Christology, Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Los Angeles Theology Conference Series) - Softcover

Sonderegger, Katherine; Torrance, Alan J.; Huntsinger, David; Leithart, Peter J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310514967 ISBN 13: 9780310514961

Publisher: Zondervan Academic, 2013

Synopsis

A Fresh Look at the Doctrine of Christ.

Christology was the central doctrine articulated by the early church councils, and it remains the subject of close theological investigation today.

Christology, Ancient and Modern—the first volume in a series of published proceedings from the annual Los Angeles Theology Conference—brings together conference proceedings, surveying the field and articulating the sources, norms, and criteria for constructive theological work in Christology.

The ten diverse essays in this collection include discussions on:

• The types of historical Christologies and evaluations of various approaches to the theology of Christ.
• A close look at the trajectory and divergence of modern denominational understandings of Christ's work and person.
• Discussions of implications and challenges to specific Christologies regarding detailed exegetical considerations.

Each of the essays collected in this volume engage with Scripture as well as with others in the field—theologians both past and present, from different confessions—in order to provide constructive resources for contemporary systematic theology and to forge a theology for the future.

About this title

About the Authors

Alan J. Torrance (DTheol, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg) is Professor and Chair of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Andrews and is an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland. He is the author or editor of several books, including Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation.

 

Peter J. Leithart (PhD, University of Cambridge) is President of Theopolis Institute and serves as Teacher at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. He is the author of several books, including?The Kingdom and the Power, Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1,?Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom, and?Baptism: A Guide from Life to Death.

Oliver D. Crisp (PhD, University of London; DLitt University of Aberdeen) is Professor of Analytic Theology at the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology, St. Mary's College, the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is author of numerous books in analytic and systematic theology, including Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology; Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology; Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered; God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology; Retrieving Doctrine: Essays in Reformed Theology; and Revisioning Christology: Theology in the Reformed Tradition. Together with Fred Sanders, he is co-founder of the Los Angeles Theology Conference.

Fred Sanders?(PhD, Graduate Theological Union) is professor of theology in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He is author of numerous books including?The Triune God?in the New Studies in Dogmatics series;?The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything;?Union with Christ and the Life of Faith;?The Holy Spirit: An Introduction; and Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology. He is coeditor of?Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology?and?Retrieving Eternal Generation. He is also the co-founder of the Los Angeles Theology Conference. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Christology, Ancient and Modern

explorations in constructive dogmatics

By Oliver D. Crisp, Fred Sanders

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2013 Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-310-51496-1

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
9
List of Contributors.......................................................
10
Abbreviations..............................................................
12
Introduction...............................................................
13
1. DESIDERATA FOR MODELS OF THE HYPOSTATIC UNION Oliver D. Crisp..........
19
2. SALVATOR MUNDI Three Types of Christology George Hunsinger............
42
3. THE HUMILITY OF THE SON OF GOD Katherine Sonderegger...................
60
4. THE OBEDIENCE OF THE ETERNAL SON Catholic Trinitarianism and Reformed 
Christology Scott R. Swain and Michael Allen..............................
74
5. EXALTATION IN AND THROUGH HUMILIATION Rethinking the States of Christ 
Jeremy R. Treat............................................................
96
6. "WE SAW HIS GLORY" Implications of the Sanctuary Christology in John's 
Gospel Peter J. Leithart..................................................
115
7. THE THEANDRIC UNION AS IMAGO DEI AND CAPAX DEI Jason McMartin..........
136
8. CHRISTOLOGY AND CONCILIAR AUTHORITY On the Viability of Monothelitism 
for Protestant Theology Jordan Wessling...................................
151
9. JESUS' NEW RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND OURS How Biblical 
Spirit-Christology Helps Resolve a Chalcedonian Dilemma Telford C. Work...
171
10. RECLAIMING THE CONTINUING PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST Implications and 
Challenges Alan J. Torrance...............................................
184
Subject Index..............................................................
205
Author Index...............................................................
209

CHAPTER 1

DESIDERATA FORMODELS OF THEHYPOSTATIC UNION

Oliver D. Crisp

Thus the official record of both substances represent him as both manand God: on the one hand born, on the other not born: on the onehand fleshly, on the other spiritual: on the one hand weak, on theother exceedingly strong: on the one hand dying, on the other living.That these two sets of attributes, the divine and the human, are eachkept distinct from the other, is of course accounted for by the equalverity of each nature.–Tertullian

