human life and culture’ – the feeling of being utterly dependent on something infinite that manifests itself in and through finite things” (Grenz/Olson, 44). He objected to the concept of salvation as deliverance from divine wrath. Rather, sin is the absence of God-consciousness and a consequent failure to be utterly dependent upon him. Awareness of and participation in God was perfectly embodied in Christ, whose consciousness of God was so profound that one may rightly speak of a unique divine presence in him, an actual entrance of the divine into human life. Insofar as he was at all times perfectly conscious of God and in absolute dependence on him, he was free from all moral fault or religious error. This, in essence, constitutes his divinity. Jesus, then, is the Ideal Man in whom the life of God was most perfectly manifest. Says Cave:

“. . . the Redeemer is like all men in that He possessed the same human nature; He is distinguished from them in that the God-consciousness, which in us is weak and clouded, was in Him at all times entirely clear and determinative” (The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 168).

Salvation, said Schleiermacher, is thus a vital union with Christ in which we are infused with the energy and power of his fellowship with and dependence upon God. In this way there is awakened within us the dormant God-consciousness which gains ascendancy over the sensuous element of our nature. By faith in Christ and consequent mystical union, we experience hisconsciousness of God and feeling of absolute dependence. Believers thereby become, although in lesser degree, what Christ was: God manifest in the flesh.

The Bible, said Schleiermacher, is neither supernaturally inspired nor inerrant. Truth, therefore, was not primarily to be derived from Scripture. Rather, all doctrines “must be extracted from the Christian religious self-consciousness, i.e., the inward experience of Christian people” (The Christian Faith, 265). Schleiermacher denied the reality of miracles, the efficacy of intercessory prayer, and seriously questioned the doctrine of the Trinity. Whereas he was not guilty of pantheism, as some have charged, “Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God suffers from an overemphasis on immanence. God’s activity becomes virtually identical with nature to the extent that evil and suffering are as much God’s activity as is redemption. Furthermore it is unclear whether God has any existence above and apart from the world. Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God is best described as panentheistic in that it correlates God and the world, making them inseparable” (Grenz/Olson, 50). Karl Barth put it best when he said of Schleiermacher that he tried to speak of God by speaking about man in a very loud voice!

B. Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89)

Ritschl would deny that he held to any Christology. For him, questions such as the doctrine of the two natures, Trinitarianism, the pre-existence of the Word (Christ “pre-existed” only in the sense that “he and his work are eternally known and willed by God” [Grenz/Olson, 57]), etc., lie outside the proper domain of theology, the focus of the latter being what Christ does for us, not who or what he is. Mackintosh summarizes well:

“Like every other doctrine, our view of Christ [says Ritschl] must be stated in judgments of value or appreciation . . . which affirm his significance for the soul; or, to put it otherwise, we see the Divine quality of Christ’s person in the Divine character of His work. The impression He makes is most fitly expressed by saying that He has for us the religious value of God. He redeemed men by fulfilling perfectly the vocation given Him to establish the Kingdom of God, and patiently enduring all things even to death: and on the basis of this achievement the society gathered round Him is forgiven, has imputed to it the position or relationship towards God, which Jesus held for Himself inviolably to the end, and is raised ‘above the iron law of necessity’ into the freedom and joy of God’s family” (The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, 279).

In other words, since the functions of Jesus are divine, He is divine. Ritschl rejected the concept of Christ as prophet, priest, and king, embracing only the latter. Jesus was the “founder of the Kingdom of God” and the “bearer of God’s moral lordship over men.”

C. The History of Religions School (die religionsgeschichtliche Schule)

Two foundational concepts gave shape to this school of Christological thinking:

First, Christianity is explicable apart from any appeal to the supernatural. A naturalistic presupposition permeates their thinking.

Second, particular focus is given to the cultural environment within which early Christianity emerged. This led to the conclusion that the principal ideas of Christianity could be explained in terms of derivation from ideas current in first-century pagan society. There is little that is truly original in the Christian gospel. The early church simply borrowed existing mythological categories and applied them to the person, work, and community of Jesus.

The most influential and enduring work produced by this school of thought was that of W. Bousset (1865-1920) entitled, Kyrios Christos (1913; it appeared in a 5^th ed. in 1964 with a preface by Rudolph Bultmann). The basis ideas in this volume are as follows:

· Jesus was conceived as a religious genius or hero who, like many prophets who preceded him, sustained a special relationship with God. He, like them, experienced visions that transcend the external world of mere phenomena.

· Jesus lived in a first-century milieu saturated with Jewish apocalyptic speculations about a coming Messiah.

· The followers of Jesus freely borrowed from these concepts to describe Jesus, around whom a messianic cult soon developed.

· The title “Lord” was applied to Jesus in order to focus on him as the present, reigning Lord of the church rather than the future, messianic Son of Man.

· As he came to be viewed as God’s unique gift to mankind, all manner of worship and honorific titles were given him.

· Eventually Paul himself saw in Jesus a spiritual power with whom he might enjoy a mystical relationship. He thus soon became the Lord who governs the entire personal life of the believer. The development reached its zenith in John and the later Christian community who viewed Jesus as the eternally pre-existent Word, Son of God, and coming King.

The distinction was thus made between the Jesus of history, i.e., the carpenter from Nazareth, and the dynamic Christ of personal faith. Whereas the former “Jesus” was real, the latter “Christ” was the religious creation of the early church, born of existential need. We “know” the Jesus of history, but we “believe” in the Christ of the church. Any suggestion of an ontological continuity between the two was summarily dismissed.

D. The Doctrine of Kenosis

Here we will focus on three theologians.

1. Gottfried Thomasius (1802-76) – A Lutheran, Thomasius believed that Luther and subsequent Lutheran orthodoxy had suppressed the genuine humanity of Jesus. Luther’s concept of the communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes), according to which the humanity of Christ shared in the majesty and attributes of his deity, seemed to detract from the authenticity of the former. It also failed to explain the earthly life and obvious limitations of Jesus.

