Post on 08-May-2023
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B.D – PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST (III/A 3(a) 327).
Objectives:- To help the student to evolve his/her faith-expression on Jesus Christ in a
holistic perspective in order to meet the challenges of witnessing Jesus Christ in the context
of religious ideological pluralism.
-To evolve the student to see Jesus Christ in Jesus’ own historical milieu on the basis of
Biblical witness.
-To lead the student to discover the dimensions of the faith in Jesus Christ expressed by
the Church in history.
-To enable the student to evaluate the doctrinal development on the Person and Work of
Christ in the light of the socio-
political and rligio-philosophical issues of the times.
Method and Scope:
-The Course should evaluate the Biblical witness to Jesus Christ.
-The Course should aim at identifying the socio-political and rligio-philosophical issues
involved in the historical development of the doctrine of the doctrine of the Person and Work
of Christ.
-The Course should take the Indian and Western Christian response to Jesus Christ seriously,
with a view to identify the basic challenges and concerns of the faith in Jesus Christ in the
student’s own historical milieu.
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a) Jesus in his own context: The socio-economic, political and religious realities of
Palestine
Political: Although trade contacts between Greek lands and Palestine had existed for
centuries, in 332 BC a new period began. Alexander the Great extended his control over
Samaria and Judea previously under Persian governance. The Jew of the Palestine-Syria area
became part of that amalgam of Greek and Eastern civilization that we know as the
Hellenistic world.
323 – 175 BC: Dominance of Palestine by Competing Hellenistic Kings: After
Alexander’s death his empire was split up among his generals. Politically the high priests in
Judea were caught in between ambitious dynasties in Egypt and in Syria. For the first one
hundred years the Ptolemics generally dominated Judea. The situation changed when in a
series of campaigns (223 –200) the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus III humiliated the
Ptolemies and gained control of all Palestine. During this period of conflicting allegiances,
the Jews felt persecuted by the Ptolemies as attested by the legends in III Maccabees. At first
Antiochus, as the new Seleucid master, seemed less oppressive in financial demands. Yet
after defeat by the Romans (190) who imposed a huge war indemnity (compensation), the
Syrian need for money grew. Under Antiochus’ son Seleucus IV (187 –175), the Syrian
general Heliodorus is remembered as having plundered the treasury of the Jerusalem Temple.
175 – 63 BC – Antiochus Epiphanes, the Maccabean Revolt and the Hasmonean High
Priests: The predicament brought on by the Seleucids became extremely grave under the
unstable Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 – 164). Antiochus proceeded systematically to gain
unity among his subjects by having them all share the same Greek culture and religion. He
punished attempts at resistance by attacking Jerusalem (169 –167), slaughtering the
population, plundering the Temple, erecting a statue to Zeus on the Temple alter of burnt
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offering and installing a permanent Syrian garrison in a fortress in the city. In 167, there
broke out a Jewish revolt led by Mattathias, a priest living in Northwest of Jerusalem. It was
continued over a period of thirty-five years successively by his sons Judah Maccabeus,
Jonathan and Simon. A number of the very pious (the Hasideans) joined the revolt hoping
that victory would put an end to the corruption of the Temple worship by the Seleucid kings.
Final freedom from Syrian attempts to dominate Palestine came only in the first part of the
reign of the high priest John Hyrcanus I (135/4 – 104), when Rome recognized Jewish
independence. His son Aristobulus (104 – 103) took the title of king. This combination of
high priesthood and kingship would be maintained by his successors for the next forty years,
with the political interests of the position often dominating the religious. Alexander Jannaeus
(103 – 76) succeeded him, who extended the boundaries of the kingdom. He was followed by
his widow Salome Alexandra (76 – 69) and subsequently by two sons, Hyrcanus II and
Aristobulus II, whose squabbling for power opened the way for Roman intervention in the
person of Pompey, who entered Jerusalem and the Temple in 63 BC. For practical purposes
the Romans then became the rulers of the land, even if they worked through subservient high
priestly rulers and kinglets.
63 – 4 BC – Roman Dominance, Herod the Great, Augustus: The Romans favoured
the weak Hyrcanus II over Aristobulus II as high priest, but Antipater II emerged as a major
force in Palestine, first as an advisor to Hyrcanus and then with Julius Caesar’s approval, as a
procurator or overseer in his own right. Antipater’s son Herod, shifted his allegiances during
the Roman civil was, following the assassination of Caesar (44 BC). By 37 BC, Herod
became undisputed king of Judea.
After Herod’s death (4 BC), the kingdom was divided between his three sons. In the
two areas, Archelaus became ethnarch (governor of an ethnic community) of Judea, Samaria
and Idumea, while Herod Antipas became tetrarch (prince of a small area) of Galilee and part
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of the Transjordan. The rule of Archelaus was autocratic and aroused the hatred of his
subjects to the extent that they sent delegation to Rome to ask for his removal. Augustus
responded in 6 AD by making Archelaus’s territory the imperial province of Judea. The first
period of direct roman governance in Judea by prefects ended in AD 39/40. In 37 AD Herod
Agrippa I, succeeded the territories of Philip and Herod Antipas. Accordingly he was made
king over all Palestine (41 – 44 AD). After Agrippa’s death another period of Roman rule
began; but the procurators of the period 44 – 66 were of low caliber, vicious and dishonest.
Theirs was a misrule that gave rise to Zealots and a major Jewish revolt against the Romans.
Major Roman forces and the best generals were involved in suppressing the Jewish Revolt
(66 – 70). (Raymond E Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 53).
Social and economic Realities: The economic circumstances in which the Jews in the
homeland lived were generally quite modest. Only the small groups of the upper stratum in
Jerusalem and the major landowners in Galilee were well to do. Since large parts of the
Galilean hill country were originally royal lands, even in the Hellenistic period many farms
belonged to non-Jews who lived in other countries and managed their property through
administrators. The Jewish population of the country earned their living by farming,
handicraft and small businesses. The land was cultivated primarily in the plains in the
northern part of the country, and to a smaller extent in the vicinity (neighborhood) of
Jerusalem also. At that time a large part of Judea was desert, so that the road from Jerusalem
to Jericho descended through dry, uninhabited territory. The barren country of Judea allowed
only livestock and pasture farming: fishing was the industry around the Sea of Genessaret,
and in the Jordan valley vineyards and fig groves flourished. The peasant population could
secure not significantly better for the artisans who worked as weavers, tailors, smiths, scribes
or potters. Many occupations were despised, such as that of the tanner, because they
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constantly had to make themselves unclean or that of the tax collector, because he was in the
service of Gentile masters and dealt fraudulently. There was unemployment so that anyone
who lost his position was necessarily fearful of his future. Poverty and mendicancy
(destitution) were widespread. Since in Jerusalem there were markets for the various goods,
which were brought into the capital city, Jerusalem attained a certain degree of prosperity.
The roads, which traversed the countryside, were sometimes made dangerous by robbers who
attacked and plundered the tradesmen. The wretched circumstances in which many peasants,
artisans and tradesmen found themselves prompted many Jews to leave their homeland and to
seek their fortune abroad. (Eduard Lohse, The New Testament Environment, Nashville:
Abingdon press, 1984, 146).
One must also raise cautions about over-dramatizing the economic divisions. No one
doubts that the wealthy, especially the absentee landlords in Jerusalem engaged in
conspicuous consumption well beyond anything that the temple functionaries, petty traders,
merchants, laborers and the like could ever imagine. But in the life of hundreds of Galilean
villages the divisions are between rich and poor peasants.
Taxes were levied on the produce of the land, property, sale of animals and all transport
of goods across boundaries. In addition Jewish males paid a half-shekel for support of the
Jerusalem temple. Taxes on the produce of the soil were supplemented by a head tax. This tax
applied to all who were subject to the Romans directly. (Pheme Perkins, New Testament
Introduction, Mumbai: St. Pauls, 1997,46).
Slavery has existed for several centuries. Ancient sources of slaves were pirate raids
and the frequent wars that preceded the inauguration of the Roman Empire, since prisoners
and sometimes the entire populations of a conquered town were sold into slavery. The status
of slaves varies. Those who rowed in galleys or worked in the quarries had a brutal existence
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and at times slaves became restive socially and politically. Yet slaves had legal rights, and
under the Empire abusing or killing slaves constituted a punishable crime.
The pattern of Greek schooling, well established throughout the Roman Empire,
consisted of an elementary school for teaching, writing, music and athletics, then tutoring in
grammar, particularly poetry and finally an upper level education in rhetoric and philosophy.
As regards influence on Jesus, there is little evidence that Greek schools were widespread in
Palestine in NT times. (Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament,
Bangalore: TPI, 2000, 63).
The Jewish family lived in a small house, which usually consisted of a single
windowless room. As head of the patriarchially ordered family, the father not only had to
care for the physical well-being of all the family’s members, but also had to instructs sons in
the Law. The children were required to show respect to him and to their mother. The position
of the woman was not equal to that of the man. To marry was regarded in Judaism as a divine
commandment. (Gen. 1:28). Women were regarded as inferior to men. They could not appear
in public as a witness before a court or take an active part in the cultus. In the temple area
they were permitted to go only as far as the court of women and were allowed to share in the
synagogue worship only by listening not by actively participating. Women were required to
observe the prohibitions of the Law, but they were not required to keep all of the
commandments nor to study the law. (Eduard Lohse, The New Testament Environment, 146 ).
Religious realities: The Jewish historian Josephus describes for his Hellenistic readers the
groups and communities which are present in Judaism at the beginning of the first century A.
D., following the example of the Greek philosophical schools: Among the Jews there are
three kinds of philosophical school, one is formed by the Pharisees, a second by the
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Sadducees and the third which lives in accordance with particularly strict rules, by the so-
called Essences. (Eduard Lohse, The New Testaments Environment, 74).
The Sadducees were anything but a philosophical school whose views would be
comparable to those of the Epicureans. (It teaches that there is nothing better for a person to
do than to enjoy his life. Epicurus did not deny the existence of gods but he did not expect
gods to be concerned with the lives of the people, hence neither do people need to concern
themselves with the gods). The roots of the Sadducees were probably in the Zadokite Temple
priesthood and its admirers. (I Kings 2:35). They held strictly to the literal wording of the
Law and refused to admit to equal rank with the written letters. It was in keeping with their
sober thought that they did not believe in angels and demons (Acts. 23:8). They did not share
in the expectation that at the last day the dead would be raised from the grave. They were
strictly concerned that the Sabbath be maintained with painstaking. With the death of the
Sadducees in the destruction of the city and the temple in AD 70, the reconstruction of the
Jewish communities fell solely to the Pharisees.
The Pharisees must be a derivation from the Hebrew peruschim ‘the separated one.’ It
is possible that outsiders first applied this designation to them because they held themselves
aloof from their environment in order to avoid contact with any impurity.
The beginnings of the Pharisaic movement date to Maccabean times, when it was
necessary to defend the Jewish faith against the infiltration of Hellenistic influence. They
combined to form distinct societies in which they could follow the commandments of the
Law exactly. It became the particular obligation of all members of the Pharisaic society to
observe with the greatest care the prescriptions of cultic purity and the commandments
concerning the tithe. Until the destruction of Jerusalem the Pharisees enjoyed a weighty
influence in the Sanhedrin.
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Some place the origins of the Essenes ca 200 BC in the atmosphere of Jewish
apocalyptic expectations. They were an independent Jewish movement, who preferred to live
in seclusion. Their name is probably derived from the Aramaic ‘chasajja’ the pious ones, a
name which perhaps was first given to them by outsiders. Presumably the Essenes is also a
reference to the origin of the movement, for the law-observing Jews who supported the
Maccabean revolt. According to the accounts of Philo and Josephus they numbered 4000.
They live chiefly in villages in Palestine, some of them also in cities, and formed themselves
into a community, in order to separate themselves from all uncleanness.
Synagogue: The structure of the Sabbath services in the synagogue appears to have been
simple. The NT examples suggest that any adult male could be called upon to read and
explain the law, though it may have been normal to pick our person who were known for
their knowledge of the law.
The religious centre of Judaism remained the temple. The synagogues were places to
meet, pray and study the law. They were not sacred places like the temple which was the
place in which God dwelt. Jews living outside Judea would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
So Jews adopted the practice of praying at the times when sacrifices would have been offered
to God in the temple.
Our earliest example of a synagogue building comes from the beginning of the third
century BC. The NT remains our only evidence that there were already synagogues there in
Jesus’ day. They were probably much simpler than these later synagogues, which had been
built along the lines of a temple with a special ark for the Torah scrolls and more elaborated
decoration.
Great Festivals: Pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem were linked with the agricultural
season. Galilean villagers probably thought that God’s faithfulness was tied to their harvest as
well as to the events of salvation that were remembered at each feast. There were various
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festivals observed – Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, New Year, and Hanukkah. (Pheme
Perkins, New Testament Introduction, 65 ).
Worship at the local synagogue, daily prayers, Sabbath meals, the great pilgrimage
feasts and other holidays of the Jewish calendar reminded people of their special relationship
to God. They did not worship the gods and goddesses of their pagan neighbours. Although it
sometimes seemed that God had left the people at the mercy of the great powers, the Jewish
people continued to look forward to the day when God would send them salvation.
Of course they had many visions of what salvation would be like. Some thought that a
new king like David would make Israel a great nation. Others imagined that the basis for a
new life would be the complete renewal of the temple and its priesthood. Still other thought
that evil had such a grip on the nations and on human institutions that they would all have to
be judged and condemned. Salvation would be a heavenly, angellike existence for those who
had remained faithful to God. Some people felt that they should show their devotion to God
by joining a sect, which had a stricter interpretation of the law tha that followed by most
people. The gospels show us that many of those who followed Jesus came not from such
pious sects but from the ordinary people who had been farmers or fishermen or collectors of
taxes and the like. (Pheme Perkins, New Testament Introduction, 70).
b) The N. T. titles of Jesus
- The Son of Man.
Introduction: Even Jesus’ own disciples found it difficult to answer the question of “who”
Jesus is. We are told stories of doubts and disbelief among Jesus’ relative and fellow
townspeople. Enemies looked at Jesus’ miracles and presumed that he was a magician in
league with Satan. Comments about his origins often appear to have been used against him.
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In our time historians have suggested a number of approaches to answering the question of
“who” Jesus is.
It is important to remember that the earliest Christians did not have the gospel
narratives to shape their understanding of Jesus. They depended upon the various miracle
stories, controversies, parables and sayings that could easily be remembered and passed on by
word of mouth. They also summed up what they believed to be true about Jesus in short
formulas such as we find in Paul’s letters. For our purposes it is enough to have some idea of
what the various expressions meant within the context of first century Judaism and what it
tells us when Jesus’ followers used these titles to explain who Jesus is.
The Son of Man: Any one who began his investigation of incarnational christology in the
second century AD would hardly think that the title “Son of Man” has any relevance to the
inquiry. For from the second century onwards it almost always denoted simply Christ’s
humanity in contrast to his divinity - not merely son of man, but also Son of God.
When we turn to “Son of Man.” We may ask – was this a title at all? Did Jesus use it
of himself? Was the Son of Man supposed to be someone other that Jesus, and did Jesus
expect this other to come and inaugurate the new age?
The expression “Son of Man” (in Hebrew ben adam; in Aramaic bar nasha) was
commonly used in these languages as a periphrasis for ‘human.’ So when the psalmist asks,
‘What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou dost care for him?’
(Ps. 8:4), the expressions ‘human’ and ‘son of man’ are used synonymously in a parallelism,
and each of them means simply ‘human being’. This is the common informal sense of ‘son of
man.’ (John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, 39).
Son of Man in Judaism:
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1. Much attention has been paid to a particular passage in the OT where the expression
‘Son of Man’ is used. This is the vision of Daniel in which we read:
There came one like a son of man, and he came to the ancient of days and was
presented before him, and to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all
peoples, nations and languages should serve him, his dominion is an everlasting
dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be
destroyed. (Dan. 7: 13 – 14).
Two points seem clearly to emerge. First, the ‘one like a son of man’ is identical with the
‘saints of the Most High.’ Second, the ‘one like a son of man’ is one of five figures in a
vision set over against four other visionary figures. (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the
Making: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, London: SCM Press,
1980, 68). It has sometimes been claimed that the Son of Man is an apocalyptic figure who
will bring in the new age and will himself be exalted in that age. The appearance of the Son
of Man in Daniel suggest the possibility of a link with apocalypticism, but the most likely
interpretation is that in Daniel’s vision of the end, a human figure or son of man symbolizes
Israel as the ‘true descendant of Adam.’ (Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, 40).
2. In the non-canonical literature, especially the Similitudes of Enoch, the Son of Man
makes his appearance (I Enoch 37 –71). These chapters have regularly been taken as the
strongest evidence for the existence of a pre-Christian Jewish belief in a pre-existence divine
individual called ‘the Son of Man.’ It is certainly clear that the Son of Man is a heavenly
individual in the Similitudes, and that the author identifies him as the Elect or Chosen One,
and indeed as his Anointed One (Messiah). (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making,
75). In the book of Enoch, the Son of Man is one whose name is named before the Ancient of
Days at the beginning of creation that he is created before all other creatures. Just as
everything concerning him and the end is a hidden teaching, so he himself is hidden until the
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end when he will come to judge and to rule over the world. This book also occasionally calls
him the Messiah. This expectation of the Son Man, then, was apparently common in esoteric
Jewish circles. (Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1965, 141). However, Dunn argues that there is nothing in I Enoch 37 –
71 to suggest that there was a pre-Christian Jewish tradition concerning the Son of Man as a
heavenly individual.
We come to the following conclusions concerning the Jewish concept of the Son of
Man. The Heavenly Man who is also known in extra-biblical religions appears in Judaism in
two different forms. (i) He is a heavenly being, now hidden, who will appear only at the end
of time on the clouds of heaven to judge and to establish the nation of the saints. (ii) He is the
ideal Heavenly Man who is identified with the first man at the beginning of time. Therefore,
there is a body of evidence, which indicates that the figure of the Son of Man as the pre-
existent divine agent of judgement and salvation was embedded in the pre-Christian Jewish
apocalyptic tradition. Fuller argues that this tradition provides the most likely source for the
concept of the Son of Man as used by Jesus and the early Church. (Reginald H. Fuller, The
Foundations of New Testament Christology, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965, 42).
Jesus and the Son of Man:
The question whether and in what sense Jesus designated himself the Son of Man is
one of the most discussed and contested problems of the NT scholarship. Is there any
indication that the identification of Jesus as the Son of Man in the NT writings was based on
a prior concept of the Son of Man as a heavenly individual already current in Judaism? Did
this early Christian identification of Jesus as the Son of Man had enjoyed a heavenly pre-
existence?
If we look at passages like Mk. 2:27 f., “The Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath,”
and Mt. 12:31 f. “and whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven.” These
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two sayings of Jesus in which it is possible that the expression “Son of Man” does not refer to
Jesus but “human” is general. The evangelists generally made a clear distinction in Greek
between Jesus the ‘Son of Man’ and ‘human’ in general. They translated the same Aramaic
word barnasha as anthropos when it referred to human; as huois tou anthropou when it
referred to Jesus. But since no distinction exists in Aramaic, they may have made a mistake in
translating the ambiguous word barnasha in the two passages mentioned.
There are also so many passages in the Synoptic Gospels in which Jesus definitely
refers to himself as the ‘Son of Man.’ At this point we must differentiate between two
categories of Jesus’ sayings about the Son of Man. (i) Those in which he uses the tile with
reference to the eschatological work he must fulfil in the future. “Day of the Son of Man”
(Lk. 17:22 ff.), “the coming of the Son of Man” (Mt. 24: 27, 37f); “coming in the glory of his
Father with the holy angels” (Mk. 8:38). (ii) Those in which he applies it to his earthly task.
“The Son of man also came not to be served but to serve and to give his lie as a ransom for
many” (Mk. 10:45). “The Son of Man must suffer many things” (Mk. 8:31).
Apart from one or two passages in which the Son of Man may designate all human
being, Jesus used the title Son of Man to express his consciousness of having to fulfil the
work of the Heavenly Man in two ways. (i) In glory at the end of time – a thought familiar to
the expectation of the Son of Man in certain Jewish circles. (ii) In the humiliation of the
incarnation among sinful people – a thought foreign to all earlier conceptions of the Son of
Man. Fuller asserts that when we come to examine the Son of Man in the sayings of Jesus
and in the development of his sayings in the early church, we hall assume that the term is
throughout derived from the pre-Christian Jewish apocalyptic tradition. (Fuller, The
Foundation of NT Christology, 43).
The Son of God:
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The title ‘Son of God’ is of inescapable importance for our study. And the questions
to be asked are: did the Son of God language when used of Jesus always have this
connotation of denoting deity, of signifying pre-existent divinity? If so, why was it applied by
the earliest Christians to Jesus? What was it about Jesus that caused the first disciples to call
him Son of God? If not, how soon did the Son of God confession come to bear this
significance and why? What did the phrase Son of God mean at the time it was first used of
Jesus? How broad or how precise was the idea of divine sonship in the first half of the first
century A. D? We will look at the range of meanings embraced by Son of God and then note
briefly the ranges of application of the words ‘divine’ and ‘god.’
Son of God in the Ancient World:
1. Some of the legendary heroes of Greek myth were called sons of God in particular,
Dionysus and Heracles were sons of Zeus by mortal mothers.
1. Oriental rulers, especially Egyptian, were called sons of God. In particular the Ptolemies
in Egypt laid claim to the title ‘son of Helios’ from the 4th century BC onwards, and at the
time of Jesus ‘son of god’ was already widely used in reference to Augustus.
2. Famous philosophers also, like Pythagoras and Plato, were sometimes spoken of as
having been begotten by a god.
3. And in stoic philosophy Zeus, the supreme being, was thought of as father of all people
(since all shared in divine reason)
Son of God in Judaism:
1. Angels or heavenly beings – the sons of God being members of the heavenly council
under Yahweh the supreme God (Gen.6: 2, 4; Deut. 32:8, Job.1:6-12; Ps. 29:1; Dan.
3:25).
2. Regularly of Israel or Israelites –‘Israel is my first-born son’ (Exo. 4:22; Jer. 31:9; Hos.
11:1).
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3. The king, so called only a handful of times in the OT (II Sam 7:14; Ps. 2:7; 89:26 f.).
Son of God in Inter-testamental Judaism:
1. In I Enoch angels are called ‘sons of heaven’ and ‘sons of the God of heaven’ (13:8;
106:5; 69: 4 –5).
2. Philo in his unique blend of Stoic and Jewish thought calls God ‘the supreme Father of
gods and human, and frequently speaks of God as Father in relation to creation, not
hesitating to call both the cosmos God’s Son and the Logos ‘God’s first born.’
3. Not only is Israel as a whole called ‘Son of God’ (Wisdom 9:7; 18:13), but individual
Israelites, specifically the righteous person (Wisdom 2:13, 16; Sir 4:10).
The degree of similarity between the use of ‘son of God’ within Jewish writings and its use in
the wider Hellenistic world is noticeable. In particular, it was obviously a widespread belief
or convention that the king was a Son of God either as descended from God or as
representing God to his people. So too both inside and outside Judaism human beings could
be called sons of God either as somehow sharing the divine mind or as being specially
favoured by God or pleasing to God. James Dunn concludes that the language of divine
sonship and divinity was in widespread and varied use in the ancient world and would have
been familiar to the contemporaries of Jesus. (James Dunn, Christology in the Making, 17).
Jesus Sense of Sonship
Did Jesus speak or think of himself as God’s Son? Can we even hope to answer this
question? And if the answer both times is Yes, what significance would it have? – son of God
in what sense? As a heavenly being who had taken earthly form? As the Davidic Messiah? As
a righteous man? As a charismatic teacher or healer? Or what?
The whole issue of Jesus’ self-consciousness and its significance is one, which has
remained at the forefront of NT christological study more or less throughout the past two
centuries. Will the evidence of the synoptic Gospels allow us to draw any firm conclusions
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about Jesus’ consciousness of sonship, about Jesus’ understanding of his relationship with
God?
1. First, as Jeremiah has shown, abba (father) was a characteristic feature of Jesus’ prayers.
This mannerism is attested in all five strata of the Gospel tradition, it is a consistent
feature of his recorded prayers and of his teaching on prayer. It is referred back to the
Spirit of the Son, the Spirit who gives believers a share in his sonship. Dunn concludes
that it was a characteristic of Jesus’ approach to God in prayer that he addressed God as
abba and that the earliest Christians retained an awareness of this fact in their own use of
abba.
2. Jesus’ habit of addressing God as abba distinguished Jesus in some degree from his
contemporaries.
3. There are various sayings and speech mannerisms, which can be, traced back to Jesus
with confidence and which uncover for us something of his self-consciousness.
4. In particular, our evidence is such that we are able to say that Jesus understood and
expressed his relationship to God in terms of sonship. We may say further that his
consciousness was of an intimacy of sonship which as embodied in his regular and
characteristic address in prayer Abba, still lacks any real parallel among his
contemporaries. To that extent Jesus’ sense of sonship was something distinctive.
5. There is sufficiently good testimony that Jesus taught his disciples to regard themselves
as God’s sons in the same intimate way, but also that he regarded their sonship as
somehow dependent on his own, that he thought of their sonship as somehow derivative
from his. Added to this is the probability that he saw his sonship in part at least as an
eschatological commissioning, God’s final attempt to recall the vineyard Israel to its
rightful ownership, God’s viceroy in disposing membership of his kingdom. In which
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case we can speak of Jesus’ consciousness or conviction that his sonship was something
unique.
6. Jesus was much more than he ever knew himself to be during his earthly life. But if we
are to submit our speculations to the text and build our theology only with the bricks provided
by careful exegesis we cannot say with any confidence that Jesus knew himself to be divine
the pre-existent Son of God. (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: An Inquiry into
the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 32).
There has been a considerable development over that period in early Christian belief
in and understanding of Jesus as the Son of God. With Jesus we found it was possible to
speak of his sonship. We also found that there was no real evidence in the earliest Jesus-
tradition of what could fairly be called a consciousness of divinity, a consciousness of a
sonship rooted in the pre-existent relationship with God. It is a very striking fact that when
we set out the NT traditions and documents on the best chronological scale available to us a
clear development in first-century christology can be traced where in the beginning the
dominant conception was of an eschatological sonship, already enjoyed by Jesus during his
ministry but greatly enhanced by his resurrection, at the end of the first century a clear
conception of pre-existent divine sonship has emerged, to become the dominant emphasis
insubsequent centuries.
1. The following conclusion can be made We should not underestimate the differences
between these various understandings of Jesus’ divine sonship. Careful exegesis requires that
we give due weight to divergences in earliest Christian thought as well as the convergences.
The one real attempt within the NT to hold together the christology of eschatological sonship
and the christology of pre-existent sonship does not wholly come off and leaves the two
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 18
strands only loosely interwoven. There is no attempt to harmonize the ideas of virginal
conception and incarnation within the NT itself. The fact is that these are different and cannot
be wholly harmonized without losing something from each. The NT contains a diversity of
christologies of Jesus’ divine sonship and to merge them into one common theme is to run the
risk of destroying the distinctive emphases of each.
2. Whatever the point is salvation-history to which thee first century Christians related the
manifestation of beginning or enhancement of Christ’ relation with God, it is the title Son of
God which regularly and repeatedly bears the primary weight of the claim made. Whether the
thought focuses on Jesus’ resurrection and parousia or on his birth, it is the language of
divine sonship which appears again and again, sometimes without rival. The belief in Jesus as
God’s Son had the power to absorb and express all these different emphases, showing that
ultimately they are not incompatible even if in the original contexts not wholly
complementary.
3. The understanding of Jesus as Son of God apparently did not provide the starting point
for a christology of pre-existence or incarnation. Any implication to the contrary, which may
be overheard in earlier formulations, is audible only because it is perceived as an echo of
clearer affirmations elsewhere. In short, the origins of the doctrine of the incarnation do not
seem to lie in the assertion of Christ as Son of God. (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the
Making, 60).
The Messiah:
The title Messiah has a special place among all the other christological titles. It
became more or less the crystallization point of all NT christological views. Externally seen,
almost all other concepts are subordinated to this one. (Cullmann, 111). We need to consider
the prevailing understanding of the term Messiah:
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 19
1. Even before the NT period, Judaism had the tendency to connect all views and even the
titles having to do with the end time with the title ‘Messiah.’
