The scholarly reinterpretation of Jesus in the Enlightenment was not formally endorsed by any ecclesiastical tradition. Rather, it was the personal opinion of theologians that began to reorient Christian thinking about Jesus. The official teachings of all Christian churches, Protestant and Catholic alike, about Jesus remained largely unchanged. Christological reflection in the 19th century was encumbered by the critiques of the Enlightenment—the repudiation of the supernatural elements in the Gospels, the challenge to metaphysical thinking and to the notion of revealed morality. This assault on traditional views raised fundamental questions for the entire Christian religion and had substantial implications for Christology. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) focused on what classical Christology would have called the human nature of Jesus and argued that Jesus had a unique consciousness of God as well as ethical self-consciousness, the latter theme carried forward by Protestant theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) and Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922).
Scholarly reflection on the historical Jesus continued in the 19th century with the work of David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), whoseLife of Jesus Critically Examined (1835) rejects both the supernatural and the natural interpretations of Jesus in favour of a “mythical” interpretation, according to which the story of Jesus illustrates timeless truths (“myths”) but not historical facts. In a brilliant study, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), Albert Schweitzer, later to gain fame as a missionary doctor in equatorial Africa, argued that the pursuit of the historical Jesus depended on a preconceived notion of Jesus as moral teacher that left the apocalyptic aspects of his message completely unconsidered. Schweitzer’s book, along with neoorthodoxProtestant theology (teachings that reaffirmed traditional Protestant Reformation creeds and rejected biblical literalism), cast grave doubt on the notion that it was possible to arrive at a historically objective portrait of Jesus. Nevertheless, the project was continued in the work of scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), who attempted to “demythologize” the New Testament, and E.P. Sanders (for an example of this approach, see Jesus), who adopted a minimalist stance about what can be said about the historical Jesus.
Roman Catholic Christological reflection since the 16th century has sought to come to terms with the challenges of the Enlightenment, especially as these have been raised by Protestant theology. Catholic discourse, all the same, has not had a distinctly Catholic orientation but sought to deal with issues germane to Protestant theology as well. Catholic post-Enlightenment Christology, more so than Protestant reflection, has encountered problems posed by the tension between historical-critical scholarship and dogmatic pronouncements; the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church has sometimes set narrow parameters, such as in the Modernist Controversy of the late 19th and the early 20th century, for what was permissible historical scholarship. The Catholic understanding of the development of dogma as the unfolding of implicit prior affirmations suggested that the formation of the Christological dogma was the development of historically demonstrable claims as well as the self-understanding of Jesus. At the same time, Catholic theologians such as Karl Rahnerand Edward Schillebeeckx have acknowledged the historicity of the dogmatic pronouncements and have insisted on allowing for new and fresh interpretations without forfeiting their essential content... source
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Enlightenment Christology
Traditional Christology, as expressed in the Nicaean and Chalcedonian creeds, was based on the belief in the sanctity of the New Testament, which was held to contain divinely revealed truth as represented in the accounts of eyewitnesses or divinely inspired authors. The Christological reflections of the Protestant reformers—including Luther,John Calvin, and even the anti-Trinitarian Faustus Socinus—took for granted the traditional view of the Scriptures and thus added little to the positions of earlier centuries. Beginning in the mid-17th century, however, a growing chorus of voices insisted that, because other writings of the past were not allowed to press supernatural claims, the same stricture should be applied to the Old and the New Testament. This rational and critical approach to the Scriptures became the basis of a new understanding of the nature and truth of Christianity that came to be known as Deism. The English adherents of Deism, includingJohn Toland (1670–1722), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), and Thomas Morgan (d. 1743), undertook to present Christianity as a rational natural religion, and they increasingly defined authentic Christianity as a religion bereft of superstition.
A key assumption of Enlightenment Christology was that theologians and clergy through the centuries had systematically perverted the true and authentic Christian religion and, in so doing, had obscured the true nature of Jesus. The task of modern theologians, therefore, was to remove these falsifications and to recover what would subsequently be called the “historical” Jesus—that is, the Jesus who actually existed.
These thinkers subjected the New Testament—particularly the four Gospels—to severe scrutiny. Relying on critical principles that were becoming standard in many areas of historical scholarship, they concentrated on two central claims about Jesus in the New Testament: that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that he performed miracles to vindicate his divine mission. English Deist writers such as Toland, Thomas Woolston (1670–1733), and Thomas Chubb(1679–1747) argued vigorously that the authors of the Gospels reported incidents that they themselves had not witnessed and relied on accounts of dreams—such as Joseph’s dream about being commanded to flee Bethlehem for Egypt—that were inherently unverifiable.
From these reflections there emerged a picture of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not a divinity. With this as his premise, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733) argued in his book Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) that Jesus had preached a gospel of “nature” that all of humankind could understand, were it not for the perversions introduced by priests and other religious functionaries. Other Deist interpretations of Jesus were Chubb’s The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (1739) and theWolfenbütteler Fragmente (“Wolfenbüttel Fragments”) of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), which triggered an enormous controversy when it was published posthumously in the 1770s. Its rejection of all the supernatural elements of the Jesus stories was consistent with attempts by other writers, such as the German philologist Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), to “cleanse” the New Testament of religious interpretation and to distill its historical core.