Thus, purportedly in the interests of preserving the true humanity of Christ, Thomasius argued that the pre-existent Word emptied (Gk.,kenoo, Phil. 2:5-11) himself of all attributes deemed incompatible with our manhood and exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant. The concept of kenosis was not new in Christian theology. Others had earlier affirmed a kenosis by which Christ temporarily emptied himself of the use of divine attributes, suspending their employment during the time of his humiliation. But in the kenotic theology of Thomasius, Christ did not merely suspend his use of said attributes: he divested himself of them and utterly forsook them. It was more than a mere concealment of his divine attributes beneath the guise of his humanity. It was an actual deprivation of the former upon assumption of the latter. “Kenosis,” said Thomasius, “is the exchange of one form of existence for another” (Christi Person und Werk, II:15; 1853/55).

Christ did not cease to be God, but simply ceased to exist in the form of God, and so utterly emptied himself that his self-consciousness was human, not divine. Thomasius argued that we must distinguish between, on the one hand, the absolute / essential / immanent attributes of God, such as truth, holiness, intelligence, freedom, love, and, on the other, the relative attributes of God such as omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. The former are essential to the Godhead and always remain in the incarnate Christ. The latter, however, do not strictly belong to the essence of God but are evoked through his relationship to the world and may consequently be forsaken or set aside in Christ’s act of self-limitation.

2. Wolfgang Friedrich Gess (1819-1891) – Gess advocated a more extreme kenotic theory in which all of God’s attributes, both absolute and relative, were forsaken. “He reduces Himself,” said Gess, “to the germ of a human soul.” This view has been called incarnation by divine suicide.

3. Isaac August Dorner (1809-84) and the theory of Gradual Incarnation – Dorner was a German Lutheran who strongly reacted to the kenotic theory (see his History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 5 vols., 1861; and System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., 1879-81).

Dorner did not believe that the incarnation was a singular, momentary act that was consummated at the point of the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary. It was, rather, a continuous, progressive, augmentative process, by which the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, gradually united himself in ever-increasing measure with the man Jesus, until such was consummated at the time of the resurrection. The result of this final union was a single consciousness and a single will in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Simultaneous with Jesus’ experience of genuine human growth was his experience of progressive appropriation of the human by the divine. Dorner believed this was the only way to explain both the deity of Christ and his earthly limitations.

E. The Contemporary Assault on the Doctrine of the Incarnation

In 1977 a group of prominent British theologians and NT scholars released a book that landed like a bombshell in the church: The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press).

In the preface the claim is made that Christianity must continue to adapt itself into something which can be believed by rational people. In the 19^th century two such adaptations can be identified: (1) evolutionary theory on the origin of the race (2) and repudiation of verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. Says Hick:

“The writers of this book are convinced that another major theological development is called for in this last part of the twentieth century. The need arises from the growing knowledge of Christian origins, and involves a recognition that Jesus was . . . ‘a man approved by God’ for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, is a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us” (ix; emphasis mine).

In other words, as Maurice Wiles asks in the chapter titled “Christianity Without Incarnation?”, “Are we sure that the concept of an incarnate being, one who is both fully God and fully man, is after all an intelligible concept?” (5). There are ten articles in the book, three of which are here noted.

(1) A Cloud of Witnesses (pp. 13-47, by Frances Young, lecturer in NT studies at the Birmingham University). Young’s thesis is that each individual in the NT or early church who either met or knew Jesus or learned of him by oral tradition sought categories in which to express their impression of him and response to his claims. The common stock of christological titles found in the NT, says Young,

“derive from the surrounding cultural background and were used by the early Christians to express their faith-response to Jesus of Nazareth. The early Christians were searching for categories which could adequately express their sense of salvation in him. It is significant that some saw him as a Rabbi, others as a prophet, others as a zealot, others as a miracle-worker and healer; that some called him Lord, some Messiah, some Son of God and so on. Both in his lifetime and in the context of the early church, groups and individuals responded to him in their own way as the one who fulfilled their needs and hopes” (18).

Later in her chapter Young writes:

“So far what we have said in interpretation of Paul could be given the anachronistic tag ‘adoptionistic’, and indeed, it implies not just the adoption of Jesus but of all men in him. It certainly does not imply the incarnation of an essentially divine being” (20).

“His Sonship to God is not expressed in terms of ‘divine nature’, but as a result of divine creation and election on the one hand, and on the other hand, his own perfect obedience in doing God’s work and obeying God’s will” (21).

(2) Jesus, the Man of Universal Destiny (pp. 48-63; by Michael Goulder, University of Birmingham) – Goulder begins by classifying certain individuals in history as “men and women of destiny” (55). “It is a part of such a person’s life,” says Goulder, “to know himself as destined for leadership at this moment. They believe themselves to be inspired. They hear voices” (55). He mentions people such as Joan of Arc, Churchill, Ghandi, Mao, Martin Luther King, and of course, Jesus. But Jesus is more. He is not just one in the class of “men of destiny”, he is the man of universal destiny. However, like Ghandi, King, and Joan of Arc, he died a martyr’s death, a necessary step in founding the society of love. And what of the resurrection?

“. . . so great is the power of hysteria within a small community that in the evening, in the candlelight, with fear of arrest still a force, and hope of resolution budding in them too, it seemed as if the Lord came through the locked door to them, and away again. So was Jesus’ life’s work sealed. The experience of Easter fused a faith that was to carry Jesus to divinity, and his teachings to every corner of the globe” (59).

(3) Jesus and the World Religions (pp. 167-85; by John Hick, University of Birmingham) – The doctrine of Christ’s deity, says Hick, is the result of the exaltation of a good but wholly human teacher into a divine figure of universal power:

“Thus Buddhology and christology developed in comparable ways. The human Gautama came to be thought of as the incarnation of a transcendent, pre-existent Buddha as the human Jesus came to be thought of as the incarnation of the pre-existent Logos or divine Son. And in the Mahayana the transcendent Buddha is one with the Absolute as in Christianity the eternal Son is one with God the Father” (169).