2. There were in Judaism many varied conceptions of the coming Mediator of the end time,
some of which differed radically from one another. In general it is true that the Jews
expected a saviour with certain nationalistic and Jewish characteristics. In the NT period
the prevailing Messiah type was of course more and more that which we roughly
designate the ‘political Messiah’ or simply the ‘Jewish Messiah’
The Messiah in Judaism:
The NT term Christos, is derived from the Hebrew term masiah or Heb. Participle
mashiach means ‘anointed one.’
1. The term is never found in the OT in its specific NT sense of the regent (ruler) of God’s
eschatological kingdom.
2. It is used primarily of the historical kings. He is called ‘the anointed one of Yahweh,’ (I
Sam 9:16; 24:6), an allusion (indirect reference) to the rite of anointing the king.
‘Anointed one of Yahweh’ is a common description of the king, who is considered the
representative of God in a special sense.
3. The title is not reserved only for the king of Israel. Anyone to whom God assigns a
special mission for his people can bear it. For instance, the priest is ‘the anointed one,’
mashiach (Ex. 28:41). Elisha is to be ‘anointed’ to the prophetic office (I Kings 19: 16).
4. The messiah throughout the OT means only an empirical figure, never an eschatological
one, always one reigning in the present, never one to come in the future.
5. According to II Sam 7:12 ff., God promised David that his kingship would last forever.
The Jewish eschatological hope held to this unfulfilled expectation so that the ‘anointed
one of Yahweh,’ ‘Messiah,’ gradually became an eschatological figure.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 20
6. The hope of the eschatological appearance of a king of Davidic descent became
particularly active as Jewish nationalism developed under the rule of Greece. During this
time the Jews expected a completely earthly, political king.
7. The exile marks the emergence of varying streams of Messianic hope: in addition to the
traditional Davidic hope, which for the time being seems to be falling into disfavour,
there is emerging the priestly hope (Eze. 40: 8) and an eschatological hope detached from
any specifically Messianic connections.
8. The prayer in Psalms of Solomon 17:21ff., is a classical expression of the prevailing
messianic expectation in the NT times. These messianic hopes were widespread among
the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. (The A pocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the OT)
9. Besides this ‘classical’ messianic expectation, we find also the idea that the expected king
will not bring in the final kingdom but only a provisional (temporary) one, while God
himself will bring in the permanent kingdom. In this case, the messianic king becomes the
forerunner of God.
Summary:
(i) The Messiah fulfills his task in a purely earthly setting.
(ii) According to one view, which we find in the Psalms of Solomon, he introduces the
end time, according to an earlier conception, he introduces an interim period. In any
case the aeon (era) in which he appears is no longer the present one. This temporal
consideration distinguishes the Messiah from the prophet.
(iii) Whether it is of peaceful or warlike character, the work of the Jewish Messiah is that
of a political king of Israel. He is the national king of the Jews.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 21
(iv) The Jewish Messiah is of royal lineage, a descendant of David. For this reason he also
bears the title ‘Son of David.’ (Cullmann, The christology of the New Testament, 111
– 117).
Jesus and the Messiah:
The question whether Jesus had a ‘messianic self-consciousness’ is one of the major
problems for understanding both his life and teachings. We need to discover in how far Jesus
applied to himself or rejected the particular Jewish idea connected with the title Messiah.
Three Synoptic passages are especially important for our problem – Mk. 14:61ff.,and the
parallel, Mk. 15:2ff., and the parallel, Mk 8:27 ff., and the parallel.
(i) Mark 14: 61 ff.: During the trial of Jesus, the high priest Caiaphas asks him, ‘Are you
the Messiah, the son of the Blessed?’ If Jesus answers affirmatively, Caiaphas could
turn him over to the Romans as a political rebel. To claim to be a Messiah who will
establish the throne of David is to declare oneself for an autonomous government, and
thus to be guilty of treason. On the other hand, a negative answer from Jesus would
also not be necessarily to the high priest’s disadvantage.
(ii) How did Jesus answer? According to the Greek text of Mark, Jesus answered ego
eimi. But the parallel texts in Luke and Matthew read differently. In Mt. 26: 64 Jesus
says su eipas ‘You have said so.’ We may say that Jesus neither clearly affirmed nor
clearly denied that he was the Messiah. Origen writes in his Commentary on Matthew
that Jesus’ answer is neither positive nor negative: ‘Jesus neither denies that he is
God’s son, nor does he expressly confess that he is.’ Origen assumes that Jesus gave
an evasive (false) answer.
(iii) The parallel passage in Lk 22: 67 ff., confirms that Jesus refuses to claim for himself
the title Messiah in this form. But on the other hand, Jesus does not answer with a
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 22
direct ‘no.’ This must be said especially in the light of the probability that at the time
of Jesus, the son of Man concept was somehow connected with that of the Messiah.
(iv) The conclusion may be that Jesus deliberately corrected the high priest’s question by
substituting the ‘Son of Man’ for the ‘messiah.’ Jesus knows that the specific ideas
relating to the Jewish Messiah are of a political nature, and nothing is more foreign to
his conception of his calling. In order to prevent all misunderstanding from the very
beginning he purposely avoids the title Messiah. But in order to make it clear that he
does not thereby give up his conviction that he has to fulfil in a special sense God’s
plan of salvation for his people and therefore for all humanity, he adds immediately
the sentence about the ‘Son of Man.’ Jesus rejection of the Messiah title therefore, by
no means indicates a rejection of his claim to an elevated positions.
Mark 15: 2 ff:
Jesus stands before Pilate, who asks him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Pilate
translates the designation Messiah into the Roman terminology. Here also it is possible that
Jesus intended an evasive answer. It is worth noting that in Mk 15: 2 ff. And parallels Pilate
does not react at all to Jesus’ “You say so.’ He would certainly have done so, had he
understood Jesus’ answer to be an affirmation.
Mark 8:27 ff.
(i) The third text having to do with Jesus’ attitude toward the title Messiah is the well-
known scene in Caesarea Philippi. In v. 29. Peter confesses ‘You are the Christ.’ In v. 30,
Jesus charged them to tell no one about him.
(i) The fact is that Jesus neither affirms nor denies Peter’s messianic confession. He says
nothing at all in answer to this explanation and speaks instead of the Son of Man who must
suffer many things. When Peter rebukes (disapproval) him for such an idea, Jesus flings
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 23
(hurl) at him the terrible accusation, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’ This means nothing less than
that Jesus considered as a satanic temptation the conception of the Messiah, which Peter
implied by his rebuke, and clearly intended when he confessed Jesus to be the Messiah. Jesus
knew very well that all his disciples had the secret hope that he would assume the political
Messiah’s glorious kingly role.
(ii) In any case, it is important that according to the Gospel tradition Jesus saw the hand
of Satan at work in the contemporary Jewish conception of the Messiah. This is probably the
basis for explaining what W. Wrede had known as ‘Messianic secret.’
(iii) Jesus himself is the source of the command not to proclaim him the Messiah. He was
afraid that such a proclamation would lead to a false conception of his task, the conception he
recognized and fought as a satanic temptation. This is the reason for his restraint to the very
end with regard to the title Messiah.
Summary:
(i) Jesus showed extreme reserve toward the title Messiah.
(ii) He actually considered the specific ideas connected with the title as satanic temptation
(iii) In decisive passages he substituted ‘Son of Man’ for Messiah and even set the one in a
certain opposition to the other
(iv) He deliberately set the ideas relative to the ebed Yahweh over against the Jews’
political conceptions of the Messiah. All these points indicate the irony of the fact that
Jesus was crucified by the Romans as a political Messiah.
There is at least one aspect of the Jewish conception of the Messiah, which we can
reconcile with Jesus’ consciousness of his calling: the title expresses a continuity between the
task he had to fulfil and the OT. The Messiah represents the fulfillment of the role of
mediation, which the whole of God’s chosen people should have realized. This idea lies
behind most of the christological titles originating in Judaism and thus is a common element
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 24
in the messianic and other eschatological figures. But it finds a particularly powerful
expression in the Messiah title, the idea that the Messiah comprehends and fulfils the whole
history of Israel has a special significance precisely because of its strong national emphasis.
The only valuable and christologically relevant element here, however, is the fact that the
Messiah fulfils the task of Israel. (Cullmann, The Christology of the NT, 120 – 133).
The Logos:
For it was the Logos (Word) concept, the explicit affirmation of the incarnation of the
Logos, and the identification of Jesus as the incarnate Logos which dominated the christology
of the second and third centuries. The simple opening phrases of the Johannine prologue
expose us to a Christianity able and eager to speak in language familiar to the religious and
philosophical discussions of the time and the second century apologists continued the same
dialogue using the same key concepts. (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 213).
The Logos in Hellenism
(i) The ‘Logos’ occurs in the earliest period of Greek philosophy in Heraclitus and then
especially in Stoicism. Here it is the cosmic law which, rules the universe and at the same
time is present in the human intellect. It is thus an abstraction, not a hypostasis.
(ii) A considerable consensus has been achieved and the great majority of contemporary
scholars would agree that the principal background against which the Logos prologue must
be set in the OT itself and the thought of intertestamental Hellenistic Judaism, particularly as
expressed in the Wisdom literature.
(iii) Bultmann’s attempt to argue for a more specific background in a pre-Christian
Gnostic myth from which the Johannine prologue derived the concept of the Logos as an
intermediary between God and the world who exercises both cosmological and soteriological
functions, falls to the ground before the same objections. We simply have no evidence of the
existence of such a pre-Christian myth, and the developed myth as hypothesized is best
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 25
explained as a syncretistic attempt to incorporate Christian belief in Jesus into a wider
framework of religious-philosophical worldviews. (Dunn, Christology in the Making, 215).
Bultmann asserts that in Gnosticism the Logos is a mythological intermediary being between
God and human. He is not only creator of the world, but above all revealer and as revealer
also redeemer. Gnosticism even believed that the Logos temporarily became human, but
only in a mythical and docetic sense, never in the historical sense of a real incarnation.
Bultmann finds here the myth of the descent and ascent of the redeemer who saves the world
in saving himself. This Logos is the same figure we find in non-Christian speculations about
the ‘original human.’ (Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, 252).
(iv) Philo quite often speaks of the Logos as though a real being distinct from God, who
acts as intermediary between God and the world. Logos is envisaged as a wholly independent
being who can acts as intermediary between God and human. Philo’s thought is what can
fairly be described as a unique synthesis of Platonic and Stoic worldviews with Jewish
monotheism. From Plato he derived the conviction that the world in which we live is not the
only world or indeed the real world. There is also a world of eternal realities, ‘forms’ or
‘ideas’ which is entirely separate from the world we perceive by our senses and which can be
known only by the mind. The implication is that the contents of this world are but shadows
and copies corresponding imperfectly to the ideal or perfect from in the other world.
(v) For the Stoic Logos is something material, in a system, which tends towards
pantheism where as in Philo the Logos is immaterial, the immanent Logos only and extension
of the incorporeal Logos. In Stoicism the divine reason is God and beyond it there is nothing
superior, whereas for Philo beyond the Logos there is always God the apprehension of whom
is removed to a very great distance from all human power of thought. The Stoics were
accustomed to distinguishing two types of logos: logos – the unexpressed thought, the
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 26
thought within the mind. And Logos - the uttered thought, the thought expressed in speech.
Philo was thoroughly familiar with this distinction and makes considerable use of it.
(vi) The relation between mind and speech in the individual is also for Philo the relation
between on the one hand the divine Logos and the world of ideas and on the other the
material world, the world of sense perception. The point is that it is one and the same logos
concerning which all this is said: not only do we have to say that as the logos in the mind is
the logos of speech, so the intelligible world is to the material world. For him, the logos
which is reason in human is not to be distinguished from the divine logos. He says, “the
reasoning power within us and the divine Word/Reason above us are indivisible.”
(vii) Plato can speak of the Logos as an intermediary between God and creation, between
God and human, simply because for Philo it is in and through the Logos that God reaches out
to his creation and it is by responding to the Logos that human comes as near as s/he can to
God.
(viii) It is evident that Philo was using the Platonic conception of a world of ideas to bridge
the gulf between God and creation, between God and human. It is a gulf, which Philo firmly
maintains is ultimately unbridgeable: God is unknowable in Godself. But his Jewish faith
convinced him that God was in fact, knowable in some degree, because God had chosen to
make himself known. At the end the Logos seems to be nothing more for Philo that God
himself in his approach to human, God himself insofar as he may be known by human.
(ix) The Logos concept of Hellenistic Judaism is closely related to Wisdom. In Job 28:23
– 28 wisdom is an entity beyond the reach of human. Human cannot by searching find it out.
But god found it out and used it in the creation of the world. Here wisdom is a pre-existent
entity, independent of God, but scarcely as yet a hypostatized figure. In Proverbs wisdom is
often no more than a prudential ethical concept, but there are passages in which it plays a
religious role and becomes a matter for theological speculation. Sophia is the agent of
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 27
revelation (8: 1 –21). She is a creation of God and was brought into being before all creation.
She was present when God created the world though as yet she played no active role in
creation. Wisdom here is figuratively personified but is hardly as yet hypostatization. In
Hellenistic Judaism sophia is much further developed. In Pro. 24: 3 – 22 she speaks for
herself, declaring that she has proceeded from the mouth of God and is thus pre-existent. She
pervades the whole creation and seeks to find a resting-place among the peoples of the world.
She becomes the mediator of revelation.
The concept of wisdom as the mediator of revelation is much more developed in the
Book of Wisdom. She is now fully hypostatized. She is distinct from, yet closely related to,
the being of God himself. She is the agent of creation, “the fashioner of all things (7:22). She
pervades the whole-created universe, and is the mediator of revelation and truth to human. As
the agent of revelation she dwells with God and with those who accept her she likewise
comes to dwell. (Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology, 72 – 74).
The concept of Sophia offered the possibility of an interpretation of Christ as the pre-
existent agent of creation and of the government in the world, and as the agent of revelation.
It also offered the possibility of the interpretation of the historical emergence of Jesus in
terms of a descent from heaven and thus made and important contribution to the doctrine of
the incarnation.(74).
The Logos Concept Applied to Jesus
The title Logos as a designation for Jesus occurs in the Gospel of John only in the
prologue and in only two passages in the other Johannine writings. It is used as a title for
Jesus in no other NT writing and in no other early Christian literature except that of Ignatius
of Antioch.
(i) Jesus was of course identified with the Logos only after his death. Without doubt the
Logos designation is the result of theological reflection.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 28
(ii) Because of its Hellenistic elements, the Gospel of John belongs to the broad category
of syncretistically influenced Palestinian Judaism. We must examine the extent to which the
ordinary uses of the word ‘logos’ in the Gospel of John itself.
(iii) The word ‘logos’ occurs extraordinary often in the Gospel of John and in the sense of
‘spoken, proclaimed word’ is actually one of its central concepts. In common use ‘logos’
means nothing more than the concrete word heard with the ear (Jn 2:22; 19:8). But there is
also a specifically theology use: the logos which Jesus proclaims is at the same time God’s
eternal revelation, which beyond simple hearings requires the understanding of faith.
(iv) In the Gospel of John a direct line leads from the theologically charged concept of the
proclaimed word to the Logos who became flesh in Jesus. This is indeed the meaning of the
Gospel: it intends to show that the total human life of Jesus is the centre of the revelation of
divine truth. The word of God, which is identical with Jesus’ proclaimed logos, is ‘truth’ (17:
17) but Jesus himself is the truth in person (14:6). Thus in this respect the ordinary Johannine
use of the word logos directly clarifies the designation of Jesus as Logos. This explanation is
of course not enough in itself, but it indicates a line of thought, which in any case ought not
to be ignored.
(v) The first chapter of John calls the Son ‘Logos’ because it is a prologue to a life of
Jesus, which in itself is the starting point for all further christological reflection. God’s
revelation is presented in this life not only in the words but also in the actions of Jesus. Jesus
is what he does.
(vi) Although the Johannine designation of Jesus as ‘the Word’ is related to pagan and late
Jewish thought, it nevertheless rests upon a direct reflection about the close connection
between the origin of all revelation and the historical life of Jesus. The speaking of God is
recognized here as God’s action and therefore it is natural to refer to his creative ‘word,’
through which he already communicated himself already at the ‘beginning.’ The prologue of
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 29
John is interested in the direct connection between the history of Jesus and the Genesis story.
The Johannine writer begins his whole presentation of the life of Jesus with the words of the
OT creation story. For him this connection is so significant that every other point of contact
can only be of secondary importance.
(vii) The prologue of John also begins within the framework of OT thought in speaking of
the rejection of revelation. The statements about the Logos are the result of deep theological
reflection about the life of Jesus as the central revelation of God. In finding the answer to the
question ‘Who was Jesus?” the evangelist was certainly helped by the speculations of
Hellenistic Judaism which began, not with the consideration of the life of a man appearing in
history, but with a definite philosophical and mythological idea. But the Johannine reflection
had a quite different beginning point: a concrete event, the life of Jesus. This gives the early
Christian statements about the Logos a radically new character in every respect.
(viii) By the very nature of the NT Logos, one cannot speak of him apart from the action of
God. The prologue itself moves from there immediately to the action of the Logos: ‘All
things were made through him.’ Thus, the Logos who appeared in the flesh as human
mediator is the same Logos who was already the mediator of creation. Jus because the Gospel
of John sees the central revelation of God in human life, it takes very seriously the fact that
from the very beginning all revelation is an event, an action of God that all divine revelatory
action is a Christ-event.
(ix) The word of God proclaimed by Jesus is at the same time the word lived by him, he is
himself the Word of God. This identification is the final consequence of the recognition that
Jesus’ life represents God’s decisive revelation. Just as the experience of the Kyrios is
worship led to faith in the deity of Christ, so theological reflection about the revelation in
Jesus led to the conviction that from the very beginning Jesus Christ was God in so far as
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 30
God reveals himself to the world. Therefore, he is God in so far as God communicates
himself.
Summary
We may say that the following elements constitute the NT Logos christology:
- Primarily the understanding of the life of Jesus as the centre of all divine revelation
- The understanding that in his very person Christ is what he brings in proclamation and
teaching
- The theological reflection upon the origin of all revelation in connection with the OT
story of creation through the ‘word.’
- Secondarily, the utilization of contemporary speculations about a divine hypostasis to
express not a syncretistic but a genuine Christian universalism. (Cullmann, The New
Testament Christology, 249 – 269
The High Priest:
Applied to Jesus, the concept High Priest is closely related to that of the Suffering
Servant of God. In a certain sense one could actually understand it as a variant (differing) of
the Suffering Servant concept. Its importance lies in the fact that first, its application to Jesus
in early Christianity has a completely different historical origin, and secondly because it has
aspects which are foreign to the ebed Yahweh concept.
The High Priest as an Ideal Figure in Judaism
(i) The High Priest is an essentially Jewish figure. The expected Jewish redeemer
does not at first appear to have the characteristics of the High Priest. And yet there are traces
in Judaism of a connection between the Messiah-king and the High Priest. We mention first
the speculations about the mysterious King Melchizedek of Gen. 14:17ff. And Ps. 110: 4.
Gen. 14:17 ff. tells how Abraham freed his nephew Lot from Chedorlaomer, the king
of Elam and his allies. When Abraham came back from the battle, King Melchizedek met and
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 31
blessed him, and Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth of the booty (goods). Genesis tells us
nothing more of this mysterious king before whom Abraham humbled himself in this way.
For this reason the figure of Melchizedek very early stimulated the imagination of the Jews.
Ps. 110: 4 ff. The early Christians repeatedly quoted, “You are a priest for ever after
the order to Melchizedek.” The psalm addresses the words to the king on whom are conferred
the high priestly functions of this high order. As an external framework it presupposes the
enthronement ceremony of the king. This is the starting point for a messianic formulation of
the figure of the High Priest because it connects kingship with an ideal priesthood.
There must have been speculations in Judaism, which identified Melchizedek with
other eschatological figures. Heb. 7 and later patristic attempts to see in Melchizedek the
prototype (original/archetype) of Christ, presuppose a Jewish tradition, which utilized the
priest-king concept eschatologically. In a Midrash to the Song of Solomon he becomes
almost a messianic mediator. In other writings the returned Elijah sometimes appears both as
prophet and as High Priest of the end time. Sometimes an eschatological priest appears
independently beside Elijah as Priest of Righteousness. We may also mention that Philo
identifies the Logos with Melchizedek and calls him the ‘Priest of God.’ E. Kasemann asserts
that a Melchizedek speculation before the Epistle to the Hebrews is of partly Jewish and
partly Christian-Gnostic origin. He points out that this speculation identifies the High Priest
with figures related to the beginning and to the end of time – figures such as Shem, the
Archangel Michael, the Original Man Adam, etc.
Therefore, Judaism knew of an ideal priest who as the one true priest, should fulfil in
the last days all the elements of the Jewish priestly office. Because of his office, the High
Priest is the proper mediator between God and his people and as such assumes from the very
beginning a position of divine eminence. Judaism had in the High Priest a person who could
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 32
satisfy already in the present the need of the people for divine mediation in a cultic
framework.
The natural consequence of this was that the expected High Priest not only had to
fulfil positively the idea of all priesthood, but above all had to overcome the insufficiencies of
the empirical priesthood. Thus, his task came to be defined as being also actually in
contradiction to that of the temporal high priest. This is important for the application of the
concept to Jesus.
Jesus and the Idea of the High Priest
Jesus might have convinced that with his coming the temple cult would not simply
continue as before. So, he must probably have taken a critical attitude toward the continuation
of the high priestly office. But we cannot conclude from Jesus’ critical attitude toward the
priesthood that he therefore could not have included the idea of the High Priest in his
conception of his task. On the contrary we have seen that even in Judaism criticism of the
empirical priesthood and belief in an ideal priesthood conditioned each other. In addressing
the king as a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, Ps. 110 not only places him above
the empirical priesthood, but at the same time sets him over against it almost as opponent.
This consideration makes it conceivable that Jesus on occasion applied to himself the idea of
an ideal High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, it not the title itself.
We have two sayings of Jesus in which he expressly relates Ps. 110 to the Messiah.
The first is the discussion about the Son of David in Mk. 12: 35 ff. and parallel. Jesus’
explanation of this psalm in Mk. 12:35 ff. is one of the most difficult of his sayings reported
in the Synoptics. Some scholars have even questioned whether he speaks of himself at all, or
only makes a statement about the Messiah without relating to himself. For Jesus’
interpretation of the meaning of the psalm clearly suggests that he speaks of himself. If so it
is important for an understanding of his self-consciousness that he applied to himself this
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 33
psalm in which the messianic king appears as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Then we would have to reckon with the probability that the idea was not foreign to Jesus that
he had also to fulfil the office of the true high priesthood.
The second passage in which Ps. 110 is cited is clearer and increases this probability.
When Jesus answers the high priest in Mk 14: 62 he combines a reference to Dan. 7 with the
reference to Ps. 110: ‘You will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and
coming with the clouds of heaven.’ ‘Sitting at the right hand’ is inseparably connected with
the thought of the priest-king after the order of Melchizedek. He says in effect that his
messiahship is not that of an earthly Messiah but he is the heavenly Son of Man and the
heavenly High Priest. This saying is thus parallel to that in the Gospel of John in which Jesus
tells Pilate that his kingship is not of this world (Jn. 18: 36).
We conclude then that Jesus considered it his task to fulfil the priestly office. This
opens perspectives, which are of far-reaching importance for the self-consciousness of Jesus.
It is in any case important that a later christological interpretation such as that of the Epistle
to the Hebrews could find a point o contact in these two citations of Ps. 110 by Jesus himself.
Jesus as the High Priest in Early Christianity
Jesus the High Priest stands in the foreground in the Epistle to the Hebrews and deals
with him in this role. The seventh chapter is the centre of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Its uses
scriptural proof (Gen. 14 & Ps. 110) to describe Jesus as the true High Priest. The writer of
the Hebrews seeks to show that Jesus fulfils absolutely the high priestly function of the Jews.
He probably makes use of an already familiar Jewish tradition about Melchizedek. He sees
the final priesthood of the New Covenant as realized in Jesus Christ, who is the Priest in an
absolute and final sense, the fulfillment of all priesthood. In his temporal and qualitative
uniqueness Jesus the High Priest makes all other high priests superfluous.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 34
(i) A new and valuable element is introduced into christology with the Jewish concept of
high priesthood. It is the idea that in his very self-sacrifice Christ manifests his high priestly
majesty. It is precisely in offering himself and taking the greatest humiliation upon himself
that Jesus exercises the most divine function conceivable in Israel, that of the high priestly
Mediator. This consideration explains the close connection between the ideas of the High
Priest and the Son of God in Hebrews. In the light of the High Priest concept, the atoning
death of Jesus demonstrates the true NT dialectic between deepest humiliation and highest
majesty. That is the great significance of the christological concept of Jesus the High Priest.
(ii) Jesus as the High Priest brings humanity to its perfection because he himself is
perfect. Beside and through the task of atonement, we see another goal and effect of the high
priestly calling Christ fulfils. The covenant with God is renewed in such a way that humanity
is made perfect.
(iii) On the basis of the High Priest concept, the author of Hebrews is bound to be
particularly interested in the sinlessness of Jesus. The fact that Jesus was tempted is a definite
element of the Gospel tradition. Hebrews understands the humanity of Jesus in a more
comprehensive way than the Gospels. This follows from the idea that the High Priest not only
completely enters the realm of humanity, but within that realm must participate in everything
that is human. Furthermore, the Hebrews goes beyond Synoptic reports of Jesus’ being
tempted, is perhaps the boldest assertion of the completely human character of Jesus in the
NT.
(iv) Another aspect of Jesus’ high priestly work which indicates the chasm between the
theology of Hebrews and all Gnosticism and mythology needs to be considered. The once-
for-all character of the high priestly work stands in express opposition to the necessity of the
continual repetition of the OT priest’ work. In this respect Jesus not only fulfils the OT
priesthood, but also overcomes all its inadequacies. The writer of the Hebrews describes a
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 35
final and decisive act, which in its very uniqueness brings salvation to humanity. The saving
character of this historically unrepeatable fact is decisive and unending. What the High Priest
Jesus completed on the human level is therefore the centre of all events, the decisive midpoint
of time.
(v) Hebrews further emphasizes that the High Priest remains in the Holy Place and there
continues his work in the present. It considers the present lordship of Christ as a high priestly
office. As a result of this conception of the High Priest, the author connects as closely as
possible Christ’ present work and his once-for-all act. Christ’ intercessory activity which is
always effective because of his once-for-all work, is a genuine high priestly act.
(vi) We must ask whether Hebrews relates the concept of Jesus’ high priesthood to the
aspect of the eschatological side, of his work, as the NT understands it. Hebrews does not
further explain the particular meaning of the high priestly work of Jesus at the end of time, it
only indicates its nature with the words ‘not to deal with sin.’ Perhaps the positive
significance of this work has to do with our perfection. When all things are completed,
humanity will once again need Jesus’ high priestly office of mediation.
(vii) We have seen that Hebrews’ development of the High Priest concept offers a full
christology in every respect. It includes all the three fundamental aspects of Jesus’ work: his
once-for-all earthly work, his present work as the exalted Lord and his future work as the one
coming again. Further Hebrews concept of the High Priest is related to the pre-Christian
history of salvation in a way, which corresponds closely, tot he thinking of the NT. Christ
both fulfils all OT priesthood and replaces the temple.
(viii) We have said that the Hebrews contains the only detailed christology of the High
Priest in the NT. However we find the ideas developed in Hebrews either expressed or
implied in other NT writings.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 36
The Gospel of John emphasizes the High Priest concept much strongly. The author of
the gospel of John pursues this concept with particular interest. Chapter 17, a part of Jesus’
farewell discourses, is actually known in theological scholarship as the ‘high priestly prayer.’
For it is a fact that one can explain the whole prayer only on the basis of the high priestly
consciousness of the one who spoke it. Jesus directs his prayer to the Father before he brings
his offering, asking that those given him may be sanctified by the Father in order to be able to
receive the fruits of the offering brought by the High Priest. It is his highest high priestly
function, the summary of all the high priestly prayers he brings before God in the present.