It may be argued, therefore, that both the consolidation of Christological dogma between the 4th and the 7th centuries and the dissolution of this dogma in the 18th and 19th centuries were affected by important cultural factors. In the first period theological reflection was influenced by Greek philosophy, in the second by the rise of science. ...source
A key assumption of Enlightenment Christology was that theologians and clergy through the centuries had systematically perverted the true and authentic Christian religion and, in so doing, had obscured the true nature of Jesus. The task of modern theologians, therefore, was to remove these falsifications and to recover what would subsequently be called the “historical” Jesus—that is, the Jesus who actually existed.
These thinkers subjected the New Testament—particularly the four Gospels—to severe scrutiny. Relying on critical principles that were becoming standard in many areas of historical scholarship, they concentrated on two central claims about Jesus in the New Testament: that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that he performed miracles to vindicate his divine mission. English Deist writers such as Toland, Thomas Woolston (1670–1733), and Thomas Chubb(1679–1747) argued vigorously that the authors of the Gospels reported incidents that they themselves had not witnessed and relied on accounts of dreams—such as Joseph’s dream about being commanded to flee Bethlehem for Egypt—that were inherently unverifiable.
From these reflections there emerged a picture of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not a divinity. With this as his premise, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733) argued in his book Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) that Jesus had preached a gospel of “nature” that all of humankind could understand, were it not for the perversions introduced by priests and other religious functionaries. Other Deist interpretations of Jesus were Chubb’s The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (1739) and theWolfenbütteler Fragmente (“Wolfenbüttel Fragments”) of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), which triggered an enormous controversy when it was published posthumously in the 1770s. Its rejection of all the supernatural elements of the Jesus stories was consistent with attempts by other writers, such as the German philologist Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), to “cleanse” the New Testament of religious interpretation and to distill its historical core.
It may be argued, therefore, that both the consolidation of Christological dogma between the 4th and the 7th centuries and the dissolution of this dogma in the 18th and 19th centuries were affected by important cultural factors. In the first period theological reflection was influenced by Greek philosophy, in the second by the rise of science. ...source
Reformation Christology
The Reformation
Much like the medieval period, the 16th-century Protestant Reformation was characterized by the restatement of earlier Christological positions rather than by the development of new formulations. Thus, the major Protestant reformers dissented from the orthodox Christological tradition mainly in matters of emphasis, as in their delineation of the doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus: prophet, priest, and king.
The controversy among the reformers over the Last Supper, which centred on the question of Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine of theEucharist, echoed debates that had begun as early as the 9th century. It quickly became apparent that different Christological assumptions underlay the positions of the two protagonists, Huldrych Zwingli andMartin Luther. Luther argued that the unity of Jesus’ two natures, divine and human, meant that every statement about Jesus applied to both of his natures at once. Thus, God suffered and died on the cross, and the humanity of Jesus was omnipresent. Luther insisted that Jesus’ bodily omnipresence entailed his real bodily presence in the elements of the offering (see transubstantiation). Calvin, in contrast, held that Jesus’ human nature had died on the cross and that Jesus was now at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit brought about Jesus’ spiritual but not bodily presence in the communion ceremony.
In Christological discourse outside the eucharistic controversy, Luther followed Augustine in emphasizing Jesus’ human nature. Luther was particularly fascinated by the humility of Jesus; the fact that the ruler of the universe had been born in a stable was, for Luther, profound proof that the humble could be elevated and even the worst sinners forgiven. Jesus’ cry on the cross that he had been forsaken by God signified that Jesus shared the lot of “the forsaken, the condemned, the sinners, the blasphemers, the accursed.” Indeed, this was the meaning of the Incarnation: that God, through Jesus, had chosen to experience the fullness of human despair. By embracing this vivid conception of the human Jesus, Luther arguably came closer to Sabellianism than he knew.
The Anabaptists (members of a Reformation movement that was the precursor of the modern Mennonites and Quakers) did not challenge classical Christological dogma but emphasized, in ever-changing ways, the Christian imperative to “follow” Jesus. This meant not only observing Jesus’ moral teachings as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount but also sharing in Jesus’ suffering. Suffering, for the Anabaptists, was the hallmark of the genuine follower of Jesus. As the Anabaptist Hans Schlaffer wrote in a 1527 treatise: “Christ suffered for us, leaving us a model or example that we should follow in his footsteps” (1 Peter 2:21).
The anti-Trinitarians, beginning with the Spanish physician and lay theologian Michael Servetus (d. 1553) and ending with the Socinianmovement which followed the teachings of the Italian-born theologianFaustus Socinus at the end of the 16th century, enunciated a Christology that returned to views that had been condemned as heretical in early Christianity. They rejected orthodox views that God existed in three persons and that God assumed human form in the Incarnation; their position was essentially Arian adoptionism. Thus, theRacovian Catechism (1605), the doctrinal statement of the Minor Reformed Church of Poland, asserted that Jesus had no divine nature. He was given divine power and authority by God to act on God’s behalf.
Enlightenment Christology
Traditional Christology, as expressed in the Nicaean and Chalcedonian creeds, was based on the belief in the sanctity of the New Testament, which was held to contain divinely revealed truth as represented in the accounts of eyewitnesses or divinely inspired authors. The Christological reflections of the Protestant reformers—including Luther,John Calvin, and even the anti-Trinitarian Faustus Socinus—took for granted the traditional view of the Scriptures and thus added little to the positions of earlier centuries. Beginning in the mid-17th century, however, a growing chorus of voices insisted that, because other writings of the past were not allowed to press supernatural claims, the same stricture should be applied to the Old and the New Testament. This rational and critical approach to the Scriptures became the basis of a new understanding of the nature and truth of Christianity that came to be known as Deism. The English adherents of Deism, includingJohn Toland (1670–1722), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), and Thomas Morgan (d. 1743), undertook to present Christianity as a rational natural religion, and they increasingly defined authentic Christianity as a religion bereft of superstition.
