Classical Trinitarian dogma affirms that God is simple—a teaching also advanced by major proponents of classical monotheism. Nevertheless, as each one knows, this notion is controversial in modern analytic philosophy, where it is commonly contested. It is also largely ignored in contemporary continental dogmatic theology. Nevertheless, the teaching that God is simple is requisite for any authentic interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma of Nicaea. It is also eminently defensible from a rational, philosophical point of view. In what follows I will (...) begin with (I) a theological consideration of the notion of Trinitarian simplicity before considering (II) the metaphysics of the simplicity of the divine essence. (III) I will then consider briefly two special problems that are associated with the metaphysics of divine simplicity: divine knowledge and divine freedom. (IV) Finally, I will consider briefly the significant Christological consequences of the acceptance (or non-acceptance) of the traditional affirmation of divine simplicity. (shrink)

Classical Trinitarian dogma affirms that God is simple—a teaching also advanced by major proponents of classical monotheism. Nevertheless, as each one knows, this notion is controversial in modern analytic philosophy, where it is commonly contested. It is also largely ignored in contemporary continental dogmatic theology. Nevertheless, the teaching that God is simple is requisite for any authentic interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma of Nicaea. It is also eminently defensible from a rational, philosophical point of view. In what follows I will (...) begin with a theological consideration of the notion of Trinitarian simplicity before considering the metaphysics of the simplicity of the divine essence. I will then consider briefly two special problems that are associated with the metaphysics of divine simplicity: divine knowledge and divine freedom. Finally, I will consider briefly the significant Christological consequences of the acceptance of the traditional affirmation of divine simplicity. (shrink)

What does it mean for Christ to be the "image of God"? And, if Christ is the "image of God," can the human person also unequivocally be understood to be the "image of God"? Augustine's Early Theology of Image examines Augustine's conception of the imago dei and makes the case that it represents a significant departure from the Latin pro-Nicene theologies of Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, and Ambrose of Milan only a generation earlier. Augustine's predecessors understood the imago (...) dei principally as a Christological term designating the unity of divine substance. But, Gerald P. Boersma argues, Augustine affirms that Christ is an image of equal likeness, while the human person is an image of unequal likeness. Boersma's careful study thus argues that a Platonic and participatory evaluation of the nature of "image" enables Augustine's early theology of the image of God to move beyond that of his Latin predecessors and affirm the imago dei both of Christ and of the human person. (shrink)

In this paper, informed by Vatican 2 and one of its premier modern day scholars, Gerald O'Collins, we will argue (1), that while the Christian evangelist should proclaim that Jesus is the only way to God, she should nonetheless be open to the possibility that Christ is saving those in non-Christian traditions as non-explicit or anonymous Christians, and, (2), that other serious religious traditions can be interpreted as doctrinally consistent with (or something nearby) the Nicene Christian tradition. In conclusion, (...) these theses will lead us to argue that in the Christian's approach to evangelism, her first step in persuading her non-Christian counterpart should be to emphasize the commonality that exists between the Christian tradition and the relevant non-Christian tradition. The evangelist then, should not see her main task as developing arguments against her interlocuter's religious tradition (though, this has its place), but rather her focus should be on proclaiming an additional truth that her interlocuter can accept alongside many of her already held religious commitments. (shrink)

This essay argues that Jesus’s confession of ignorance about the day and hour of his return (Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32) is logically inconsistent with the Nicene-Constantinopolitan doctrine of his “consubstantiality” (homoousia) with God the Father. The essay first defines “consubstantiality”, then presents three formulations of the argument, and finally rebuts a number of possible responses: from the textual originality of the phrase “nor the Son”; from the reinterpretation of “knows” as “makes known”; from the ideas of partitive exegesis and (...) communicatio idiomatum; and from the question of the Holy Spirit’s knowledge of the things of God. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Fortunatian’s Christology and Trinitarian theology that can be deduced from his recently found work Commentarii in evangelia and, by doing so, to present a general re-evaluation of his role in the political-doctrinal clashes at the middle of the 4th century. By investigating Fortunatian’s (Trinitarian) theology in relation to the prior early Latin Trinitarian doctrine and to different heterodox traditions, and ascertaining his doctrinal standpoint in the Arian controversy of the middle (...) of the 4th century, his doctrine reveals itself to be far more Catholic and “pro-Nicene” – though remaining deeply rooted in the Latin theological tradition – that it was regarded before. (shrink)