Jesus, says Hick, was intensely conscious of the reality of God. His life was a continuous response to the love of God and its demands, namely, loving others:

“He was so powerfully God-conscious that his life vibrated, as it were, to the divine life; and as a result his hands could heal the sick, and the ‘poor in spirit’ were kindled to new life in his presence” (172).

“Thus in Jesus’ presence, we should have felt that we are in the presence of God – not in the sense that the man Jesus literally is God, but in the sense that he was so totally conscious of God that we could catch something of that consciousness by spiritual contagion” (172).

Given this perception of the man Jesus, pressure mounted within the tightly-knit Christian community to predicate of Jesus titles which more explicitly affirmed his divine origin and nature:

“Once men and women had been transformed by their encounter with Jesus, he was for them the religious centre of their existence, the object of their devotion and loyalty, the Lord in following whom they were both giving their lives to God and receiving their lives renewed from God. And so it was natural that they should express this lordship in the most exalted terms which their culture offered” (174).

In the Epilogue, Dennis Nineham draws the only conclusion the book can offer:

“In a situation of galloping cultural change, which has brought the doctrine of the literal divinity of Jesus into question, is it any longer worthwhile to attempt to trace the Christian’s everchanging understanding of his relationship with God directly back to some identifiable element in the life, character, and activity of Jesus of Nazareth?” (202).

In other words, in the final analysis, the Jesus of historic Christian orthodoxy is irrelevant.

Sam Storms

Nov 8, 2006

Series: Historical Theology ... Read

Christology:

The Work of Christ

In this lesson, we will look at the significant post-reformation developments concerning the work of Christ, specifically, his atoning sacrifice.

A. Theologians and Theories Emphasizing the Objective Nature of Christ's Atoning Death

Perhaps the best example of this tradition is found in 19^th century America among Reformed theologians.

1. William G. T. Shedd (1820-1894) - Shedd followed the reformers by insisting that the atonement of Christ was grounded in God's justice. Contrary to Grotius, Shedd argued that divine justice is not an arbitrary appointment of the divine will, easily rescinded or abrogated, but is a necessary and intrinsic quality constitutive of the being of God:

"Retributive justice is necessary in its operation. The claim of the law upon the transgressor for punishment is absolute and indefeasible. The eternal Judge may or may not exercise mercy, but he must exercise justice" (Dogmatic Theology, II:436).

However, Shedd points out that whereas sin necessitates punishment, it need not fall upon the sinner:

"Hence, in every instance of transgression, the penalty of law must be inflicted, either personally or vicariously; either upon the transgressor or upon his substitute. The remission of penalty under the Divine administration is not absolute, but relative. It may be omitted in respect to the real criminal, but, if so, it must be inflicted upon some one in his place. . . . [T]he exercise of justice, while necessary in respect to sin, is free and sovereign in respect to the sinner. Justice necessarily demands that sin be punished, but not necessarily in the person of the sinner. Justice may allow of the substitution of one person for another, provided that in the substitution no injustice is done to the rights of any of the parties interested" (I:373; cf. also II:451).

2. Charles Hodge (1797-1878) - Hodge differs only in emphasis, placing more stress on the concept of covenant in the atonement. Just as God ordained for Adam to stand vicariously as the covenantal or federal head of his people, such that his action (the fall) and its consequence (guilt and death) become that of his posterity, so also Christ stood vicariously as the covenant head of those who by divine election were so related to him. His action (obedience) and its consequence (righteousness) are likewise imputed to those whom he represented.

Other American theologians who followed suit were A. A. Hodge (1823-86; son of Charles), Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921), and more recently Leon Morris.

There were also a number of Scottish theologians who embraced the doctrine of penal substitution.

3. George Smeaton (The Doctrine of the Atonement as taught by Christ Himself [1868] and The Doctrine of the Atonement as taught by the Apostles [1870]) - He clearly argues for penal substitution:

". . . the sufferings of Christ were penal in their character, or, in other words, that they were judiciously inflicted in the execution of a law which demanded punishment on the sins of men" (183).

It should be noted that Smeaton, on occasion, appears to endorse the concept ofacceptilation:

"All that it very much concerns us to be assured of is, that the sufferings of Christ were deemed sufficientin the judgment of God to satisfy his justice, to expiate our guilt, and to obtain for us eternal redemption" (176, 185).

4. James Denney (1856-1917) - Denney wrote several important treatises, among which wereThe Death of Christ (1902), The Atonement and the Modern Mind (1903), and The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation (1917). Denney placed more emphasis on Christ's passive sufferings and less on his obedient life than his American counterparts:

"If He had not died for us, He would have done nothing at all" (CDR, 274).

"The work of reconciliation, in the sense of the NT, is a work which is finished, and which we must conceive to be finished, before the gospel is preached" (DOC, 101).

In other words, Christ has done something outside of us and apart from our cooperation, into the benefits of which we are now able to enter through faith. Commenting on 2 Cor. 5:14-15,

"Plainly, if Paul's conclusion is to be drawn, the 'for' must reach deeper than this mere suggestion of our advantage: if we all died, in that Christ died for us, there must be a sense in which that death of His is ours; He must be identified with us in it;there, on the cross, while we stand and gaze at Him, He is not simply a person doing us a service; He is a person doing us a service by filling our place and dying our death" (Commentary on 2 Corinthians, 194-95).

Again,

"It is a death in which the divine condemnation of sin comes upon Christ, and is exhausted there, so that there is thenceforth no more condemnation for those that are in Him" (Studies in Theology, 108).

Concerning the word "substitution" he writes:

"It declares that God forgives our sins because Christ died for them; and it maintains unambiguously that in that death of Christ our condemnation came upon Him, that for us there might be no condemnation more. This is the truth which is covered and guarded by the word "substitution"" (Studies in Theology, 126).

