The Shape of Christology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Person of Christ 9781472550040, 9780567086464

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PREFACE

It was a wise Providence which inspired Dr Warfield to insert in the terms of the Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectureship an instruction that 'every Lecturer shall publish the Lectures within twelve months after their delivery'. Indeed, the proverbial slip 'twixt the cup and the lip is as nothing compared with that between lectures and publication. So the Warfield Lecturer cannot but be gratehl that even though grace abounds, the law nevertheless compels. The text published here formed the substantial basis of the Lectures as actually delivered in February 1965. The invitation to deliver the Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures is in itself honour sufficient, but the event surpasses even the expectation. I should like, therefore, to place on record my very sincere appreciation of the generous welcome extended to me by President and Mrs G . I. McCord and by Professor G. S. Hendry of Princeton Theological Seminary, and of the warmth of the hospitality shown to me by Professor and Mrs James Barr in their own home. It would be ungracious of me not to mention also the stimulus provided by the attendance and attention of the audience in the Miller Chapel, and by the questions of the students in discussion thereafter.

New College University of Edin burgh Whitsuntide 1965

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

When the opportunity was offered to me to 'update' the original text of The Shape of Christology (1966), the question arose as to which direction I should follow, for a number of movements in theology had emerged since then to influence christological definition, such as feminism and liberation theology, narrative theology and theologies sensitive to post-modernist themes. In the end I decided to follow through the Chalcedonian interest which dominated the 1966 volume and had far from spent itself in the modern period, and which therefore represented unfinished business. The first main extension, then, was towards the christologies inspired metaphysically by, and dependent upon, process philosophy. These, while they set themselves steadfastly against Chalcedon, remained deeply under its spell in two respects. First, it was in reaction to what they considered the philosophical inadequacies of the metaphysics associated with Chalcedon that they turned to process philosophy to make good these defects. To that extent they remained within its magnetic field, even if at the negative pole, but were positively influenced by it even to the point of employing some of its concepts. Secondly, that influence was in evidence in another way, for some of these process christologies, as they might be called, sought a kind of validation in showing their conformity with, or at least their non-violation of, the main thrust of Chalcedon. In order to prove, then, that Chalcedon was not a spent force even in the 1990s, I thought it would be instructive to explore the christological thinking of two of the most eminent writers in the field - Canon John Macquarrie and Professor Gerald

WHAT IS GIVEN IN CHRISTOLOGY?

If we were asked to give in a summary form the distinguishing characteristic of Protestant theology in our time, many of us would reply that it is its christocentric quality which claims this title. And the evidence would be convincing. It could be shown that not since the days of Marcion has there been such an exclusive emphasis upon the absolute significance of Jesus Christ, not indeed in the whole history of Christian doctrine has there been any attempt such as we have seen in our day to locate revelation only in the person of Jesus Christ and to deny its occurrence elsewhere in God's creation. Ours is the period of theology which invented the phrase 'Christ, the centre of history' and interpreted historical process as a span between his first and his second comings, so that all events contained therein derived their significance from this twofold reference. It is an emphasis which has appeared also in the more strictly biblical disciplines - in the contentions that Christ stands between the Old Testament and the New, as the person to whom the one points forward and the other points back; or that Christ is the unity of the Old and New Testaments; or again that the two Testaments are 'all about Christ' and that typological exegesis is the only proper method for the right presentation of the biblical message.

T W O FORMS O F CHRISTOCENTRICISM In the doctrinal field, christocentricism has come to have two meanings. First, it may be applied to a process in which doctrines

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THE METHOD OF CHRISTOLOGY

What I have been calling the shape of christology is determined by three constituent elements - the given, the method followed in the study and exposition of this given, and finally, the models which are the media of description, analysis and examination of the given. Our immediate concern now is with the method of christology. Perhaps the proper starting-point is to indicate what exactly we intend by the term, and what we wish to comprehend within it. Such definition is all the more important at a time when most disciplines are becoming explicit and self-conscious about their methods. ASPECTS O F METHOD

METHOD AS ATTITUDE TO THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF A DISCIPLINE At a first glance, all that may be intended by the term 'method' may be the way the given of the discipline is handled, the attitude adopted by its practitioners. For example, if the given lies in the field of one of the natural sciences, then a certain enquiring, experimental, searching attitude is demanded, an unwillingness to rest short of the final explanation, a desire to question old, established positions. If the given lies in the field of the literary arts, then a certain feeling for the substance of the material is necessary, a degree of empathy, of penetration into the mind and feelings of the author; or in the visual arts, into the aesthetic objects, the painting or the sculpture. So too in the religious