How did John’s Gospel draw and compel Augustine before and during the composition of Confessiones? Analyzing references to John in Augustine’s works from his embrace of Nicene Christianity to the writing of Confessiones, this paper finds a growing (and Johannine-based) emphasis on the importance of Christ’s humanity. Augustine strategically invokes two texts in Confessiones’ crucial seventh book: John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh,” and John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This paper considers three (...) features: First, how the rhetorical device of anticipation (prolepsis) allows Augustine simultaneously to unify his developing Christological perspective and to build drama into his conversion narrative. Second, how the structure of Confessiones, which first works to understand divine transcendence and then seeks to relate that divine transcendence back to time, emphasizes the central role played by the Gospel of John in advancing Augustine’s conversion story. Third and finally, how invocations of John’s Gospel typify the way that, for the Augustine of Confessiones, reading scripture had become the means of achieving new spiritual self-comprehension. Texts from John were not mere receptors or reflectors of spiritual forces that moved Augustine toward conversion, but, rather, powerful agents of conversion in their own right. (shrink)

How did John’s Gospel draw and compel Augustine before and during the composition of Confessiones? Analyzing references to John in Augustine’s works from his embrace of Nicene Christianity to the writing of Confessiones, this paper finds a growing emphasis on the importance of Christ’s humanity. Augustine strategically invokes two texts in Confessiones’ crucial seventh book: John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh,” and John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This paper considers three features: First, (...) how the rhetorical device of anticipation allows Augustine simultaneously to unify his developing Christological perspective and to build drama into his conversion narrative. Second, how the structure of Confessiones, which first works to understand divine transcendence and then seeks to relate that divine transcendence back to time, emphasizes the central role played by the Gospel of John in advancing Augustine’s conversion story. Third and finally, how invocations of John’s Gospel typify the way that, for the Augustine of Confessiones, reading scripture had become the means of achieving new spiritual self-comprehension. Texts from John were not mere receptors or reflectors of spiritual forces that moved Augustine toward conversion, but, rather, powerful agents of conversion in their own right. (shrink)

Angelika Neuwirth has argued that sura 112 of the Quran is intended as an intertextual corrective commentary on key Jewish and Christian creedal statements. This theory, consonant with recent scholarship considering the Muslim scripture to be a text of late antiquity, would match the enigmatic phrase Allāh al-ṣamad with the Nicene creed’s description of God as “almighty” (pantokrator) and sura 112’s statement that God has no equal (kufuʾ) with the Nicene creed’s homoousia, the term that throughout the seventh (...) century CE remained central to the bitter doctrinal conflict wracking Eastern Christianity. This article surveys the wide debate in the scholarly literature over these quranic verses, and specifically the hapax legomenon of al-ṣamad, and compares the early Muslim exegetical treatment of al-ṣamad with the approach of contemporaneous Christian polemical writing of the late eighth century. It suggests that the key to unlocking the meaning of the sura and al-ṣamad, which has long vexed both premodern and modern scholars, could lie in the concept of Aristotelian substance and its articulation in the trinitarian formula and ensuing christological disputes. (shrink)

Gheorghe Sferlea | : Cet article examine les premières tentatives d’interprétation théologique du titre marial Theotokos au IVe siècle. Au coeur de cette histoire on retrouve Apollinaire, évêque de Laodicée et figure importante du camp pro-nicéen, qui a élaboré une théorie controversée sur l’unité du Christ, notamment en excluant l’intellect humain de la constitution du Sauveur. C’est dans le cadre de cette préoccupation plus large qu’il vit l’opportunité de tenter une appropriation théologique du titre Theotokos et qu’il en fit un (...) outil polémique dans la stratégie d’ériger sa propre position en orthodoxie christologique. L’idée que je défends ici est que Diodore de Tarse, Grégoire de Nazianze, Grégoire de Nysse et Théodore de Mopsueste se sont tous confrontés à l’interprétation proposée par Apollinaire et ont cherché les meilleurs moyens d’y réagir. | : This article examines the first attempts of theological interpretation of Marian title Theotokos in the fourth Century. At the centre of this history stands Apollinarius, bishop of Laodiceea and a significant character of the pro-Nicene movement, who elaborated a controversial account on the unity of Christ that excluded human intellect from Saviour’s constitution. It was within this broader concern that he saw the opportunity of attempting a theological appropriation of title Theotokos and made it a polemical tool in the strategy of establishing his own Christological stance as authoritative. My contention is that Diodore of Tarsus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and Theodore of Mopsuestia all found themselves confronted with Apollinarius’ interpretation and searched ways of reacting to it. (shrink)