A key assumption of Enlightenment Christology was that theologians and clergy through the centuries had systematically perverted the true and authentic Christian religion and, in so doing, had obscured the true nature of Jesus. The task of modern theologians, therefore, was to remove these falsifications and to recover what would subsequently be called the “historical” Jesus—that is, the Jesus who actually existed.
These thinkers subjected the New Testament—particularly the four Gospels—to severe scrutiny. Relying on critical principles that were becoming standard in many areas of historical scholarship, they concentrated on two central claims about Jesus in the New Testament: that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that he performed miracles to vindicate his divine mission. English Deist writers such as Toland, Thomas Woolston (1670–1733), and Thomas Chubb(1679–1747) argued vigorously that the authors of the Gospels reported incidents that they themselves had not witnessed and relied on accounts of dreams—such as Joseph’s dream about being commanded to flee Bethlehem for Egypt—that were inherently unverifiable.
From these reflections there emerged a picture of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not a divinity. With this as his premise, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733) argued in his book Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) that Jesus had preached a gospel of “nature” that all of humankind could understand, were it not for the perversions introduced by priests and other religious functionaries. Other Deist interpretations of Jesus were Chubb’s The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (1739) and theWolfenbütteler Fragmente (“Wolfenbüttel Fragments”) of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), which triggered an enormous controversy when it was published posthumously in the 1770s. Its rejection of all the supernatural elements of the Jesus stories was consistent with attempts by other writers, such as the German philologist Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), to “cleanse” the New Testament of religious interpretation and to distill its historical core.
It may be argued, therefore, that both the consolidation of Christological dogma between the 4th and the 7th centuries and the dissolution of this dogma in the 18th and 19th centuries were affected by important cultural factors. In the first period theological reflection was influenced by Greek philosophy, in the second by the rise of science. ....source
Much like the medieval period, the 16th-century Protestant Reformation was characterized by the restatement of earlier Christological positions rather than by the development of new formulations. Thus, the major Protestant reformers dissented from the orthodox Christological tradition mainly in matters of emphasis, as in their delineation of the doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus: prophet, priest, and king.
The controversy among the reformers over the Last Supper, which centred on the question of Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine of theEucharist, echoed debates that had begun as early as the 9th century. It quickly became apparent that different Christological assumptions underlay the positions of the two protagonists, Huldrych Zwingli andMartin Luther. Luther argued that the unity of Jesus’ two natures, divine and human, meant that every statement about Jesus applied to both of his natures at once. Thus, God suffered and died on the cross, and the humanity of Jesus was omnipresent. Luther insisted that Jesus’ bodily omnipresence entailed his real bodily presence in the elements of the offering (see transubstantiation). Calvin, in contrast, held that Jesus’ human nature had died on the cross and that Jesus was now at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit brought about Jesus’ spiritual but not bodily presence in the communion ceremony.
In Christological discourse outside the eucharistic controversy, Luther followed Augustine in emphasizing Jesus’ human nature. Luther was particularly fascinated by the humility of Jesus; the fact that the ruler of the universe had been born in a stable was, for Luther, profound proof that the humble could be elevated and even the worst sinners forgiven. Jesus’ cry on the cross that he had been forsaken by God signified that Jesus shared the lot of “the forsaken, the condemned, the sinners, the blasphemers, the accursed.” Indeed, this was the meaning of the Incarnation: that God, through Jesus, had chosen to experience the fullness of human despair. By embracing this vivid conception of the human Jesus, Luther arguably came closer to Sabellianism than he knew.
The Anabaptists (members of a Reformation movement that was the precursor of the modern Mennonites and Quakers) did not challenge classical Christological dogma but emphasized, in ever-changing ways, the Christian imperative to “follow” Jesus. This meant not only observing Jesus’ moral teachings as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount but also sharing in Jesus’ suffering. Suffering, for the Anabaptists, was the hallmark of the genuine follower of Jesus. As the Anabaptist Hans Schlaffer wrote in a 1527 treatise: “Christ suffered for us, leaving us a model or example that we should follow in his footsteps” (1 Peter 2:21).
The anti-Trinitarians, beginning with the Spanish physician and lay theologian Michael Servetus (d. 1553) and ending with the Socinianmovement which followed the teachings of the Italian-born theologianFaustus Socinus at the end of the 16th century, enunciated a Christology that returned to views that had been condemned as heretical in early Christianity. They rejected orthodox views that God existed in three persons and that God assumed human form in the Incarnation; their position was essentially Arian adoptionism. Thus, theRacovian Catechism (1605), the doctrinal statement of the Minor Reformed Church of Poland, asserted that Jesus had no divine nature. He was given divine power and authority by God to act on God’s behalf.