I mention in passing R. W. Dale, an English theologian who used the terminology of penal substitution while deviating from its intended meaning. He calls both the imputation of our sin to Christ and Christ's righteousness to us 'a legal fiction' (The Atonement, lxiii). According to Culpepper, Dale's theory is "an attempt to restate the doctrine of penal substitution in such a way as not to offend the moral sensibilities of modern man" (Interpreting the Atonement, 109).

B. Theologians and Theories Emphasizing the Subjective Nature of Christ's Atoning Death

Subjective theories of the atonement are those which envision the focus or aim of Christ's sufferings to be the human soul rather than God himself.

1. F. Schleiermacher (1768-1834; so too, Albrecht Ritschl; 1822-1889) - Schleiermacher denied the objective focus of Christ's death and insisted that no barrier to reconciliation with man (such as the demands of divine justice) exists in the heart of God. Christ's death terminates entirely upon humanity. He emphasized notwhat Christ does for us but what he does in us, namely, bringing us into a deeper consciousness of complete dependence on God and thus participation in His life.

2. Horace Bushnell (1802-76) and Hastings Rashdall (1858-1924) - Bushnell openly denies any form of substitution in Christ's death and articulates an updated version of Abelard's moral influence theory:

"On the other hand, we are not to hold the Scripture terms of vicarious sacrifice, as importing a literal substitution of places, by which Christ becomes a sinner for sinners, or penally subject to our deserved penalties. That is a kind of substitution that offends every strongest sentiment of our nature. He cannot become guilty for us. Neither, as God is a just being, can He be anyhow punishable in our place - all God's moral sentiments would be revolted by that" (Forgiveness and Law, 79).

"By the previous exposition Christ is shown to be a Savior, not as being a ground of justification, but as being the Moral Power of God upon us, so a power of salvation. His work terminates, not in the release of penalties by due compensation, but in the transformation of character, and the rescue, in that manner, of guilty men from the retributive causations provoked by their sin" (449).

Rashdall (The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, 1919) advocates a similar view. Note his comments on Acts 4:12,

"There is none other ideal given among men by which we may be saved except the moral ideal which Christ taught by His words, and illustrated by His life and death of love; and there is none other help so great in the attainment of that ideal as the belief in God as He has been revealed in Him who so taught and lived and died" (463).

C. Theologians and Theories Emphasizing the Victorious Nature of Christ's Atoning Death

We focus here on but one man, Gustaf Aulen (b. 1879), theologian at the University of Lund in Sweden. His most famous work was Christus Victorin which he argued for what has come to be known as the "Classic" theory of the atonement:

"Its central theme is the idea of the Atonement as a Divine conflict and victory; Christ ' Christus Victor ' fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the "tyrants" under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself? (4; special appeal is made to 1 John 3:8).

In effect, Aulen resurrects the patristic theory of the atonement, but modifies it by eliminating the crude imagery of Christ's blood as a ransom to Satan. He focuses on the victorious conflict of Christ against the powers of evil. His view is thus dualistic, but in this sense:

"It is used in the sense in which the idea constantly occurs in Scripture, of the opposition between God and that which in His own created world resists His will; between the Divine love and the rebellion of created wills against Him. This Dualism is an altogether radical opposition, but it is not an absolute Dualism; for in the scriptural view evil has not an eternal existence" (5).

D. The Theory of Vicarious Confession and/or Repentance

There is one theory of the atonement that defies classification. It was articulated by John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872) in his book The Nature of the Atonement (1856). It may well be that Campbell embraced this theory principally to maintain his belief in the universal extent of the atonement, for he believed the penal substitutionary theory logically entailed restricting the benefits of Christ's sufferings to the elect. He says this concerning John Owen'sDeath of Death in the Death of Christ:

"As addressed to those who agreed with him as to the nature of the atonement, while differing with him as to the extent of its reference, this seems unanswerable" (1873, 4^th ed., 51).

Some contend Campbell derived his theory from Jonathan Edwards, who wrote:

"It is requisite that God should punish all sin with infinite punishment; because all sin, as it is against God, is infinitely heinous, and has infinite demerit, is justly infinitely hateful to him, and so stirs up infinite abhorrence and indignation in him. Therefore, it is requisite that God should punish it, unless there be something in some measure to balance this desert; either some answerable repentance or sorrow for it, or other compensation" (Essay onSatisfaction for Sin, NY ed. I:583).

Yet Edwards rejected the possibility of an "answerable repentance," for repentance is possible only by those who have sinned, and whatever degree of repentance someone might produce, it is as nothing in comparison with the injury, done by him in sinning.

Campbell begins by affirming that Christ suffered as an atoning sacrifice but not as a penal substitute:

"The sufferer suffers what he suffers just through seeing sin and sinners with God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. Is such suffering a punishment? Is God in causing such a divine experience in humanity inflicting a punishment? There can be but one answer" (117). And that answer is No.

"While Christ suffered for our sins as an atoning sacrifice, what he suffered was not - because from its nature it could not be - a punishment" (101).

He then argues, contrary to Edwards, that Christ himself offered an adequate sorrow, confession, and repentance for sin. He explains:

"That oneness of mind with the Father, which toward man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the Son's dealing with the Father in relation to our sins, take the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession as to its own nature must have been a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man. . . . That response has all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man, --- a perfect sorrow --- a perfect contrition --- all the elements of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection, all except the personal consciousness of sin; and in that perfect response in Amen to the mind of God in relation to sin is the wrath of God rightly met, and that is accorded to divine justice which is its due, and could alone satisfy it" (117-18).

God's justice is thus satisfied, not by Christ enduring the penalty of the law, but by his perfect confession of sin on our behalf. Christ uttered forth in his life and death a heart-felt 'Amen!' to the assessment of God against human rebellion:

"We feel that such a repentance as we are supposing would be the true and proper satisfaction to offended justice, and that there would be more atoning worth in one tear of the true and perfect sorrow than in endless ages of penal woe" (125).