In relation to the recent monograph of Karmann on Meletius of Antioch, some important episodes concerning the Arian controversy in the East between 360 and 364 are examined. The presence of the Meletians at the Council of Alexandria in 362 is ruled out and the meaning of the Trinitarian and Christological formulas in the Tomus ad Antiochenos is critically evaluated. The more political than doctrinal meaning of the formula issued by the Council of Antioch in 363 is accentuated, and the (...) significance of the contentious relationship between Athanasius and Meletius is considered in depth. That the doctrinal decisions of the Alessandrian council of 362 might have anticipated the passage from Nicenism to Neo – Nicenism is ruled out; this is confirmed by the Trinitarian reflection of Basil of Caesarea. (shrink)

Though the details about Gregory of Elvira’s personal life and much of his ecclesial work are sparse, we do possess information concerning his pastoral concerns and his position in the Christological disputes of his era. These insights come from his own writings as well as the comments offered to him and about him from his contemporaries. His writings demonstrate a rather wide-ranging familiarity with western theologians such as Tertullian, Novatian, Lactantius, and Hilary, but Gregory was not simply a copyist. He (...) was willing to utilize and then expand upon his sources as he saw fit, and this is especially visible in his Christological materials. This article will examine these influences on Gregory, especially regarding his promotion of the Nicene creed, both from his setting in Roman Spain and from the literary and theological sources he drew upon. These demonstrate that Gregory supported the theology of the Nicene creed even as he learned to refine his own language and expand his defense of the creed and its key term homousios. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Rufinus’ translation of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica 1, 1-3, which discusses trinitarian and christological matters. Firstly, I will analyze how Rufinus amends or removes statements which are close to Origenism and Arianism, sometimes replacing them with orthodox ones; I will then examine Rufinus’ way of citing and interpreting the Bible, by correcting Eusebius’ reading, when it is suspected of heresy, or by explaining passages himself. This work of emendation reveals, on the one hand, Rufinus’ desire to give (...) the readers a text which fits perfectly with the nicen-constantinopolitan creed, and, on the other hand, his aim of protecting himself from accusations. (shrink)

This article investigates the growth and decline of the use of the ante-Nicene Fathers in relation to Trinitarian issues in seventeenth-century Anglican apologetics. Anglican apologists referred to the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers as the earliest and most reliable testimonies of Christianity contra what they perceived as Popish, Puritan, and Socinian corruptions of the true religion. On the other hand, Catholic, Reformed, and anti-Trinitarian polemicists stigmatized the incompatibility of the ante-Nicenes’ writings with the Trinitarian dogma formulated at Nicaea (...) and elaborated by the post-Nicene Fathers. In response, several Church of England divines attempted to defend their engagement with the ante-Nicene Fathers from the criticisms of Catholic, Reformed, and anti-Trinitarian polemicists, which exposed their use of the ante-Nicenes in Trinitarian matters to the charge of priestcraft. The historical narratives employed by Anglican apologists ultimately proved ineffective, and even provided various heterodox thinkers, such as John Toland, with additional arguments against the Trinitarian dogma. (shrink)

In this article I canvas the options available to a proponent of the traditional doctrine of the incarnation against a charge of incoherence. In particular, I consider the charge of incoherence due to incompatible predications both being true of the same one person, the God-man Jesus Christ. For instance, one might think that any- thing divine has to have certain attributes – perhaps omnipotence, or impassibility. But, the charge continues, nothing human can be omnipotent or impassible. And so nothing can (...) be divine and human. So Christ is not both God and man, contrary to the traditional doctrine of the incarnation. To do so, first, in Section II, I will present the problem as a deductively valid argument. I then, in that section, go on to show that the proponent of traditional Christology should grant all but one premise of the argument. In the remaining sections I will canvas possible solutions to the problem. In Section III I discuss three ways to deny Premise 3 of the forthcoming argument. These ways include a Kenotic response, qua-modification (in four versions), and finally a response that accepts the compatibility of the allegedly incompatible predicates. (shrink)

A collection of essays spanning Smith's career that examines the prospects for a renewed continental philosophy of religion, while making a constructive case for Smith's own vision of the "Nicene option" and incarnational theology as conversation partner.