Enlightenment Christology
Traditional Christology, as expressed in the Nicaean and Chalcedonian creeds, was based on the belief in the sanctity of the New Testament, which was held to contain divinely revealed truth as represented in the accounts of eyewitnesses or divinely inspired authors. The Christological reflections of the Protestant reformers—including Luther,John Calvin, and even the anti-Trinitarian Faustus Socinus—took for granted the traditional view of the Scriptures and thus added little to the positions of earlier centuries. Beginning in the mid-17th century, however, a growing chorus of voices insisted that, because other writings of the past were not allowed to press supernatural claims, the same stricture should be applied to the Old and the New Testament. This rational and critical approach to the Scriptures became the basis of a new understanding of the nature and truth of Christianity that came to be known as Deism. The English adherents of Deism, includingJohn Toland (1670–1722), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), and Thomas Morgan (d. 1743), undertook to present Christianity as a rational natural religion, and they increasingly defined authentic Christianity as a religion bereft of superstition.
A key assumption of Enlightenment Christology was that theologians and clergy through the centuries had systematically perverted the true and authentic Christian religion and, in so doing, had obscured the true nature of Jesus. The task of modern theologians, therefore, was to remove these falsifications and to recover what would subsequently be called the “historical” Jesus—that is, the Jesus who actually existed.
These thinkers subjected the New Testament—particularly the four Gospels—to severe scrutiny. Relying on critical principles that were becoming standard in many areas of historical scholarship, they concentrated on two central claims about Jesus in the New Testament: that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and that he performed miracles to vindicate his divine mission. English Deist writers such as Toland, Thomas Woolston (1670–1733), and Thomas Chubb(1679–1747) argued vigorously that the authors of the Gospels reported incidents that they themselves had not witnessed and relied on accounts of dreams—such as Joseph’s dream about being commanded to flee Bethlehem for Egypt—that were inherently unverifiable.
From these reflections there emerged a picture of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not a divinity. With this as his premise, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733) argued in his book Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) that Jesus had preached a gospel of “nature” that all of humankind could understand, were it not for the perversions introduced by priests and other religious functionaries. Other Deist interpretations of Jesus were Chubb’s The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Vindicated (1739) and theWolfenbütteler Fragmente (“Wolfenbüttel Fragments”) of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), which triggered an enormous controversy when it was published posthumously in the 1770s. Its rejection of all the supernatural elements of the Jesus stories was consistent with attempts by other writers, such as the German philologist Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92) and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), to “cleanse” the New Testament of religious interpretation and to distill its historical core.
It may be argued, therefore, that both the consolidation of Christological dogma between the 4th and the 7th centuries and the dissolution of this dogma in the 18th and 19th centuries were affected by important cultural factors. In the first period theological reflection was influenced by Greek philosophy, in the second by the rise of science. ....source
Post-Reformation Christology Schleiermacher and others
Christology:
Sam Storms
Nov 8, 2006
Series: Historical Theology ... Read
The Person of Christ
Our focus here is on the more significant post-reformation developments in Christology, specifically, the person of Jesus Christ. We begin by noting several important developments in 19th century German thought.
A. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
Schleiermacher, often referred to as the father of modern liberal theology, sought to relocate the focus of true religion away from cognitive affirmation of orthodox dogma and place it in universal human “feeling” and “intuition”. Schleiermacher “tried to show that the essence of religion lies not in rational proofs of the existence of God, in supernaturally revealed dogmas or in churchly rituals and formalities, but in a ‘fundamental, distinct, and integrative element of human life and culture’ – the feeling of being utterly dependent on something infinite that manifests itself in and through finite things” (Grenz/Olson, 44). He objected to the concept of salvation as deliverance from divine wrath. Rather, sin is the absence of God-consciousness and a consequent failure to be utterly dependent upon him. Awareness of and participation in God was perfectly embodied in Christ, whose consciousness of God was so profound that one may rightly speak of a unique divine presence in him, an actual entrance of the divine into human life. Insofar as he was at all times perfectly conscious of God and in absolute dependence on him, he was free from all moral fault or religious error. This, in essence, constitutes his divinity. Jesus, then, is the Ideal Man in whom the life of God was most perfectly manifest. Says Cave:
“. . . the Redeemer is like all men in that He possessed the same human nature; He is distinguished from them in that the God-consciousness, which in us is weak and clouded, was in Him at all times entirely clear and determinative” (The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 168).
Salvation, said Schleiermacher, is thus a vital union with Christ in which we are infused with the energy and power of his fellowship with and dependence upon God. In this way there is awakened within us the dormant God-consciousness which gains ascendancy over the sensuous element of our nature. By faith in Christ and consequent mystical union, we experience hisconsciousness of God and feeling of absolute dependence. Believers thereby become, although in lesser degree, what Christ was: God manifest in the flesh.
The Bible, said Schleiermacher, is neither supernaturally inspired nor inerrant. Truth, therefore, was not primarily to be derived from Scripture. Rather, all doctrines “must be extracted from the Christian religious self-consciousness, i.e., the inward experience of Christian people” (The Christian Faith, 265). Schleiermacher denied the reality of miracles, the efficacy of intercessory prayer, and seriously questioned the doctrine of the Trinity. Whereas he was not guilty of pantheism, as some have charged, “Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God suffers from an overemphasis on immanence. God’s activity becomes virtually identical with nature to the extent that evil and suffering are as much God’s activity as is redemption. Furthermore it is unclear whether God has any existence above and apart from the world. Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God is best described as panentheistic in that it correlates God and the world, making them inseparable” (Grenz/Olson, 50). Karl Barth put it best when he said of Schleiermacher that he tried to speak of God by speaking about man in a very loud voice!
B. Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89)
Ritschl would deny that he held to any Christology. For him, questions such as the doctrine of the two natures, Trinitarianism, the pre-existence of the Word (Christ “pre-existed” only in the sense that “he and his work are eternally known and willed by God” [Grenz/Olson, 57]), etc., lie outside the proper domain of theology, the focus of the latter being what Christ does for us, not who or what he is. Mackintosh summarizes well:
“Like every other doctrine, our view of Christ [says Ritschl] must be stated in judgments of value or appreciation . . . which affirm his significance for the soul; or, to put it otherwise, we see the Divine quality of Christ’s person in the Divine character of His work. The impression He makes is most fitly expressed by saying that He has for us the religious value of God. He redeemed men by fulfilling perfectly the vocation given Him to establish the Kingdom of God, and patiently enduring all things even to death: and on the basis of this achievement the society gathered round Him is forgiven, has imputed to it the position or relationship towards God, which Jesus held for Himself inviolably to the end, and is raised ‘above the iron law of necessity’ into the freedom and joy of God’s family” (The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, 279).
In other words, since the functions of Jesus are divine, He is divine. Ritschl rejected the concept of Christ as prophet, priest, and king, embracing only the latter. Jesus was the “founder of the Kingdom of God” and the “bearer of God’s moral lordship over men.”
C. The History of Religions School (die religionsgeschichtliche Schule)
Two foundational concepts gave shape to this school of Christological thinking:
First, Christianity is explicable apart from any appeal to the supernatural. A naturalistic presupposition permeates their thinking.
Second, particular focus is given to the cultural environment within which early Christianity emerged. This led to the conclusion that the principal ideas of Christianity could be explained in terms of derivation from ideas current in first-century pagan society. There is little that is truly original in the Christian gospel. The early church simply borrowed existing mythological categories and applied them to the person, work, and community of Jesus.
The most influential and enduring work produced by this school of thought was that of W. Bousset (1865-1920) entitled, Kyrios Christos (1913; it appeared in a 5th ed. in 1964 with a preface by Rudolph Bultmann). The basis ideas in this volume are as follows:
· Jesus was conceived as a religious genius or hero who, like many prophets who preceded him, sustained a special relationship with God. He, like them, experienced visions that transcend the external world of mere phenomena.
· Jesus lived in a first-century milieu saturated with Jewish apocalyptic speculations about a coming Messiah.
· The followers of Jesus freely borrowed from these concepts to describe Jesus, around whom a messianic cult soon developed.
· The title “Lord” was applied to Jesus in order to focus on him as the present, reigning Lord of the church rather than the future, messianic Son of Man.
· As he came to be viewed as God’s unique gift to mankind, all manner of worship and honorific titles were given him.
· Eventually Paul himself saw in Jesus a spiritual power with whom he might enjoy a mystical relationship. He thus soon became the Lord who governs the entire personal life of the believer. The development reached its zenith in John and the later Christian community who viewed Jesus as the eternally pre-existent Word, Son of God, and coming King.
The distinction was thus made between the Jesus of history, i.e., the carpenter from Nazareth, and the dynamic Christ of personal faith. Whereas the former “Jesus” was real, the latter “Christ” was the religious creation of the early church, born of existential need. We “know” the Jesus of history, but we “believe” in the Christ of the church. Any suggestion of an ontological continuity between the two was summarily dismissed.
D. The Doctrine of Kenosis
Here we will focus on three theologians.
1. Gottfried Thomasius (1802-76) – A Lutheran, Thomasius believed that Luther and subsequent Lutheran orthodoxy had suppressed the genuine humanity of Jesus. Luther’s concept of the communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes), according to which the humanity of Christ shared in the majesty and attributes of his deity, seemed to detract from the authenticity of the former. It also failed to explain the earthly life and obvious limitations of Jesus.
Thus, purportedly in the interests of preserving the true humanity of Christ, Thomasius argued that the pre-existent Word emptied (Gk.,kenoo, Phil. 2:5-11) himself of all attributes deemed incompatible with our manhood and exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant. The concept of kenosis was not new in Christian theology. Others had earlier affirmed a kenosis by which Christ temporarily emptied himself of the use of divine attributes, suspending their employment during the time of his humiliation. But in the kenotic theology of Thomasius, Christ did not merely suspend his use of said attributes: he divested himself of them and utterly forsook them. It was more than a mere concealment of his divine attributes beneath the guise of his humanity. It was an actual deprivation of the former upon assumption of the latter. “Kenosis,” said Thomasius, “is the exchange of one form of existence for another” (Christi Person und Werk, II:15; 1853/55).
Christ did not cease to be God, but simply ceased to exist in the form of God, and so utterly emptied himself that his self-consciousness was human, not divine. Thomasius argued that we must distinguish between, on the one hand, the absolute / essential / immanent attributes of God, such as truth, holiness, intelligence, freedom, love, and, on the other, the relative attributes of God such as omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. The former are essential to the Godhead and always remain in the incarnate Christ. The latter, however, do not strictly belong to the essence of God but are evoked through his relationship to the world and may consequently be forsaken or set aside in Christ’s act of self-limitation.
2. Wolfgang Friedrich Gess (1819-1891) – Gess advocated a more extreme kenotic theory in which all of God’s attributes, both absolute and relative, were forsaken. “He reduces Himself,” said Gess, “to the germ of a human soul.” This view has been called incarnation by divine suicide.