[For a more positive assessment of Campbell's concept of atonement, see Thomas F. Torrance,Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark)

Read

After Chalcedon

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Thus, whether one thinks of Irenaeus and Tertullian against Docetists and other Gnostics, Athanasius against Arians, the Cappadocian Fathers against Apollinaris, Cyril of Alexandria against Nestorius, always the essential point of the orthodox tradition is that only God -- true God -- can work redemption, and does so by taking upon himself human nature in its wholeness. And if the language of the definition has what Grillmeier refers to as a "static-ontic ring", that is because only the precise technical language of scientific theology could express exactly, and thereby safeguard the essential religious truth of the Incarnation.
------------------------------------

The fifth, sixth and seventh ecumenical councils (II Constantinople, 553; III Constantinople, 680-81; II Nicaea, 787) were all in some sense christological councils, all concerned in some way or another with problems of Monophysite tendencies. For instance, II Constantinople fostered a "Cyrillian" interpretation of Chalcedon, in the vain hope of reconciling separated Monophysite Christians; III Constantinople condemned those who argued for one will (i.e., divine) in Christ, or one operation -- positions which would deny the integrity of his human nature; and II Nicaea condemned the iconoclasts, on the grounds that their rejection of images representing Christ betokened a denial of his true humanity. Byzantium, while remaining true to the letter of the Chalcedonian definition, manifested always, throughout its history, in its political theology and in the character of its spirituality generally, the "Neo-Chalcedonian" standpoint which emphasizes the "divinizing" of the natural, and is therefore uneasy with the Chalcedonian duality of natures.

----------------------------------------

The first important Latin interpretation of Chalcedon is the tractate by Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, probably written in 512, as Boethius meditated upon questions posed by certain oriental bishops in a letter to Pope Symmachus.^[5] Boethius' tractate, much read and commented on in the Middle Ages, was particularly important for its clear exposition of the Monophysite and Nestorian alternatives, and its precise definitions of the terms involved. What is meant by "person"? Boethius answers: "person is the individual substance of a rational nature". What is meant by "nature"? "Nature is the specific property of any substance".^[6]

Thus, Christ is understood to be one individual rational substance (i.e., one "person"), possessing the specific properties (or "natures") of both divinity and humanity. Thus, "in him", says Boethius, "nature becomes double and substance double because he is God-man (homo-deus) and one person since the same is man and God. This is the middle way between two heresies...."^[7]

The Chalcedonian definition, in the Boethian understanding of it, remains standard for Latin Christendom throughout the Middle Ages; but even the precision of Boethius left certain questions unresolved, notably questions as to the manner of the union of natures in Christ. Peter Lombard, in the twelfth century, in that most successful of medieval theological text-books, his Libri sententiarum, says that there are three opinions, all of which, he says, can be found in St. Augustine: 1. The Son of God assumed a man; 2. The Word of God was clothed with humanity; 3. The person of the Son composed a human nature, of soul and body, taken separately.^[8] These opinions were matters of extended debate throughout the scholastic era
----------------------------

For the medieval doctors, as for the Church Fathers before them, christological discussion had always a soteriological dimension. Nowhere is that fact more evident than in the works of St. Anselm, De conceptu virginali, Epistola de incarnatione verbi, and above all, Cur deus homo. Jaroslav Pelikan, in his book on Jesus Through the Centuries says of Cur deus homo, that

more than any other treatise between Augustine and the Reformation on any other doctrine of the Christian faith, Anselm's essay has shaped the outlook not only of Roman Catholics, but of most Protestants, many of whom have paid him the ultimate compliment of not even recognizing that their version of the wisdom of the cross comes from him, but attributing it to the bible itself.

-----------------------------

Anselm's essay is, in fact, thoroughly biblical and traditional in its substance: all that is really new is the attempt to cast the argument in the form of "necessary reasons". His position assumes and rests firmly upon Chalcedonian christology, serving to bring out more sharply the soteriological dimensions of that christology. Most twentieth-century criticism of the argument arises chiefly from cultural prejudices and lacks theological seriousness. The one serious theological criticism, found in Gustav Aulén's very influential Christus Victor and elsewhere, is that Anselm makes of redemption a human work. But such a criticism involves overlooking Anselm's Chalcedonian presuppositions: for him, redemption is seen as the work of the Deus-homo, the God-man. For Anselm, as for Chalcedon, both sides, the divine and the human, are crucial. It is the Son of God, in his human nature, who is offered to pay the price which fallen man can never pay.^{[10]

----------------------------}

NOTES

1. The most useful modern studies of this history are A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon 451 (tr. J. S. Bowden, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965); A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart, II (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1954), especially section VII, "Chalkedon und die abendländische Theologie von 451 bis zur Hochscholastik", pp. 763-939. Still valuable, especially for extensive consideration of the Greek Fathers and Eriugena, is J. Bach, Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters vom christologischen Standpunkte, Part I (Frankfurt/M: Minerva reprint, 1966). Also generally useful is J. Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1985).
2. Translation from H. Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1947), p. 73.

3. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, p. 491.

4. H. U. von Balthazar, Kosmische Liturgie. Maximus der Bekenner, quoted in P. Piret, Le Christ et la trinité selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), p. 23.

5. The Latin text of the tractate, with English translation, is published in H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, S. J. Tester, Boethius, The Theological Tractates, The Consolation of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978); on the christology, cf. A. Trapè, "Boezio teologo e S. Agostino", in L. Obertello, ed., Atti. Congresso internazionale di studi boeziani (Rome: Herder, 1981), esp. pp. 21-24.

6. Boethius, Contra Eutychen, ed. cit., IV, p. 93.

7. Ibid., cf. Trapè, op. cit., p. 23.

8. Peter Lombard, Libri sententiarum, III, dist. VI.

9. Pelikan, op. cit., pp. 106-107.

10. For more detailed criticism of Aulén's argument, see my essay "Atonement and Sacrifice: Doctrine and Worship. St. Augustine and the Fathers", together with Gavin Dunbar's response to that essay, in G. E. Eayrs, ed., Atonement and Sacrifice (Charlottetown: St. Peter Publications, 1990), pp. 24-40; and W. Hankey's essay, "St. Anselm and the Medieval Doctors", in the same volume, pp. 41-62.

