Method and Scope

Dn. Christo C. Kurian 1

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.


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


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


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


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


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


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.


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


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.


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:


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


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


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:


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).


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


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


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


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:


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.


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.


(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


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


(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


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


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


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


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.


(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


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


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


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


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


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.


(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


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.


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.


- 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


- 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.


- 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.


- 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.


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.


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.


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.


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


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


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,


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


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).


(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


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:


“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


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


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


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


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.


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


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).


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


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


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


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


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.


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,


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


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.


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


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’


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.


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-


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


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.


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


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.”


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


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:


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


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


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.


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


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.


(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.


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.


(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.


(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.


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


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.’


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


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.


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.”


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


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


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


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


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.


- 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.


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


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


‘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


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


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


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


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


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.


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


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


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


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.


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


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


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,


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.


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.


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


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


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


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


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


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’


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


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


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


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


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.


(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


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


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


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


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


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.


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


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


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


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


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.


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


“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


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


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


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:


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


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.

Method and Scope

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