These are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well, I haveothers.–Groucho Marx

On what basis should we construct our Christologies? What methodshould we adopt? To what authorities should we appeal? These may seemlike questions that admit of obvious answers, but in the history of moderntheology, they have been given anything but traditional responses. Somewant to develop Christologies on the basis of what can be shown via historicalinvestigation independent of any appeal to traditional theologicalauthority, such as the catholic creeds, or the Bible understood as ChristianScripture. Usually, this involves an appeal to a certain cluster of practicesand methodological assumptions that are loosely collected togetherunder the name Historical Biblical Criticism (or HBC). Some (thoughby no means all) practitioners of HBC seem to think that this is the onlyviable means by which to get at what can be known about the historicalJesus. This often goes hand-in-hand with a rather condescending attitudetoward theological accounts of Christ that take, say, the Bible as Scriptureor the catholic creeds as data for the generation of theological claims aboutChrist. A celebrated example of this can be found in the work of RudolfBultmann, who writes:

Also finished by knowledge of the forces and laws of nature is faith inspirits and demons. For us the stars are physical bodies whose motion isregulated by cosmic law; they are not demonic beings who can enslavemen and women to serve them.... Likewise, illnesses and their cures havenatural causes and do not depend on the work of demons and on exorcisingthem. Thus, the wonders of the New Testament are also finishedas wonders; anyone who seeks to salvage their historicity by recourse tonervous disorders, hypnotic influences, suggestion, and the like only confirmsthis.... We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the eventof illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at thesame time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.

Accounts of the person of Christ that begin with history and progressto theological claims about Christology are usually termed "Christologiesfrom below." Those that begin with certain theological givens, data thatare thought to be divine revelation or approved and authoritative theologicalstatements that depend on divine revelation like the creeds, are usuallycalled "Christologies from above." Neither term is helpful as a descriptionof what the particular theological trajectories involve. Christologies frombelow often make tacit assumptions about who Christ is at the outset, justas Christologies from above make judgments about how to treat differingreports about Christological texts in the canonical Gospels. And, for themost part, sophisticated Christology involves both textual work (includingthe sort of work familiar to practitioners of HBC) as well as appeals towhat we might call ecclesiastical tradition, broadly construed.

Nor is it true that approaches to Christology that privilege a method"from below" will inevitably yield "lower" Christologies than those thatadopt a "from above" approach. (Here "lower" and "higher" refer towhere one pegs Christ metaphysically. If a particular Christology assumesthat he is more than merely human, it is a "higher" Christology than onein which he is assumed to be merely human.) This may often be the case,but it need not be. There is certainly nothing like an entailment between,say, Christology "from below" and low Christology, or, for that matter,between Christology "from above" and high Christology. We can pointto historic examples that buck this trend, the supreme instance of whichis the disciples of Jesus that became the apostles of the early church. Theirknowledge of Christ was largely (though not exclusively) "from below,"so to speak. But they came to think of Christ in the most exalted terms, asthe Son of God. As Richard Bauckham puts it, the "earliest Christologywas already the highest Christology." He goes on to say that this

was not a mere stage on the way to the patristic development of ontologicalChristology in the context of a Trinitarian theology. It is already afully divine Christology, maintaining that Jesus Christ is intrinsic to theunique and eternal identity of God. The Fathers did not develop it somuch as transpose it into a conceptual framework more concerned withthe Greek philosophical categories of essence and nature.

There are also historic examples of those whose Christology emphasizesa "from above" approach, but whose conclusions are not as high asclassical Chalcedonian Christology. Arianism might be thought of as acandidate here, where certain metaphysical assumptions about the uniqueand undivided nature of God and of how to fit Christ into the divine identity,led to a doctrine of the person of Christ according to which Christ isonly of like substance to the Father (i.e., homoiousios).

Rather than wade into this debate, something I have attemptedelsewhere, I will simply stipulate that responsible Christology oughtto pay attention to the biblical and postbiblical traditions in formulatingarguments for substantive conclusions about the person and work ofChrist. This is not to deny that discrimination and judgment will have tobe exercised in appeals to different sorts of theological authority. Allowingthat Christology should attend to biblical and extrabiblical sources, includingcanonical and confessional documents, is one thing. The weighting ofthese different sources in forming Christological judgments is another, andI will not go into that in detail here. Instead, I will assume with the greatmajority of Christian theologians down through the ages that Scriptureis the norming norm in theology this side of the grave. Other theologicalnorms, such as the canons of ecumenical councils or the confessions ofparticular ecclesial communities, or even the arguments of theologians,are to be understood in light of Scripture and as ancillary to Scripture.