11. See, e.g., the classic work in this field, E. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1959), esp. pp 78, 128-129.

12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, 1, 8, ad 2.

^More

Monergism” vs ”Synergism

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“Augustine and the Varieties of Monergism”

Synergism is just a Greek way of saying “co-operation,” which in turn is just a Latin way of saying “working together.” Paul uses the corresponding Greek verb when he describes himself and his colleagues as “co-working” (2 Cor. 6:1) with God as ambassadors for Christ, through whom God urges people to be reconciled to himself (ibid., 5:20). Monergism, a much more recent term, means to work alone, having no co-worker. So monergists are those who think that in some respect God works alone.

The crucial question is: in what respect? The standard Protestant view is monergism with respect to justification: God alone renders us just or righteous in his sight, without our co-operation. But most Protestants would add that sanctification is a co-operative enterprise in which our will and work have a necessary role to play, working together with the grace of God. So most Protestants are monergists about justification but synergists about sanctification. And since justification by faith alone is all that is necessary for salvation, most Protestants are also monergists about salvation.

Of course in order to be thoroughly monergist about justification one must also be monergist about the faith by which we are justified, understanding it to be a divine gift resulting from grace alone and not from human work. Luther, in effect, insisted on this type of monergism when he excoriated the medieval nominalist notion of “congruent merit,” according to which sinners work to acquire the gift of “first grace” (meaning roughly, the gift of conversion and true faith) by praying as well as they can, trying their best to “do what is in them” (facere quod in se est) even without grace. The term “synergism” seems to have come into use for the position rejected by the Lutheran orthodox theologians when they reaffirmed Luther’s doctrine in the Book of Concord in 1580 (see especially article 2). Later, Calvinists used it to describe the Arminian position that our free will has an independent role to play in accepting the gift of grace. Synergism, for both Lutherans and Calvinists, means the teaching that grace does not simply cause us to have faith, but rather makes an offer of salvation which it is up to us to accept or reject. Both Lutherans and Calvinists reject this synergism, and thus can aptly be labeled monergists with respect to the gift of faith.

Theology Reader: Medieval Theology Resources

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Theology Reader: Medieval Theology Resources

V.C. Samuel, The Chalcedon Re-examined, Reviews

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Rev. Dr. V.C. Samuel was a priest of the Indian Syrian Orthodox Church. He was a pioneer in the ecumenical movement towards unity and reconciliation by reappraisal of historical events. Fr. Samuel studied in Yale University for his Ph. D. He was a Syriac scholar and served as professor, in Serampore College, United Theological College, Bangalore, Theological College of Holy Trinity, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He worked briefly for the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, and was involved in Ecumenical Research for many years, worked with the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, Bangalore and served as a member of the Faith and Order commission of the WCC. He took part in the Orthodox-Catholic ecumenical dialogue.

Read some of the Reviews of his Chalcedon Re-examined from Amazon:

1) The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined_ by Father V. C. Samuel is a lengthy dissertation dealing with the political, historical and theological conflicts behind the ecumenical council at Chalcedon (near Constantinople in Asia Minor) in AD 451.

Fr. Samuel, a priest in the Indian Orthodox Church, has studied extensively in the Syriac language and Christian theology since his youth in India. He brings a frequently disregarded perspective into this obscure theological-political struggle of the fifth century Byzantine Empire. From 451 onwards there has been a continual schism, or broken communion, between the Orthodox Church, the later pro-Chalcedonian churches (Roman Catholic and Protestant) and the so called non-Chalcedonian, Oriental Orthodox, or "monophysite" Church. The non-Chalcedonian church has distinguished and isolated itself from the rest of Christendom because of this schism and continues to exist today preserving a very ancient and even "primitive" form of Christianity in Egypt, Armenia, Syria, India, Ethiopia and Eritrea. I recommend _The Council of Chalcedon_ to those interested in church history because it covers such a wide variety of information in an objective manner from a very different theological tradition than most Christian authors.

Samuel's book is basically about the events before and after the council of Chalcedon in 451. Chalcedon is sometimes referred to as the "Fourth Ecumenical Council" by Orthodox and Roman Catholic historians, although was not universally acknowledged by ancient Christendom. Samuel familiarizes the reader with the subject by over viewing councils (in 431, 449 and 450) where the dominant doctrinal issue at stake was a definition of exactly who Christ was in extremely technical Greek theological terms. This structuring does the reader a service because it provides a backdrop to the issues Samuel discusses during 451 and afterwards. During 431, a majority of bishops decided to adopt the writings and anathemas (curses) of Cyril of Alexandria (the largest city in Egypt) as official doctrine. The next generation of bishops in Alexandria, led by Cyril's successor Dioscorus, stringently supported Cyril's works. Samuel is an adherent of the Alexandrian position and therefore a modern supporter of the deposed Egyptian patriarch Dioscorus. One of the strong points of Samuel's book, in my opinion, is he goes into a lengthy analysis of the wrangling and power struggles of the different sides and how Dioscorus was condemned.

_The Council of Chalcedon_ covers which groups had a political stake in the outcomes of Chalcedon. To the vast majority of Egyptians, Chalcedon was the "council of schism." In contrast, Chalcedon was a bastion of Christian Orthodoxy for the prelates loyal to the Byzantine Empire and its government and the pope of Rome in the west. The pro-Roman and pro-empire parties considered _The Tome of Leo_ as the definitive statement of Christology which supplemented and complemented Cyril's writings. Samuel does an excellent job in this area of analysis because he differentiates between actual theology and what were in fact worldly power struggles between separatist and nationalist elements in the empire and those interested in maintaining centralized church authority in Rome and Constantinople.