3. Isaac August Dorner (1809-84) and the theory of Gradual Incarnation – Dorner was a German Lutheran who strongly reacted to the kenotic theory (see his History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 5 vols., 1861; and System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., 1879-81).
Dorner did not believe that the incarnation was a singular, momentary act that was consummated at the point of the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary. It was, rather, a continuous, progressive, augmentative process, by which the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, gradually united himself in ever-increasing measure with the man Jesus, until such was consummated at the time of the resurrection. The result of this final union was a single consciousness and a single will in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Simultaneous with Jesus’ experience of genuine human growth was his experience of progressive appropriation of the human by the divine. Dorner believed this was the only way to explain both the deity of Christ and his earthly limitations.
E. The Contemporary Assault on the Doctrine of the Incarnation
In 1977 a group of prominent British theologians and NT scholars released a book that landed like a bombshell in the church: The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press).
In the preface the claim is made that Christianity must continue to adapt itself into something which can be believed by rational people. In the 19th century two such adaptations can be identified: (1) evolutionary theory on the origin of the race (2) and repudiation of verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. Says Hick:
“The writers of this book are convinced that another major theological development is called for in this last part of the twentieth century. The need arises from the growing knowledge of Christian origins, and involves a recognition that Jesus was . . . ‘a man approved by God’ for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, is a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us” (ix; emphasis mine).
In other words, as Maurice Wiles asks in the chapter titled “Christianity Without Incarnation?”, “Are we sure that the concept of an incarnate being, one who is both fully God and fully man, is after all an intelligible concept?” (5). There are ten articles in the book, three of which are here noted.
(1) A Cloud of Witnesses (pp. 13-47, by Frances Young, lecturer in NT studies at the Birmingham University). Young’s thesis is that each individual in the NT or early church who either met or knew Jesus or learned of him by oral tradition sought categories in which to express their impression of him and response to his claims. The common stock of christological titles found in the NT, says Young,
“derive from the surrounding cultural background and were used by the early Christians to express their faith-response to Jesus of Nazareth. The early Christians were searching for categories which could adequately express their sense of salvation in him. It is significant that some saw him as a Rabbi, others as a prophet, others as a zealot, others as a miracle-worker and healer; that some called him Lord, some Messiah, some Son of God and so on. Both in his lifetime and in the context of the early church, groups and individuals responded to him in their own way as the one who fulfilled their needs and hopes” (18).
Later in her chapter Young writes:
“So far what we have said in interpretation of Paul could be given the anachronistic tag ‘adoptionistic’, and indeed, it implies not just the adoption of Jesus but of all men in him. It certainly does not imply the incarnation of an essentially divine being” (20).
“His Sonship to God is not expressed in terms of ‘divine nature’, but as a result of divine creation and election on the one hand, and on the other hand, his own perfect obedience in doing God’s work and obeying God’s will” (21).
(2) Jesus, the Man of Universal Destiny (pp. 48-63; by Michael Goulder, University of Birmingham) – Goulder begins by classifying certain individuals in history as “men and women of destiny” (55). “It is a part of such a person’s life,” says Goulder, “to know himself as destined for leadership at this moment. They believe themselves to be inspired. They hear voices” (55). He mentions people such as Joan of Arc, Churchill, Ghandi, Mao, Martin Luther King, and of course, Jesus. But Jesus is more. He is not just one in the class of “men of destiny”, he is the man of universal destiny. However, like Ghandi, King, and Joan of Arc, he died a martyr’s death, a necessary step in founding the society of love. And what of the resurrection?
“. . . so great is the power of hysteria within a small community that in the evening, in the candlelight, with fear of arrest still a force, and hope of resolution budding in them too, it seemed as if the Lord came through the locked door to them, and away again. So was Jesus’ life’s work sealed. The experience of Easter fused a faith that was to carry Jesus to divinity, and his teachings to every corner of the globe” (59).
(3) Jesus and the World Religions (pp. 167-85; by John Hick, University of Birmingham) – The doctrine of Christ’s deity, says Hick, is the result of the exaltation of a good but wholly human teacher into a divine figure of universal power:
“Thus Buddhology and christology developed in comparable ways. The human Gautama came to be thought of as the incarnation of a transcendent, pre-existent Buddha as the human Jesus came to be thought of as the incarnation of the pre-existent Logos or divine Son. And in the Mahayana the transcendent Buddha is one with the Absolute as in Christianity the eternal Son is one with God the Father” (169).
Jesus, says Hick, was intensely conscious of the reality of God. His life was a continuous response to the love of God and its demands, namely, loving others:
“He was so powerfully God-conscious that his life vibrated, as it were, to the divine life; and as a result his hands could heal the sick, and the ‘poor in spirit’ were kindled to new life in his presence” (172).
“Thus in Jesus’ presence, we should have felt that we are in the presence of God – not in the sense that the man Jesus literally is God, but in the sense that he was so totally conscious of God that we could catch something of that consciousness by spiritual contagion” (172).
Given this perception of the man Jesus, pressure mounted within the tightly-knit Christian community to predicate of Jesus titles which more explicitly affirmed his divine origin and nature:
“Once men and women had been transformed by their encounter with Jesus, he was for them the religious centre of their existence, the object of their devotion and loyalty, the Lord in following whom they were both giving their lives to God and receiving their lives renewed from God. And so it was natural that they should express this lordship in the most exalted terms which their culture offered” (174).