MODELS IN CHRISTOLOGY

One feature of Christian worship which even the most callous familiarity cannot fail to observe is the sheer variety of titles ascribed to Jesus Christ. They range from the list which is part of the Old Testament Advent lesson, Isa 9.6: 'And his name shall be called Wonderhl, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace' to the great climax of phrases contained in the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed: 'And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary. And was made man.' Within the limits of this wide range there lie the names which occur within the Gospels themselves, where Jesus is described, or rather describes himself, as the way, the truth, the life, the shepherd, the vine, ransom, and so on; as well as the many titles which later theology has employed - leader, hero and religious genius. Clearly, the use of such a variety of titles creates problems for biblical students, who must decide, for example, which of the New Testament terms are going to have precedence over others; how far contemporary Jewish usage or previous Old Testament usage or even classical usage is to be allowed to predetermine the interpretation of New Testament terms; and whether there are irreconcilable differences of emphasis when the terminology favoured by one evangelist is compared with that of another. In approaching the question of the place of models in christology,

4 THE TWO-NATURE MODEL

It will have become clear by now that in a quite hndamental way the model is the controlling element in the development of any discipline. It determines how we shall handle the given from which the discipline takes its beginning. It dictates the method we follow in imposing form and structure upon the given. It regulates our discussions with one another upon the validity or invalidity of statements made within the given. I propose in the second part of our discussion to examine more closely three of the more important models which have in the past operated in the christological field, and more particularly to try to discover to what extent they continue to be models that we may rightly employ in the execution of our christological task.

JESUS CHRIST, HUMAN AND DIVINE: T H E BIBLICAL WITNESS Beginning with the two-nature model, I should like to indicate its main constituent features. The feature that is most obvious is, of course, the description of the person of Jesus Christ as both human and divine. We have become so accustomed to this sort of characterisation that we are unaware now that even by using this quite simple descriptive form we have firmed into hard usage something that was still fluid and malleable in the Scriptures themselves, and we have even given the description a twist which is not immediately recognisable as biblical.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL

When we turn from the two-nature model to what I have entitled the psychological model, it may at first appear that we have moved away from the logically concise to something which is definable only in the vaguest terms. But it must now be clear in recollection that in fact the two-nature model is a deceptively simple description which cloaks an amazing range of variation from Nestorianism to enhypostasia. For this reason it should not be unexpected if we encounter a variety of description under a single title. Since the phrase 'the psychological model' is of my own invention, it may prove helphl to indicate what it means. The psychological model is a comprehensive description of those interpretations of the person of Jesus Christ which. both hold that it is possible to speak significantly of the motivation, feelings, purposes, cognition and in fact the mind of Jesus Christ; and go on to affirm that interpretation of this sort contributes insights in christology which are obtainable in no other way and for which there can be no substitutes. Discussions of the psychological model have therefore taken two forms. O n the one hand, they have been concerned with the whole validity of the claim to penetrate the psyche of Jesus Christ and set down in meaninghl terms what the thoughts and purposes of a God man could possibly be. Sometimes the argument has never gone beyond this point. O n the other hand, when it has, the questions have immediately arisen of how far one may go on this tack and at what point a reverent agnosticism should begin to raise its head. Probably, however, no time could be less opportune than the present for raising the matter of the psychological model. Giinther Bornkamm has written (Jesus of Nazareth, ET, Hodder

THE REVELATION MODEL

Here, until 1964 we would have been approaching the totally, universally accepted mid-twentieth-century christological model. Barth might disagree with Brunner on the extent and nature of the effect of the fall of man upon the image of God in man, or about the range of revelation. Barth and Bultmann might disagree about how history and myth are related to one another in the Gospel; Pittenger might criticise the christology of the kenoticists; but to a man they would rally to a single standard when the question was raised of whether the term 'revelation' is the right one to apply to Jesus Christ. Revelation is what Christianity is about. Revelation is the totality of the faith. To deny revelation is to be not a heretic, but a blasphemer. Suddenly, publicly, in 1964 in the midst of this universal, ecumenical chorus, there was heard a strident, discordant note - though perhaps the word 'note' is not appropriately applied to such a lengthy, detailed and sustained analysis of the case for revelation. I refer to F. Gerald Downing's Has Christianity a Revelation? (SCM Press, London, 1964). The publication of that book makes it unnecessary for me to say some of the things that I meant to say. It will affect some of the things I shall have to say, because I shall be obliged to orient myself by its position. But since Mr Downing's purpose was rather different from mine in this present exercise, I expect to say things to which he has not given his attention. A matter which we have not so far examined is that of how the human mind arrives at the models with which it operates in extending its christological structures. By this time it must be clear that they are not given by the Holy Spirit to the mind of