[paragraph 3 of the article] The goal of this article is to flesh out that initial understanding of incarnational immutability. The method I employ to attain this goal is to consider cases of predications from the texts of conciliar Christology. I show potential ontological truth conditions for those predications being true that do not require the truth conditions I propose for immutability to be unsatisfied. Put otherwise, I show ontological truth conditions for predications that imply Christ’s mutability and Incarnation (...) that are also consistent with the truth of “Christ is immutable.” Since the truth conditions for the incarnational texts do not require the falsity of the claim that “Christ is immutable,” the incarnational claims do not require the rejection of immutability. In other words, the Incarnation is no reason to deny divine immutability, and vice versa. (shrink)

In my chapter "Christology and Anthropology in Friedrich Schleiermacher,” I discuss Schleiermacher's understanding of both the person and work of Christ. Schleiermacher's dialogue with the orthodox Christological tradition preceding him, as well as his understanding of the work of Christ, is founded on a critical analysis of the fundamental person-forming experience of being in relation to Christ and the community founded by him. I provide an analysis of Schleiermacher's discussion of the difficulties surrounding the use of the word "nature" (...) in relation to Jesus' humanity and divinity, and then move to discuss how Schleiermacher understands both the humanity and divinity of Jesus, as well as how the two stand in relation to one another. In the original divine decree Jesus Christ is ordained as the person through which the whole human race is to be completed and perfected, and the essence of perfect human nature just is to express divine. This is the essence of Schleiermacher's solution to the Christological problem, that is, of how the divine and the human can converge in one person. I then move to discuss Schleiermacher's understanding of the work of Christ as involving two interrelated moments. The first is the awakening of the God-consciousness. The second involves the self-expression of this God-consciousness in the form of Christian love in the community of believers. As such, the principle work of Christ is the founding of the kingdom of God. (shrink)

John Henry Newman's theory of heresiology evolved over the course of his life, accentuating certain Christological characteristics of heresy. He began with the study of the Arian heresy, progressing through the Sabellian and Apolloniarian, and ending with the Monophysite. The theory of heresy and orthodoxy finally developed in the Development of Doctrine reflects this struggle to find common features of orthodoxy corresponding to principles governing Christology in the early Church Fathers. As a consequence, Newman's heresiology, in its final stage, (...) holds that faith is inherently Christological, as it depends on the doctrine of the Incarnation to secure the authority of the divine voice of Christ to which one submits in faith. (shrink)

Recent analytic theology has seen a wave of excellent work on the fundamental problem of Christology, the question of how one and the same person can be human full stop and divine full stop. Along the way, new objections have been raised for a venerable family of Christological views, whose distinctive is the employment of qua-devices to dissolve the difficulties stemming from the dual nature doctrine of Chalcedon and its successors. My objective in this article is twofold. First, I (...) propose to lay out a hierarchy of principles that should guide the search for a Christological theory. I then use these principles to illuminate the best qua-theoretic approach to Christology. Finally, I argue that the best qua-theory is at worst on a par with major recent views. (shrink)

This book explores Christology through the lens of whiteness, addressing whiteness as a site of privilege and power within the specific context of Christology.

In this paper we present the standard Thomistic view concerning substances and their parts. We then note some objections to that view. Afterwards, we present Aquinas’s Christology, then draw an analogy between the relation that holds between the Second Person and the assumed human nature, on the one hand, and the relation that holds between a substance whole and its substance parts, on the other. We then show how the analogy, which St. Thomas himself drew at points, is useful (...) for providing a theory that answers the objections that the standard Thomistic view faces. Finally we answer objections to our approach. We conclude that there is a hylomorphic theory, founded on an analogy from Aquinas’s Christology, that fits well with the empirical data concerning substance parts, on which some complete created material substances have other complete created material substances as parts. (shrink)

Do “majestic Christologies” violate the principle of non-competitive relationship? Majestic Christologies are diverse according to conceptual delineation, but share the common affirmation that Jesus’ humanity participates in the divine majesty in a transformative manner. This notion seems to transgress the principle of non-competitive relationship by behaving as if the fullness of Christ’s deity requires a displacement or transmogrification of his creatureliness. This paper argues that majestic Christology does not necessarily contradict the non-competitive principle by emphasizing the elasticity of theological (...) anthropology from an eschatological point of view. (shrink)