Samuel also focuses on the outcome of Chalcedon and does not cover up the often violent and criminal conflicts that raged in the Byzantine Empire. The separate non-Chalcedon church was viewed as a threat by the imperial government to its authority which was bound up with pro-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. Violence broke out in places, involving persecutions of dissident monks and prelates. Factionalists from both sides even assassinated and murdered bishops.

In later centuries, debate continued between the non-Chalcedonian church and the Orthodox adherents of Chalcedon. Samuel addresses the question of whether or not the non-Chalcedonians were rightfully deserving of the label "monophysite" which has had a heretical and therefore negative connotation in Western Christendom. Samuel does an excellent job of showing how the theologians of the non-Chalcedon church in later centuries maintained inherently Orthodox Christian beliefs. He argues to the modern reader how the label "monophysite" is a misnomer and something of an undeserved slander. The greatest theologians of the non-Chalcedonians, such as Severus of Antioch, Timothy Aelurus and Philoxenos of Mabbogh, went to great lengths to maintain their belief in the humanity of Christ. The non-Chalcedonian Church also anathematized teachings as heresies that were associated with "monophysitism" by the Orthodox Church. Among the teachings repudiated were Eutychianism, the belief that Christ was not consubstantial with humanity; the belief that Christ had only one "property" in his being, and Julianism, the belief that Christ's humanity was of some incorruptible nature.

Samuel also lists several extremely technical Greek terms became bones of contention because their precise meanings and usage in previous documents were not agreed upon by the debating parties: ousia "essence," hypostasis "that which exists in itself", physis "nature", prosopon "person" and hyparxis "existence". This section of the book greatly helps the reader understand the precise issues that were up for debate and how they were understood differently by the opposing sides.

It appears that the schism heralded by Chalcedon and imperial and papal political and theological agendas was a terrible mistake and both sides were in fact "Orthodox" in their Christology. Both sides condemned the same views as heretical and both were careful to uphold the true humanity of Christ, as well as his divinity. This is the conclusion that Samuel reaches in his book. His work is of such excellent quality because he defends his thesis so well. Chalcedon was essentially a regional power struggle between different factions masked by what was basically a haggle over words. These are the reasons why The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined is a recommended book for readers interested in theology and the history of religion. The book does have a significant fault in because it does not go into enough detail as to what the specific accusations against Dioscorus were. It also seems to attack Chalcedonian Orthodoxy as inherently dangerous to Christendom and the Church at large. Otherwise, Samuel's book is an excellent, objectively written text.

2) "the well known Cyrillic formula of 'One united nature of the Incarnate Word' has constituted the basis, the crux of our Christologies, for us the Oriental Orthodox,...emphasis on that; 'it was the Logos who assumed humanity." Armenian Catholicos

Ecumenical Christology:
Oriental Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, and Syriacs were always defiant, and have persistently challenged Caledonian's habitual errancy in calling them-the ancient apostolic churches of the Mia-Physite (Hypostatically United) tradition-as Mono-physite. Such devious terminology alleged their unity with Eutichian heterodox, in Christological belief, which could not be sustained by any sound theological analysis, old or novel. Most of contemporary eminent Roman Catholic and Protestant experts have condemned the Chalcedonic expression as futile and practically indefensible. Luther, Barth, are Cyrillic Miaphysites, while von Harnack, Baillie, Rahner, Schoonenberg, Tillich, and many others like R. Brown, J. Fitzmyer, J.Knox, and before his parting, Fr. Grillmeyer were never comfortable with consequential lack of soteriology in Leo's Tome.

Chalcedon in the dock?
"Chalcedon was a stumbling block-and still is. It has been said that present day theology has put Chalcedon in the dock." Cardinal Kasper writes that it is not difficult to find many utterances among leading theologians, Protestant and Catholic, which tend in the same direction of A. von Harnack. Everywhere we hear about the impossible deadlock (aporia), presented by the doctrine of the 'two natures' in in Kung, Rahner,Tillich, and Pannenberg, and many others." (W. Kasper, Theology and the Church, Crossroads, 1989, p. 95)

Severian Christology:
Based on his doctoral dissertation, whose thesis analyzed "The Council of Chalcedon and the Christology of Severus of Antioch," the book included his subsequent research on primary source material. His supported findings addressed the christological controversy, and is another earnest attempt to theologically reevaluate the Chalcedonian expression pros and cons. The 'Council of schism' has divided the church, and split the Byzantine empire, helping in the domination of Islam. In his research work, and thorough examination of source documents-mostly in their original language-has cast some light on the root cause of present-day ecclesiological differences. The work of Fr. Samuel made possible "to revisit genuine incarnation theologies of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries in order to equip itself with powerful instruments for overcoming dualistic concepts in cosmology, anthropology and in political ethics" (German theologian Dietrich Ritschl)

Confusion of terms in Patristic theology

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Much of the controversies that raged the Patristic period regarding Trinity and Christology were due to the confusion of meanings in the usage of Greek terms in the Alexandrian and Antiochean Schools. Dr. V. C. Samuel in his Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) writes: "In the Christological controversy, unlike any other theological dispute in the ancient church, there was a great deal of obscurity on account of the technical terms that were employed. theologians of all shades of opinion used the following terms: ousia in Greek; the Syriac used either ousia or Ithutho to correspond to it. Hupostasis in Greek and its Syriac equivalent Qnumo. Physis in Greek had kyono as its Syriac rendering. The Greek prosopon had parsupo in Syriac....(p.218,;see also , pp. 257-9).

For a brief description of this confusion of terms visit Timothy Enloe's site.

He writes:

"Prior to the Councils, at least in Neoplatonic circles, the terms hypostasis (υποστασισ) and ousia (ουσια) had the same meaning. Whereas hypostasis signified a real being that had entered real existence, ousia meant something primal and eternal. Significantly for later disputes, Latin translations of the creeds used the word substantia for both hypostasis and ousia.