In the Epilogue, Dennis Nineham draws the only conclusion the book can offer:
“In a situation of galloping cultural change, which has brought the doctrine of the literal divinity of Jesus into question, is it any longer worthwhile to attempt to trace the Christian’s everchanging understanding of his relationship with God directly back to some identifiable element in the life, character, and activity of Jesus of Nazareth?” (202).
In other words, in the final analysis, the Jesus of historic Christian orthodoxy is irrelevant.
Christology:
The Work of Christ
In this lesson, we will look at the significant post-reformation developments concerning the work of Christ, specifically, his atoning sacrifice.
A. Theologians and Theories Emphasizing the Objective Nature of Christ's Atoning Death
Perhaps the best example of this tradition is found in 19th century America among Reformed theologians.
1. William G. T. Shedd (1820-1894) - Shedd followed the reformers by insisting that the atonement of Christ was grounded in God's justice. Contrary to Grotius, Shedd argued that divine justice is not an arbitrary appointment of the divine will, easily rescinded or abrogated, but is a necessary and intrinsic quality constitutive of the being of God:
"Retributive justice is necessary in its operation. The claim of the law upon the transgressor for punishment is absolute and indefeasible. The eternal Judge may or may not exercise mercy, but he must exercise justice" (Dogmatic Theology, II:436).
However, Shedd points out that whereas sin necessitates punishment, it need not fall upon the sinner:
"Hence, in every instance of transgression, the penalty of law must be inflicted, either personally or vicariously; either upon the transgressor or upon his substitute. The remission of penalty under the Divine administration is not absolute, but relative. It may be omitted in respect to the real criminal, but, if so, it must be inflicted upon some one in his place. . . . [T]he exercise of justice, while necessary in respect to sin, is free and sovereign in respect to the sinner. Justice necessarily demands that sin be punished, but not necessarily in the person of the sinner. Justice may allow of the substitution of one person for another, provided that in the substitution no injustice is done to the rights of any of the parties interested" (I:373; cf. also II:451).
2. Charles Hodge (1797-1878) - Hodge differs only in emphasis, placing more stress on the concept of covenant in the atonement. Just as God ordained for Adam to stand vicariously as the covenantal or federal head of his people, such that his action (the fall) and its consequence (guilt and death) become that of his posterity, so also Christ stood vicariously as the covenant head of those who by divine election were so related to him. His action (obedience) and its consequence (righteousness) are likewise imputed to those whom he represented.
Other American theologians who followed suit were A. A. Hodge (1823-86; son of Charles), Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921), and more recently Leon Morris.
There were also a number of Scottish theologians who embraced the doctrine of penal substitution.
3. George Smeaton (The Doctrine of the Atonement as taught by Christ Himself [1868] and The Doctrine of the Atonement as taught by the Apostles [1870]) - He clearly argues for penal substitution:
". . . the sufferings of Christ were penal in their character, or, in other words, that they were judiciously inflicted in the execution of a law which demanded punishment on the sins of men" (183).
It should be noted that Smeaton, on occasion, appears to endorse the concept ofacceptilation:
"All that it very much concerns us to be assured of is, that the sufferings of Christ were deemed sufficientin the judgment of God to satisfy his justice, to expiate our guilt, and to obtain for us eternal redemption" (176, 185).
4. James Denney (1856-1917) - Denney wrote several important treatises, among which wereThe Death of Christ (1902), The Atonement and the Modern Mind (1903), and The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation (1917). Denney placed more emphasis on Christ's passive sufferings and less on his obedient life than his American counterparts:
"If He had not died for us, He would have done nothing at all" (CDR, 274).
"The work of reconciliation, in the sense of the NT, is a work which is finished, and which we must conceive to be finished, before the gospel is preached" (DOC, 101).
In other words, Christ has done something outside of us and apart from our cooperation, into the benefits of which we are now able to enter through faith. Commenting on 2 Cor. 5:14-15,
"Plainly, if Paul's conclusion is to be drawn, the 'for' must reach deeper than this mere suggestion of our advantage: if we all died, in that Christ died for us, there must be a sense in which that death of His is ours; He must be identified with us in it;there, on the cross, while we stand and gaze at Him, He is not simply a person doing us a service; He is a person doing us a service by filling our place and dying our death" (Commentary on 2 Corinthians, 194-95).
Again,
"It is a death in which the divine condemnation of sin comes upon Christ, and is exhausted there, so that there is thenceforth no more condemnation for those that are in Him" (Studies in Theology, 108).
Concerning the word "substitution" he writes:
"It declares that God forgives our sins because Christ died for them; and it maintains unambiguously that in that death of Christ our condemnation came upon Him, that for us there might be no condemnation more. This is the truth which is covered and guarded by the word "substitution"" (Studies in Theology, 126).
I mention in passing R. W. Dale, an English theologian who used the terminology of penal substitution while deviating from its intended meaning. He calls both the imputation of our sin to Christ and Christ's righteousness to us 'a legal fiction' (The Atonement, lxiii). According to Culpepper, Dale's theory is "an attempt to restate the doctrine of penal substitution in such a way as not to offend the moral sensibilities of modern man" (Interpreting the Atonement, 109).
B. Theologians and Theories Emphasizing the Subjective Nature of Christ's Atoning Death
Subjective theories of the atonement are those which envision the focus or aim of Christ's sufferings to be the human soul rather than God himself.