(ix) The High Priest concept is not only present in Hebrews but lies also behind the
christological statements of other NT passages. It is of course true that no other writing has so
concentrated all the christological assertions in the High Priest concept as has Hebrews. The
concept has never completely disappeared and has in any case played a much larger role in
the history of doctrine that the ancient ebed Yahweh christology. The High Priest concept has
served to emphasize one christological aspect among others. (Cullmann, The Christology of
the NT, 83 – 89
- concept of High Priest is closely connected to that of the suffering servant of God.
- Its importance lies – that (i) it has different historical origin (ii) has aspects foreign to the
ebed Yahweh.
- H.P is essentially Jewish figure. There are traces in Judaism of connection bet. Messiah
king & HP. Let us see the speculations about the mysterious King Melchizedek of Gen
14: 17ff.
- Genesis tells us nothing of this king. For this reason the figure of Mel. Stimulated the
imagination of the Jews.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 37
- Ps. 110: 4. The Ps. Addresses the words to the king on whom are conferred the high
priestly functions of this high order. It presupposes the enthronement ceremony of the
king.
- This is the starting point for a messianic formulation of the figure of the HP bec. it
connects kingship with an ideal priesthood.
- Have been speculations in Judaism which identified Mel. With other eschatological
figures:
- Patristic attempts to see in Mel. the prototype of Christ, which utilized the priest-king
concept eschatologically.
- In a Midrash to the Song of Solomon, he becomes almost a messianic mediator.
- In other writings Elijah appears both as prophet & as HP
- Sometimes an eschatological priest appears beside Elijah as priest of righteousness
- Philo identifies the Logos with Mel. and calls him the Priest of God.
- Mel.’ speculations before the Epistle to the Hebrews is of partly Jewish and partly Christian
Gnostic origin. Speculations identifies the HP with figures related to the beginning and to the
end of time.
- In Judaism an ideal priest should fulfil in the last days, all the elements of the Jewish
priestly office. Bec. Of this office, the HP is the proper mediator bet. God and his people.
- And bec. Of this assumption it has a divine eminence from the very beginning.
- The expected Hp not only had to fulfil the idea of priesthood but had to overcome the
insufficiencies of the empirical priesthood.
- His task came to be defined as contradiction to that of temporal high priest. This is impt.
For the application of the concept of Jesus.
Jesus & the Idea of HP
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 38
- Jesus might have taken a critical attitude toward the priesthood and therefore, might not
have included the idea of HP in his conception of his task.
- We have two sayings of Jesus in which he expressly relates Ps. 110 to the Messiah. The
first is the discussion about the Son of David in Mk. 12: 35.
- Jesus’ explanation of this Ps is one of the most difficult sayings reported in the Synoptics.
- Scholars have questioned whether he speaks of himself or only make a statement about
the Messiah without relating to himself.
- For Jesus’ interpretion of the meaning of ps. he speaks of himself. It is important for
understanding of his consciousness that he applied to himself this ps. in which the
messianic king appears as HP after the order of Mel.
- The idea of HP was not foreign to Jesus that he had to fulfil the office of the true high
priethood.
-The second passage in which Ps. 110 is cited in Mk. 14: 62, where Jesus combines a
reference to Dan. 7.
- sitting at the right hand is inseparably connected with the thought of the priest-king after
the order of Mel. He says in effect that his messiaship is not that of an earthly Messiah
but his the heavenly Son of Man and heavenly HP.
- We may conclude that Jesus considered it his task to fulfil the priestly office. This opens
perspective for the self-consciousness of Jesus.
Jesus as HP in Early Christianty
-Jesus as the HP stands in the foreground in the Epistle to the Hebs. The 7th chapter is the
centre of the Heb. Its uses scriptural proof (Gen. 14 & Ps. 110) to describe Jesus as the HP.
The writer seeks to show that Jesus fulfills the high priestly function of the Jews. He makes
use of an already familiar Jewish tradition about Mel. He sees the final priesthood of the New
Covenant as realized in Jesus Christ, who is the Priest in absolute and final sense.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 39
- A new element is introduced into christology with the Jewish concept of high priesthood.
Self- sacrifice, humiliation, atoning death. Jesus demonstrate the true NT dialectic bet.
Deepest humiliation and highest majesty.
- Jesus as the HP brings humanity to its perfection bec. He himself is perfect.
- The sinlessness of Jesus is brought out. Heb. Understands the humanity of Jesus in a more
comprehensive way than the Gospels. Within that realm he must participate in everything
that is human. The Heb. Goes beyond Synoptic reports of Jesus’ being tempted. This is
perhaps the boldest assertion of the completely human character of Jesus in the NT.
- The once for all character of the high priestly work is emphasized. It overcomes all the
inadequacies of the OT priest’ work.
- It describes a final and decisive act, which in its very uniqueness brings salvation to
humanity. The saving character is decisive and unending. This is the centre of all events,
the decisive midpoint of time.
- The Heb. Emphasizes that the HP remains in the holy place and there continue his work
in the present. It considers the lordship of Christ as a priestly office.
- Christ intercessory activity is effective bec of his once for all work, is a genuinely high
priestly act.
- Hebs development of the HP concept offers a full christology. It includes the three
fundamental aspects of Jesus’ work : his once-for-all earthly work, his present work as
the exalted Lord and his future work as the one coming again.
- The Gospel of John emphasizes the HP concept much stronger. He pursues this concept
with particular interest. Chapter 17 is actually known as the high priestly prayer. It is high
highest priestly function, the summary of all the high priestly prayer he being before God
in the present.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 40
- The HP concept lies behind the christological statements of other NT passages. The
concept has never completely disappeared and play a larger role in the history of doctrine
that the ancient ebed Yahweh christology
The Lord: Kyrios
The designation Kyrios for Jesus developed into a christological title especially in the
environment of Hellenism. It is proper that we investigate its secular and religious
significance in this area outside Christianity.
The Kyrios Title in Oriental Hellenistic – Religions and in Emperor Worship
In the Hellenistic world Kyrios was used not only in connection with certain religious
conceptions, but also in the general sense of ‘master’ or ‘owner.’ It could designate deity with
respect to its absolute power or superiority. It could also become a name, which emphasized
divinity in a unique way. The word in this sense occurs very frequently in the oriental-
Hellenistic religions of the Roman Empire. Hellenism speaks Kyrios to refer to some revered
divinity.
The same is true also of the Roman emperor, the Kyrios who demanded special
recognition of his ‘lordship’. He was called Kyrios primarily in a political-legal sense and the
title does not refer primarily to his divinity. In fact, long before Roman times oriental rulers
were venerated as gods. The Roman emperors inherited divine dignity from them. They were
worshipped because they ere believed to be of divine origin and nature. Therefore, the
emperor was called Kyrios as a sign of his political power on the one hand, and on the other
hand was revered as divine the title Kyrios must automatically take on a religious
significance especially where this name was a common designation for heathen gods.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 41
The Kyrios in Judaism
The Greek word Kyrios is Adon in Hebrew and Mar in Aramaic. We now have to ask
whether like their Greek equivalent, the Hebrew and Aramaic words were used in the NT
period in the absolute sense of ‘the Lord’ as well as in the general sense of ‘master’ or
‘owner’. This is the decisive question for our problem.
It is important to note that the Jews did not speak the name of God, JHVH. After a
certain time they replaced it with Adonai in their services of worship. Although the use of
Adonai in this absolute sense did not become part of everyday speech and so not a common
designation for God either. It was understood and respected primarily as a sacral word. This
use is more common in the Greek apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings. Therefore,
Adonai-Kyrios was a liturgical designation for God both in Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism
of the NT period.
What of the Aramaic equivalent Mar? It is especially interesting to us here, first
because Jesus himself as well as his first disciples spoke Aramaic, and secondly, because the
NT has preserved the Aramaic liturgical prayer Maranatha of the early church. Mar does not
occur as a divine title in this absolute sense. In everyday language Mari was a respectful form
of polite address similar to ‘Rabbi.’ Mari expresses even greater respect than “Rabbi’. It as
used to refer to king and emperor, but also to highly respected teachers. But even this use is
still far removed from the absolute sense.
The development of the Hellenistic concept Kyrios and of the Hebraic concept Adon
suggests philologically an analogous (similar) development from the naïve use of the
Aramaic Mar to the Christian theological significance of the Greek Kyrios with the
presupposition. This theological development to a cultic and individual experience and
worship of the present exalted Lord had taken place already among the Aramaic speaking
Palestinian followers of Jesus.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 42
Kyrios Jesus and Early Christianity
It is certain that the Kyrios title applied to Jesus received its full meaning only after
his death and exaltation. It is characteristic of the expression Kyrios Jesus that it refers to his
post-Easter, present work fulfilled in the state of exaltation. The title thus naturally developed
with the salvation event itself.
The Kyrios designation appears directly in Mk. 11:35 ff. and in Mt. 7: 21. None of
these passages indicates the absolute use of Kyrios as we find it applied to Jesus in early
Christianity. On the other hand, we so see in these examples that the word can be given
different meanings according to the context in which it is used.
Mk. 11:3 uses the article with Kyrios and since it is the only passage in the whole
book in which the title so appears, we could say that Jesus himself used the expression. But
even so we cannot conclude that on this occasion Jesus designated himself the divine Kyrios.
In the first place, the original Aramaic here may have been ‘our Lord’ or ‘his Lord’ and in the
second place Mar may have been used here simply as an expression of the disciple-rabbi
relationship.
The same is true of Mt. 7:21. The genuineness of this saying as such cannot be
questioned. We have seen that the doubled ‘Lord, Lord’ corresponds to the Semitic form of
polite address. Like the previous passage, this also probably refers to the address of the
disciple to a respected master.
The use of Kyrios in terms of the disciple-rabbi relationship is still far removed from
the later absolute use. Nevertheless, the earlier use suggests the possibility of the same
development to the absolute use as in the case of the Hellenistic Kyrios and the Hebraic
Adon. When the Rabbi Jesus becomes the object of cultic veneration, the Teacher and Lord
who speaks and acts with absolute authority becomes the one Lord.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 43
The confession Kyrios Jesus is one of the most ancient we possess. This brief
formula expresses the whole faith of the early church with the single word Kyrios. This
designation points primarily only to the present work of Christ, but from this point of view
one can visualize the whole work of Christ, both in the past and in the future. The lordship
bestowed upon the Kyrios Jesus, who is now equal with God manifests itself especially in the
fact that also all the invisible powers of creation are subjected to him, so that now ‘every knee
should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess: Jesus Christ
is Lord.’ This idea is the foundation of every NT passage, which actually identifies Jesus with
God.
The Kyrios title has the immense significance for the NT faith, It also takes the central
place in the theological thought of the first Christians. It is not a title, which like ‘Son of
Man’ goes back to Jesus himself. It is rather an explanation of the person and work of Jesus,
which already presupposes the conviction of his resurrection.
The title rests upon faith in two essential elements of Heilsgeschichte: (I) Jesus is
risen (2) that fact that the decisive event of the resurrection has already happened but that the
eschatological fulfillment has not yet happened does not mean that the Heilsgeschichte has
been interrupted. In other word, there is no chasm between the resurrection and the Parousia
of Christ.
Kyrios Christos and the Deity of Jesus
One important aspect of the Kyrios concept deals with the titles referring to the pre-
existence of Jesus. The NT letters quite commonly apply OT passages to Jesus. The
Septuagint translates the name of God with Kyrios. The Greek concordance indicates that in
the NT the OT Kyrios passages can automatically refer to Jesus. This is the case, for instance
with Is. 45:23, which quoted in Phil. 2:10 ff.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 44
The most striking example is the quotation of Ps. 102:25 ff. in Heb. 1:10. The OT text
obviously speaks of God the Father, the Creator. But as a result of the transfer of the name
Kyrios to Jesus, the writer of Hebrews does not hesitate to address him with the words of the
psalm, and thus, to designate him the Creator of heaven and earth. Heb. 1:8 says expressly
that the passage refers to the Son.
According to the early Christian faith, this Kyrios is of course also pre-existent. The
early Christian faith in the pre-existence of Jesus should be understood in the light of the
present lordship of the Kyrios Christ. That is, it should be understood from the point of view
of history of salvation, of the work of Christ. It is the great significance of the Kyrios concept
that it made possible for the first time what we call the Christology of the NT. It furnished the
foundation for fixing the relationship between the various christological explanations in
Heilsgeschichte.
The New Adam of the new creation:
Adam plays a larger role in Paul’s theology. Adam is a key figure in Paul’s attempt to
express his understanding both of Christ and of human beings. Soteriology and christology
are also closely connected in Paul’s theology.
The narratives about Adam heavily influence Paul’s understanding of human beings
in Gen. 1-3 and especially the account of Adam’s fall in Gen. 3. Gen. 1-3 is the only OT
passage Paul had in mind when he wrote Rom. 1: 18 – 23. There can be no doubt that the
figure of Adam plays an important role in Paul’s theology. In his most careful analysis of the
plight of human beings Paul draws repeatedly on the account of Adam and his fall in Gen. 2 –
3.
In Paul’s theology Adam becomes merely the type of fallen human and another Adam
appears as alone the final human to whom believers must be conformed. But it is Christ
playing an Adamic role – it is Christ playing the role in reversing the fall equivalent to the
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 45
role that Adam played in the fall, as the plight of human can be described as a sharing in the
fallenness of Adam, so the hope of the believer can be described as that of sharing in the
glory of Christ (I C or. 15: 21 ff).
Adam and Christ
The first point, which calls for comment, is that when Paul uses Adam language
explicitly of Christ, he is referring primarily to Christ risen and exalted. As Adam stands for
fallen human, so Christ stands for human risen from the dead. Adam denotes life that leads to
death. Christ denotes life from the dead. Christ the last Adam is the risen Christ. Paul makes a
careful contrast between Adam and Christ. Christ role as second man, as last Adam, does not
begin either in some pre-existent state or at incarnation, but at his resurrection. For Paul, the
resurrection marks the beginning of the representative humanity of the last Adam.
Ps. 8: 4 – 6 provides scope for a larger Adam christology – an Adam christology
which embraced both earthly as well as the exalted Jesus. This development probably
predates Paul’s letters too, since it seems to be reflected in I Cor. 15 and to provide the
backcloth for Rom 5: 12 – 19. In Rom. 5: 12 – 19, there is a forceful contrast between Adam
and Christ. For where Adam’s death was the consequence of his trespass, his disobedience,
Christ’s death was his act of righteousness, his act of obedience. The implication is that
Christ willingly accepted the consequences of Adam’s sin, that Christ’s death was a freely
chosen embracing of Adam’s death. But beyond death Christ re-emerged as a new Adam,
whose hall mark is life from the dead. By sinking to the depths with human in death, the
depths of his present plight, he was able to catch up man in resurrection, to make it possible
for God’s original intention for human to be fulfilled at the last. The point can be expressed
thus: Adam’s disobedience – death, Christ obedience to death – life.
Jesus as sharing the fallenness of sinful human, of Adam, so that his death might
become a means to creating a new human, a new humanity. In other words, before he become
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 46
last Adam Jesus shared wholly the lot of the first Adam. The christology behind all this is that
the resolution to the plight of human is provided not as it were be scrapping the previous
model and starting afresh with a new humanity wholly independent of the old, but precisely
by Christ following through Adam’s plight to the end and thus becoming a new Adam in
resurrection beyond death. The way in which Jesus becomes last Adam is by following the
path taken by the first Adam. Christ starts his saving work be being one with Adam in his
fallenness, before he becomes what Adam should have been. He follows in Adam’s footsteps
and at the point where Adam comes to an end in death te takes over and becomes what Adam
did not become, and no longer could become. He becomes one with human in his falling
shortness in order that through death and resurrection he might lift human to God’s glory. He
becomes one with human in his sinfulness in order that by the power of his life-giving Spirit
he might remould human in God’s righteousness. He becomes what Adam fell to by his
disobedience in order that Adam might become what Christ was exalted to by his obedience.
The main emphasis in Adam christology for Paul is eschatological. Christ as last
Adam is eschatological human. His role as last Adam begins with and stems from his
resurrection, not from pre-existent, or even from his earthly ministry. Up to and including his
death Christ himself was patterned according to the archetype of the first Adam, born of
woman in the likeness of sinful flesh, only with the resurrection did Chris become himself
archetype of a new human, eschatological human, last Adam.
Thus, in Rom 5: 15 –19, Paul is talking not about the last Adam as such but about the
earthly Jesus patterned according to the archetype of Adam, about the human who
recapitulated Adam’s fate, who repeated but reversed the dram which brought about human’s
fallenness. That is to say, he is talking about Jesus as the one who shattered the mould of
Adam’s archetype, who broke through Adam’s death to resurrection beyond to new humanity
beyond. It is in this sense that Paul can speak of Jesus’ death as a kind of pattern as a pattern,
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 47
that is for the way through Adam’s fate to resurrection beyond. But the new humanity is life
for the other side of death, shaped by power from the other side of death. Paul thinks in terms
of the believer sharing in Christ’ death only because Christ lived through Adam’s fate to
resurrection life beyond, so that only those who share in the death of Adam as experienced by
Christ will share also in the resurrection life of Christ, that is only those who follow out the
pattern of Adam to death with Christ will be stamped with the pattern of Christ’s resurrected
humanity, only those who follow the footsteps of the pioneer will be crowned like him with
honour and glory and thus fulfill God’s original purpose for human being
c) N.T metaphors on the Work of Jesus Christ (e.g. Redemption, Reconciliation,
Justification, etc.)
By reconciliation is meant the activity whereby the disorders of existence are healed, its
imbalances are redressed, its alienation bridged over.
Paul quiet certainly sees human in a hopeless situation which finally allows him nothing
but to break out in the cry: “Wretched man that I am…” (Rom. 7: 24). But this view of
human is the consequence of the certainty that God frees the Christians from this situation
and that every one can be freed from it. Thus the picture of human which Paul draws is only
the other side of his message of the redemption of human by Christ. (Rom. 8:1) Paul speaks
of the salvation that has now become a reality in various forms of conceptions, all of which
describe the same divine event from various sides.
Redemption: Redemption or Deliverance can also be translated as ‘salvation.’ Human
being as sinner is in fact confronted by ‘perdition’ (destruction). Paul speaks frequently of the
deliverance/redemption, which awaits the Christians (Rom. 1: 16; 10:9). Rom. 13: 11 – 12
shows that Paul expects this deliverance at the coming of Christ in glory that is anticipated in
the near future, that is, at the imminent (near) end (cf. I Cor. 1:8; I Thes. 5:2). But Paul also
speaks not only of the expectation of the future deliverance; he also closely connects this
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 48
future with the present: “We await the redemption of our body, for in hope we are saved”
(Rom. 8: 23 – 24). For the Christian the coming salvation is assured gift already in the
present, because it is grounded in Christ’s death and resurrection in the past. The deliverance
of Christian, which he assuredly expects at the approaching end of the world, thus is for him
already a present reality, because God’s decisive saving act has happened and in the present
the Christian already receives a share in this salvation event of the past.
It is only in the specific concepts related to salvation that we can discern what this state of
being delivered means in terms of contents.
(i) Redemption from the Spiritual powers: According to Paul’s conviction, human
beings are always a slave and therefore unfree. (Rom. 6:16) In this world one is in
him/herself slave to many lords which seek to draw him/her away from God: sin (Rom. 6:6,
20), the law (Rom. 6: 14 – 15; 7: 5- 6), and the elements of the world (Gal. 4: 3, 8). Christ has
freed and will free human beings from all these masters (I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 3: 17; Rom. 8:
23). Most comprehensive are the statements about the liberation from the world elements, the
spiritual powers. According to Paul, in this world, one stand inescapably under the power of
the demons and devil, which keep one from God and thus from the godly life. But by sending
of Christ God has “disarmed the powers and principalities and made a public exposure of
them by gaining the victory over them in Christ” (Col. 2:15). As the Christian is certain that
the powers are disarmed so also one is certain that Christ’s is appearing in glory, which is
expected in the near future. Then when Christ “has destroyed every lordship and every
principalities and power.. the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (I Cor. 15: 24 ff.; II Thes.
2:8). Thus, the Christian can be certain that the power of evil will not have the last word,
because the powers are to be destroyed and God will be all in all (I Cor. 15: 24, 28; II Thes.
2: 8).
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 49
(ii) Redemption from the Law: Liberation from the Law seems to be the central
message of Paul. For Paul the law is the power, which bids human beings to God’s will. The
Christians have to recognize that the law keeps one in prison and awakens sinful passions
(Gal. 3:23; 4: 3-5, 9; Rom. 6: 14-15; 7: 4-6). The law was not capable of giving life to human
being, and the works of the law can justify no one before God (Gal. 3:21; Rom. 3:20; 7:24).
Paul proclaims to the Galatians who desire to be subject to the law: “Christ has redeemed us
from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3: 13; 4: 4-5). But this
redemption from the law signifies freedom: “For freedom Christ has made us free” (Gal. 5: 1-
13). Thus here, two periods of the divine dealing with the world are clearly set in sequence:
until the coming of Christ and of faith, human being stood under the curse of the law (Gal. 3:
10). Christ has put an end to this curse (Gal. 3: 13). Thus, Paul interprets Christ’s death on the
cross as a vicarious taking upon himself of the curse of the law, which necessarily affected
human who were disobedient to the law; and Paul portrays this vicarious bearing of the law’s
curse as a redeeming of human being from this curse.
(iii) Redemption from Sin and Guilt: Paul sees the enslaving dominion of sin over
human being as bound up closely with the law as the lord that enslaves one in the world. One
is always stands under the death-dealing power of sin so long as one is under the power of the
law (cf. Rom. 7:5). Paul sees sin first of all as a power to which human being are subject as
slaves and which exercises its rule through death (Rom. 5: 21). But Christ has also set us free
from slavery to sin (Rom. 6: 22; 8:2). Hence the Christians have died to sin and are freed
from slavery to the power of sin (Rom. 6:2, 18) but sin can still exercise its dominion (Rom
6:12). For Paul human’s most desperate misery is the guilt into which sin plunges human.
Because all have sinned and the whole world is guilty before God (Ron. 5:12; 3: 19, 23;
5:20). But in Christ “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14). Paul uses a
number of other images in order to express the message of the removal of the guilt of sin by
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 50
God (Rom 8:1; II Cor 5:19; I Thes 1:10). In these texts we encounter the juridical image of
acquittal and remission of guilt.
JUSTIFICTION
It is in the polemical contexts of Romans and Galatians that Paul goes into this
message of divine justification in the most detail. The so-called “theme” of Romans finds its
fundamental exposition in Rom. 3:21 – 30. In what follows this message is illustrated by the
figure of believing Abraham, and then there is the quite general statement in Rom. 4: 5-8 and
in Gal. 2: 15 16. And here Abraham is named as an example of faith Gal. 3: 6-9). And still a
third time Paul speaks still more explicitly of justification, after he had spoken in the
Philippian epistle of the fact that he had learned to regard the irreproachable law-
righteousness of his Jewish past as loss for the sake of Christ (Phil. 3: 8-9).
Paul also frequently speaks briefly of the justification of the Christians or of
justification by faith (Rom. 5:9, 18; 8:30; I Cor. 1:30; 6:11), and of God righteousness (Rom.
3:5; 5:7 II Cor. 5:21), and the often held view, that Paul’s doctrine of justification is a mere
“polemical doctrine and hence not a central expression of his message of salvation, which
cannot be maintained in view of the dominant position of this doctrine in the Pauline epistles.
Quite to the contrary we can see that the doctrine of justification represents the basic and
most highly personal form of expression of the Pauline message of God’s eschatological
saving action.
This polemical character of the Pauline utterances about justification is unmistakable,
because Paul emphasizes that the divine justification is imparted to human being, “apart from
works of law” or “apart from the law” (Rom. 3: 20 –21, 28; 4:6; Gal. 2: 16; 3: 11) and
therefore, “without (human) merit” (Rom 3:24), and without “my own righteousness by the
law” (Phil. 3:9). This polemical antithesis also explains the paradoxical formulations:
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 51
“Human being is justified by faith” or “to the believer his faith is counted for righteousness”
(Rom. 3:28; 4:5), which have repeatedly led to the misunderstanding that in place of the
human works of the law Paul demands human faith as one’s achievement in advance for the
divine justification. Paul’s doctrine of justification has its historical root in the apocalyptic
Judaism ideas of “God’s righteousness.” This concept had been used in the sense of God’s
faithfulness, which was maintained in the covenant. God’s righteousness is revealed in two
ways: through the gospel, i.e., by the proclamation of the gospel (Rom. 1: 16 – 17) and now
also to the believer, through the redemption in Christ Jesus, through whom God has
demonstrated his forgiveness (Rom. 3: 21 - 25). Thus, God has acted in the present time in
Christ and continues to act through he gospel, and thus causes his righteousness to be
manifest.
What does “righteousness of God” mean with Paul?
Paul uses the concept of “righteousness of God” only in the context of the doctrine of
justification. In Paul “righteousness of God” is not a statement about God’s nature but about
God’s action. Since his becoming a Christian Paul has learned to see that his irreproachable
righteousness of the law has been loss for him, that it is not possible to create his own
righteousness out of the law (Phil. 3: 6 – 9; Rom. 3:20; 9:31; 10:3). God righteousness has
manifest “through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom. 3: 21 – 22, 26 – 27). On
the basis of this statement it is clear, first that “God’s righteousness” denotes an action of
God which has become manifest in the present and has occurred and therefore is proclaimed
(cf. Rom. 10:8 – 10; I Cor. 1: 23-24; Col. 1: 22 – 23). It is clear that this divine action
“justifies one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3: 26; 4:5). Thus, God’s righteousness comes to
pass in God’s declaring the ungodly righteous.
For Paul God’s action that acquits is a creative action which causes the godless to
become righteous and makes the sinners into a “new creation” (II Cor. 5: 17, 21). God is the
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one “who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist” (Rom. 4: 17)
and therefore God’s judgement is an event and his pronouncement of righteousness has “the
character of power” (Rom. 1: 17). Therefore, for Paul “God’s righteousness” denotes God’s
saving action which in the present end-time declares sinful being righteous and thus is a
newly creative force.
Christ and Justification
Paul describes God’s justifying action as an action of love which comes to pass in
Christ’s death (Rom. 5:6, 8-9). Paul says clearly that God’s love for sinful human being
caused Christ to die for them. This death has brought it about that we were now declared
righteous by God and may have the firm assurance that in the final judgement we can stand in
the presence of God’s wrath. Here Paul is thinking the purification of human being from guilt
by God, when he calls the death of Jesus “God’s expiation”: Jesus death on the cross is
indeed the lowest level of the humiliation of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:8). That Christ died for us
while we were yet sinners is contrary to all human probability (Rom. 5:6, 8), but precisely
this is the way of the love of God, “who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us
all” (Rom. 8:32).
Paul indicates that God intended to cause his righteousness to become effective
“through forgiveness of the sins which were committed earlier, in the time of forbearance,”
and thus to be just and to justify those who believe. The aim of God’s expiatory action, which
is actualized through Jesus’ death, is the forgiveness of sins which humanity had committed
up to this time. Through Jesus God wrought the forgiveness of sins and therewith the
acquittal of the ungodly (Rom. 4:5)
Faith and Justification
In his statements about God’s act of justification Paul repeatedly points out that this
act applies to all who believe (Rom. 1: 16 – 17; 3: 21 – 22; 4: 5). Rom. 4: 5 gives the
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 53
impression that faith plays the role of an achievement which God acknowledges and rewards.
Paul rather understands faith unequivocally as a consequence of the divine saving action in
Christ: faith comes about on the basis of preaching and of the sending of the preacher.
But faith in Paul’s sense is by no means adequately described therewith. Faith in its
actual nature is not intellectual acknowledgement of a state of affairs, but obedience (Rom.
6:17; 10: 16; 16: 19). If faith as obedience denotes the totality of being a Christian yet at the
same time it is characterized as hope (Col. 1:23; Rom. 4: 18; 20- 22; 8: 24 – 25; Gal. 5: 5-6).