To my mind there is also considerable merit in approaching the theologicaltask in general, and the Christological one in particular, with whatThomas Oden has recently called "consensual Christianity" in mind.That is, paying attention to the consensus about a wide range of theologicalmatters especially matters pertaining to what is central and definingwithin the Christian tradition. Marginal voices often do help us to seethings in a different light and can lead to reevaluations of the canonicalconsensus. But in formulating Christian doctrine, especially Christologicaldoctrine, more weight should be given to the consensus than to those atthe margins. Part of the reason for this is that the consensus view on mattersChristological was reached via a complex process of debate, discussion,and ref lection in the first five centuries of the life of the church duringwhich the language of Christology was forged. Pains were taken to ensurethe church had certain Christological parameters in place, and certain dogmaticmarkers that indicated the bounds of orthodoxy in this matter.

This is not true of every theological topic. For instance, there is no realconsensus view on the atonement, though this is hardly a marginal topic inChristian theology. On the face of it, this seems rather odd. However, theearly church debates about Christology were generated because the churchwas trying to get clear who and what Christ was. Surely he is more than amere human. But how is he different from other mere humans? Is he a sortof superman, an angelic being, or a divine entity who merely appears to behuman? Or is he both divine and human, not a hybrid of these two thingsbut God and man both together in one person? And if he is both God andman, is he fully God and fully man? How can these things be predicatedof one individual when it appears that such a view yields contradictionsof the sort that imply one person is both omnipotent and impotent, bothomniscient and yet limited in knowledge, both omnipresent and yet circumscribedby a human nature, and so on?

The fact is the same attention was not paid to the doctrine of atonementas was paid to the incarnation, which is why the church today continuesto wrangle over how we should understand the nature and scope of thisaspect of the work of Christ. But two things must be borne in mind here.The first is that the early Christians all believed Christ was the Savior ofthe world and that salvation was obtained through his work. This muchwas not in dispute. The second thing is that many of the theologians of theearly church did not think of the atonement as a separable constituent of thework of Christ that could be hived off and analyzed independent of otheraspects of his work, or, more importantly, from his person. They believedthat the incarnation and atonement were two aspects of one organic whole.Both were parts or phases of the one seamless work of Christ.

The idea was not merely that the incarnation is a necessary prerequisiteto the atonement (though this is true). It was that the incarnation is part ofthe work of Christ that culminates in the atonement and resurrection. Thismakes a considerable difference, not only to how we view the person andwork of Christ, but also to how we think of their relative places in Christiandogmatics. We might put it like this. The mechanism of atonement andits scope (i.e., the extent of Christ's salvific work in its accomplishment andapplication) were not matters that were so controverted that they requireddogmatic definition. The question of who and what Christ was, that is, whatit means to say he is the Savior of the world, and how it is that he can be such aSavior — these were matters that were pressing problems for the church, as shesought to establish what the faithful should believe about Jesus of Nazareth.

It is often said that the Christological settlement at which the churcharrived after much vituperation was as much a political as a theological resolution;some might say, a merely political resolution. It is undeniable that theChristological controversies were hard and often bitterly fought, that sometheologians were misunderstood or even misrepresented, and that politicsplayed a significant role in the outcome. However, this fact alone says nothingone way or another about the truth value of the outcome. A decision can bereached for complex religious and political reasons and still be the right result.I suggest that God would not permit the church to come to a substantiallymistaken account of the person of Christ and to encode this in a canonicaldecision in an ecumenical council, for what we think about the person ofChrist touches the heart of Christian doctrine, and therefore the heart of thegospel. It is an impoverished doctrine of providence that claims otherwise.