1. F. Schleiermacher (1768-1834; so too, Albrecht Ritschl; 1822-1889) - Schleiermacher denied the objective focus of Christ's death and insisted that no barrier to reconciliation with man (such as the demands of divine justice) exists in the heart of God. Christ's death terminates entirely upon humanity. He emphasized notwhat Christ does for us but what he does in us, namely, bringing us into a deeper consciousness of complete dependence on God and thus participation in His life.
2. Horace Bushnell (1802-76) and Hastings Rashdall (1858-1924) - Bushnell openly denies any form of substitution in Christ's death and articulates an updated version of Abelard's moral influence theory:
"On the other hand, we are not to hold the Scripture terms of vicarious sacrifice, as importing a literal substitution of places, by which Christ becomes a sinner for sinners, or penally subject to our deserved penalties. That is a kind of substitution that offends every strongest sentiment of our nature. He cannot become guilty for us. Neither, as God is a just being, can He be anyhow punishable in our place - all God's moral sentiments would be revolted by that" (Forgiveness and Law, 79).
"By the previous exposition Christ is shown to be a Savior, not as being a ground of justification, but as being the Moral Power of God upon us, so a power of salvation. His work terminates, not in the release of penalties by due compensation, but in the transformation of character, and the rescue, in that manner, of guilty men from the retributive causations provoked by their sin" (449).
Rashdall (The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, 1919) advocates a similar view. Note his comments on Acts 4:12,
"There is none other ideal given among men by which we may be saved except the moral ideal which Christ taught by His words, and illustrated by His life and death of love; and there is none other help so great in the attainment of that ideal as the belief in God as He has been revealed in Him who so taught and lived and died" (463).
C. Theologians and Theories Emphasizing the Victorious Nature of Christ's Atoning Death
We focus here on but one man, Gustaf Aulen (b. 1879), theologian at the University of Lund in Sweden. His most famous work was Christus Victorin which he argued for what has come to be known as the "Classic" theory of the atonement:
"Its central theme is the idea of the Atonement as a Divine conflict and victory; Christ ' Christus Victor ' fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the "tyrants" under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself? (4; special appeal is made to 1 John 3:8).
In effect, Aulen resurrects the patristic theory of the atonement, but modifies it by eliminating the crude imagery of Christ's blood as a ransom to Satan. He focuses on the victorious conflict of Christ against the powers of evil. His view is thus dualistic, but in this sense:
"It is used in the sense in which the idea constantly occurs in Scripture, of the opposition between God and that which in His own created world resists His will; between the Divine love and the rebellion of created wills against Him. This Dualism is an altogether radical opposition, but it is not an absolute Dualism; for in the scriptural view evil has not an eternal existence" (5).
D. The Theory of Vicarious Confession and/or Repentance
There is one theory of the atonement that defies classification. It was articulated by John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872) in his book The Nature of the Atonement (1856). It may well be that Campbell embraced this theory principally to maintain his belief in the universal extent of the atonement, for he believed the penal substitutionary theory logically entailed restricting the benefits of Christ's sufferings to the elect. He says this concerning John Owen'sDeath of Death in the Death of Christ:
"As addressed to those who agreed with him as to the nature of the atonement, while differing with him as to the extent of its reference, this seems unanswerable" (1873, 4th ed., 51).
Some contend Campbell derived his theory from Jonathan Edwards, who wrote:
"It is requisite that God should punish all sin with infinite punishment; because all sin, as it is against God, is infinitely heinous, and has infinite demerit, is justly infinitely hateful to him, and so stirs up infinite abhorrence and indignation in him. Therefore, it is requisite that God should punish it, unless there be something in some measure to balance this desert; either some answerable repentance or sorrow for it, or other compensation" (Essay onSatisfaction for Sin, NY ed. I:583).
Yet Edwards rejected the possibility of an "answerable repentance," for repentance is possible only by those who have sinned, and whatever degree of repentance someone might produce, it is as nothing in comparison with the injury, done by him in sinning.
Campbell begins by affirming that Christ suffered as an atoning sacrifice but not as a penal substitute:
"The sufferer suffers what he suffers just through seeing sin and sinners with God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. Is such suffering a punishment? Is God in causing such a divine experience in humanity inflicting a punishment? There can be but one answer" (117). And that answer is No.
"While Christ suffered for our sins as an atoning sacrifice, what he suffered was not - because from its nature it could not be - a punishment" (101).
He then argues, contrary to Edwards, that Christ himself offered an adequate sorrow, confession, and repentance for sin. He explains:
"That oneness of mind with the Father, which toward man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the Son's dealing with the Father in relation to our sins, take the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession as to its own nature must have been a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man. . . . That response has all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man, --- a perfect sorrow --- a perfect contrition --- all the elements of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection, all except the personal consciousness of sin; and in that perfect response in Amen to the mind of God in relation to sin is the wrath of God rightly met, and that is accorded to divine justice which is its due, and could alone satisfy it" (117-18).
God's justice is thus satisfied, not by Christ enduring the penalty of the law, but by his perfect confession of sin on our behalf. Christ uttered forth in his life and death a heart-felt 'Amen!' to the assessment of God against human rebellion:
"We feel that such a repentance as we are supposing would be the true and proper satisfaction to offended justice, and that there would be more atoning worth in one tear of the true and perfect sorrow than in endless ages of penal woe" (125).
[For a more positive assessment of Campbell's concept of atonement, see Thomas F. Torrance,Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark)
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