Thus faith is the response of the human being who has encountered in the preaching of the
gospel the message of God’s saving action at the end of time which produces righteousness
and who obediently embraces the grace of God which is offered (Col. 1: 4 – 6). Thus faith is
no human achievement, no “work” but a “free act of obedience,” on the basis of which the
believer knows oneself to be “delivered from the present evil eon (time/age) according to the
will of God because Jesus Christ has given himself for our sins” (Gal. 1: 4). On the basis of
this act of obedience the believer knows him/herself to be “transferred into the kingdom of
his dear Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1: 13 – 14). Only
the believer can know that God “willed to demonstrate his righteousness in the present
time… that God might be righteous and might justify one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3: 25
– 26), but where there is no faith, nothing at all can be said of God’s justifying action.
Thus Paul’s message of the justification of the sinner by faith also describes the
existence of the Christian in the present as the end-time in its inception, while the old eon is
hastening to its end. This confirmed by the juxtaposition (comparison) of expressions about
present and future with reference to the justification event. We hear frequently of justification
that has already been received (Rom. 5:1, 9; 9:30; I Cor. 6:11). But justification is equally
clearly expected of the future (Rom. 5: 19; 3: 30; Gal. 5:5). With all the grateful confession of
the justification that has already taken place, the ultimate justification remains the hoped-for
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 54
gift of God. God’s action that justifies one has occurred and for the believer is the assured
present, as a gift of grace already received, but since there exists the possibility of falling
from grace (Gal. 5:4), the condition of standing finally before God without reproach (blame)
(Col. 1: 23; Gal. 5: 6).
RECONCILIATION
Paul uses the concept of “reconciliation” somewhat in detail only twice, both times in
clear conjunction with the idea of justification (Rom. 5: 8 – 10; II Cor. 5: 17 – 21). Other than
in these two passages in which Paul speaks emphatically of reconciliation, he mentions this
conception only once in passing (Rom. 11: 15). In addition he spoke in hymnic form of the
reconciliation of the universe (Col. 1: 19 – 22).
While the idea of justification was an image from the legal realm, the image of
reconciliation comes from the sphere of personal association, reconciliation presupposes that
an enmity exists between human beings, which is removed by the readiness of one of the
angered sides to bury the enmity, precisely through a being reconciled. Thus, God has buried
the enmity and made peace (Col. 1:20; Rom. 5:1), through Christ’s death. Paul clearly says
that Christ died for us, that thereby the guilt of sin is removed and that thus we have the
certainty of being preserved from God’s coming wrath. The cross of Christ is the way which
God has chosen when he wanted to set aside the enmity between human and Godself (Gal.
2:20).
It is true that the association of the two figures of justification and reconciliation
express the removal of the separation of human being from God that is caused by human
guilt. But the personal figure of reconciliation gives still clearer expression to the fact that the
personal relationship of human to divine Lord is disrupted by guilty one which cannot be put
in order again, but that this broken relationship has been restored by God. Paul speaks of
reconciliation only in the verb form of the past, or at the most once (Rom. 11: 15), of the
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 55
present. For the reconciliation has indeed already taken place, when God acted in Christ’s
death as the one reconciling himself with the world (Rom. 5: 10) and Christ has died for sin
once for all (Rom. 6:10). And yet the message of the reconciliation also describes the
historical reality of the life of the believers in the end-time, which has begun and is not yet
consummated. For God’s reconciling action which has become reality in the past in Christ’s
death is not complete, because the “ministry of reconciliation” sill must exhort, “be
reconciled to God,” because God’s making peace is intended to embrace the whole world
(Col. 1: 20), but the message has not yet reached all the people. The historical character of
God’s reconciling action is also shown in the fact that the belief in the reconciliation that is
received must be maintained (II Cor. 6:1; Col. 1:23) and the ultimate deliverance from the
divine wrath, hoped for as certain, is yet to come (Rom. 5: 10). The message of reconciliation
also thus describes the provisional character of the divine gift of salvation that is received in
faith and confronts us with the question as to the present reality of the Christian life in the
context of Pauline theology.
(Werner Georg Kummel, The Theology of the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1973,
185 – 205)
d) N.T christological interpretation (e.g. kenotic, cosmic, etc.)
Cosmic Christ (John 1:9):
According to Jn 1:19, Christ is the true light that enlightens every one. The historical
Jesus, however, enlightens only Christians. The argument is that the work of Christ before his
historical birth was to enlighten all people through reason and conscience. So trusting in
reason and conscience can still save those who do not know the historical Jesus. Trusting in
reason and conscience is really trusting in the pre-incarnate Christ.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 56
Christology and the Evolutionary Thought
A number of contemporary theologians have seen in the philosophy of process an aid
towards christological restatement. Although there is an appearance of novelty about this
approach, the underlying theological motive is an ancient one. It is a revival of the endeavour,
which first found expression in Irenaeus, to interpret the incarnation as the crown and
consummation of God’s on-going work in creation and to achieve a closer integration
between creation and redemption. The sufferings and death of Christ are de-emphasized and
instead there is stressed his exaltation and cosmic significance. The epistle to the Ephesians
gives clear testimony to a new phase in the Christ event, another step toward the
universalizing of the new humanity that had been inaugurated in Christ and his immediate
circle of disciples and was now spreading into the wider world.
According to this epistle, God’s purpose for his creatures has been revealed in Christ.
It is to bring together in a unified community the many rival groups of human beings, whose
differences are typified by the division between Jews and Gentiles. Before the foundation of
the world, God had already destined these warring groups to be brought into unity in Christ.
As for Christ himself, he is a cosmic figure, and the church is a cosmic or universal
community.
There is a new view of reality, which wan reinforced by the discovery of evolution in
the 19th cent. (C. Lloyd Morgan). Reality is viewed as a process continually moving on to
new and higher levels of complexity and values. Now theologians, who see reality as God’s
creation, naturally incline to think of a driver (than a drive) and to ascribe the process to the
activity of a divine purpose. The incarnation of God in Christ is then seen as the culmination
of the process. In Thorton’s view it does not simply emerge from the process, but represents
rather a new act of creation, a new divine intervention in the process. Thorton prefers to think
of Christ as one who emerges from humanity and in whom God actualized in a living human
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 57
personality, the potential God-human relationship, which is divinely, intended truth about
every person. Therefore, christology should be interpreted as the coincidence of the divine
self-expression and free human response in self-surrender and faith in Christ. And Christ is
not only the fulfillment of human’s capacity for God but also Christ is the fulfillment of
God’s purpose in human.
Interest in this aspect of Christology has been stimulated in Roman Catholic thought
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. His scientific investigation of human origins with a vision of
the whole cosmic process as one of continuous complexification converges on the ‘Omega
Point.’ This Omega Point coincides with the doctrine of Christ as the centre of the final
unification of the cosmos (Col.1:20; Eph. 1:10). In an essay on christology, Karl Rahner has
presented a view of Christ within an evolutionary world view as the appearance in history.
Christ is the one who emerges from history, at the same time, Christ is the absolute self-
impartation of God, who inaugurates in a definitive way the ultimate phase in the process of
self-transcendence.
Cosmic christology points to a genuine aspect of the problem. The continuity of the
incarnation with God’s previous action in the world has been important to Christian faith
from the beginning. It is the theme of the prologue to the Fourth Gospel and other passage
like Heb. 1:1-3. But when the continuity is looked for in the process of evolution, there is a
danger that the purposive activity of God in his creation will be too unequivocally identified
with it, and that the radically recreative aspect of the work of God in Christ will not be
recognized.
Although the incarnation was part of God’s purpose for the fulfillment of his creation
from the beginning, and was not made necessary only by the fall, it does tend to diminish the
gravity of evil. There is a disconcordance between the divine purpose and the life of human
beings and the presence of the Logos in the world is like a light shining in darkness (Jn 1:5).
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 58
So if there is continuity between creation and incarnation, there is also discontinuity. Christ
does emerge from the process, as the Son of Mary, he is continuos with the whole race of
human beings from Adam (Lk 3: 23 – 38). But Christ is also the second Adam, a new divine
creation, a new beginning of creation (Col. 1: 18) whom God inserts into the process. Christ
is the fulfillment of human being.(A Dictionary of Theology – Alan Richardson, pp. 62 – 62).
For Christianity, the mystery of Christ and the communion in the Spirit are the
foundation of all mystical experience. The cultivation of a cosmic mysticism within a
Christian context begins with the predication of the cosmic energies to Christ is a cosmic
christology. While there are roots of this predication in the Christian tradition of a cosmic
christology that integrates the discoveries of modern science and philosophy is yet to be
written. The beginnings of a cosmic christology and mysticism are clearly evident in the
writings of Pierre de Chardin, himself a Christian and a scientist.
Teilhard’s work develops the understanding of cosmic evolution and expansion in the
image of the Omega Point, which he associates, with the energy of Christ. The transformative
energies of the universe, which have their foundations in the noetic dimensions of Christ,
include the human energies of consciousness, which can be transformed to harmonize with
the cosmic forces. This transformation is realized in the mystical contemplation of persons
who associates themselves in the divine energies of love. Teilhard posits a dynamic interplay
between personal and cosmic consciousness in mystical awareness. Thus, cosmic mysticism
is participation in the Christic energies of evolution.
Cosmic mysticism ensues in human activity, a task that emerges from the realized
cosmic interconnection in Christ. This activity is described as building the earth. For Teilhard
this is not mere activism but rather a quality of work, that suggests a new paradigm for
activity, i.e., the quality of compassionate discovery. Compassion is the vigorous drive to
discover the depths of the cosmic energy active in the human and in the universe. It is a
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 59
passionate energy that directs all human activity into a consciousness of the Divine Milieu
from which contemplation and creative activity arise. Cosmic mysticism does not turn from
the universe in its diversity but rather celebrates it in the human energies by sharing in the
evolving impulse of the universe itself. The cosmic mystic becomes the opening for the
evolutionary energies of Christ-Omega to become incarnate.
Kenotic Christology
By kenotic christology we mean a doctrine of the person of Christ which sought to
understand him in terms of a kenosis or self-emptying of the Logos, whereby it was able to
manifest itself in the finite life of a human being. Kenoticism was a kind of mediating
theology, incorporating the traditional incarnational understanding of Christ, but modifying it
is such a way as to safeguard against those docetic tendencies which seem to have dogged the
classical christology through the centuries.
The word is an allusion to that famous hymn in praise of Christ, whether it is by Paul
or as many scholars believe, is pre-Pauline: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of
a servant, being born in the likeness of human being… (Phil. 2: 4 – 8). Exponents of
Kenoticism rely heavily on this passage, and to a less extent, on another Pauline passage (II
Cor. 8: 9).
The most persuasive statement of the kenotic view came from Gottfried Thomasius
(1802 – 73) whose writings were almost contemporaneous with those of Kierkegaard. One
may ask if such a dimming down, reduction or emptying takes place, must this not result in a
failure to reveal, if the divinity of the Logos has been so diminished? Thomasius had two
answers: In his language, it is of the very essence of love ‘to accept every limitation… What
seems to be the alienation or finitization of deity is the deepest internalization of deity itself,
the concentration of its energies on one point which, in its significance, far outweighs the
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 60
most inclusive manifestation of omnipotence. The second of Thomasius’ answers turns on
his well-known distinction between the immanent and the relative attributes of God. The
immanent attributes are absolute power, truth, holiness and love. In the incarnation, it is
claimed, the Logos divested himself of these relative attributes and now related to the world
as a human being. But he retained and in his incarnate existence fully manifested those
immanent attributes that belong to the very existence fully deity. The incarnate Lord was no
omnipotent one, and no miracle worker.
Thomas makes a distinction between the ‘emptying’ by which the divine, pre-existent
Logos sets aside his relative attributes to assume the finite human condition, and the
‘humbling’ which the incarnate Christ undergoes in his acceptance of the way of the cross. In
Thomasius’ language, there is an emptying of the Logos asarkos (the Word before
incarnation) and a humbling of the Logos ensarkos (the Word in the incarnate state). But
these two moments are closely connected, indeed, the humiliation of Jesus in his death is the
earthly-historical counterpart or image of the divine self-limitation or self-emptying of the
Logos. The humiliation of the human Jesus is no disguise but is continuous with the self-
abnegation of God himself. All these presupposes a two-stage kenosis, a self-emptying by the
pre-existent Logos and then a further humbling event to the death of the cross in the human
life in which that Logos is believed to have become incarnate. At this point, some lines of
connection are obviously established between Kenoticism and the religious philosophy of
Hegel, for in his philosophy the Absolute Spirit may be said to empty itself of its
absoluteness and to enter the finite.
Charles Gore (1853 –1932) developed kenotic christology. For him the incarnation
was a self-emptying of God to reveal himself under conditions of human nature and from the
human point of view. The real incarnation involves a real self-impoverishment, a real self-
emptying, a real self-limitation on the part of the eternal Word of God. The church has
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 61
systematically obscured this true humanity of Christ. One of Gore’s most striking examples
of te limitation of Jesus’ knowledge touches on a subject – how far did Jesus know in
advance that he would be put to death? Gore believes that even in the very last hours, Jesus
still did not see clearly the shape of coming events: It was only because the future was not
clear that he could pray, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me.”
The idea of kenosis is an important one in Christian thought, but the kenotic
christologies turned out to be no more than an episode in modern thinking about the person of
Jesus Christ.
Christ in terms of the Greek Philosophies
The Greek Apologists of the second century defense the Christian faith against the
objections raised by intelligent contemporaries in the Greco-Roman world, especially the
charge that Christians are “atheist” (non-believer) and therefore a subversive (rebellious)
influence. They seek accordingly to commend their faith in terms acceptable to the serious
Greco-Roman inquirer, and this involves them in an attempt to examine and to articulate the
fundamental beliefs they profess. The main lines of their defense of Christianity and their
commendation of it to the world of their time had already been predicted. And the Gentile
world is asked to recognized that Christianity is as old as the Creation. Thus, the claim that
Christianity is the truth to which both the scriptures and the insights of the philosophers
directly lead, is the starting point for the arguments of the Apologists. But they develop its
implications and they provide it with a theological rationale. This was found in the idea that
the divine Logos, the uttered and self-communicating reason of God, spoke through the
prophets and was the subject of the theophanies recorded in the OT in which people found
themselves encountered and addressed by the divine presence; and at the same time, the
Logos who is Christ is none other than the Reason in which all people participate. The
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 62
identification of Christ with the divine Logos serve to unite the old claim of Christianity to be
faith in one who was both the glory of Israel and a light to the Gentiles.
Irenaeus
Irenaeus is believed to have been born in Smyrna (modern Turkey), in approximately
A. D 135, although he subsequently settled in Rome. He became Bishop of Lyons around
178, a position, which he held until his death two decades later. As bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus
led the church in that city, evangelized the Celts who lived in the region, defended his flock
against heresy, and sought peace and unity in the church. Irenaeus is noted especially for his
vigorous defense of Christian orthodoxy in the face of challenge from Gnosticism. His most
significant work “Against all Heresies” represent a major defense of the Christian
understanding of salvation, and especially fo the role of tradition in remaining faithful to the
apostolic witness in the face of non-Christian interpretations. He is often considered the first
great Christian theologian after the NT.
Summary of his Christology:
1. Christ is the center of Irenaeus’ theology. He is the basis for the continuity between
creation and redemption. We were made by the same God who now in Christ offers us
salvation. In Christ, that image according to which and for which we were made has come
to dwell among us. This is the work of Christ, which Irenaeus calls “recapitulation.”
2. Recapitulation is one of Irenaeus’ fundamental doctrines. The term “recapitulation” has
various meanings in ancient writers, and Irenaeus himself uses it in more than one sense.
Irenaeus sees in it the best way to express the work of Christ as head of a new humanity.
Literally recapitulation means to place under a new head. That is precisely what Christ
has done. He has become the head of a new humanity, just as sinful Adam is the head of
the old.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 63
3. Although God’s plan for the redemption of humankind was operating from the very
beginning, that plan finds its greatest and final expression in the recapitulation of all
things by Christ which began in the incarnation. Recapitulation is a summary and
culmination of what has happened before, and it can only be understood within the
context of those previous events.
4. To a certain extent, Christ’ recapitulation is a new starting point, but it is also closely
related with what went before it. Although the incarnation is a new beginning in the
history of the world, it is not opposed to creation, but is rather its continuation and
fulfillment. Christ is the new Adam, and in him the history of the old Adam is repeated,
although in opposed direction. In Adam we had been created to be like the Son, and in
Christ the Son takes humanity unto himself. As a person, Christ is all that Adam should
have been and had he not succumbed to temptation. Christ is the new point of departure
in which the human creature, who in Adam had given itself over to the Devil, is once
again free to grow in the image that is the Son. It is for this reason that Irenaeus
emphasized the parallelism between Adam and Christ.
Adam was formed from the virgin soil and Christ came to the world through
Mary, the virgin.
The Fall took place through the disobedience of a woman and the obedience of
another woman was the occasion for restoration.
Adam was tempted in Paradise and Jesus in the desert.
Through a tree did death enter into the world and through the tree of the cross
has life been given unto us.
5. Another fundamental aspect of Christ’ recapitulation is his victory over Satan. Irenaeus
sees the whole history of salvation as the struggle between God and the Devil, which will
end in God’s final victory. In Adam we were made subjects of the Devil, and therefore,
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 64
Christ’ recapitulation involves a victory over Satan, and our consequent liberation. In
Adam, Satan managed to alienate us from that image of God for which we had been
created. In Christ, that very image is united to us, and thus the Devil’s purposes are
overthrown. Therefore, the initial victory of Christ is not his resurrection but his
incarnation. When God is united to humanity Satan suffers the first of the great defeats
that will lead to his final destruction.
6. Irenaeus does not discuss the union of divinity and humanity in Christ as if these were
two opposed natures. On the contrary, humanity was created to enjoy union with God and
in Christ that union achieves its highest goal. Furthermore, divine and human in Christ are
not understood as two “substances” or “natures.” It is rather that in Christ divinity is
united to humanity because he is the Word that God addresses to us, and is also the
human who responds to that Word. In making use of dynamic rather that substantialist
concepts an din nit defining the divine nature in opposition to the human, Irenaeus avoids
the difficulties that would later give rise to bitter christological controversies.
7. God’s incarnation in Christ is only the beginning of victory over evil. The whole life of
Christ is part of the work of recapitulation which now continues until the final
consummation. After being united to humanity, the Son of God must life a human life and
die a human death. His temptation in the desert is another decisive victory over Satan,
who is unable to achieve the Fall of this new Adam. Throughout his life and ministry,
living the totality of human life, Christ saves that life from its ancient servitude to the
power of Satan. In his death and resurrection, he makes use of the most formidable
weapon of evil, death itself, in order to conquer the empire of Satan. The final fulfillment
we now await will be Christ’ last victory over the Devil. Meanwhile we who live between
the resurrection and the consummation are not living in a period of truce in this struggle
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 65
of centuries but are living precisely at the time in which Christ is making effective his
victory in order to lead us to the final day.
8. The church has an important tile in this work of recapitulation. Just as in Adam all sinned
because Adam was the head of humanity, in Christ the whole church overcomes Satan
because Christ is the head of the church. Although Christ has overcome the Devil, and
thus has returned to us the possibility of growing until we achieve the plenitude of God’s
image, that possibility is given only in the body whose head is Christ. The church is
Christ’ body, and in her he advances his work of recapitulation through baptism and the
Eucharist by which we are united to Christ.
Irenaeus asserts strongly the humanity of Christ. This found expression in his taking
up again that christology – i.e., the Adam christology of Paul. Underpinning (support)
Irenaeus christology is an anthropology. According to this anthropology, the human being is
not conceived as confined within rigid bounds, but is constituted rather by a possibility of
becoming, by an openness, which allows for development and advance. So Irenaeus did not
take the story in Genesis that the human being was made in the image and likeness of God to
mean that Adam and Eve were perfect in the beginning. Rather, they were like children who
had to grow into maturity. “Created things must be inferior to God who created them… They
come short of the perfect. Human being could not receive this perfection, being yet infant.”
The image of God, on this view, was given as a potentiality into which the human creatures
might grow, though the possibility of growth and advance implies that equally there was the
possibility that they might slip back through sin. However, he did not hesitate to call the
perfected state of humanity as “deification.” But he did not mean that human being had
become a god or a part of God, but that the divine image was now fully manifested in the
creature, whose life was lived in God and out of God.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 66
The christology of Irenaeus is very close to Paul. The first attempt to create human
beings in the image and likeness of God failed through the sin of Adam and Eve. But in the
last times, not by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of human, but by the pleasure of God,
his hands formed a living human, in order that Adam might be created after the image and
likeness of God. There is one difference made by Irenaeus to Pauline teaching. He speaks of
Adam as having been animated (lively/active) by the “breath of life which proceeded from
God” whereas in the case of Christ, he says that “the Word…having become united with the
ancient substance of Adam’s formation, rendered human living and perfect receptive of the
perfect God, in order that as in the natural (Adam) we were all dead, so in the spiritual we
may all be made alive.” But perhaps one should not make too much of the difference between
the “breath of life” given by God to Adam and the Word given to Christ, for surely the breath
of life bestowed on Adam included some share of participation in the Logos. “Breath of life”
and “Logos” are not extras (spare), but essential to the human constitution. Certainly,
Irenaeus’ desire to defend the genuine humanity of Christ would not seem to be compatible
with making a fundamental difference between Christ and human beings generally.
In christology his approach was conditioned negatively by his opposition to
Gnosticism and Docetism, positively by his own tremendous vision of Christ as the second
Adam, Who summed up in Himself the whole sequence of humankind, including the first
Adam, thereby sanctifying it and inaugurating a new, redeemed race of human being. Thus,
he insists on the unity of the God-human, repudiating (rejecting) the Gnostic separation of the
heavenly Christ from the human Jesus. As he read the Gospels and the rule of faith, it was the
eternal Word Itself Who became incarnate; and Irenaeus uses to apply the formula “one and
the same” to the Lord Jesus Christ. Irenaeus motive here was soteriological; only if the divine
Word entered fully into human life, could the redemption have been accomplished. Similarly
as against Docetism, he argued for the reality of Christ’s corporeal nature. He was truly God
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 67
and truly human. If Christ’ flesh had differed in any respect from ordinary human flesh, the
parallel between Christ and the first Adam would not have been valid, and human’s sinful
nature could not have been reconciled to God. The Word Himself fashioned His own
humanity in the Virgin’s womb; and if it be asked why He did this instead of creating some
altogether novel substance, the answer is that the humanity which was to be the instrument of
salvation had to be identical with that which needed to be saved.
Summary:
Irenaeus follows the general line of the Apologists’ attempt to reconcile the doctrine of
creation and divine transcendence by means of a Logos theology. The Logos continues to b
seen as the medium of God’s self-revelation, particularly in the OT theophanies in which the
Logos was manifested to human being. The revelatory function of the Logos is linked with
his work in creation and in salvation. At the Incarnation the Logos became manifest humanly.
It is his concern with the recreation of human being which provides the driving force for
his christology. He is interested primarily in soteriology: in the restoration of God’s original
Creation. When the Word of God was made flesh he displayed the true image by becoming
that which was his image, and restored the likeness by making human like the invisible
Father through the visible Word.
He is concerned to maintain the identity of the person of Jesus Christ with the eternal Son
i.e., to separate the Christ from the human Jesus. These basic concerns are the source of the
great strength of his Christology – the clarity with which he asserts the unity of the person of
Christ who is the Logos, who in turn is the actual manifestation of God himself and not an
inferior mediator, and who is also fully human with the same humanity which was created in
the beginning and which is restored.
Irenaeus vigorously attacks those who divide Jesus from the Logos, or Jesus from Christ.
He expounds the idea of two natures. He points out that the NT often uses the name ‘Christ’
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 68
in contexts, which in fact speak of his humanity, his humiliation, suffering and death. This
serves to underline the truth that he is Son of God and Son of human. And the very name
Christ has a Trinitarian significance, since it speaks of one, which anoints (Father), one who
is anointed (the Son) and an anointing (the Spirit).
He is anxious to show that Christ’s humanity is identical with our own. It is on this truth
that his whole soteriology hinges. In his view the work of Christ would be valueless if he had
not become what we are and so made it possible to ‘recapitulate’ Adam in himself. Since
Irenaeus points out that in this context that we are both body and soul, it is likely that he
means to imply that in becoming human the Logos assumed both flesh and human soul.
The purpose of the incarnation was to repair the consequences of Adam’s disobedience.
Adam was created not as the glorious creature. He was given freedom and moral choice and
the rationality, which mirrored in him the Logos. Adam should have advanced towards the
realization of these potentialities but he fell through disobedience. This fall was the fall of
human being as a whole, for Adam is individual with a corporate significance. All people
were in Adam when he disobeyed God: they and he are identical.
This belief in the solidarity of the human race with Adam corresponds to the
christological emphasis on the one-ness of Christ with human being. Christ is not a heavenly
being who descended from heaven and remain impassible but he was made one with his own
creation, and became flesh, fathering up or ‘recapitulating’ all things into himself. This means
that whereas all people had been gathered up into Adam’s disobedience, they have now been
gathered up into Christ as the second Adam. In him they have been reconciled to God, having
become, collectively, obedient unto death. Thus, the human race, summed up in Christ’s
humanity, regains what it had lost in Adam, that is, to be in the image and likeness of God.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 69
Irenaeus interpretation of Christ’s work of salvation has at its centre the ideas of the
restoration of human to the likeness of God through the incarnation and the incorporation of
human into Christ’ obedience.
It must be admitted that although Irenaeus makes it perfectly clear that human being is
restored by Christ’ recapitulation of Adam, he offers two different interpretations of this at
the same time. He lay great emphasis on Christ’ human obedience, culminating in his death,
as the means by which Adam’s disobedience is reversed and annulled. On the other hand, he
also understands it as the union of humanity in the Incarnation with the incorruptibility and
immortality of the Son of God, in whom what was mortal is swallowed up in immortality so
that in this sense he became what we are to make us what he is.
Clement of Alexandria:
Clement welcomes the philosophy as a means by which human’s mind are trained to
receive the full truth revealed by Christ. He knows that some are afraid of Greek philosophy
and run away from it but he argues with them that the devil can transform himself into an
angel of light. For him philosophy was divinely given to the Greeks as their own particular
covenant. It was given in fact, to the Greeks as a preparation for the coming of Christ and the
calling of the Christian community just as the Law was given to Jews for the same purpose.
Even if Greek philosophy does not grasp the greatness of the truth yet it does nevertheless
prepare the way for the supremely royal teaching. Clement follows the conventional line of
Christian apologetic in claiming that the Hebrew scriptures represent a far older philosophy
than that of any Greek philosophical school. Nevertheless Clement is sincere in his belief that
the universal Logos has provided philosophy as an introduction to the way of perfection
through the teaching of Christ, and that this illustrates the fact that although there is one way
of truth, yet many streams flow into it from different directions, as though into an ever-
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 70
flowing river – a sentiment which is rare enough among the early Christian writers to mark
out Clement as a thinker of remarkable insight and breadth of sympathy.
Clement’s writings consist of introductions to the Christian faith and life leading up to
his conception of the ideal advanced believer: ‘the Gnostic.’ This Gnostic’s form of
Christianity is highly intellectualized. Knowledge is on the whole a higher stage of
communion with God than faith and salvation tends to be seen primarily in terms of
illumination. His theological starting point is the transcendence (incomparable) and
ineffability (inexpressible) of God. In calling God ‘one’ or ‘good’ or ‘mind’ or ‘Father’ or
‘God’ or ‘Creator’ or ‘Lord’ we are not applying him an actual name but employing the best
terms we have, so that our mind may have some basis to rest on. God, in fact is inaccessible
to every mode of human knowledge, and can be known only in so far as God discloses
Godself by grace through the Logos. In himself God is ‘one and beyond the one and above
monad (oneness) itself.’ But he is revealed by his Logos, the Son who is wisdom and
knowledge and truth. He can express the inexpressible God. The revelation of God is
communicated through the Son or Logos who contains within himself the archetypal
(model/classic) ideas. Thus, the Logos is the mediator between the utterly transcended One,
which is God and the world
In christology Clement follows lines of thought which were by now traditional: the
Logos appeared human, the one who was both God and human and hence, the mediator
between God and human, begetting himself when he became flesh, being born, suffering and
dying in the flesh.