Before turning to consider the Christology bequeathed to Christiantheology by Chalcedon and the dogmatic desiderata its canons provided,one other preliminary matter requires comment. In some recent theologythere is a concern to approach the theological task "without metaphysics"or in a "postmetaphysical" manner. In the hands of some theologians, thisclaim has to do with addressing a particular philosophical project, usuallythe project associated with the continental tradition, especially MartinHeidegger and his interlocutors. Other theologians seem to think thatone can (even, ought to) approach the theological task absent metaphysicsper se. But without further explanation this claim is liable to misunderstanding.For it is not that such theologians eschew the project of presentingtheological arguments that are ontological in nature. What they rejectis the idea that one can make ontological claims on the basis of the mostgeneral, metaphysical categories and notions. Instead, it is said, the theologianshould begin with the specific and concrete and work from this togeneral ontological claims. Bruce McCormack articulates a specificallyChristological version of this "postmetaphysical" method. He says:

The word "metaphysical" has often been taken as synonymous with"ontological." It is not so used here.... "Metaphysics" is a way of speakingabout transcendent (supramundane) realities, which begins with generalconcepts rather than concrete particulars. A move is made from a generalconcept (often a totality that has been abstracted from the individuals ofwhich it is composed) such as "world" or "humanity." The problem isthat a totality is only an idea; it is not given to us directly to know. We donot encounter it anywhere. It is simply postulated in order to introduceand explain the unity of a group of items. As such, it lacks reality.

McCormack goes on to relate this specifically to Christology: "It isalso possible to construct an ontology ... on the basis of an individual as apossibility made necessary by the belief that Jesus Christ is God incarnate.In him, that which 'deity' is and that which 'humanity' is are 'universals'made concretely real in an individual." This Christological method is not"metaphysical," he says, "since it does not draw inferences from generalconcepts." But because it does result in an account of what a divine andhuman being is, it counts as "ontological." It is a postmetaphysical methodbecause it was only recognized "after the failings of both classical andmodern metaphysics had become clear."

There is certainly something to be said for the claim that Christiantheology should be shaped in fundamental respects by the doctrine ofthe incarnation, or by Christological concerns more broadly construed.But that is not the same as a method that proceeds on the assumption thatontological claims must begin with the concrete moving from there to theabstract. What is more, we have just seen that on McCormack's reckoningabstract metaphysical notions are ideas that lack reality independentof the concrete things from which they are abstracted. Yet they are alsouniversals made concretely real in an individual. Whatever one makes ofthese claims about universals, concrete particulars, and kind terms like"humanity" or "deity," they are nothing if not metaphysical in nature.We might think of McCormack's comments as the recommendation for aparticular sort of metaphysical method. On this reading of his remarks, hebegins with the presumption that concrete particulars are the most fundamentalontological things, and that any conceptual apparatus that maybe devised on the basis of these concrete things is a kind of purely mentalconstruction, which does not carve nature at the joints. But this is notnovel and it is not postmetaphysical in the sense of being nonmetaphysicalor beyond metaphysics or even ametaphysical in nature. It is representativeof the sort of approach to metaphysics advocated by those who are nominalistsabout predicates and concepts. Rather than exchanging metaphysicsfor ontology, McCormack appears to be rejecting one way of conceivingmetaphysics (a way often associated in traditional theology with realismabout universals and abstract objects) for another.

But I can see no reason why a Christian theologian might not adoptMcCormack's general proviso that theology ought to be framed by means ofChristological concerns (e.g., that Christology be the "lens" through whichwe view a particular theological locus, such as the church or Scripture)without commitment to the sort of nominalism he seems to think necessaryfor the successful execution of such a project. To put it another way, McCormack'sapproval of a Christologically focused theology is appealing (at leastto this reader). But for those who are nonplussed about his claim that classicaland modern metaphysics have failed, there are other options available.In fact, systematic metaphysics is back in vogue among Anglo-Americanphilosophers, including neo-Aristotelian metaphysics, which is willing tocountenance much that would be recognizable to our medieval and patristicforebears. Far from "failing" or heading toward extinction, such "classical"metaphysics is alive and well, and, if anything, flourishing once more.

A Note on the Chalcedonian "Consensus"

With these methodological considerations in mind, we can turn to thequestion of desiderata. Since I am approaching this question from the perspectiveof consensus Christianity, and since there is a classical consensusof sorts encapsulated in the Christology of the ecumenical Council ofChalcedon of ad 451, it is its so-called "definition" of the person of Christthat is our point of departure. I do not deny that there are other ways ofthinking about the person of Christ, some of which have been historicallyimportant. It is just that we will be concerned to think about Christologywithin this dogmatic frame of reference, the frame of reference that hasbeen accepted by the vast majority of Christians in history as a trustworthysummary statement about the person of Christ, which encapsulatesimportant theological notions found in Scripture.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0310514967
• ISBN 13: 9780310514961
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Crisp Oliver D., Sanders Fred