Scholars agree that Christology is at the center of the In Iohannis euangelium tractatus. In his exegesis of the Gospel of John, Augustine particularly highlights the human nature of the Incarnated, even as he integrates Trinitarian arguments as a cornerstone of his homiletic teaching. This may have been important for the later reception of Augustine’s Trinitarian thought. Christology is clearly present throughout the various parts of the work. The differences between the parts can be traced to the various (...) contexts in which they were composed and/or delivered: e.g., the Anti-Donatist controversy that is behind the first sermons, and the Anti-Pelagian and Anti-Homean controversies that often fueled the later ones. Sometimes anti-heretical strategies are used as a crucial step for advancing the teaching of the preacher, even if the heresy being opposed is of no immediate relevance or importance to the North Africa of Augustine’s day. Surprisingly, the second half of the work contains various passages in which anti-heretical strategies were clearly pursued. It is particularly Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian strategy that provides us with clues regarding the historical context of this part of the work. (shrink)

I reclaim the patristic Christological use of perichoresis, by showing how in bringing together different entities, such as God and Nature, and looking at them in unity as the one person of Christ, we can acknowledge the perichoresis between divine and human, divine and nature. Christological perichoresis supports the idea that the whole creation is included in God’s recreated cosmos, in response to the redeeming power of Christ who entered the web of life as a creature. The Christological reading of (...) perichoresis can be an original contribution which supports my ecofeminist Christian view. Christological perichoresis, as the divine form of contextualization, can enable us to follow Christ’s steps to contextualize by taking our own contexts seriously. Human contextualization can only be a witness of divine contextualization. (shrink)

Scholars agree that Christology is at the center of the In Iohannis euangelium tractatus. In his exegesis of the Gospel of John, Augustine particularly highlights the human nature of the Incarnated, even as he integrates Trinitarian arguments (which he had developed earlier in his De trinitate) as a cornerstone of his homiletic teaching. This may have been important for the later reception of Augustine’s Trinitarian thought. Christology is clearly present throughout the various parts of the work. The differences (...) between the parts can be traced to the various contexts in which they were composed and/or delivered: e.g., the Anti-Donatist controversy that is behind the first sermons, and the Anti-Pelagian and Anti-Homean controversies that often fueled the later ones. Sometimes anti-heretical strategies are used as a crucial step for advancing the teaching of the preacher (not least because they can directly promote knowledge of the fundamentals of the faith), even if the heresy being opposed is of no immediate relevance or importance to the North Africa of Augustine’s day (e.g., that of the “Sabellians” or the “Apollinarians”). Surprisingly, the second half of the work (consisting as it does of shorter homilies or, better, drafts of homilies) contains various passages in which anti-heretical strategies were clearly pursued. It is particularly Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian strategy that provides us with clues regarding the historical context of this part of the work. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary dialogue with contemporary sciences question the coherence and plausibility of many traditional Christological formulations. This book attempts to show that engaging in this interdisciplinary endeavour is both possible and promising.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christology and EthicsLindsey EsbensenChristology and Ethics Edited by F. Leron Shults and Brent Waters Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 231 pp. $28.00.This collection of essays is a welcome venture into the often-neglected relationship between Christology and ethics. The book stresses that the reciprocal relationship between Christology and Christian moral discernment needs greater attention as well as creative reformulation. The essays produce a variety of models (...) of how other disciplines provide the critical and constructive developments that can strengthen the bond between Christology and the Christian moral life. Rather than a definitive resolution to the “problem” of these Christian disciplines, the book is an invitation to further inquiry, an offer to join the conversation.Although the contributors to this anthology present disparate analyses, they share the goal of integrating interdisciplinary developments in the engagement of Christology and ethics. While each author shares similar departure points for these essays, the conclusions are vastly diverse for each contributor. This is in part because the essays draw from a broad range of sources, from the theological to the scientific. One chapter incorporates developments in the field of psychoanalysis in a discussion of the Christian emphasis on participation in the “new creation” through Jesus Christ, who is akin to the psychoanalytic “third” (121). Another chapter applies evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics to a discussion of the ongoing social mediation and cultural reinterpretation of what it means to “do as Jesus did” (178). Underlying all the expositions is an affirmation that ethics and Christology mutually instruct and challenge each other (98). [End Page 211]Despite the integral connection among the essays, some underlying tensions remain. For instance, Brent Waters’s “The Incarnation and the Moral Life” strongly emphasizes the distinction between the civil community and the church, between the City of Man and the City of God (30). The church is the body of Christ that ministers to the world; therefore, “the singular ministry of the baptized engages, evangelizes, and orders the world in the name and under the authority of Jesus Christ” (21). All moral discernment outside of that with Christological foundations falls short of its goal. Conversely, Jan-Olav Henriksen’s “The Surprise of Judgment and Justice” suggests a much more inclusive view of non-Christian (and non-Christological) contributions to ethics in his interpretation of Matthew 25. Using the imago Dei as the springboard for his analysis, the world is envisioned as God’s gift, and the other (the neighbor) is the imago Dei who calls for recognition. Henriksen contends, “Because Christ is the true image of God, all of humanity is related to him, and is in some sense represented in him.... Christ is the face of every other human—as the one who calls us to mercy, compassion, and love” (142). Christian moral action, then, “is not only determined by you, it is determined by them and their calling of you” (141). In this sense, then, the church does not minister to the world, but the world ministers to the church in helping her to recognize the world as God’s gift and to see the image of God in the neighbor.While the emphases of the various proposals in this collection of essays may produce tensions, the strain is actually a positive contribution to the overall project. The anthology seeks to examine the most significant issues in the relationship between Christology and ethics without necessarily providing a conclusive resolution to how these disciplines mutually inform and reinforce each other. This collection of essays begins a conversation and invites further investigation of the various lines of inquiry.As with any anthology, each essay will have a greater or lesser appeal to the reader according to his interests. Nonetheless, this collection of essays is a unique contribution to systematic and moral theology, and it is an indispensable anthology for those pursuing Christology or ethics for their future endeavors. [End Page 212]Lindsey EsbensenUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The notion that the soul comes into existence simultaneously with the body at the moment of conception was originally introduced into the Patristic discourse as an alternative to the Origenist notion of a pre-existing soul. Yet from the sixth century onwards it was itself regarded as an Origenist tenet. Now it was claimed that only those who believed the soul to be created after the body were truly orthodox. The present article examines the links between this development and the Christological (...) conversies. (shrink)