In soteriology, Clement offers little that is original. He concentrates attention chiefly
on the revelatory work of the incarnate Logos, but he has some fine statements of the breath
of the love which has been extended to suffering and helpless humankind: “He conformed
himself to our weakness to enable us to gain his strength, offered himself like a sacrificial
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 71
libation (offering) and gave himself as ransom, and left to us a new covenant; he reveals God
to human being, causes corruption to cease, conquers death, reconciles disobedient children
to God: educates, admonishes, saves, guards and promises the kingdom of heaven as the
reward of discipleship.”
In his ideas about salvation it could be said that Clement realizes the eschatology of
Irenaeus. The goal of salvation is the attainment of likeness to God, a likeness that transcends
the natural relationship to God given to human in creation, for it is a participation in divine
qualities, bestowed by pure grace. Clement identifies likeness or assimilation (homoiosis) to
God with knowledge (gnosis) and his ideal ‘gnostic,’ being a son of God by adoption, is a
‘god’ even in this life. In his vision of Christian perfection gnosis is more prominent
(important) than incorruptibility, for Clement believes that the soul possesses a natural
immortality, it was created with the gift of incorruptibility. By knowledge of God human is
transformed into the likeness of God, indeed, knowledge of God is identical with union with
God. In its intellectual aspect gnosis is assimilation to the divine through contemplation;
morally it is assimilation to the divine through freedom from the passions and love.
Since only the advanced Christian is able to receive true gnosis, Clement’s hope of
salvation is certainly elitist (egotist). It does not however, represent a total transformation of
the early Christian into a Platonist understanding of human’s destiny. Assimilation to God
means the closest communion with him, but it does not mean absorption into the One, for
Clement has no doubt that the soul belongs to the created order and is not to be identified
with the divine. Further although salvation is the fullness of gnosis rather than deliverance
from death and corruption, the resurrection of the body is maintained by Clement as part of
the traditional Christian belief, although in his scheme of salvation it is really an anomaly
(deviation from the rule). Clement’s theology illustrates some of the characteristic elements
in the Alexandrian combination of biblical and Platonist religion.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 72
Origen:
One of the most important defenders of Christianity in the third century, Origen
provided an important foundation for the development of eastern Christian thought. His
major contributions to the development of Christian theology can be seen in two general
areas. In the field of biblical interpretation, Origen developed the notion of allegorical
interpretation, arguing that the surface meaning of Scripture was to be distinguished from its
deeper spiritual meaning. In the field of christology, Origen established a tradition of
distinguishing between the full divinity of the Father and a lesser divinity of the Son. Origen
also adopted with some enthusiasm the idea of universal restoration, according to which
every creature including both humanity and Satan will be saved.
Origen was a biblical scholar who steeped in the philosophy of Plato. It is in this
context that we have to understand his christology.
Origen’s starting point is the divine Wisdom, which is a living hypostasis. The
Wisdom is eternally begotten or generated by God. He goes on to say that this Wisdom is
also called the Word because she is the interpreter of the secrets of the mind. So Christ is co-
eternal with God the Father, who has generated Wisdom or the Word from the beginning.
According to him Jesus had a human soul: “As he truly possessed flesh, so also he
truly possessed a soul.” He asserts that the soul of Christ (itself immortal) had always been
united with the Logos. Origen believes that the world of spiritual beings including human
souls, pre-existed from all eternity; he applied this as the key to the incarnation. One of these
souls, the one destined to be the soul of the human Jesus, in every respect a human soul like
the rest, was from the beginning attached to the Logos with mystical devotion. All the other
souls, by the misguided exercise of their free-will, fell away from the Logos, but this unique
soul, as a result of its adoring contemplation, became inseparably united with Him. Origen
quotes I Cor. 6:17 as Scriptural proof that it formed ‘one spirit’ with Him. But since this soul
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 73
belonged to a body, it formed the ideal meeting-point between the infinite Word and finite
human nature. So when it was born from the Blessed Virgin with pure flesh created by the
action of the Spirit, Godhead and humanhood were inextricably (mixed up) united.
With this theory of the mediating role of Christ’s human soul as its basis, Origen
expounds the doctrine of the incarnation. On the one hand he insists on the duality of the
natures speaking of Christ’s humanhood and divinity and of His divine and human nature,
even of His ‘hypostasis’ as human and His ‘hypostasis’ as Only-begotten. Origen defines the
relationship of the two natures as an actual union resulting in the deification of the humanity,
and not as a mere association. The Logos and he humanity are really one, the reason being
that He has united Himself substantially with Christ’s human soul in a union more intimate
than He ever affected with the souls of prophets or apostles by inspiration and grace.
Origen’s christology is catabatic since it begins from the divine Wisdom or Word,
who has been generated by the Father since eternity, but because it is a full humanity, both
body and soul, which the Word takes in the incarnation. Origen strongly asserts the Word’s
subordination to the Father, even if they are co-eternal. We cannot see God directly in Christ,
for the infinite has been scaled down to the finite. Christ is the image or mirror of the
eneffable God.
From the NT onward, we have come across Universalist tendencies. In Origen there
are not just tendencies but explicit statements acknowledging that the truth and salvific action
of God extend beyond the specifically Christian revelation, and that in the end God’s
salvation will embrace all those creatures who are capable of receiving it, even the demons.
“It was not true that God’s rays were enclosed in that human alone… or that the Light, which
is the divine Logos, which causes these rays, existed nowhere else… We are careful not to
raise objections to any good teachings, even it their authors are outside the faith.”
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 74
With the traditional teaching as his starting point, Origen was thus able to explain the
rationale of the incarnation in terms of his philosophy. Two further points must be made in
order to set his position in true perspective. First while he clearly intends to represent the
unity between the Logos and Christ’s human soul as a real one, his theory hardly succeeds in
doing so. However his deepest thought seems to have been that the unity of the God-human
was located in the Logos Himself. It was the nature of the Logos, which predominated in
Christ. Therefore, the Word had in effect taken over the role of the governing principle in
Christ. The second point opens up larger issues. It must be recognized that the incarnation as
such really stood outside the logic of Origen’s system. While assigning it a place, he did not
regard the Son’s participation in human nature as either permanent or essential. The mediator
between the only true God and human being is not the God-human Jesus Christ, but the Word
who bridges the gulf between the unoriginate Godhead and creatures. Indeed Jesus shared in
the Word’s divinity and while absolutely real possessed a godlike, ethereal (not earthly)
quality. With the resurrection the deification of Christ’s human nature really began, His body
becoming of a consistency midway between that of natural flesh and that of the soul freed
from bodily ties. The exaltation of the Son of Man consists precisely in this, that He has
ceased to be other than the Logos and has become identically one with Him.
Summary:
Origen’s christology displays his profundity as a Christian thinker and at the same
time the difficulty of reinterpreting the Christian tradition so as to harmonize with his
philosophical presuppositions. The christological problem is to try to understand how the
power of the divine majesty, the Word and Wisdom can have existed within the limitations of
the Jesus Christ. The answer given by Origen is that whereas all soul fell away through the
wrong exercise of its free will except that soul, which adhered to him inseparably and was
made to be ‘one spirit’ with him. This soul is the medium through which the divine nature
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 75
was able to unite itself with material flesh and as such to be born as God-human. This soul
united with the Logos, is rightly termed Son of God, power of God, Christ and wisdom of
God, and the Son of God is correspondingly termed Jesus Christ and Son of Man.
Christ is God and human: human and divine nature begin to come together in him so
that by communion with deity human nature may be deified. In the incarnation Origen tends
to see the divine Logos cut down to human size rather than exalted in the glory of self-giving
love.
The redemptive work of Christ is seen primarily as the revelatory activity of the
Logos illuminating human’ minds, bringing them out of darkness into light, and enabling
them through participation in himself to share in his transformed humanity and be exalted in
him to fellowship with God.
In one sense the believer has already been saved through Christ’s offering of himself
as a propitiatory sacrifice to avert God’s wrath and his rescue of humankind from the devil,
who had gained the mastery over him through sin. But this is only the beginning of the
process of salvation. Indeed, to know Christ as redeemer is only a rudimentary form of faith,
suitable for simper Christian. God’s will for the soul is its transformation into the divine
image through knowledge of himself, that is, its deification. The end of salvation is
contemplation of the Father which requires no intermediary.
For Origen salvation is thus a complex process of re-deification, a return to the
beginning. For this reason the ultimate goal involves no abolition of the original distinction
between uncreated God and created spirits.
Alexandrian –Antiochene dimension and the varying emphasis on the divine and human
in Jesus Christ:
The Two Natures of Jesus Christ:
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 76
The two doctrines to which the patristic period may be argued to have made a
decisive contribution relate to the person of Christ and the nature of the Godhead. These two
developments are organically related to one another. By 325, the early church had come to
the conclusion that Jesus was “of one substance” (homoousios) with God. (The term
homoousios can also be translated as “one in being” or “consubstantial.”) The implications of
this christological statement were twofold: in the first place, it consolidated at the intellectual
level the spiritual importance of Jesus Christ to Christians; secondly, however, it posed a
powerful challenge to simplistic conceptions of God.
It may be noted that the christological debates of the early church took place largely
in the eastern Mediterranean world, and were conducted in the Greek language, and often in
the light of the presuppositions of major Greek schools of philosophy. In practical terms, this
means that many of the central terms of the christological debates of the early church are
Greek, often with a history of use within the Greek philosophical tradition. We may
summarize the main landmarks of the patristic christological debate in terms of two schools,
debates and council, as follows:
The Alexandrian School: It tended to place emphasis upon the divinity of Christ, and
interpret that divinity in terms of “the word becoming incarnate.” A scriptural text, which was
of central importance to this school, is Jn. 1:14, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among
us.” This emphasis upon the idea of incarnation led to the festival of Christmas being seen as
especially important.
The outlook of the Alexandrian school, of which Athanasius is a representative, is
strongly soteriological in character. Jesus Christ is the redeemer of humanity, where
‘redemption’ means “being taken up into the life of God” or “being made divine,” a notion
traditionally expressed in terms of deification. Christology gives expression to what this a
soteriological insight implies. We could summarize the trajectory of Alexandrian christology
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 77
along the following lines: If human nature is to be deified, it must be united with the divine
nature. God must become united with human nature in such a manner that the latter is
enabled to share in the life of God. This was precisely what happened in and through the
incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ. The Second Person of the Trinity assumed
human nature and by doing so, ensured its divinization. God became human, in order that
humanity might become divine.
Alexandrian writers thus placed considerable emphasis upon the idea of the Logos
assuming human nature. The term “assuming” is important, a distinction is drawn between
the Logos “dwelling within humanity” and the Logos taking human nature upon itself (as in
the incarnation of the Son of God). Particular emphasis came to be placed upon Jn.1:14 (the
word became flesh), which came to embody the fundamental insights of the school and the
liturgical celebration of Christmas. To celebrate the birth of Christ was to celebrate the
coming of the Logos to the world, and its taking human nature upon itself in order to redeem
it.
This clearly raised the question of the relation of the divinity and humanity of Christ.
Cyril of Alexandria is one of many writer within the school to emphasize the reality of their
union in the incarnation. The Logos existed “without flesh” before its union with human
nature, after that union, there is only one nature, in that the Logos united human nature to
itself. This emphasis upon the one nature of Christ distinguishes the Alexandrian from the
Antiochene School, which was more receptive to the idea of two natures within Christ. Cyril
writes in the fifth century:
We do not affirm that the nature of the Logos underwent a change and became flesh,
or that it was transformed into a whole or perfect human consisting o flesh and body,
rather we say that the Logos … personally united itself to human nature with a living
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 78
soul, became a human being, and was called the Son of Man, but not of mere will or
favour.
The Antiochene School:
The school of christology which arose in ancient Syria differed considerably from
Alexandria. One of the most significant points of difference concerns the context in which
christological speculation was set. The Alexandrian writers were motivated primarily by
soteriological considerations. Concerned that deficient understandings of the person of Christ
were linked with inadequate conceptions of salvation, they used ideas derived from secular
Greek philosophy to ensure a picture of Christ which was consistent with the full redemption
of humanity. The idea of the “Logos” was of particular importance here, especially when
linked with the notion of incarnation.
The Antiochene writers differed at this point. Their concerns were moral, rather than
purely soteriological, and they drew much less significantly on the ideas of Greek
philosophy. The basic trajectory of much Antiochene thinking on the identity of Christ can be
traced along the following lines. On account of their disobedience, human beings exist in a
state of corruption, from which they are unable to extricate (clear away) themselves. If
redemption is to take place, it must be on the basis of a new obedience on the part of
humanity. In that humanity is unable to break free from the bonds of sin, God is obliged to
intervene. This leads to the coming of the redeemer as one who unites humanity and divinity,
and thus to the reestablishment of an obedient people of God.
The two natures of Christ are vigorously defended. Christ is at one and the same time
both God and human being. Against the Alexandrian criticism that this was to deny the unity
of Christ, the Antiochene responded that they upheld that unity, while simultaneously
recognizing that the one redeemer possessed both a perfect human and perfect divine nature.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 79
There is a “perfect conjunction (combination)” between the human and divine natures in
Christ.
Arius (c. 250 – c. 336): The originator of Arianism, a form of christology which refused to
concede the full divinity of Christ. Little is known of his life and little has survived of his
writings. With the exception of a letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, his views are known
mainly through the writings of his opponents. The following points are of especial
significance:
(i) The Father is regarded as existing before the Son. “There was when he was not.” This
decisive affirmation places Father and son on different levels, and is consistent with Arius’
rigorous insistence that the Son is a creature. Only the Father is “unbegotten,” the Son, like
all other creatures, derives from this one source of being. However, Arius is careful to
emphasize that the Son is like every other creature. There is a distinction of rank between the
Son and other creatures, including human beings. Arius has some difficulty in identifying the
precise nature of this distinction. The Son, he argued, is “a perfect creature, yet not as one
among other creatures, a begotten being, yet not as one among other begotten beings.” The
implication seems to be that the Son outranks other creatures, while sharing their essentially
created and begotten nature.
(ii) Arius stresses the unknowability of God of creatures, with the result that the Father
must be unknown to the Son (who is a creature). Arius emphasizes the utter transcendence
and inaccessibility of God. Any other creature cannot know God. Yet the Son is to be
regarded as a creature, however, elevated above all other creatures. Arius presses home his
logic, arguing that the Son cannot know the Father. “The one who has a beginning is in no
position to comprehend or lay hold of the one who has no beginning.” This important
affirmation rests upon the radical distinction between Father and Son. Such is the gulf fixed
between them, that the latter cannot know the former unaided. In common with all other
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 80
creatures, the Son is independent upon the grace of God if the Son is to perform whatever
function has been ascribed to him. It is considerations such as these which have led Arius’
critics to argue that, at the levels of revelation and salvation, the Son is in precisely the same
position as other creatures.
(iii) Arius argued that the biblical passages which seemed to speak of Christ’s status in
terms of divinity were merely using language in an honorific manner. Arius’ opponents were
easily able to bring forward a series of biblical passages pointing to the fundamental unity
between Father and Son. On the basis of the controversial literature of the period, it is clear
that the Fourth Gospel was on major importance to his controversy, with Jn. 3: 35; 10:30;
12:27; 14:10; 17:3, 11, being discussed frequently. Arius’ response to such texts is
significant: the language of “sonship” is variegated in character, and metaphorical in nature.
To refer to the “Son” is an honorific, rather than theologically precise way of speaking.
Although Jesus Christ is referred to a “Son” in Scripture, this metaphorical way of speaking
is subject to the controlling principle of a God who is totally different in essence from all
created beings – including the Son. Arius’ position can be summarized in the following
manner.
(a) The affirmation of the absolute uniqueness and transcendence of God, the unoriginate
source of all reality. “We acknowledge one God, Who is alone ingenerate, alone eternal,
alone without beginning, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone wise, alone good,
alone sovereign, alone judge of all, etc. Since it is unique, transcendent and indivisible, the
being or essence of the Godhead cannot be shared or communicated. For God to impart His
substance to some other being, however, exalted would imply that He is divisible and subject
to change which is inconceivable. Therefore, whatever else exists must have come into
existence, not by any communication of God’s being but by an act of creation on His part.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 81
(b) The Son is a creature, who, like all other creatures, derives from the will of God. The Son
is a perfect creature and not to be compared with the rest of creation; but that he is a creature
owing His being wholly to the Father’s will, i.e., He is not self-existent.
(c) As a creature the Son must have had a beginning. There was when He was not. The
orthodox suggestion that He was in the strict sense eternal, i.e., co-eternal with the Father
seemed to Arius to entail presupposing ‘two self-existent principles, which spelt the
destruction of monotheism.
(d) The Son can have no communion with and indeed no direct knowledge of, His Father.
Although He is God’s Word and Wisdom, He is distinct from that Word and that Wisdom,
which belong to God’s very essence. He is a creature pure and simple, and only bears these
titles because He participates in the essential Word and Wisdom. In Himself, He is like all
other creatures, alien from and utterly dissimilar to the Father’s essence and individual being.
He cannot comprehend the infinite God. The Father remains ineffable to the Son, and the
Word can neither see nor know the Father perfectly and accurately.
(e) The Son must be liable to change and even sin. While the Son’s nature was in principle
peccable (liable to sin), God in His providence foresaw that He would remain virtuous
(ethical) by His own steadfast resolution, and therefore bestowed this grace on Him in
advance.
(f) The term “Son” is thus a metaphor, an honorific term intended to underscore the rank of
the Son among other creatures. It does not imply that Father and Son share the same being or
status.
(g) The status of the Son is itself a consequence of the will of the Father, it is not a
consequence of the nature of the Son, but of the will of the Father.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 82
The net result of this teaching was to reduce the Son to a demigod; if He infinitely
transcended all other creatures, He Himself was no more than a creature in relation to the
Father.
Athanasius (c. 296 – 373): One of the most significant defenders of orthodox Christology
during the period of the Arian controversy. Elected as bishop of Alexandria in 328, he was
deposed on account of his opposition to Arianism. Although he was widely supported in the
west, his views were only finally recognized at the Council of Constantinople (381) after his
death.
For Athanasius the affirmation of the creature-hood of the Son had two decisive
consequences, each of which had uniformly negative implications for Arianism. First,
Athanasius makes the point that it is only God who can save. God and God alone, can break
the power of sin, and bring us to eternal life. An essential feature of being a creature is that
one requires to be redeemed. No creature can save other creature. Only the creator can
redeem the creation. Having emphasized that it is God alone who can save, Athanasius then
makes the logical move, which the Arians found difficult to counter. The NT and the
Christian liturgical tradition alike regard Jesus Christ as Saviour. Yet, as Athanasius
emphasized, only God can save. So how are we to make sense of this?
The only possible solution, Athanasius argues, is to accept that Jesus is God incarnate.
The logic of his argument at times goes –
(a) No creature can redeem another creature
(b) According to Arius, Jesus Christ is a creature,
(c) Therefore, according to Arius, Jesus Christ cannot redeem humanity
At times a slightly different style of argument can be discerned, resting upon the
statements of scripture and the Christian liturgical tradition.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 83
(a) One God can save
(b) Jesus Christ saves
(c) Therefore, Jesus Christ is God
Salvation for Athanasius involves direct intervention. Athanasius thus draws out the
meaning of Jn.1:15 by arguing that the “word became flesh”: in other words, God entered
into our human situation, in order to change it.
The second point that Athanasius makes is that Christians worship and pray to Jesus
Christ. This represents an excellent case study of the importance of Christian practices of
worship and prayer for Christian theology. By the fourth century prayer to and adoration of
Christ were standard features of the way in which public worship took place. Athanasius
argues that if Jesus Christ is a creature, then Christians are guilty of worshiping a creature
instead of God. Christians are totally forbidden to worship anyone or anything except God
himself. Athanasius thus argued that Arius seemed to be guilty of making nonsense of the
way in which Christians prayed and worshiped. Athanasius argued that Christians were right
to worship and adore Jesus Christ, because by doing so, they were recognizing him for what
he was – God incarnate.
Summary:
(a) The Father used the Word as His organ of creation, but to suppose that He needed an
intermediary was absurd (ridiculous). On the other hand by his fellowship with Christ, human
has been made divine and has become the child of God. Hence the Word Himself must be
intrinsically (in it self) divine, since otherwise He could never have imparted the divine life to
human beings. As Athanasius put the matter, the Word could never have divinize us if He
were merely divine by participation and were not Himself the essential Godhead, the Father’s
veritable (real) image.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 84
(b) Conception of the divine Sonship: According to him God can never by without His Word.
Hence the Son must exist eternally alongside the Father. It is entirely correct to call the Son
the eternal offspring. And since God is eternal and He belongs to God as Son, He exits from
all eternity.
(c) As the Father’s offspring the Son must be really distinct from Him, and since the
generation is eternal, it follows that the distinction too is eternal and does not simply to the
‘economy.’ It also follows that as a Son derived from His Father’s being He must share the
same nature. As two persons, Father and Son are ‘alike’ (homoioi). The Son is the Father’s
image, he is the stream and the Father is the source. He the brightness and the Father the
light.
(d) The divinity of the Father is identical with that of the Son and even that the Son’s divinity
is the Father’s divinity. Again the fullness of the Father’s divinity is the being of the Son. The
Son is of course other than the Father as offspring, but as God He is one and the same. He
and the Father are one in the intimate union off their nature and the identity of their Godhead.
Thus, they are one and their Godhead is one so that whatever is predicated of the Son is
predicated of the Father.
(e) His fundamental position is that Father and Son share the divine ousia, simple and
indivisible, at once. The distinction between them is real and lies in the distinction between
the Godhead considered as eternally activating, expressing and begetting itself and the
selfsame Godhead considered as eternally activated, expressed and begotten. So the Son is
the Father’s very own self-illuminative and creative activity, without Whom He neither
creates anything nor is known. Again whatever works the Son accomplishes are the Father’s
works, for the Son is the manifestation of the Father’s divinity, which accomplished the
works. Indeed the Father achieves nothing except through the Son, Who is the Godhead
regarded as active in the work of divinizing and illuminating.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 85
Nicaea:
The Arian controversy of the fourth century is widely regarded as one of the most
significant in the history of the Christian church. Arius teaching provoked a hostile response
from Athanasius.
The Council of Nicea (325) was convened by Constantine, the first Christian emperor,
with a view to sorting out the destabilizing christological disagreements within his empire.
He was determined to re-establish doctrinal unity in the church. This was the first
‘ecumenical council,’ that is, an assembly of Christians drawn from the entire Christian
world, whose decisions are regarded as normative for the churches. Nicea settled the Arian
controversy by affirming that Jesus was homoousios (one in being or of one substance) with
the Father, thus rejecting the Arian position in favour of a vigorous assertion of the divinity
of Christ. The following is the translation of the creed, which the council drafted and required
all the bishops present to sign:
We believe in on God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-
begotten that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true
God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom
all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth. Who because of us men
and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered
and rose again on the third day, ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the
living and the dead;
And in the Holy Spirit.
But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and Before being born He was
not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 86
from a different hypostasis or substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or
change – these the Catholic church anathematizes.
Our immediate task is to investigate the theological attitude of the council, as expressed
principally in this creed.
1. Arianism was placed under a decisive ban. The Son is begotten, not made; He is also
‘true God’ i.e., not God in a secondary degree. Any one who affirms that the Father pre-
existed the Son, or that the Son is a creature produced out of nothingness, or is subject to
moral change or development is formally declared a heretic.
2. In repudiating Arianism the fathers of Nicea shared Alexander’s conviction that
Scripture and tradition alike attested the divinity and immutability of the Word. In his anti-
Arian treatises, Athanasius was to deploy a triple onslaught (attack) based on the church’s
living faith and experience. First he argued that Arianism undermined the Christian doctrine
of God by presupposing that the divine Triad is not eternal and by virtually reintroducing
polytheism. Secondly, it made nonsense of the established liturgical customs of baptizing in
the Son’s name as well as the Father’s and of addressing prayers to the Son. Thirdly, and
perhaps most importantly, it undermined the Christian idea of redemption in Christ, since
only if the Mediator Himself was divine, human being could hope to re-establish fellowship
with God.
3. The creed supplies some hints, stating that as begotten, the Son is ‘out of the Father’s
substance’ and that He is ‘of the same substance as the Father.’ Eusebius explains that the
former simply means that the Son is ‘from the Father,’ not that the Son is ‘a portion of His
substance.’ The latter, Eusebius says, is not to be taken in any corporeal (bodily) sense, nor as
suggesting that the Father’s substance had undergone any change or division rather it
indicated that the Son bore no resemblance to creatures, but was in every respect like the
Father, and that He came from Him and ‘not from any other hypostasis or ousia.’
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 87
4. There can be no doubt that as applied to the Godhead, homoousios is susceptible
(open to) of, and in the last resort requires, the latter meaning. Since the divine nature is
immaterial and indivisible, it follows that the Persons of the Godhead Who share it, must
have or rather be, one identical substance. The question is whether this idea was prominent in
the minds of the Nicene Father or rather of the group among them whose influence may be
presumed to lie behind the creed.
5. The doctrine of numerical identity of substance has been widely assumed to have
been the specific teaching of the Nicene council. Nevertheless there are the strongest possible
reasons for doubting this. The chief of these is the history of the term homoousios itself, for
in both its secular and its theological usage conveyed the ‘generic’ sense. Christian writers
seem to have borrowed it from the Gnostics, for whom it signified the relationship between
beings compounded (combined) of kindred (related) substance. It was with this ‘generic’
sense that the word was first applied in Christian theology to express the Son’s relation to the
Father.
6. It is paradoxical (contradictory) to suppose that the Nicene fathers suddenly began
employing what was after all a familiar enough word in an entirely novel and unexpected
sense. The only reasonable inference is that in selecting it for insertion in their creed they
intended to underline their conviction that the Son was fully God, in the sense of sharing the
same divine nature as His Father. Several other considerations lend support to this: First,
Arius himself used more than once homoousios denying that the Son was of the same nature
as the Father. But it is clear that it was His alleged (professed) divinity nor His substantial
unity with the Father that he was repudiating. Secondly, the issue before the council was not
the unity of the Godhead as such it was the Son’s co-eternity with the Father, which the
Arians denied, His full divinity in contrast to the creaturely status they ascribed to Him.
Thirdly, when the identity of substance of the three persons was fully acknowledged, the
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 88
most orthodox theologians continued to use homoousios with the sense of generic (general)
unity.
7. If negatively the council unequivocally (openly) outlawed Arianism, positively it was
content to affirm the Son’s full divinity and equality with the Father, out of Whose being He
was derived and Whose nature He consequently shared. It did not attempt to tackle the
closely related problem of the divine unity.
8. Whatever the theology of the council was, Constantine’s own overriding motive was
to secure the widest possible measure of agreement. For this reason he was not prepared to
bar the door to anyone who was willing to append (add) his signature to the creed. There is
thus a sense in which it is unrealistic to speak of the theology of the council. While different
groups might read their own theologies into the creed and its key word, Constantine himself
was willing to tolerate them all on condition that they acquiesced (agree) in his creed and
tolerated each other.
The Aftermath of Nicea:
1. The Nicene crisis did not come to an end, with the closing of the council. Arianism
proper has been driven underground, but the conflict only served to throw into relief the
deep-seated theological divisions in the ranks of its adversaries. The Church’s new relation to
the State, which meant that the success or failure of a doctrine might hinge upon the favour of
the reigning emperor, tended to sharpen these divisions.
2. Until Constantine’s death in 337, there was a widespread reaction against Nicea. The
Arian leader who had been exiled returned and Eusebius of Nicomedia became head of anti-
Nicene coalition. While the emperor was alive, his creed was sacrosanct (venerated), but
Eusebians were able to engineer the deposition and exile of their principal opponents,
Athanasius, Eustathius or Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 89
3. From 350 to 361 Constantius reigned as sole emperor and made a determined effort to
bypass (avoid) the Nicene doctrine. The genuinely Arian elements in the great anti-Nicene
party now took the initiative and succeeded in getting a thoroughly subordinationist creed
omitting the ban on Arianism.