DAVID R. GRIFFIN

The christological models so far considered have been controlled in their expression by the norms imposed by the Chalcedonian Creed and its derivatives, as well as by the metaphysics which in turn conditioned them. We turn now to a selection of christological views which claim a rather different metaphysical inspiration and medium of expression and control, namely, the process philosophy associated with the names of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. The examples of such process christology will come from the writing of David R. Griffin, John B. Cobb, Jr and Norman Pittenger. Certain differences in method, however, between this process christology and the Chalcedon-related types may be considered in advance. For example, first, it will have been noticed that the corpus of Aristotelian metaphysics drawn on by the Chalcedonian christologists, both orthodox and heretical, was fairly well defined, and the logical principles in accordance with which it was operated were almost universally accepted. The writings of the process philosophers, by contrast, have never quite achieved the quasi-canonical status given to Aristotle's, nor has there been a logical system to be employed in the extension of the process philosophy into areas not anticipated by its founders. Consequently, secondly, the process christologists draw on different aspects of process philosophy, interpret it differently, and their dependence on their sources is to be seen more in terms of influence than of literal transposition. The rather selective method which they have adopted in using process material differs considerably from the adherence of the classic Chalcedonian christologists to a common metaphysic and its accordant logical

JOHN B. COBB, JR

john Cobb, Jr had established himself as the authoritative theological exponent of process thought, with works on natural theology, the doctrine of God and the evangelical and homiletic relevance of process philosophy, and his contribution to the problem of the essential nature of Christianity, before he offered his now classic presentation of what might be called a process christology, Christ in a PluralisticAge (Westminster, Philadelphia, 1975). That book, once again, is not an ivory tower, sterilised account of his subject; it recognises certain cultural changes in Western and Third World thought which are highly significant for christology. It will form the main source for this exposition. However, in a subsequent symposium (reported in Encountering jesw: Debate on Christology, ed. Stephen Davis, Westminsterl John ,Knox, Philadelphia, 1986), partly under the pressure of these same cultural circumstances and partly in response to critical discussion of his revised christology by Davis, John Hick, Rebecca Pentz and others, Cobb modifies his form of process christology to a point where the question must be asked whether he still remains faithful to his original insights. But his restatements in that symposium and his responses to critiques from the others supplement his original presentation and provide material for our own assessment of his christological theory. From an early point in Christ in a Pluralistic Age, Cobb expresses a deep sense of the decline of the image of Christ in contemporary society and the corresponding loss of the redemptive power of that image from all but those living within the closed circle of the Church. Despite this gloomy

NORMAN PITTENGER

CLEARING T H E GROUND

CRITICISM O F ENHYPOSTASIS More lucidly than in the writing of either of the other two exponents of process christology whom we have considered, Pittenger states the logic and the motivation which have wooed him away from the classical Chalcedonian and postChalcedonian christology upon which he has clearly been reared. He does so in two books, The Word Incarnate (Nisbet, London, 1959) and Christology Reconsidered (SCM Press, London, 1970). The main subject of his dissatisfaction, expressed in both books, is the doctrine of enhypostasis usually associated with the names of Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jerusalem. It affirms that in the person of Jesus Christ, while the divine nature (physis) is centred in the person (hypostasis) of the Logos, the human nature (physis) which is alleged to have no human person (hypostasis), and therefore to be anhypostatos locates its hypostasis in the divine hypostasis and so is said to be enhypostatos. (The subject is discussed at length on pp. 94-105 above.) Pittenger's attack on the doctrine of enhypostasis, both in its classical expression and in the forms of it used by modern writers such as the Tractarians of the last century and H. M. Relton and E. L. Mascall of this century, is sharp and direct. He will have none of Relton's almost ecstatic praise for enhypostasis: the person of Jesus Christ so conceived [that is, according to the doctrine of enhypostasis] is the richest and hllest possibility for

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JOHN MACQUARRIE

The process theologians whose christological writings we have been discussing have, on the one hand, quite explicitly abandoned the classical metaphysical framework which has provided a scaffold for christology for some 1,600 years; and, on the other hand, they have been equally explicit about the alternative philosophical system which they propose to use. How far they have been successful in their drive for independence from the classical forms has been a subject for inquiry. We turn now to John Macquarrie's Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (SCM Press, London, 1990), surely in many ways the true successor of H. R. Mackintosh's The Doctrine of the Person o f b u s Christ (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1912), which straddled the history of British christology for some six decades after its publication. Macquarrie shares two convictions with the process theologians. First, he finds that the metaphysics employed in classical christology used technical philosophical language which no longer has any significance for our contemporaries. He dates the 'tidal wave' which has swept away so much traditional thinking about Christ back to the Enlightenment and the writing of Reimarus, and he traces its course through Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Strauss, Ritschl, Harnack and many others. From the 1930s onwards this 'tidal wave' of doubt of the validity of traditional christology and its metaphysical components gained further impetus from the linguistic analysis which dominated philosophy generally for some forty years and greatly distorted theological discussion for roughly the same period. The main component of