In this paper I show that the problem of temporary intrinsics and a fundamental philosophical problem concerning the doctrine of the incarnation are isomorphic. To do so, I present the problem of temporary intrinsics, along with five responses to the problem. I then present the fundamental problem for Christology, which I call the problem of natural intrinsics. I present six responses to that problem, all but the last analogous to a response to the problem of temporary intrinsics. My goal (...) is not to argue that any individual response to either problem is correct. Instead, my goal is to present and defend an interesting and unnoticed similarity between two different problems, and to note how work on one problem can help with work on the other. -/- This is a penultimate manuscript, and not a final version, of a forthcoming article in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. As such, please do not cite this version; cite the official version, due out in OSPR VII in 2015. (shrink)

This article seeks to adumbrate something of an ascending complement to Blondel's descending Christology. For Blondel, the Word as Incarnate is not only the Redeemer but is also he in whom creation is constituted. Christ's synthesizing perception of creation mediates between the world and the creating Absolute and establishes things as real. Blondel's 'Panchristism' suggests that in his passive perception Christ is the keystone that solidifies and integrates even the most ignoble components of creation. In the current economy this (...) passive perception embraces the world as marred by sin. The way in which sin assumed by Christ in suffering and passivity is transformed in redemption is left underdeveloped, however. One aspect of a Christology that ascends from the sufferings of Christ is highlighted in reference to Blondel's own devotion to the Sacred Heart. This devotion illuminates an integration of sin and suffering into glory that is compatible with Blondel's thought. (shrink)

This article examines the practical nature of Christology in contemporary African Christianity. The writers argue that though the religious mindset of the African people does not allow a dichotomy between ontological and functional Christologies, existential challenges have made many Africans tilt towards the functional end. The method adopted in the article is a descriptive approach. Christology is central to the orthodox Christian faith. It permeates all the pages of the Bible. The Old Testament consistently predicts the coming of (...) the Messiah. The New Testament writers focused on Him in the light of His work on earth and the office he came to occupy concerning the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament. In history, the focus of theology has always been on the person and work of Christ. Contemporary African Christianity is not an exception to this trend. Many controversies have emerged in the process of the discussion on Christology. These Christological controversies surround the Person, picture, and deeds of Christ. A tilt towards functional Christology may cause a down-playing of God’s sovereign will to focus on what works. This may lead to syncretic beliefs and practices as people look for what gives a solution. The conclusion is that African Christology should blend ontology and functionality. The Christology that is both contextually relevant and scripturally balanced should be presented to the African people. Therefore, African theologians should make efforts to prepare theology that reflect a balanced Christological presentation intentionally. (shrink)