4. The final phase from 361 to 381 witnessed the overthrow of Arianism and the gradual
conversion of the now dominant ‘Homoeousians’ acceptance of the homoousion. At the
council of Constantinople (381) the Nicene faith was re-affirmed, and the various Arian and
Arianizing deviations were placed under a ban.
Apollinaris of Laodicea (310 to 390):
A vigorous defender of orthodoxy against the Arian heresy, who was appointed
bishop of Laodicea at some point around 360. He is chiefly remembered for his christological
views, which were regarded as an overreaction to Arianism, and widely criticized at the
Council of Constantinople (381).
This can be seen clearly from a letter written by Apollinaris to the bishops at
Diocaesarea, which sets out the leading features of his Christology. The most important is
the unequivocal (clear) assertion that the Word did not assume a “changeable” human mind
in the incarnation, which would have led to the Word being trapped in human sin. Rather, it
assumed “an immutable (unchangeable) and heavenly divine mind.” As a result, Christ
cannot be said to be totally human. He stated, “We confess that the Word of God has not
descended upon a holy man, which was what happened in the case of the prophets. Rather,
the Word himself has become flesh without having assumed a human mind – that is, a
changeable mind, which is enslaved to filthy thoughts – but which exists as an immutable and
heavenly divine mind.”
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 90
It was in fact, the most subtle (complex) and thorough going attempt to work out a
theory of Christ’s Person in the fourth century, and carried tendencies long accepted in the
Alexandrian school to their logical limit. Because the rejection of a human mind in Jesus was
its salient feature scholars have sometimes been tempted to trace its ancestry to Arianism.
The refusal to admit a human mind or soul in the God-man was a permanent feature in the
Alexandrian tradition and the Word-flesh christology generally.
According to Gregory of Nazianzus, the beginnings of the Apollinarian heresy can be
dated as early as c. 352. It was nit until the council of Alexandria (362), however, that its
teaching became a public issue, and not until a decade later that serious controversy flared up.
Apollinarius was a life-long opponent of the dualist, later to be called ‘dyophysite,’ strain in
the Antiochene approach to Christology. He protests against those who ‘confess, not God
incarnate, but a person conjoined (unite) with God, i.e., in a merely external union, and
against the misleading distinction between ‘two Sons,’ the Son of God and the son of Mary.
Such distinctions imply that Christ is ‘two’, whereas the Scripture is emphatic that He is a
unity, and such a duality is inconceivable. Thus, Apollinarius was deeply influenced by
soteriological motives. He was convinced that if the divine is separated from the human in the
Saviour, our redemption is imperiled (at risk). Considered merely as human, Christ had no
saving life to bestow. He could not redeem us from our sins, revivify (restore to life) us, or
raise us from the dead.
In order to eliminate the dualism, which he considered so disastrous, Apollinarius put
forward an extreme version of the Word-flesh Christology. He delighted to speak of Christ as
‘God incarnate,’ ‘flesh bearing God,’ or ‘God born of a woman.’ By such descriptions he
meant that it was joined in absolute oneness of being with the Godhead from the moment of
its conception (pregnancy). He states the flesh is not something super-added to the Godhead
for well being, but constitutes one reality or nature with It. The Incarnate is a compound unity
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 91
in human form and there is one nature composed of impassible (unaffected) divinity and
passible flesh. As he viewed the matter, the body of Christ could not by itself exist as an
independent ‘nature.’ To exist as such it needed to be conjoined with and animated by spirit.
He states the flesh being independent for its motions on some other principle of movement
and action is not of itself a complete living entity (being), but in order to become one enters
into fusion with something else. So it united itself with the heavenly governing principle (i.e.,
Logos) and was fused with it. Thus, out of the moved and the mover was compounded a
single living entity – not two, nor one composed of two complete, self-moving principles.
The argument is that the divine Word was substituted for the normal human
psychology in Christ. According to Apollinarius’ anthropology, human being was ‘spirit
united with flesh.’ So in the God-human, the divine energy fulfils the role of the animating
spirit (suches) and of the human mind (nous). What is important is that on Apollinarius’
interpretation the Word was both the directive intelligent principle in Jesus Christ, and also
the vivifying (enliven) principle of His flesh. The common account of his christology
represented the Word as performing the functions usually exercised by the will and intellect,
does not do justice to what was in fact its most distinctive features. This was his theory that
the Word was the sole life of the God-human, infusing vital energy and movement into Him
even at the purely physical and biological levels. Apollinarius suggested that the theological
significance of the virgin birth lay precisely in the fact that divine spirit replaced the
spermatic matter, which gives life to ordinary human.
On this theory, Christ is an organic, vital unity, just as a human compounded of soul
and body is a unity, there is a ‘unity of nature’ between the Word and His body. As
Apollinarius expresses it, ‘He is one nature since He is a simple, undivided Person, for His
body is not a nature by itself, nor is the divinity in virtue of the incarnation a nature by Itself,
but just as a human is one nature, so in Christ Who has come in the likeness of human. He
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 92
uses hupostasis, being the first to introduce it into the vocabulary of christology which
connotes for him a self-determining reality. His regular description of the Incarnate is ‘one
nature’ (mia ousis), and he never ceases to protest against the doctrine of ‘two natures’ taught
by the Antiochenes. He declared that there was ‘one incarnate nature of the divine Word.’ He
explains his position clearly: “The body is not of itself a nature, because it is neither vivifying
in itself nor capable of being singled out from that which vivifies it. Nor is the Word, on the
other hand, to be distinguished as a separate nature apart from His incarnate state, since it was
in the flesh, and not apart from the flesh, that the Lord dwelt on earth.”
This close connection of the flesh with the Godhead, their fusion ‘into a single life
and hypostasis’ represents the distinctive core of Apollinarius’ thought. Certain important
features of his christology flow logically from it:
(i) As a result of its fusion with the Word, he regarded Christ’ flesh as being glorified. It
has become ‘divine flesh’ or the flesh of God. Christ Himself can be properly described as
‘the heavenly man’ because of the union in Him of flesh with heavenly spirit. Doctrines like
this caused Apollinarius to be accused of teaching that the Lord’s flesh was heavenly in
origin and pre-existent.
(ii) Apollinarius affirms that Christ’ flesh is a proper object of worship. The reason for
this is that it cannot be separated from the adorable Word, to Whom it belongs and in Whose
divine qualities it consequently shares.
(iii) Like all Alexandrian thinkers, Apollinarius accepts and exploits that ‘the flesh of the
Lord, while remaining flesh even in the union shares in the names and properties of the Word
and the Word, while remaining Word and God, in the incarnation shares in the names and
properties of the flesh.’ As employed by Apollinarius, this is not merely an external
interchange of words and titles made possible by the fact that only one Person is subject. As
the fact that worship may offered to the flesh reveals, it involves a real exchange of attributes
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 93
since both flesh and Word, while remaining distinct, are conceived of as being fused in ‘one
nature.’
(iv) Inasmuch as the flesh actually participates in the properties of the Word, Apollinarius
draws the inference that the Lord’s body at the Eucharist. ‘The holy flesh,’ he remarks, ‘is
one nature with the Godhead, and infuses divinity into those who partake of it,’ and as a
result ‘we are saved by partaking of it as food.’ In other words, the believer is deified by
assimilating the deified flesh of the Redeemer, and so Apollinarius’ christology is logically
linked with his soteriology.
Objection against Apollinarianism:
1. One of the most damaging based on the divinization of Christ’ flesh which
Apollinarius taught was that it was virtually docetic, implying that the Saviour was not a real
human but only appeared as a human. The suggestion that He has brought His flesh from
heaven was a misrepresentation, which was closely connected with this.
2. If it is assumed that Christ lacked the most characteristic of element in human’ make
up i.e., a rational mind and will, His alleged humanhood was not in the strict sense human,
but must have been something monstrous, it is absurd to call Him a human at all since He
was not a human according to this definition.
3. The rejection of a normal human psychology clashes with the Gospel picture of a
Saviour Who developed, exhibited signs of ignorance, suffered and underwent all sorts of
human experiences.
4. For all its concern for soteriology Apollinarian christology failed to meet the essential
conditions of redemption.
- He developed a very precise christology of the Word-flesh type. He charged his
opponents with teaching two sons, the son of God and the son of Mary, the former being the
son of God, by nature the latter only by adoption. In contradistinction to this view, he said
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 94
that the Holy Scriptures know only on one Son of God, Apollinaris, was prompted by
soteriological considerations: as a mere man Christ would not have possessed the capacity to
redeem men. Furthermore, how could we be baptized into the death of a mere man? As a man
Christ would have been subject to error and consequently would not have brought us
redemption.
- To avoid these dangers Apollinaris often spoke of a “God made flesh” or a ‘flesh-
bearing God.” He presupposed a union of God and flesh beginning with the moment of
conception. The flesh is thus not something added, but it forms one single reality with the
divinity in Christ. The Christ who became flesh is therefore a composite being in the form of
a man. Thus, there is only “one nature of the divine Logos, which became flesh.” This means
that Jesus Christ was a single, indivisible being, or to say it more pointedly that the body of
Jesus was dependent upon the Logos as its guiding principle. The Logos is active, the flesh is
passive. Only thus, it is possible to speak of the one nature of Jesus Christ. This was the
foundation of Apollinaris’ christology.
- Apollinaris understood the incarnation of the Logos, not in a broad sense, as referring to
his being made man, but literally: the Logos took on only flesh, only a body. For this reason
no human intellectual activity can be asserted of the earthly Jesus. For if it were, it would
mean, first that the human nature of Christ would be exalted to the level of a discrete entity.
As a result its full unity with the Logos would be diminished to a mere connection between
the two. Second, it would imply that the human nature could, because of its own freedom
sever, its connection with divinity and humanity would be called into question.
- From this Apollinaris deduces that the Logos did not take on a “spirit” but that the Logos
took the place of the spirit. During his early period Apollinaris probably denied that Jesus
even had a human soul. Later on, however, he changed his mind and put the Logos in the
place of the human spirit. What we thus have in Jesus Christ is a “mixture” of God and man.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 95
- This conception has an important consequence as regards the flesh. Apollinaris was of the
opinion that the flesh of Jesus was glorified by this union. It became divine flesh. For that
reason Apollinaris has sometimes been accused of teaching the preexistence of the flesh of
Christ. This is unfair to him. For him the glorification of the flesh was solely the result of its
union with the Logos. He always maintained that the flesh of Jesus came from the Virgin
Mary. It is significant also that Apollinaris arrived at conclusions similar to those of Origen,
even though he began with different premises. In the last analysis neither of these persons
succeeded in maintaining the full humanity of Jesus.
- The christology of Apollinaris was rejected by various synods, above all by the Second
Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 381. It is obvious however that Apollinaris
could defend himself only with great difficulty against the charge of Docetism. It is equally
clear that his doctrine flatly contradicted the biblical records, which frequently speak of Jesus
as not knowing something, and which also mention his suffering and other human traits. In
other word, Apollinaris did not give expression to the reality of the incarnation of the Logos.
Cappadocians:
The following thinkers are called as Cappadocian fathers. Gregory of Nazianzus (c.
329 –389) is particularly remembered for his ‘Five Theological Orations,’ written around 380
and compilation of extracts from the writings of Origen, which he entitled the Philokalia.
Basil of Caesarea (c. 330 – 379), also known as ‘Basil the Great’. This fourth century writer
was based in the region of Cappadocia (modern Turkey). He is particularly remembered for
his writings on the Trinity, especially the distinctive role of the Holy Spirit. He was elected
bishop of Caesarea in 370. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330 – 395). One of the Cappadocian fathers,
noted especially for his vigorous defense of the doctrine of the Trinity and the incarnation
during the fourth century.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 96
In his letter Gregory of Nazianzus mounts (prepares) a frontal assault on the central
thesis of Apollinarianism that Christ was not fully human, in that he possessed ‘an immutable
and heavenly divine mind,’ rather than a human mind. For Gregory, this amounts to a denial
of the possibility of redemption. Only what is assumed by the Word in the incarnation can be
redeemed. If Christ did not possess a human mind, humanity is not redeemed.
On the Incarnation: Do not let people deceive themselves and others by saying that the
‘Man of the Lord,’ is without a human mind. We do not separate the humanity from the
divinity. In fact we assert the dogma of the unity and identity of the Person, who previously
was not just human but God, the only Son before all ages, who in these last days has assumed
human nature also for our salvation, in his flesh possible, in his Deity impassible, in the body
subject to limitation, yet unlimited in the Spirit, at one and the same time earthly and
heavenly, tangible (perceptible) and intangible, comprehensible and incomprehensible, that
by one and the same person, a perfect human being and perfect God, the whole humanity,
fallen through, sin might be recreated.
If any one does not believe that holy Mary is Theotokos, they will be cut off from the
Deity. If any one who asserts that humanity was created and only afterwards endued with
divinity, they also are to be condemned. If anyone brings in the idea of two sons, one of God
the Father, the other of the mother, may they lose their share in the adoption. For the
Godhead and the humanity are two natures, as are soul and body, but there are not two Sons
of two Gods. For both natures are one by the combination, the Godhead made humanhood
deified or whatever be the right expression.
If anyone has put their trust in him as a human being lacking a human mind, they are
themselves mindless and not worthy of salvation. For what has not been assumed has not
been healed, it is what is united to his divinity that is saved. Let them not grudge us our total
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salvation or endure the Saviour with only the bones and nerves and mere appearance of
humanity.
The following points are of especial importance:
1. Gregory stresses that Jesus is both perfect God and a perfect human person. Even
though human nature has fallen, through the impact of sin, it remains capable of being
redeemed. And if the whole of human nature is to be redeemed, it follows that the whole of
that human nature must be assumed. He makes a famous phrase, “What has not been assumed
cannot be restored; it is what is unite with God that is saved.” It was Adam’ nous, which
originally violated the commandment so that it became imperative that the Redeemer should
possess one too.
2. It is to be noted the use of the term to refer to Mary. For Gregory, the use of this title
(bearer of God) is a necessary consequence of the incarnation. To deny this title is to deny the
reality of the incarnation.
3. For Gregory “what has not been assumed has not been healed” refers to those aspects
of human nature which have been united to the divinity in the incarnation are saved. If we are
to be saved in the totality of our human nature, that totality must be brought into contact with
the divinity. If Christ is only partly or apparently human, then salvation is not possible.
Gregory of Nyssa – says that there is a mixture of God with human nature, which is
like the sun shining in darkness and dissolving it, God has taken our nature with its pollution
and is not himself defiled by this but cleanses it. The really important principle for
soteriology, according to Gregory, is salvation should have been brought to human’s soul
through he union of the human soul with deity in Christ.
In his positive and non-polemical teaching, Gregory of Nyssa seeks to return to the
historical evidence of the Gospels as the real ground for the belief that in Christ deity is
‘mixed with’ humanhood. The manner of the Incarnation is an impenetrable mystery, like the
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‘how’ of Creation. But the Gospels show that Christ both experienced the limitations proper
to human and also transcended them and acted, within his human existence, with divine
power. This power was conjoined with love, in such a way that it was precisely in the
humiliation of the incarnate life that it was most wonderfully manifested. The following
needs to be noted:
1. Gregory dwells more fully on other aspects of Christ’ saving work, especially the
healing and cleansing of human’s disease and corruption, and that the deception of the devil
is itself remedial since in the end the devil too will be brought within the scope of the
purifying and saving efficacy of the Incarnation. He used His incorruptible body to save
human’s corruptible bodies, His immortal soul to save souls doomed to death. It was
necessary for Him to have both for it was impossible for Him to give one in exchange for the
other, and so He gave His body for human’s bodies and His soul for human’s soul. As the
new Adam enabling us to participate in His divinity, Christ necessarily possessed human
nature in its completeness.
2. Gregory also lays emphasis on the fact that the presence of deity in human nature
through the Incarnation is different, indeed, in mode, but nevertheless parallel to, its continual
immanent presence in all things. God is ‘mingled’ with us inasmuch as he contains and
sustains the entire natural order in himself, in the incarnation he was ‘mixed’ with our nature
in order that by this mixture with the divine it might be deified. Thus, the union of God and
human in Christ is related to the indwelling of the divine in everything. “By becoming
exactly what we are, He united the human race through Himself to God”
3. Gregory is anxious to safeguard the distinction of the divine and human natures. Each
operates in its own sphere: human nature did not bring Lazarus to life, nor did the ‘impassible
power’ weep for him. Yet because of the union of the natures both sets of experiences were
common to each and can be predicated of either. For Gregory’ basic concern with
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soteriology it is essential to affirm both the completeness and the distinctness of Christ’
manhood and the absolute indivisibility of its union with God by which humanity is exalted
and deified.
Unlike the other Cappadocians, Basil had nothing fresh to contribute. He stressed the
reality of Christ’ human soul, fully accepted that it was the subject of the affections necessary
to living being, but refused to attribute to it ‘the affections which sully (stain) the purity of
our life.’ In fact his christology was relatively unsophisticated (unrefined) and fluid
(running), betraying no influence from the great Cappadocians. One of this most interesting
statements directed against Apollinarian is that Christ had complete freedom of will, acting
without any compulsion in respect of the two elements out of which He was according to His
nature composed. He repeatedly emphasized the Incarnate’ possession of a complete
humanity, adding however that His human soul may be discerned. Christ was at once God
and human, having two modes of manifestation, the unity of His person being assured by the
recognition that he was ‘God become human.’
The Cappadocians had tried to maintain a Christology on the Alexandrian lines
without excluding the human soul from the humanity assumed by the Logos.
Re-evaluation of the Ecumenical Creeds:
In Nicea the main burden of the Council had been to ensure that Christ was confessed
as the Son of God, one in being with the Father while in Ephesus it was that there is only one
Christ. In Chalcedon however, the main concern was the distinction between the divine and
the human nature of Christ. Its specific contribution lay in that it maintained the specific
difference between these two although both are joined in one and the same Jesus Christ, not
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only in his outward manifestation (prosopon) but also in his deeper being (hypostasis). In this
way the Chalcedon managed to bring the two views of Alexandria and Antioch together.
All Councils have an element of controversy. They are always about definite and
widely debated issues and so the answers worked out in a Council are always incomplete and
limited. In the same way those that took part in the Council of Chalcedon had no intention of
saying everything that could be said about Christ. The ideas they used were based on current
popular philosophical understanding; they were not meant to be the expression of scientific
exactitude (correctness). The terms used still had some kind of general meaning. And we
have a clear warning that future generations should not overrate the terminology used by
Chalcedon.
According to A. de Halleux there are at least three points where the Chalcedon
formula is doctrinally inaccurate. They are (a) it does not say Christ is one hypostasis, but
only that there is one hypostasis after the two natures have been united. (b) it does not say
that thi hypostasis must be understood as a person in our modern sense of the word (c) nor
does it say explicitly that his person is the divine Logos.
The concept of hypostasis was so ambiguous that in any theological school could
exploit it for its own purposes. Another weakness lies in the expression ‘acknowledged in
two natures.’ This is wholly in harmony with Cyril’s inclination to explain the distinction as
based on logical abstraction.
The Limitations of the Chalcedon formula:
1. Chalcedon wanted to find a satisfactory way of expressing what one might call the inner
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constitution of Jesus Christ: What is the relation between the divine and the human
dimensions in him. But in this process a very important section of Christology was
practically left out. With the exception of a reference to his birth from the virgin Mary, there
is nothing about the historical life of Jesus. There is no mention of his public appearance,
suffering, death, and resurrection. This produced a view of Jesus Christ which was very
different from that of the NT where Jesus’ identity was mainly revealed through the actual
liberation which people experienced in meeting him in his life and behaviour.
The heavy demands which Chalcedon put on the incarnation resulted in giving the
impression that according to this model of salvation, everything was already over and done
with at that moment the divine was united with the human. The rest of Jesus’ life on earth
was pushed into the background. Its formula demands therefore without doubt that it be
supplemented by the actual history of salvation. As it stands the formula remains too abstract
and too static.
Medieval Christological Thinking:
In the history of the church, the medieval age is chiefly remarkable for the successful
reassertion of papal supremacy. There is no theological elaboration in this period partly
because the subject is one of extreme complexity in which political thought and legal theory
occupy more space than theology.
The first theological controversy of this age was Eucharistic. This is linked with the
name of Berengarius (d. 1088). He put out his old opinion, denying any change of ‘nature’
or ‘essence’ in the consecrated elements, and asserting Christ’ presence to be merely
conceptual. However, the orthodox asserts in precise terms the change of substance from
bread and wine to the ‘essence’ of the Lord’s body while the ‘appearance’ remained without
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change. Berengarius answered that the change that occurred was purely spiritual and refused
to admit that the material bread and wine were replaced by the body and blood of Christ.
The advantage of the term ‘transubstantiation’ was that it asserted without
compromise or confusion the ‘real’ presence of Christ, both physical and spiritual, in the
sacred elements. The disadvantage was that it gave a handle to crude and materialistic
imaginations about the host as merely veiling a physical body. This could be countered by an
elaborate metaphysical analysis of substance and accident, but it remained a danger on the
lower levels of mental and spiritual competence. On the other hand it certainly encouraged
devotion to the reserved sacrament as providing Christ’ presence in a church and to
processions and blessings in which the host was revered as Christ.
Anselm of Bec and Canterbury (1033 – 1109) is the first to use the reasoning mind
with the specifically scholastic purpose of penetrating revealed truth. Anselm hoped to
advance in theological insight by means of intellectual inquiry directed by a mind illuminated
by God. In the realm of speculative theology, he is remembered for his query on the
Incarnation – Cur Deus homo? Why did God become man?
How was human being redeemed? Many Greek fathers had seen in the Incarnation the
basic redemption of the human race. The uniting of a human nature to the divine in the
Person of the Son elevated the whole human race to a supernatural destiny. Others and
especially the Latin fathers saw in the passion and death of Christ the sole and sufficient
agency of redemption. The obedience and love of Christ redeemed sin, obedience and lack of
love.
St. Leo the Great gave to the west a classic expression of this. Human being lay under
the dominion of sin, no mere person could give due satisfaction to God – or in other words
submerge person’s falling in an ocean of love. Nor could God as God. But a divine person
who had assumed human nature could do so. Concurrently with these two opinions, another
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stream of tradition regarded human being as the slave of the devil, irredeemable save by the
payment to his master of a death that was wholly unmerited. This was the so-called ‘ransom’
theory, of which an alternative took the form of regarding the death of Christ, the just person,
brought about by diabolical malice in ignorance of Christ’ divinity, as having transgressed the
limits of the devil’ just claim to sinful humanity. Anselm’s presentation was a fuller version
of the familiar argument of St. Leo. Only a sinless person who was also God could satisfy or
human’ sin, which has in it an infinite quality as being an offence against an infinite Being.
Anselm thus firmly rejected the ransom theory and the supposition that the powers of
darkness had rights.
Abelard (1079 – 1142) turned to theology only in 1121, as a new world to conquer.
He used the methods of logic and dialectic on his way through Christian doctrine. The new
dialectic found in the doctrine of the Trinity, with its use of the strictly defined terms ‘nature’
and ‘person’ and its apparent relevance to the problem of universals (three persons, one God)
an irresistible attraction and pitfall. In reaction Abelard regarded the names of the divine
Persons as little more than attributes or appropriations – Power, Wisdom and Love – of a
single God. He trod on dangerous ground when he touched the central point of Christology.
Concerned to safeguard the transcendence of the Divinity, Abelard regarded the human
nature of Christ as ‘nothing’ to the divine person. On the doctrine of redemption Abelard was
equally daring. He reacted against the legal or forensic implications of both the ‘ransom’ and
the ‘adequate satisfaction’ interpretations of the Incarnation and Passion. He regarded the
incarnation as sufficient exemplary purpose on the basis that incarnation is necessary to
instruct mankind in the perfect love of God. On this view, the Passion of Christ was the
supreme example of self-abandonment in Christ’ unhesitating championship of truth against
error.
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As regards the Incarnation, Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) based himself upon the
words of the Creed that the primary cause of the appearance of a divine person in human
form was to redeem human being from sin and to give them eternal life by a share, through
adoption, in his own true sonship of God, by means of his obedience even unto death.
Aquinas held that without sin there would have been no incarnation: in the wisdom and
loving-kindness of God, Adam’ fall was a happy mishap. He explained the difficult matter of
the transmission of original sin by emphasizing the position of the First Person as head and
representative of the whole human race, as Christ was to be of redeemed and glorified
humanity, and he used the analogy of the sympathy between the head and other members of
the human body.
Reformation Christological Thinking:
Martin Luther: The Word of God is the starting point for theology. By Word of God Luther
means the Scriptures, but he also means a great deal more. The Word is the eternal second
Person of the Trinity, which existed in God from all eternity; the Word is God’s power as
manifested in the creation of all things; the Word is the incarnate Lord; the Word is the
Scriptures, which witness to it; the Word is the proclamation through which the Word in
Scripture is actually heard by the believers.
Luther speaks of the eternal Word, the second Person of the Trinity and the unuttered
Word of God. After showing how we think words within ourselves before we express them,
Luther says:
This same picture may be applied to God. God, too, in his majesty and nature, is
pregnant with a Word or a conversation in which He engages with Himself in His
divine essence and which reflects the thoughts of His heart. It is invisible and
incomprehensible conversation. His Word existed before all angels and all creatures
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existed, for subsequently He brought all creatures into being by means of this Word
and conversation.
But God has spoken; the Word has been uttered. This is the power through which all
things were made out of nothing, for God’s Word is not just an act of self-disclosure, but is
also the action and power of God. This doctrine, which in the order of logic precedes the
incarnation, in the actual order of our knowledge is possible only through the event of Jesus
Christ. That event is the supreme Word of God through which every other word is to be heard
and understood.
The value of Scripture is not to add to the Word of God in Christ, “for this much is
beyond question, that all the Scriptures point to Christ alone.”
Luther’ understanding of the work of Christ includes all the themes that had become
traditional in his time. What is significant is that in Jesus Christ we hear the word that
liberates us from the bondage to sin, death and the Devil. This is the word of justification.
Justification is first of all, the decree of absolution that God pronounces upon us, declaring us
justified in spite of our sinfulness.
John Calvin: Calvin follows traditional orthodoxy when he discusses the person of Christ
and his work. In Christ there are two natures in a single person, so that “he who was the Son
of God became the Son of man- not by confusion of substances, but by unity of person.”
Although councils may err- and in fact have erred- the first ecumenical councils correctly
represented the biblical testimony regarding the person of Christ.
There are three points at which study of Calvin’ christology may prove significant.
The first concerns his attempts to defend the traditional dogma against its detractors. This is
significant, both because it forced Calvin to spell out his own Christology and because it
serves to illustrate some of the unorthodox ideas held by rationalists and others. Second,
Calvin’ description of the work of Christ in terms of the triple office of king, prophet, and
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priest- usually called the triple munus- became common in Reformed theology. Third, his
understanding of the hypostatic union is closely connected with his position on the presence
of Christ in the Lord’ Supper.
The first point at which contemporary controversies forced Calvin to develop his
theology was the reason for the incarnation. Calvin regards that the purpose of the incarnation
is for our redemption. This controversy is significant, for it tended to ground Calvin’
christology on soteriology.
Another point at which the controversies of his time helped Calvin develops his
christology had to do with the human nature of Christ. The new ‘Marcionites’, (who taught
that Christ did not have an earthly flesh) forced Calvin to insist on the humanity of Christ,
and on his physical descent from Adam. What is significant is that in this discussion Calvin
developed a christology that, while remaining orthodox, tended to emphasize the distinction
between the two natures in Christ rather than the unity of the person and the communicatio
idiomatum. This is fully consistent with Calvin’ opinions regarding the value of humanity
before God as well as with his theory of the presence of Christ in the Lord’ Supper.
Finally another opponent who helped shape Calvin’ christology was Franceso
Stancaro, who held that Christ is our mediator only through his human nature. Against this
Calvin asserted that because the work of redemption took place through the hypostatic union,
everything in Christ that has to do with redemption is to be ascribed to the unity of the
person, and not to one nature or another. The significance of this is that toward the end of his
life Calvin came to emphasize the communicatio idiomatum to a greater degree than he had
before.