GERALD O'COLLINS, SJ

Professor Gerald O'Collins, SJ, of the Gregorian University in Rome, opens his work Christology (Oxford University Press, London, 1995), by reviewing the challenges encountered by any writer on christology, which come from disciplines which are contiguous with that subject, and all deeply involved in it. These disciplines include history, philosophy, language, and particularly, religious language, and Old and New Testament criticism. He responds to these challenges, together with the ever-changing fashions within christology itself, with a very comprehensive 'biblical foundation of christology', together with a critique of the patristic, medieval and modern writers on the person and work of Jesus Christ. The quality of the scholarship in this book marks it out, with that of Canon Macquarrie which we have just been considering, as among the most eminent and fairminded of the works in this field for many years. In fact, as we proceed we shall notice how similar their method is, and how profitable it is to consider where they differ. As to similarity, for example, they both agree upon the inappropriateness, verging on irrelevance, of the language of Chalcedon in the context of a modern christology, O'Collins describing it as 'the distance between the idiom of any present-day Christology and older formulations modelled closely on Chalcedon's language' (op. cit., p. 224, n. 1). Nevertheless, they both seek to conserve the basic insights of Chalcedon, that in the man Jesus Christ believers identify one who is divine, so that in this human being was discernible the being of God, God acting and living in an altogether human way. Both have an interest in the distinction between christology 'from below' and christology 'from above',

WHAT, THEN, OF CHALCEDON?

While our main intention has been to trace the different configurations which christology has assumed at different times and under different external pressures, there has been running concurrently a sub-plot. It concerns the understanding of the role which the Chalcedonian model has played in relation to the other models, and even at times how it is composed. Two somewhat contradictory accounts of it have emerged, and this fact has been the trigger of this final investigation. O n the one hand there has been a widespread complaint - judgement, even - that not only is the Greek philosophy which seems to appear so often in the creed irrelevant to the way folk think nowadays, it is even unintelligible to the mass of our contemporaries. So, we are told, though they may on rare occasions repeat it, they are literally mouthing words bereft of meaning. We have encountered such sentiments on several occasions in our previous studies. O n the other hand, these christologists, sometimes even the same ones, have maintained a lingering respect for the creed, attempting to demonstrate that their novel views actually conform to Chalcedonian standards or could be used as a hermeneutic device to modernise Chalcedon.

E. L. MASCALL AND CHALCEDON The question of Chalcedon has been considered by most christologists over the past century and a half, but one who has been particularly articulate and sympathetic has been E. L. Mascall, whose WhateverHappened to the Human Mind? (SPCK,

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Abraham, 72f, 172 Acts, Declaratory, 66 Acts of the Apostles, 69 Adoration, 40 Adverbs, four Chalcedonian, 28 1 , 315, 319 Agnosticism, 1 16 , Alcoholics Anonymous, 131 Amos, 73 Analogy, 59ff human, 179 application of, 180ff Analysis, sociological, 39f Anhypostaria, anhypostarh, 102, 269, 275,277,299 Anselm, 1 13, 199 Antioch, School of, 4 4 , 9 1f Apokalyptein, 153f Apollinarianism, 97, 99ff Apollinaris, 97E 134, 136 Apprehension, 62f Arians, 141 Aristotelianism, 169 histotie, 87ff, 96, 236, 301 f, 3 17 Categoriae, c. 5, 87ff, 30 1f Art, Byzantine, 197f Romanesque, 197f Articles, Declaratory, 6 6 Articles, Thirty-nine, 68 Assumptions, 28f Atonement, theories of, 168 Attitudes, 12ff, 25 Augustine, 235

Austen, Jane, 138 Australia, 13 Ayer, A. J., 27 Baillie, D. M., 122, 125-7, 134, 249f, 274 Baillie, John, 250, 269 Baptism, 1 17f Barth, K.,20, 22, 31,35,74,79,99ff, 109-12, 145, 152, 158-62, 166, 170,321 Barton, B., 45 Beauchamp, Sally, 296 Being Itself, 62 Berkeley, Bishop, 103 Bible, 36, 67 unity of, 70 Biography, 1 19 Birch, C., 230 Birth, Virgin, 34 Black, Max, 50 Boethius, 3 18 Bornkamrn, G., 45, 115f, 127-9,236 Broad, C. D., 237 Brunner, E., 20,49, 1226 145,1568, 167, 168,285 Buber, M., 24, 26, 132 Bulgakof, S., 126 Bultmann, R., 2 2 , 3 5 4 3 , 106, 1 17ff, 123, 145,236 Bush, burning, 146f Calvin, J., 22