Taking as a starting point the assertion of an ambiguity in the Lutheran tradition's assessment of reason, the essay argues that the Kantian unreserved confidence in reason is criticised in Bonhoeffer. Based upon a Christological understanding of reason, Bonhoeffer endorses a view of reason which is specifically Christian and yet maintains a universality. With a focus on Bonhoeffer's Ethik as the hermeneutical key to his theology, Bonhoeffer's notion is also discussed in light of contemporary Christian ethics. In this part it (...) is particularly the role of reason within a public discourse which is treated in the essay. Here it is argued that Bonhoeffer may be appropriated in attempting to outline a Christological ontology of reason holding essential implications for the sources and conditions of public discourse. (shrink)

Christology is an attempt to relate the two natures of Christ; apology on the other hand, has the dual aim of justification and attack; both these entail polar structures. It is argued in this paper that these two binary systems of opposition interfered with each other to a certain extent. This occurred because of the practice of the early church to establish institutional stability and consent via a process of polarisation. The effect of apologetic antitheses on Ephrem’s description of (...) the natures of Christ is investigated. Examples from Ephrem’s work relating to the polarity between the church and Judaism, between the nature of God and Arianism, and between the nature of God and humanity are discussed. (shrink)

Theodore of Tarsus served as archbishop of Canterbury for twenty-two years until his death in 690, aged eighty-eight. Because the only significant record we had of Theodore was that contained in Bede's Historia, until recently it was very difficult to say anything about his life before this appointment, and even more difficult to determine anything about his thought. All of that changed in the last half of the twentieth century, when the discovery of some biblical glosses from Canterbury was revealed (...) and the ensuing scholarship uncovered more of Theodore's work than had previously been known. The Laterculus Malalianus is a text that benefited from treatment in this period. This present work examines the Laterculus for what it has to say about the person and work of Christ, and establishes that Theodore's main theological inspiration was Irenaeus of Lyons and the concept of recapitulation, even while he cast his thought in language heavily drawn from the Syriac East, and Ephrem the Syrian in particular. The volume represents a contribution to our understanding of the early medieval theological project in Britain, the transmission of eastern Mediterranean thought in the early medieval West and, ultimately, of the work of Theodore of Tarsus. James Siemens continues to research theological questions arising from the encounter between the Greek and Semitic East and Latin West through the late antique and early medieval periods. He is an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University, and director of the nascent Theotokos Institute for Catholic Studies. (shrink)

This work presents a historically informed, systematic exposition of the Christology of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of undivided Christendom, from the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD. Assuming the truth of Conciliar Christology for the sake of argument, Timothy Pawl considers whether there are good philosophical arguments that show a contradiction or incoherence in that doctrine. He presents the definitions of important terms in the debate and a (...) helpful metaphysics for understanding the incarnation. -/- In Defense of Conciliar Christology discusses three types of philosophical objections to Conciliar Christology. Firstly, it highlights the fundamental philosophical problem facing Christology: how can one thing be both God and man, when anything deserving to be called "God" must have certain attributes, and yet it seems that nothing that can aptly be called "man" can have those same attributes? It then considers the argument that if the Second Person of the Holy Trinity were immutable or atemporal, as Conciliar Christology requires, then that Person could not become anything, and thus could not become man. Finally, Pawl addresses the objection that if there is a single Christ then there is a single nature or will in Christ. However, if that conditional is true, then Conciliar Christology is false, since it affirms the antecedent of the conditional to be true, but denies the truth of the consequent. Pawl defends Conciliar Christology against these charges, arguing that all three philosophical objections fail to show Conciliar Christology inconsistent or incoherent. (shrink)

Questions concerning issues in Christology in Conflict are addressed. James Buckley’s attention to Barth’s metaphysical account and Rahner’s notion of Jesus as Realsysmbol are highlighted and clarified. Criticisms by Robert Krieg are briefly discussed and answered. Finally, though Rahner’s transcendental account of the person of Jesus is shown to lead to certain logical inconsistencies, it is argued, nevertheless, that his christology, though internally incoherent, is valuable.