Calvin discusses the work of Christ in terms of three offices-triplex munus. Christ is
at once prophet, king and priest. The very title ‘Christ’ signifies this triple office, for it
means ‘anointed’ and in the OT kings, prophets and priests were anointed. Christ is the
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prophet par excellence, because in him all prophecies are fulfilled. The prophecies of the OT
had no other content that Christ himself. This prophetic office of Christ is extended not only
to his mouth, so that his words are prophetic, but also to his entire body, so that in each of his
actions, as well as in the present preaching of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit can be
seen. Christ is the king of the church as well as the individual believers. As such he rules over
us. But his rule is such that he shares with his subjects all that he has received. The kings of
the OT like the prophets point to this supreme and unique king. As a priest, Christ has come
before God to present himself in sacrifice. In so doing he fulfilled all the ancient sacrifices,
which had no validity other than in him. And he has also made his followers priest, for he has
now enabled them to present themselves before God as living sacrifice.
The third main characteristics of Calvin’ christology is his constant concern to avoid
any confusion humanity and divinity in Christ. In this he tended to agree with Zwingli against
Luther, who emphasized the unity of the person above the distinction of the two natures. He
pointed out that although he divinity of the Second Person was fully present in Jesus, it was
not circumscribed by his humanity. His wondrous descent was such that he was still in
heaven while he was also in Jesus; and when he was being born from the Virgin’ womb he
was still filling the entire universe. This is what later theologians came to call the extra
calvinisticum, and it became a characteristic emphasis of Reformed Christology.
If one were to attempt to characterize Calvin’ christology in a few sentences, one
could say that while strictly orthodox, that christology leans more toward the ancient
Antiochenes than toward the Alexandrians and also that it has a very strong soteriological
rather than metaphysical emphasis.
Calvin understands the work of Christ in terms of satisfaction. Through his obedience
unto death, Christ has merited for us the forgiveness of sins. In this manner God’s justice and
love have been satisfied.
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Christ – the Arche-type (original/prototype/model)
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born on 1st day of November 1768 and
died on the 12th day of February 1884. He is one of the most important and influential
German theologians. He has been called the Father of modern theology.
Schleiermacher’s mother Stubenrauch was a woman of keen intellect and deep piety.
She guided her son’s earlier education. His father, Gottlieb, was chaplain to a Prussian
regiment in Silesia. Schleiermacher studied at a Moravian school at Niesky and later at a
Moravian College at Barby. Schleiermacher’s father always wanted for his children the pious
atmosphere and healthy moral discipline of Moravian educational system. In 1787
Schleiermacher entered the University of Halle, at that time Halle was a center of rationalist
under the influence of Semler and Wolf. Plato also influenced him. Also he had interest in the
works of Kant, Jacobi and Spinoza. In 1790 he became a tutor in the house of Count Dohna at
Schlobitten in West Prussia. In 1794 he was ordained and became for a time assistant to his
uncle, the aged pastor of Landsberg. Two years later he moved to Berlin to become chaplain
to the Charlie hospital. In 1804 he returned to his old university Halle as preacher and
professor of theology.
At this point we must also know a little about the situation at Schleiermacher’s times
i.e., during the late 17th and early 18th century – a new world view emerged. In the early 18th
century, Western Europe emerged from the chaos of the religious wars and began to make
rapid progress over its long prevailing natural and social problems. People became optimistic
and began to have confidence in themselves. The progress was seen in human reason.
Autonomous reason became the primary criterion of truth, nothing could be accepted as true
that could not be grasped and verified by the free operation of the mind. Many people
concluded that religion, especially revealed religion and most particularly the Christian
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religion was the chief enemy of inquiry and social progress. For the first time, science
confronted belief with a history. The scientist described nature as it displayed itself fin the
present, the Bible explained how it came to be that way. Now biblical religion was faced with
a science whose basic methodology was historical. It sought to answer questions about the
present order and structure of the world by investigating the origins of that order. In the
process it projected a very different view of world origins from that presented in Genesis, and
this new view had the ring of truth. The trustworthiness of the Bible, at least in important
areas seemed to be undermined. The historical study of scripture raised serious questions
about the factuality of the life of Jesus and made it hard for Christians to feel confident about
the “truth value” of affirmations based on that historicity.
The most important of Schleiermacher’s many writings are his Addresses on Religion
to Its Cultured Despisers (1799) and The Christian Faith (1821/2). In both, Schleiermacher
can be seen attempting to chart a middle way between traditional orthodoxy and cold
rationalism, to find a means of re-stating classical Christian convictions in a fresh and
modern way which will not reduce them or dilute them, but rather uncover their real force
and depth. He was a renowned preacher, a pioneer critic of the NT, one of the founding
fathers of the discipline of hermeneutics (the philosophy or science of interpretation).
His theology is commonly described as centred on “religious experience.” The
description is a valid one provided it is remembered that he does not build on special or
peculiar “religious experiences” of a mystical or emotional kind. What he appeals to is
primordially (preexistent/previous) human which is the foundation and basis of all other
experience. It is also sometimes called a theology of “feeling” and he himself uses this
language. What he is trying to describe, and to find terms to name, is what would later be
called “existential awareness,” an awareness which includes and involves ourselves by
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contrast with any more or less detached knowledge of facts and truths quite external to
ourselves.
The guiding theological approaches of Schleiermacher are as follows:
1. Religion is an attack upon dogmatic, creedal orthodoxy. Vigorous assent to Christian
dogma as part of the vitality of faith is excluded. In his Addresses Schleiermacher
commends the cultured despisers of religions for rejecting “the dogmas and propositions
of religions.” “They are not in any case the essence of religion itself.”
2. All Christian doctrines either are reconstructed so as to conform to the philosophical
criteria or are eliminated. The locus of faith is no longer in what God says (divine
revelation) or in what God does (redemption in history) but primarily in what human
experiences. The hope was that these cultured despisers of religion in Germany who
rejected orthodoxy would now be willing to accept this retooled version of Christianity.
3. The center of gravity of Christianity is now in the experience of the Christian and not in
those sovereign acts of grace and revelation which God does in history. The essence of all
religion, including Christianity is experience. Its seat is not reason, conscience or volition
but feeling. Christ is Redeemer in that Christ creates the change of consciousness within
us through the preaching in the church.
“Religious feeling” for Schleiermacher was “a sense of unity with the Whole.” He defines
“religious feeling is the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or which is the same
thing, of being in relation with God.” This awareness of absolute dependence is the nature of
piety in all religions even in those, which are not organized. Schleiermacher further describes
piety as an “immediate self-consciousness,” by which he means that it is not based on
intellectual reflection, but is of the category of feeling. Feeling is not, as our everyday use of
the term rather feeling would seem to convey, passing emotion. It is rather our constant,
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profound awareness of an Other whose presence is the source and basis of all that is –
including ourselves.
Schleiermacher defines Christianity as “a monotheistic faith, belonging to the teleological
type of religion, and is essentially distinguished from other such faiths by that fact that in it
everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.” Christianity is
monotheistic because in it our feeling of dependence is directed toward a singly source. It is
teleological because it leads to purposeful activity within the world, with an end to
establishing the kingdom of God. And last everything in Christianity is related to Jesus of
Nazareth because he is the source of the new religious consciousness – the specific piety –
that is characteristic of the Christian faith. This faith is based on the experience of
redemption, which is an element not common to all religions. More than a teacher, Jesus is
our redeemer, because through his person and his interaction with us we are brought into the
new level of existence that is the Christian life. By thus emphasizing the person of Jesus, and
making him more than a mere teacher, Schleiermacher challenged the rationalist tradition of
the eighteenth century which viewed Jesus as primarily a teacher of enlightened natural
morality.
According to him there are three levels of human consciousness –
1. Animal Grade: There is no distinction between self and world.
2. As the distinction between self and world increases our sense of freedom vis-à-vis the
world – that is, of our ability to affect the world – also increases. The world is given, and
we cannot change that givenness. But at the same time that very world is the field in
which we exercise our freedom. As finite beings, we can neither experience nor imagine
absolute freedom – that is, freedom within a context entirely created by us. As this second
level is attained – which normally happens in the natural course of human development –
the precious animal level is gradually superseded.
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3. The third one is God’s consciousness, which is specifically religious. It has to do not with
freedom but with dependence. Here we are aware that both the self and the world are
absolutely dependent upon an Other that neither we nor the world can affect. This Other
has absolute freedom. In the face of this Other we are totally passive.
The religious self-consciousness thus determines the fact that systematic theology will have
to deal with three main themes – the self, the world and God.
Schleiermacher turns to the consideration of the self, the world and God from the
perspective of the consciousness of sin and grace. When viewing the self under the
consciousness of grace, two subjects are to be discussed; the person and work of Christ as the
cause of grace and the transformation of the self through grace. The redemptive activity of
Jesus is due to his sinless perfection – that is to say, his absolute God-consciousness, which
was never in conflict with his second level of consciousness. This perfection can be explained
only by the existence of God in Jesus. Jesus Christ is both divine and human. Human is
defined as totally passive in regard to God, and God as totally active in regard to the human.
The fact that Jesus as human is totally passive, and therefore absolutely dependent – is his
sinless perfection. It is also the means by which God can be seen as totally active in Jesus,
and the union takes place. Thus, understood, the traditional statement of the union of two
natures in Jesus is acceptable for Schleiermacher. However, this union is not dependent upon
the doctrine of the virgin birth, which is not to be taken literally. The same is true of the
doctrines of the resurrection, the ascension and the return in judgment, which are not
necessary expressions of Christian consciousness. The disciples knew Jesus to be the
redeemer without these doctrines. It is obvious that we find here in Schleiermacher some
common elements of earlier rationalism, which would persist, in a great deal of the theology
of the 19th century.
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The work of the redeemer is based upon the definition of his person. This work is the
communication of his absolute God-consciousness to other human beings. He does this by
assuming believers into his own God-consciousness. The redeemer is active in us, as God is
active in him, we are passive in regard to him, as he is passive in his humanity in regard to
God. His redemptive activity is the work of God through him in us. Paradoxical as it may
sound, our action in our redemption is to be passive, just as Jesus was united with God
through his own human act of passivity. We become unconscious of our own life and become
conscious of his life. This is the passage from sin to perfection. It is an act of freedom for us
as well as for the redeemer. We are formed as new persons him and thus become part of the
new creation, which expresses the original perfection.
In typical Reformed fashioned, Schleiermacher discusses the work of Christ under the
headings of the three offices of Christ as prophets, priest and king.
As prophet, Christ announces the kingdom of God. But one must remember that he
also ushers in the kingdom that he announces, and that he is thus also the end of prophecy.
One cannot separate his teachings from his person and work – and here Schleiermacher is
reacting against the rationalist tradition, which made Jesus no more than a teacher and made a
radical distinction between the teachings of Jesus and teachings about him.
As priest, the redeemer received upon himself the burden of the sins of the entire
world. This does not mean, in the literal sense that he died in our place. What is means is that,
because his sinless perfection was a judgment upon us, he suffered the hostility of the entire
world, and died for it. Since he responded to this situation out of total God-consciousness,
and not out of sin, he opened a new possibility in our world and our history – the possibility
of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. His suffering is therefore, the necessary culmination
of his work as our redeemer, and ends all priesthood, except that which is a continuation of
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his redeeming work. In these statements Schleiermacher is opposing all views of atonement
that would center the work of Christ on a particular moment of his life.
As king, the redeemer creates a people whom he still rules through the ordinances that
he established. He is the provident ruler who gives us all things that are necessary for our life
as his people. The conclusion to drawn from this is that there can be no political religion, no
theocracy and no union of church and state.
He has been accused of being the starting point of the “undercover apotheosis
(deification) of human” planned by liberal theology. The point at which he has been most
severely criticized is his concentration on human God-consciousness rather than on
revelation, and his willingness on this basis to forsake the radical ‘otherness’ of the Christian
gospel. And yet seen within the context of the early 19th century the contribution of
Schleiermacher to Protestant theology was of enormous significance and can be felt to this
day. Coming out of Pietist background, he nevertheless overcame the individualism of
Pietism by his emphasis on the importance of the church. Though greatly influenced by the
rationalist and by Kant, he corrected the rationalist position by insisting on the centrality of
the person of Jesus for the Christian faith, and that faith is not a mere endorsement of civil
morality.
Karl Barth:
His theological conviction is that Christian faith rests solely on the revelation of God
in Jesus Christ, and that the task of theology is to allow that revelation to shine in its own
light and stand on its own authority as the Word of God to us. Theology lives out of the
Word; and the name of the Word is Jesus.
According to Barth the Word of God is one of both judgement and mercy. It
contradicts and condemns us in our pride, our self-sufficiency, our ethics, our politics and our
religion which, far from being our point of closest access to God, is the house we build in
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order to hide ourselves from him, to convince ourselves that we have him in our control. The
hurricane (storm) of the Word tears away the flimsy (weak) structures of our pretensions
(claim), the altars of our false gods, the artificial securities to which we love to cling. The
cross of Jesus is God’s final and decisive ‘No’ to all that: it leaves us literally nothing of our
own on which we can rely. But that is only the first stage, the negative side of the matter.
God’s ‘No’ to any form of self-reliance on our part is spoken in order to enable us to put our
trust solely in him, and to hear behind and beyond his ‘No’ the even deeper and more final
promise of his ‘Yes’. It is only through the cross only through the ‘No’ of judgement and
destruction, that God’s will to affirm us as his children can be heard; but the affirmation is the
real purpose of the negation. It is that that makes real and radical faith possible, faith which
lives from noting in itself, but solely from the promise and invitation of God. Faith is thus the
response in the ‘moment’ to the Word of God himself, a Word which continually creates and
renews the possibility of faith.
This theology is called Dialectical theology because it underlined the absolute
contrast between God and human, the interplay of the ‘No’ and the ‘Yes’ of the Word to
human and also following from these, the fact that no human speaking about God could
directly or immediately express or contain the truth about him. Rather all our statements must
be qualified, and indeed negated, even as they are made, and only by such affirmation and
negation is room made to hear the authentic Word of God himself through them. Dialectical
theology emphasized first the ‘Godness of God;’ second, the reality of the Word of God in
Jesus Christ; third the impossibility of building theology itself on any other foundation. These
are central to Barth’s theology.
Theology must take as its starting-point the actuality of God’s self-revelation in Jesus
Christ, disclosed to us by the Holy Spirit, and set its sights and adjust its compass by that.
These conditions of the possibility of Christian theology were on the one hand the actuality of
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the revelation in Jesus, and on the other the reception of that revelation in faith empowered
by the Holy Spirit. Within that horizon it can be seen that God’s making of himself known
through Jesus Christ has a three-fold pattern: he makes himself known in Jesus Christ and to
us; and this triadic structure is nothing other than that of the Trinity: that God is Father, Son
and Holy Spirit; that the Son is the Word and Image of the Father; that the Holy Spirit
is the power who discloses that Image and conveys that Word.
Within this horizon Barth went on to distinguish three ‘forms’ of the Word. The
primary from is God’s own self-expression, his eternal Word which was made flesh in Jesus.
The secondary form is the witness of the Bible in Old and New Testaments to that primary
Word, the witness by which the Word itself is mediated and heard. The tertiary form is the
proclamation of Jesus Christ in the church as the Word of God to us. The special task of
Christian dogmatics is to refer the present proclamation of Jesus Christ back to its original
ground in God himself in order to clear away distortions and misrepresentations so that the
Word itself can be heard afresh in its own integrity. The Word was made flesh in Jesus
Christ; God has given himself to be understood in our terms and on our level; and even in
these terms and on that level it is the reality of God that is given for us to understand.
Barth insists that even the doctrines of creation and sin must be grounded in
christology, that there is no predestination of God apart from Jesus Christ, that on the cross
Jesus himself is the one rejected and abandoned by God, and that both judgement and mercy,
reprobation and election, must be seen as worked through in him. All these lines must be
carried into the centre where they meet in Jesus Christ himself, and be seen as opening out
from him rather than as constituting a distinct frame of reference into which he can be
subsequently fitted.
The centre and focus of the whole is Jesus Christ himself – Jesus Christ as ‘true God
and true man,’ and so as the key both to the nature and activity of God and to the meaning
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and purpose of human existence. Working from that centre, Barth explores four great
intersecting circles which supply the overall structure of the whole: the doctrines of the Word
of God; of God and of Reconciliation and of Creation, each being developed with reference
to the Trinitarian structure of God’s own being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The four
circles are equally fundamental and interlocking dimensions of the same ground-motif that
runs throughout: that Jesus Christ is the actualization and realization in time and history of
God’s eternal decision to be God for and with human; he is himself the everlasting covenant
of God with us, and in that covenant the meaning and purpose of the created universe itself is
contained and in him too lies the uncovering and overcoming of human’s estrangement from
God by the divine ‘No’ of the cross which leads on to the ‘Yes’ of the resurrection.
In respect of christology itself, Barth powerfully defended and restated the orthodox
doctrine that Jesus Christ is both God and human, ‘two natures in one person,’ as the Council
of Chalcedon (451) had described it. But he developed and extended the rather static idea of
‘nature’ in a dynamic way, tracing in Jesus’ person and history a ‘double movement’ of God
to human, and human to God. Jesus, is therefore not simply the human instrument of God’s
purposes, not simply a human responding to divine grace: he is God come as human I order
to work out and establish in himself the true destiny of human in friendship and communion
with God. So the very being of God and the true nature of human are opened up for us in him.
In respect of God’s being, the fundamental axiom with which Barth works is that God
is ‘eternally and antecedently in himself’ what he shows himself to be in Jesus. There is no
other God that this, nor is he God in any other way than he here makes known. In Jesus’ own
relation of sonship to the Father, a relation which is mediated and empowered by the Holy
Spirit, the triune Spirit is shown as the eternal ground within God of the human person and
history of Jesus. Similarly the self-relatedness within God’s triunity is opened up as the basis
on which he calls into being creatures other than himself. So the doctrine of the trinity is
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presented as intrinsically bound up with the incarnation of the eternal Son as Jesus Christ, and
as supplying the ultimate framework for a theology centred and focused in him.
Man for others - D. Bonhoeffer: Bonhoeffer was born in 1906, and while still very young
came to be known as one of the outstandingly promising theologians of his generation in
Germany. In 1930s he was active in Confessing Church, which was established in opposition
to the Nazis and the German Christians; he also spent some time in both Britain and the
United States. During the war he was arrested and after some years in prison was executed in
1945. Through the 1930s he published a number of books, subsequently translated into
English as Sanctorum Communio (1963), Act and Being (1961), Creation and Fall (1959),
The Cost of Discipleship (1959) and Life Together (1954). Mention should also be made of
the posthumously published Ethics (1955) and the early lectures on Christology,
reconstructed from student’s notes, of which a revised translation was published in 1978.
Bonhoeffer was trained in Berlin where the influence of liberal theology still lingered
on, he soon identified himself with the new dialectical theology. Most of his own
theologizing was done in the midst of the Church’s struggle in Germany – a struggle in which
he eventually lost his life, so it will not surprise us that his theology is not abstract speculative
affair, but one that impinges on the situations of real life.
In Letters and Papers, Bonhoeffer repeatedly turns to exploring the question of the
bearing of Jesus Christ on life today, of the meaning of faithful Christian life in the modern
world. On the one hand Christian faith has an essential ‘this –worldly’ aspect: it centres on
the human Jesus, and finds expression in the whole range of our life in the world. Already in
his christology this emphasis can be clearly seen: he insists that to call Jesus ‘God’ is to
qualify the human Jesus as God, not to superimpose a second ‘divine nature’ upon him.
Bonhoeffer works out what he calls the ‘pro me’ structure of Jesus’ being, his being ‘for me’
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 119
and Bonhoeffer sketches the ‘hidden presence’ of Jesus in worship and in the life of the
Christian community. This underlies the phrase used in Letters and Papers to sum up
Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Jesus: Jesus is the ‘man for others,’ the man whose own
identity reaches out to involve us, and to involve us in his quality of radically human life.
Bonhoeffer believes that God discloses Godself only in and through Jesus Christ. He
says, “Encounter with Jesus Christ. The experience that a transformation of all human life is
given in the fact that ‘Jesus is there only for others.’ His “being there for other” is the
experience of transcendence. It is only this “being there for others” maintained till death, that
is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in
this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, and resurrection). Our relation to God is not a
‘religious’ relationship to the highest, most powerful and best Being imaginable – that is not
authentic transcendence – but our relation to God is a new life in “existence for others”
through participation in the being of Jesus.”
According to James Woefel, Bonhoeffer makes the view of divine self-disclosure and
self-humiliation absolutely central i.e., Christology is the very heart of his theology. The key
to Bonhoeffer’s whole theological method, including the final “non-religious interpretation of
biblical concepts” is – God is God become human, the human Jesus Christ, and that is all we
can concern ourselves with as human being. The only majesty, sovereignty, glory and
freedom of God which we know are what he has revealed in Jesus Christ. God is God-turned-
toward-human in the Incarnation. He is “haveable,” “graspable” in the concrete, historical
affairs of human, not “eternal non-objectivity,” related to the world only formally and
tangentially through bare acts.
Bonhoeffer divides the topic of Christology into three parts – the contemporary
Christ, the historical Christ, the eternal Christ – although he was able to cover only two by
the end of the semester. That he begins with the contemporary is significant; again, his stress
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is on ‘Christ existing as the church.’ As he puts it here in analogy to the Lutheran view of the
Lord’s supper, the church is the Body of Christ. But even the historical Christ, he insists, did
not exist in and for himself, but as a Christ ‘for me.’ This is the ‘deputyship’ that he assumed
not only for me but also for the whole of nature and of history.
Bonhoeffer lays great stress on the ‘humiliation’ of Christ and the ‘incognito’ that
makes him recognizable, whether historically or contemporaneously, only to faith. At the
same time, he draws a sharp distinction between this humiliation and the incarnation as such.
The humiliation is not God’s becoming human (for this in itself is glorious), but the
subjection of the Incarnate One to the conditions of existence under sin. Humiliation is
concealment, while incarnation as such is revelation. The humiliation pertains (refers to) to
the fallen creation, the incarnation to the primal creation. The humiliation therefore is
temporary, whereas the incarnation is permanent; with the return of Christ to the Father,
humanity has been assumed into the eternal life of God himself.
Humiliation – concealment Incarnation - revelation
--------------- fallen creation --------------- primal creation
--------------- temporary --------------- permanent
The lectures on Christology remained incomplete, but in one of the concluding
chapters on The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer further clarified his own position as well as
its antecedents when he writes: “As they contemplated the miracle of the Incarnation, the
early Fathers passionately contended that while it was true to say that God took human nature
upon him, it was wrong to say that he chose a perfect individual man and united himself to
him. God was made human. This means that he took upon him our entire human nature with
all of its infirmity, sinfulness and corruption, the whole of apostate humanity.” Bonhoeffer
reveals his dependence on the tradition, particularly strong in Greek theology, whereby the
notion of humanity as an entity makes it possible to conceive of the redemption as universal
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 121
in its scope. As to the character of that redemption, Bonhoeffer describes it here as the
restoration of the proper ‘form’ of man as he was originally created in God’s image. In Jesus
Christ as the Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen One, this true image once again takes form in
human history.
Cosmic Christ - T. Chardin:
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit and a priest, a scientist, a philosopher, a theologian, a
spiritual prophet, and a seer. He was born in 1881, France. He entered the Society of Jesus in
1899 and taught at the Jesuit secondary school in Cairo between 1905 and 1908. In 1922 he
was appointed to the chair of geology at the Institut Catholique in Paris but the Jesuit
Superior General removed him from this position in 1925 because of a paper he wrote on the
relation of evolution to the doctrine of original sin. The Vatican forbade him to publish
anything of a philosophical or religious nature and he was exiled to China. He remained in
China for 20 years. In 1948 he was asked to be a candidate for the chair of paleontology at
the College de France, but his Superior General refused permission. Teilhard had to leave
Paris permanently. He settled in New York in 1951 at the invitation of the Wenner –Grenn
Foundation for Anthropological Research. He wrote a number of essays on the philosophical
and religious meaning of evolution and on Christian spirituality which were published
following his death in New York on Easter Sunday, 1955.
Methodology: Teilhard was primarily a visionary, a seer. He once wrote: “Nothing is profane
to those who know how to see.” He saw something and wanted to show others what he saw.
He wanted to be a guide for others yet he suffered deeply for wanting to be a guide. He saw
with crystal clarity the disjointedness between the sphere of the sacred and that sphere is the
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product of the modern science. This secular sphere was not at all interested in talking about
God or Christ but it was a sphere to which Teilhard as a scientist was totally committed.
Process Christology – N. Pittenger
One of the major and most complex contemporary theological movements is known as
process theology. A “theology of becoming,” the process movement became particularly
prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Process philosophy is not new. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (500 B. C)
declared that a person “could not step twice in the same river: for other and yet other waters
are ever flowing on.” There are many modern philosophers who contributed to the
development of process philosophy. It is claimed that God is in historical process. In fact,
history is the footprints of God in the sands of time. God is unfolding Himself in the
phenomena of the world in a continual process. This identification of process and God is a
significant moment in the history of process theology. The most influential formulation of
process theology however is found in Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947).
Process Christology: Emil Brunner has truly declared that the “center and the foundation of
the whole Christian faith is ‘Christology,’ that is faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, what process
theology believes about the Person and work of Jesus Christ is of paramount importance.
As we consider process theology, it is well to remember the assumption it brings to
the christological task. First, it assumes a panentheistic view of God and the world. Secondly,
it rules out any miraculous intrusions into the natural order of things. Norman Pittenger
writes that “the notion of natural and supernatural… the methods by which God was
supposed to work in his world, etc., are not and cannot be ours.” Thirdly, process theology
does not accept the Bible as uniquely authoritative, and holds that it is subject to correction
by reason and science. Many process theologians belong to that school which believes that
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what the Bible records as the words of Jesus were actually not His, but were put in His mouth
by the early Christian community.
Consistent with their rejection of the miraculous, process thinkers repudiates (rejects)
as “incredible and impossible the Greek idea of a god who comes down to earth and walks
about as a human being.” To speak about Jesus as though He were an intruder from some
other (even spiritual) realm would render Him supremely meaningless. Any relevant
contemporary Christology must view Jesus “as a genuine person (a genuine Jew of the first
century of our era), genuinely thinking the thoughts of that period in which he lived, ..
sharing fully and completely in the human experience.”
God’s activity in the Incarnation: God is not only manifest generally in all of
creation and human history, but He is specially evident in the incarnation of Christ. Pittenger
dislikes the terms absolute and final as applied to the incarnation; rather he prefers speaking
of it as “important” and even “decisive.” Christ differs only in degree, in fact, “a very great
degree of intensity.” Pittenger rejects the enhypostasis view of the incarnation, that the only
one person in Christ is the one in God, too. Christ is merely the organon, the fully human and
personal instrument of God’s activity. Further, “it is impossible to demonstrate from the
available material that Jesus was absolutely sinless,” because we know nothing of much of
His life. Pittenger is content with the fact that the general impression of Christ is “of a man
who can properly be described as embodying love-in-action.” However, there is no ideal love
in Christ. What is more, ‘there is no ideal perfection; even in God himself, the Unsurpassable
Lover.” It is sufficient for Pittenger that Christ is a very significant and prime manifestation
of God’s loving activity in and through a man. So there are three essentials in Pittenger’s
Christology:
(i) There is the firm conviction that in some fashion we meet God in the event of Jesus
Christ.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 124
(ii) There is the equally firm conviction that God is thus met in a genuinely historical,
conditional and entirely human being.
(iii) There is the assurance that God met in that man, and the man in whom God met, are
in relationship….of personal union rather than after some model which suggests a less
secure and abiding togetherness of God and man.
Pittenger understands one of the important contributions of process christology to be its
ability to explain the suffering and impassability of God in Christ. Since God is supremely
related in and through all things, He “contains suffering, in accordance with the suffering of
the world.” And in a special way is “the Christian idea of a suffering deity – symbolized by
the cross, together with the doctrine of Incarnation.”