The word prosopon (πρωσοπον) classically referred to one’s “face” in the sense of “individual outward being.” Its meaning could be extended to refer to one’s “role” or “position” in the community. In patristic thought, as a result of the Sabellian controversies, prosopon came to mean roughly the same thing as hypostasis (but with no metaphysical connotations) and sometimes also referred to a concrete instantation of an abstract ousia.

Lastly, the word physis (φυσισ) typically referred to the actual nature of a thing, to the characteristics and qualities of which it was composed or to those things as they would exist when it was finished developing.

At the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), hypostasis and ousia were used interchangeably against the Arian doctrine that “there was a time when He was not.” It is possible that both terms were used to indicate some differences of emphasis among the assembled Fathers. By contrast, by the time of the Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.), hypostasis had become synonymous instead with prosopon. The common triune nature of the Godhead became ousia while the individual expression of the three Persons were each prosopon. Meanwhile, physis became tied to ousia in another refutation of the Arian position that Christ was a creation of God (i.e., a physis with a different ousia)."

Also go to the descriptions of Key Terms

ousia (essence/being/substance): Important in the Trinitarian doctrine codified at the council of Nicea (325), which declared the Son to be of the same essence (homoousious) as the Father. It becomes important in Christological debates as various theologians sought to understand how the humanity of Jesus and our human nature could be homoousious (usually translated "co-essential").

hypostasis (entity, substance, "person"): Used at Nicea as a synonym for ousia (the word literally means "to stand under" i.e. "sub-stance"). Over the course of the 4th century it comes to be distinguished from ousia and taken as meaning "entity" or "individual reality" or even "distinct manner of existing." Thus in speaking of the Trinity, theologians will speak of there being one ousia (essence/being/substance) and three hypostases (entities or "persons"). In Christology there is a concern that while Christ is both fully human and fully divine, this duality of nature not be thought of as compromising the unity of Jesus Christ as a single hypostasis i.e. Jesus is only one "thing."

physis (nature): Sometimes used in Trinitarian theology as a synonym for ousia, the term really comes into its own in Christological reflection as a way of speaking of the humanity and divinity of Christ. Thus the unity of Christ's hypostasis (person) does not imply any mixing of the divine nature and the human nature.

prosopon (person, "mask/face"): This term literally means "face" and implies the "person" that we present to others. This term was used in both Trinitarian and Christological reflection as virtually synonymous with hypostasis. However, it did not convey as strong a sense as hypostasis of an actually existing entity and thus was suspected by some of indicating only the appearance of a distinct and unified act of existence.
In Trinitarian theology, the "classic" formulation of doctrine is that
God is one essence (ousia)
existing as three persons (hypostases): Father, Son and Spirit.

In Christology, the "classic" formulation of doctrine is that
Christ is one person (hypostasis)
who possesses two natures (physes): divine and human.

2008-07-13T20:44:00.001+05:30

tag: gurukulam

Leon Morris:Theories of the Atonement

2008-07-09T11:59:00.000+05:30

Leon Morris:Theories of the Atonement
Theories of the Atonement

by Leon Morris

Throughout the Bible the central question is, "How can sinful man ever be accepted by a holy God?" The Bible takes sin seriously, much more seriously than do the other literatures that have come down to us from antiquity. It sees sin as a barrier separating man from God (Isa. 59:2), a barrier that man was able to erect but is quite unable to demolish. But the truth on which the Bible insists is that God has dealt with the problem. He has made the way whereby sinners may find pardon, God's enemies may find peace. Salvation is never seen as a human achievement. In the OT sacrifice has a large place, but it avails not because of any merit it has of itself (cf. Heb. 10:4), but because God has given it as the way (Lev. 17:11). In the NT the cross plainly occupies the central place, and it is insisted upon in season and out of season that this is God's way of bringing salvation. There are many ways of bringing this out. The NT writers do not repeat a stereotyped story. Each writes from his own perspective. But each shows that it is the death of Christ and not any human achievement that brings salvation.For the full text go to Molemax: Leon Morris:Theories of the Atonement

The Meaning of the Atonement

2008-07-09T11:47:00.001+05:30

The Meaning of the Atonement

by Mark M. Mattison

Introduction

The foundational truth of Christianity is that Christ Jesus died on the cross for our sins (1 Cor. 15:3). In this way he fulfilled the old covenant sacrificial system, reconciled us to God, and changed our lives forever.

That is the doctrine of the Atonement. Its reality is not in dispute. However, many Christians struggle to understand and live this doctrine better. We know that the Atonement works; but how it works is not as clear. Over the centuries many different theories have been suggested to explain how the Atonement works. As C. S. Lewis and others note, no one interpretation has been singled out as the only valid theory. With this fact in mind, we would do well to consider some of the principal theories and their limitations, using the Scriptures as our touchstone. for the full text go to:

Molemax

Person and Work of Christ

Identity of Jesus Research Group

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

(A Reveiw of the Identity of Jesus Research Group by Fleming Rutledge in Generous Orthodoxy)

Greek patristic foundations for a theological anthropology of women in their distinctiveness as human beings

Person and Work of Christ: Reformation Christology

Calvin Reformers Christology of atonement

Jesus Seminar

Tom,Driver, Christ in a Changing World: Toward an Ethical Christology.

Theology Today - Vol 40, No. 2 - July 1983 - ARTICLE - Theocentric ...

Contents

[edit]Theological viewpoints

A Quest for Historical Jesus By Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer’s ‘consistent eschatology’

Christology Schweitzer

A Christological Hermeneutic by Donald G. Bloesch

Post-Enlightenment Christology

Enlightenment Christology

Reformation Christology

Reformation Christology

Post-Reformation Christology Schleiermacher and others

After Chalcedon

Monergism” vs ”Synergism

Theology Reader: Medieval Theology Resources

V.C. Samuel, The Chalcedon Re-examined, Reviews

Confusion of terms in Patristic theology

Leon Morris:Theories of the Atonement

The Meaning of the Atonement