Pittenger also eschews the ancient confessions about the natures of Christ as being no
longer meaningful. Words like hypostasis, ousia, and so forth are old-fashioned. Nonetheless,
he considers that to be a mere verbal orthodoxy as opposed to his more vital orthodoxy. He
maintains that in attempting to reformulate the early confessions to relate them to today we
must be loyal to the intentions of the original authors rather than their words. In other words,
the continuation of their doctrinal aims seems to be important in spite of repetition of their
doctrinal conclusions. In attempting to relate the nature of Jesus to modernity Pittenger
stresses His humanity. He was the ‘authentic’ man who sacrificed Himself for His fellow
human beings and for God. It was in this Man that the early believers saw God at work.
“Jesus is the coincidence of God’s action.. and man’s responsive action…, not in spite of but
under the very conditions of genuinely human life… in a degree not elsewhere known in
human experience.”
The doctrine of salvation: Process theologians place a much heavier emphasis on the power
of Jesus’ life than on that of His death. They also have a radically different understanding of
what salvation means. Rather than recreation of the individual from a life of corruption to a
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life of righteousness, process salvation is a matter of harmonizing one’s life in time of health
and wholeness, and of exchanging a life of self-centeredness for a concern for one’s fellows.
Pittenger defines it as “a unity of life, on the way to full integration, where men and women
are so related to … the cosmic thrust of life.”
The crucifixion and resurrection were important to the universal extension of
salvation. As long as Jesus was alive this creative salvation was confined to the context of
Hebrew culture and religious tradition. The resurrection shattered these restrictive barriers.
When process theologians speak of the resurrection, one must not think that they
mean the literal physical resurrection of Jesus. Not at all. Henry Wieman suggests that with
the death of Christ, hope for the future died, But about the third day after His death, that
creative power came to life once more in the discipleship’ band. Because of its past
association with Jesus some of his followers thought that they saw Him. “But what rose from
the dead was not the man Jesus it was creative power.”
Their view of Christ is unbiblical and unorthodox: Despite the learned attempts of
Pittenger and others, it is both theologically inadequate and biblically unfounded to describe
Christ as anything less than perfect God and perfect man in one eternal Person, the second
person of the blessed Godhead. It is a gross misrepresentation of Scripture to represent the
incarnation as merely God in Christ. Rather, Christ is God. He claimed for himself the
attributes of God.
Hope Christology – W. Pannenberg
The theology of hope has its origins in the existential gloom of the late 1960s. At a
time when ecclesiastical fortunes were at an all-time low and it seemed that much of
Christianity was headed for some form of “Christian atheism,” a new school of German
theologians came to the fore, propounding what has been variously termed the theology of
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 126
hope or the theology of the future. Theology of hope is a way of looking at theology and
theological concerns from the perspective of the future rather than the past or present. Past
and present have value only with reference to the future. Reality is not –yet; it is future
oriented. The question of God’s existence can be answered only in the future, for God is
subject to time as it pushes into the future.
The theology of hope is grounded in the eschatology of Albert Schweitzer from the
early 20th century, but with a radical redirection. It seeks to point theology toward the future,
rather than toward the past or present. It places a strong emphasis on faith as it relates to
history, but insists that the meaning of history can be uncovered only in its conclusion.
The theologians of hope refuse to dichotomize history into secular and sacred. For
them, there is only one history and God meditates His revelation indirectly through all of it.
The Christian hope is the anticipation of the historical future, which will be a direct
fulfillment of God’s promises as given to humanity in Christ. The present is meaningful only
inasmuch as it relates to future possibilities.
The theology of hope is also a resurrection theology, although it sees Christ’
resurrection as a “first-fruits” of the future and interprets its significance by a backward look
from the future rather than vice versa. Christ’ church is to be a ‘disturber’ of society, engaged
in a mission of confrontation as it awaits the eschatological fulfillment of God’s kingdom.
The theology of hope goes beyond traditional theological bounds, seeking to envelop
the whole world, including the fields of politics, sociology, ethics and biology. It considers
itself to be a secular theology and as such has had a definite impact of Third World thinking.
The pillars of this school are Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Johannes Metz.
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928 - ): Pannenberg, who holds a teaching post in systematic
theology at the University of Munich, presents his theology from the category of history.
With the appearance of his Jesus – God and Man in 1968, he became an influence in the
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English-speaking world. A more popular type of theology appeared with the two-volumed
publication of his essays, Basic Questions to theology, in 1970 and 1971.
Approaching a theology: During his studies, Pannenberg had delved (examine) into
philosophy and theology. A study of theology gave him a deeper acquaintance with patristic
and a new appreciation for the place of history. He says, “The subject matter that fascinated
me was the reality of God and the consequences to be derived from the affirmation of that
reality in philosophy and in dogmatics. But now historical experience, tradition and critical
exegesis, together with philosophical and theological reflection on their content and
implications, became the privileged medium to discuss the reality of God. That meant that
…God’s presence is hidden in the particulars of history…We finally arrived at the conclusion
that even God’s revelation takes place in history and that precisely all the biblical writings
suggest this solution of the key problem of fundamental theology.” Such an approach called
for a new method of relating the Person and history of Jesus to the OT’ theology of history. It
was discovered in apocalyptic thought. “In the end it became discernible that it is in history
itself that divine revelation takes place, and not in some strange Word arriving from some
alien place and cutting across the fabric of history.”
History and revelation: Pannenberg sees history as the key to revelation, therefore, he can
be called the theologian of history. For him history is the principle of verifying the future. For
him, all history is God’s revelation. History is so clear in its revelatory functions that its
interpretation can be made without the aid of a supernatural revelation.
It is in the events of history that God discloses Himself to humanity. Nor is this
revelation limited to a “sacred” history; it includes all of history, the totality of all events. In
this manner God becomes known not just as “the God o
The historical Jesus and Christology: Pannenberg’s next major publication after
announcing his new view of revelation was his Christology – Jesus – God and Man. He
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 128
began this work with the assertion: “Its teaching about Jesus Christ lies at the heart of every
Christian theology.”
Pannenberg’ christology begins with a methodological concern for the right starting
point. The traditional way of doing christology was to start ‘from above’ with the
incarnational dogma of the ancient church a defined in the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon.
Ever since the quest of the historical Jesus began in the 18th century, it has become
increasingly clear that church dogma can lo longer be the point of departure in christology
but must itself be legitimated with reference to our knowledge of the historical Jesus and the
early Christian trajectories of interpretation. Christology today must start ‘from below’ to
show that the apostolic kerygma or ecclesiastical dogma is grounded in the Jesus of history.
In starting christology ‘from below’ Pannenberg does not end with a ‘low christology’. A
‘low’ christology is one which follows the ancient Ebionitic tendency to treat Jesus as a
‘mere man’ in contrast to a ‘high’ christology which finds in Jesus’ unity with the Father the
revelation of the identity of God. Pannenberg ‘ proposal is to do a christology ‘from below’
which is a true christology ‘from above.’
What is christology? The note of history is struck again. Christology is the
interpretation of the history of Jesus. There is nothing that can be called Christian that is not
based on that. Jesus of Nazareth was a proclaimer of the oncoming Kingdom of God within
the horizon of late-Jewish apocalyptic expectations. Jesus was not one of the apocalyptic
visionaries, but the distinctiveness of Jesus’ message and ministry can be understood only
within the framework of apocalyptic eschatology. That was the context within which Jesus
preached his message of the Kingdom of God and in whose terms that message was heard
and believed. Without the historical event of Resurrection, Jesus would have been one more
zealous eschatological preacher soon forgotten. The Resurrection acted like a magnet to draw
christological titles from numerous sources into the service of announcing the identity and
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meaning of Jesus as the Messiah waited by Israel. Thus, in one sense christology began with
the first witnesses to the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus as the Christ was an Easter
event. Yet in another sense christology began in the person of Jesus himself, for the risen
Lord is an empty symbol without connection with the historical life and ministry of Jesus.
In addition to t his strong emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus as the pivot of
christology, Pannenberg offers a number of equally significant, constructive proposals for
christological thought.
(i) He resists the modern tendency to write christology strictly out of soteriological
interests. Tillich’s famous statement that christology is a function of soteriology is
unacceptable.
(ii) Jesus’ unity with God can be established only retrospectively (recall) from the Easter
event. His pre-Easter life has proleptic significance. The idea of prolepsis is the key to
understanding the relation between the present and the future.
(iii) The mode of God’s presence in Jesus is affirmed in terms of God’s revelational unity
with Jesus. From this revelational approach Pannenberg seeks to do justice to the
concern of classical christology to stress the essential unity of Jesus with the Father.
(iv) Through christology Pannenberg opens a way to rethink the doctrine of the Trinity,
thus helping to reinforce the revival of Trinitarian thinking in the 20th century, starting
with the creative initiatives of Barth.
(v) The most striking original idea in Pannenberg’s overall scheme is that of the
retroactive power of the future to create all things from the beginning. This idea lies at
the heart of his incorporation of eschatology into all dimensions of theology,
including in particular his idea of God as the power of the future.
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Crucified God – J. Moltmann
Ethical Christology – Tom Driver
Selected Indian thinkers and writers:
Jesus the Avatar (Chakkarai): (1990 – 1858)
Chakkarai was born on January 17, 1880 in Tamilnadu. He was brought up under the Hindu
religious influences of his home. He began to see Hinduism as an integral part of the national
awakening of India. At the Madras Christian College, Chakkarai studied the Bible carefully.
He came under the influence of Principal William Miller who believed that Hinduism would
find its fulfillment in Christ. The personality of Jesus began to take a supreme place in
Chakkarai’s mind and spirit, without producing him any alienation from Hinduism. It was the
mystery of Jesus’ cross that led him to accept Jesus as Lord and Redeemer. He was baptized
at the MCC chapel in 1903 and was admitted to the Free Church of Scotland.
After graduating in Philosophy Chakkarai taught in high schools in Madras for five
years, during this period he also took hi law degree. He practiced law from 1908 – 1913.
Then he left law and joined the staff of the Danish Mission in Madras and was associated
with the Mission’ Broadway Reading Room and its work among educated Hindus. It was
during this period that Gandhi made an impact on him. In 1917 he joined the Home Rule
movement and in 1920 Gandhi’ Non-cooperation Campaign. With Justice Chenchiah, S. J.
Appasamy and others Chakkarai belonged to the Rethinking Christianity in India group of
theologians in South India. His nationalism led him to oppose the imitation of Western
Christianity in India and to advocated Indianization not only in the external life of the Church
but also in its spirituality and theology. He died in 1958.
Jesus the Avatar: Chakkarai’ theology was primarily christological. He maintained that
instead of interpreting Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in the light of a prior conception of
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God or Ultimate Reality, one should interpret God in terms of the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus. So he speaks first of the Christhood of God rather than the Deity of Jesus. We know
God the Unmanifest only through the revelation in the face of Jesus the Immanuel, God with
us. According to him though metaphysics cannot be avoided the divinity of Jesus is not to be
interpreted primarily in metaphysical terms, but spiritually and morally as the incarnation of
the True Man (Sat Purusha).
Perhaps Chakkarai was the foremost among the Indian Christian theologians who
brought out fully the meaning of the Christian concept of incarnation and the Hindu doctrine
of Avatar and gave a new interpretation of the incarnation of Jesus, in his classical work
“Jesus the Avatar.” While urging the Indian Christians to take their Hindu heritage and
tradition seriously in understanding Christ an the Christian faith, he emphasized that the
Christian scripture and experience alone should remain the primary source of Indian Christian
Theology.
He firmly held the view that there are essential differences between the Incarnation of
Christ and the Hindu Avatars. According to Hinduism, the Avatar is of a recurring nature. In
the oft-quoted lines from the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna “I will come again and again, Yuga
after Yuga, for the protection of dharma and destruction of adharma.” Secondly Avatars are
temporary phenomena. There is no promise that their spirits would come back and abide with
human spirits.
Chakkarai elaborately explains the concept of Avatar as it is the basis of his
christology. He observes, In Jesus the Avatar, the unmanifest God becomes manifest and we
come to know Him through the way of Bhakti. He becomes man whereas all other men are
dominated by Maya, he is the Satpurusha in whom Maya is cast aside.
According to Hinduism that Avatara comes to the earth for only a short time and
thereafter merges once more in the Godhead. As against this Chakkarai stresses the
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continuing Manhood of Jesus and once he becomes incarnate he remains the ‘God-Man’ even
after ascension, and for that reason can be our mediator. He prefers to interpret the ‘Avatar’
as dynamic rather than static. It is because once incarnated Jesus remains forever the God-
Man in human history as Mediator of true spiritual communion between God and humanity.
The Christian incarnation occurs once and for all. The Logos, having become man in Christ,
remains as God-Man for ever an did not simply absorbed back into the Godhead with the
discarding of his human nature. In addition, the incarnation is dynamic and is still at work
today through the power of the Spirit. The avatar did not cease with the Cross nor even with
the ascension, but God in Christ still continues to be man, living and working in the lives of
the believers. Thus, the life of Jesus culminating on the Cross-and Resurrection is the clue to
the metaphysics of God-world relations and not the other way round. The incarnation or
avatar of Christ is thus seen to be no mere theophany but a permanent, mediating union of
God and man in him. But besides being permanent it is also dynamic, working in the world
today and this dynamism of the incarnation is found in the fact that God, in Christ, submitted
himself to the buffetings of human life and history. The meaning of the incarnation, then, is
not to be seen in some metaphysical or substantial union of God and man, but rather in
Christ’ breaking into the uncertainties of history. Chakkarai is not interested in how the
divine and the human can co-exist in Jesus, but rather in the fact who Jesus is and what He
does in the world.
In his exposition of Avatara Chakkarai uses a kenotic theory which is closely related
to Christ’ death on the Cross, where all self is annihilated. Chakkarai also develops the idea
in a way which is critical of the Western conception of ‘personality.’ He interprets Kenosis to
identify the moment at which Jesus of history passes into Christ of faith and that moment he
believes is the cry of dereliction (failure) on the Cross, when Jesus suffers the very depth of
humiliation and separation from his Father and the abyss of Kenosis becomes the beginning
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of his glorification. According to him Christ’ sinlessness consists in complete self-abnegation
culminating in his death on the Cross. It is not the sinlessness of a metaphysical divinity but a
dynamic sinlessness which is the free choice of his own personality and which works itself
out in suffering love. Jesus of Nazareth is the True Man who from the beginning has ‘perfect
unity of mind and heart with God,’ a unity seen not only in his deep communion with God
through the yoga of prayer and in his self-abnegation even to the death of the Cross, but also
in his miracles of love and in his sinlessness. He says: “Jesus of history is to us the Avatar of
God, but the Incarnation, whose real significance we are trying to grasp from the standpoint
of Indian thought, was not a static product which admitted of no growth.. The incarnation
advanced from state to stage from the historical to the spiritual, from the external to the
internal, form time to eternity.”
In his use of Hindu terms like Avatara, Chakkarai made it sufficiently clear that there
are significant differences between the Christian conception of ‘incarnation’ and the Hindu
doctrine of Avatar of God.
Christ, the Adipurusha of New Creation (Chenchiah) (1886 – 1959):
Chenchiah was born on December 8, 1886 in Andra Pradesh. In 1901 he and his
family became Christians. He studied at the Madras Christian College. He came under the
influence of Principal Miller’s Christ centred liberalism. He and other Christians shared the
spirit of national awakening. They created forums for expressing it and for promoting the
discussion of issues of religion and culture connected with it. The publication Rethinking
Christianity in India published in connection with Tambaram 1938, gave the Rethinking
group an important place in the developing history of Indian theology. Chenchiah was critical
of the church. Its dogmatism and its order seemed to him to stifle (suffocate) creative
thought. But he regularly attended the Sunday church services. However his idea of spiritual
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fellowship transcended church boundaries and he organized ‘small groups consisting of
Christians and Hindus for praying for the sick.” He died in 1959.
Christ, the Adipurusha of New Creation:
Chenchiah wanted Indian Christianity to relativise all Scriptures and church traditions
in creed, cultus and order, and seek the direct experience of what he called ‘the raw fact of
Christ’ which is the only absolute for the Christian. No doubt the NT is the earliest
interpretation of the Divine revelation in Jesus, but as revelation Jesus Christ is not just word
or idea or past history, but a new creation which is the living stream of the Risen Christ and
the Spirit. Therefore the finality of Jesus cannot ever have a final interpretation. Indian
Christian must have direct contact with Jesus, commune with god through Jesus and receives
rebirth as the sons of God in the image of Jesus. And then formulate their understanding in
the context of the spiritual urges of contemporary history regarding the future of humanity.
Chenchiah’ theology has Christ, as its starting point and goal.
He speaks of the necessity to discover and recover the incarnation as New Adam.
Salvation is not a return to an original paradise but a creative evolutionary movement towards
a new human being, society and cosmos. Salvation is not redemption nor reconciliation but
simply “reproducing Jesus” by means of our essential union with him. Within the framework
of Bergson’ philosophy of creative evolution Chenchiah saw the fact of Christ as ‘the birth of
a new order of Creation,’ as the emergence of a new life, not bound by karma but as the
manifestation of the first fruits of a new race of the sons of God in the creative process.
Cosmic evolution has always been the creative act of God, an outburst of His creative
power. That was how matter, vegetable, animal and human beings have come into being,
each representing a leap to a new stage. So Jesus represents the leap from the man enslaved to
sin, karma and death towards the new manhood triumphant, glorious and partaking of the
immortal nature of God.
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 135
Along this line, Chenchiah conceives incarnation as God assuming manhood to be in
the world permanently with a view to create the new humanity and the new cosmos in his
image. Thus, Jesus is God Immanuel in history, releasing the cosmic energy of the Holy
Spirit to build the new life-order the Kingdom of God. The incarnation process ends only
with the revelation of the Sons of God; the recapitulation of all things in Christ and of Christ
into God. Following the biblical and evolutionary language of the time, Chenchiah takes
Jesus Christ to be the starter of a new era of a new stage in the process of evolution. For his
Jesus Christ is the Adipurusha (original man) of a new creation. For “in Jesus creation
mounts a step higher.” He is more interested in the fact of Jesus rather than the act of Jesus;
hence he repeats that we are saved not by the acts but by the fact of Jesus.
Since Jesus is God’s radical new entry into history, all religions belong to the old
creation to be abrogated by Christ, and there is no continuity from any religion to Christ. But
a bridge can be built from Christ to any religion by selecting those elements in it which point
towards Christ. “Neither Judaism nor Hinduism leads to Christ. Christ abrogates Judaism and
Hinduism more than He fulfils them.”
The Unknown Christ (R. Panikkar)
The Acknowledged Christ (M. M. Thomas)
The Liberating Christ (S. Kappen)
The Hindu Christ (M. C. Parekh & Subba Rao)
Discussions concerning the unity of the natures in Jesus Christ – Nestorius, Cyril of
Alexandria, Eutyelies, Chalcedonian definition.
Dalit Theology – A. P. Nirmal
Dn. Christo C. Kurian 136
“When they divided the Purusa, into how many parts did they arrange him? What was his
mouth? What were his two arms? What are his thighs and feet called?” “The brahmin was his
mouth, his two arms were made the rajanya (worrier), his tow thighs the vaisya (trader and
agriculturist) from his feet the sudra (survile class, was born). (Rig. Veda X, 90:11-12)
Meaning of Dalit:
1. the broken, the torn, the rent, the burst, the split
2. the opened, the expanded
3. the bisected
4. the driven asunder, the dispelled, the scattered
5. the down trodden, the crushed, the destroyed
6. the manifested, the displayed.
Reason for the construction of Dalit Theology: Nirmal observes- broadly speaking, Indian
Christian theology in the past has tried to work out its theological systems in terms of either
Advaita Vedanta or Vaishisahtha Advaita. Most of the contributions to Indian Christian
theology in the past came from caste converts to Christianity. The result has been that Indian
Christian theology has perpetuated within itself what I prefer to call the Brahminic tradition.
This tradition has further perpetuated institution interiority oriented approach to the
theological task in India. On wonders whether this kind of Indian Christian theology will ever
have a mass appeal.
The brief observation can be spelt out little more fully. In Brahmabandhav
Upadhyaya, we have a brilliant theologian who attempt a synthesis of Sankara’ Advaita and
Christian theology. In A. J. Appasamy we had a bhakti margi theologian who tried to
synthesize Ramanuja’ Vishishtha Advaita with Christian theology. In M. M. Thomas we have
a theologian who has contributed to theological anthropology at the international level and
who laid the foundations for a more active theological involvement in India – the karma
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marga. In Chenchiah we find an attempt to synthesize Christian theology with Sri Aurobindo’
Integral Yoga. These are some of the examples to highlight that Indian Christian theology
failed to take note of the history of depressed class in India.
Thus, the struggle of Indian dalit is a story that provides us with a liberation motif that
is authentically Indian. This story needs to analyzed and interpreted theologically. The
struggle is far from over. All the documentation on the situation of the dalits are clear
indication of the fact that the liberation story of Indian dalits is incomplete as yet. Theirs is an
ongoing struggle. This liberation struggle needs to be undergirded.
What is Dalit theology?
This question, according to Webster, may be answered in at least three different ways:
The first answer may be that it is a theology about the dalits or theological reflection upon the
Christian responsibility to the depressed classes. Secondly the answer may be that it is a
theology for the depressed classes, or the theology of the message addressed to the depressed
classes and to which they seem to be responding. Thirdly, the answer may be that it is a
theology from the depressed classes, that is the theology, which they themselves would like
to expound.
Nirmal would say that a Christian dalit theology will be produced by dalits. It will be
based on their own dalit experiences, their own sufferings, their own aspirations and their
own hopes. It will narrate the story of their pathos and their protest against the socio-
economic injustices they have been subjected to throughout history. It will anticipate
liberation which is meaningful to them. It will represent a radical discontinuity with the
classical Indian Christian theology of the Brahminic tradition. This Brahminic tradition in the
classical Indian theology needs to be challenged by the emerging dalit theology. This means
that a Christian dalit theology will be a counter-theology. Basically, it is the common dalit
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experience of Christian dalits along with the other dalits that will shape a Christian dalit
theology.
Historical Dalit consciousness:
The historical dalit consciousness is the primary datum of a Christian dalit theology.
The question of dalit consciousness is really the question of dalit identity, the question of
their roots.
Nirmal expounds the Deuteronomic Creed found in Deut. 26: 5-12 as it has
tremendous implications for a dalit theology.
(i) A Creed, a Confession, a faith-affirmation must exercise in laying bare the roots of the
believing community. ‘A wandering Aramean was my father’ recalls the nomadic
consciousness. To confess that ‘once we were no people’ is also an integral part of a
confession, before we come to the claims ‘now we are God’s people.’ It is only when we
recognize our roots, our identity that we become truly confessional. A truly confessional
theology, therefore, has to do with the question of the roots, identity and consciousness.
(ii) We notice that this wandering Aramean is also described as ‘few in number.’ The
Aramean ancestor, therefore, stands for the entire community. The question of identity and
roots is inseparably bound with the sense of belonging to a community. In our search for a
Dalit theology it is well worth remembering that we are looking for is community-identity,
community-roots and community-consciousness. The vision of a dalit theology therefore
ought to be a unitive vision or rather a communitive vision.
(iii) Then comes the recalling of their affliction, the harsh treatment meted out by the
Egyptians and their bondage. Then comes their cry to the Lord. A theology of a christian dalit
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theology therefore, is a story of the afflictions, the bondage, the harsh treatment, the toil, and
the tears of the dalits. A genuinely dalit theology will be characterized by pathos, by
suffering.
(iv) The Exodus liberation is symbolized by ‘a mighty hand,’ ‘an outstretched arm,’ and by
‘terror.’ Liberation does not come only through sings and wonders. A certain measure of
‘terror’ is necessary to achieve it. In terms of a dalit theology, this would mean that the dalits
cannot afford to have a fatalistic attitude to life. They must protest and agitate it for change.
(v) We should also notice that the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’ comes last. It is an
outcome of the liberation already achieved. The land flowing with milk and honey is not the
chief goal of the Exodus. Rather it is the release from the captivity and slavery and the
liberation from the Egyptian bondage that are the chief goal of the Exodus. The implication
for a dalit theology is that the liberation struggle we are involved in is primarily a struggle for
our human dignity and for our right to live as a free people – people created in the ‘image of
God.’
(vi) This historic Deuteronomic Creed has paradigmatic value for our dalit theological
construct. And the dalit consciousness has an unparalleled depth of pathos and misery. And it
is this historical dalit consciousness that should inform any attempt at a Christian dalit
theology.
(vii) The dalit consciousness should realized that the ultimate goal of its liberation movement
cannot be the ‘land flowing with milk and honey.’ For a Christian Dalit theology it cannot be
simply the gaining of the rights, the reservations and privileges. The goal is the realization of
our full humanness or conversely our full divinity, the ideal of the Imago Dei, the image of
God is us.
The Question of God:
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The God whom Jesus Christ revealed and about whom the prophets of the OT spoke
is a Dalit God. He is a servant God – a God who serves. Services for others have always been
the privilege of dalit communities in India. Unfortunately the word ‘service’, ministry or
diakonia has lost its cutting edge. Originally the word diakonia was associated with the
waiting at the dining table. The ‘servant’ therefore, means a waiter. Our housemaid or the
sweeper who cleans commodes and latrines are truly speaking our servants. It is precisely in
this sense that our God is a servant God. God is a waiter, a dhobi, all such services have been
the lot of dalits. This means we have participated in this servant-God’s ministries. To speak
of a servant-God therefore, is to recognize and identify Him as a truly dalit deity. The gospel
identified Jesus with the servant of God of Isaiah (Is. 53:2-8).
The language used to described the servant language is full of pathos. This is the
language use for God – the God of dalits. This is also the language that mirrors the God of
dalits and dalit themselves.
Dalit Christology: To say that we are Christian dalits and not just dalits has christological
implications, which must be faced boldly. It means first of all that we proclaim and affirm
that Jesus Christ himself was a dalit despite his being a Jew. It further means that both his
humanity and his divinity are to be understood in terms of his dalitness. His dalitness is the
key to the mystery of his divine hman unity. His dalitness can be traced at his genealogy as
given in Matthew (Mt. 1:1-17). The Son of Man saying is indicative of Jesus’ present
sufferings and imminent death which is also significant for developing a dalit christology.
These sayings speak of the Son of Man as encountering rejection, mockery, contempt,
suffering and finally death. Jesus suffered from the dominant religious tradition and the
established religion. He underwent these dalit experiences as the prototype of all dalits.
Another feature of Jesus’ life is this total identification with the dalits of his day. Jesus
is accused of eating and drinking with publicans, tax-collectors and sinners of his day. The
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Nazareth Manifesto has tremendous significant for the dalit. Jesus made two illustrations that
indicate that the liberation he talked about is meant for the dalits and not for non-dalits. The
gospel that Jesus brought was the gospel for dalits. The whole situation change at Jesus’
explosive words and we read, ‘when they heard this all in the synagogue were filled with
wrath.’ (Lk. 4: 16-29). The Nazareth Manifesto is really a manifesto for dalit.
Another episode from Jesus’ ministry full of significance for a Christian dalit
theology is that of the cleansing of the temple (Mk. 11: 15-19). The suggestion coming from
Lightfoot maintains that the incident of the cleansing of the temple must be understood in
terms of its implications for the Gentiles. All the buying and selling and money exchanging
took place in the part of the temple precincts, which were reserved, for the Gentile worship. It
was the Gentile Court. The Gentiles had no access to the inner precincts where the Jewish
worship proper was conducted. The bazar that was held in the Gentile court thus effectively
prevented them from conducting their worship in a peaceful and quiet manner. Jesus the
Messianic King thus restores to the Gentiles their religious rights. Lightfoot’ interpretation
makes sense to the Indian dalits who had to struggle for the temple entry rights and we know
about temple entry legislation in the various states of India. We the Indian dalits know what it
means to be denied that entry to the temple and to be denied the right to pray and worship. In
his act of restoration of the Gentile rights to worship we see a prefiguration of the vindication
of the Indian dalit struggle for their prayer and worship rights.
Jesus dalitness is symbolized by the Cross. On the cross, he was the broken, the
crushed, the split, the torn, the driven asunder man, the dalit in the fullest possible meaning of
that term. My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He cries aloud from the cross. The
Son of God feels that he is God-forsaken. That feeling of being God-forsaken is at the heart
of our dalit experiences and dalit consciousness in India. It is the dalitness of the divinity and
humanity that the Cross of Jesus symbolizes.