The purpose of this article is to express what I call a “conciliar concern” regarding Jc Beall’s recently proposed contradictory Christology. By “conciliar concern” I mean a concern that is likely to be shared by all Christians—be they Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant—who are committed to the early ecumenical councils. Formulated as an argument, the concern is this: if contradictory Christology is correct, then the early ecumenical councils were misguided. But (conciliar Christians should say that) the early ecumenical councils (...) were not misguided. Therefore, (conciliar Christians should say that) contradictory Christology is not correct. (shrink)

The Martyrdom of Polycarp narrates a martyrdom ‘according to the Gospel’. Numerous facets of the text echo the passion materials of the Gospels, and Polycarp is directly said to imitate Christ. Various scholars have discussed the imitatio Christi theme within the work. Such an approach focuses upon Christ as an exemplar of suffering to be imitated, through specific events of similar suffering. But the Christology of the Martyrdom of Polycarp is far richer than this focus alone. Jesus Christ is (...) also the Son, Savior, eternal high priest, teacher, elector, king, and alternative to Caesar. As the sovereign, he actively coordinates events and chooses martyrs from among his servants. (shrink)

Christians, from Jerusalem to Jakarta and from the 1st to the 21st century, worship the same Jesus. However, the way that Jesus has been depicted throughout history and throughout different cultures has not been monolithic. The reason for discontinuity can be varied. One reason beneath the different descriptions of Jesus inhabits the issue of methodology. By “methodology,” I mean the ways people make sense of Jesus and present him to others. Generally, there are two main approaches to the study of (...) Christology: “from below” and “from above”. This article explores the concept of Christology “from below,” examining its historical development, assessing its theological assumptions, and investigating its contextual applications in the global context to cultivate some biblical principles for ongoing contextual theological conversations. (shrink)

This book brings together leading theologians and ethicists to explore the neglected relationship between Christology and ethics.

In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (6: 61), Kant provided an ethical interpretation of kenosis, the 'self-emptying' of Christ described by St Paul in Philippians 2: 6-8. This type of interpretation is distinct to Hegelian interpretations of Christ's kenosis, which read the 'self-emptying' in ontological terms. In this essay, I explore how the British Idealists received both interpretations of the doctrine, and constructed a range of Christologies of both types. Types of kenosis in the work of Thomas Hill (...) Green and Charles Gore are examined in detail, revealing their dependence on Kant's work. Following thework of DonaldMacKinnon in this area, I argue that Gore eventually adopted a Kantian Christology for political and ethical reasons. (shrink)

Given the interest in analytic theology circles about following “conciliar Christology,” this article describes three different patterns by which patristics scholars have interpreted the relations between the Ecumenical Councils in the past 150 years, patterns that I label as “pendulum swing,” “synthesis of emphases,” and “Cyrillian/traditional.” The article argues that whereas much analytic theology work on Christology belongs in the “synthesis of emphases” pattern, the ascendant paradigm in patristics scholarship is Cyrillian/traditional. It makes a case that the councils (...) understood themselves as moving in a straight line of development from one to another and as proclaiming a broadly Cyrillian Christology, in which the person of the Incarnate Logos is the subject of all actions and experiences of the incarnate Christ. Given the significance of this issue for analytic theology discussions of Christ’s human freedom (is it the freedom of the human nature to act independently of the Logos, or the human freedom of the Logos to accomplish his earthly mission?), analytic theologians would do well to be aware of these currents in patristics scholarship on the Ecumenical Councils. (shrink)

This article engages the current anti‐humanist or post‐human ethos from the point of view of Christology. Invoking Alain Badiou's claim that “the man of humanism has not survived the twentieth century”, it argues that the death of “the man of humanism” ushers in a situation in which the Christian proposal can be clarified in two crucial ways: Christology is the core of Christian anthropology, and therefore must be the first and last word of the Church's formulation of her (...) answer to the question that is every human life; there is no neutral “human” ground in which the Church can carry on a discourse about “humanism” or “natural law”. The current situation thus forces a theological decision: either the death of man or the God‐Man. (shrink)

In this chapter, I grant Jc Beall’s assertion that the best understanding of the doctrine of the incarnation posits that Christ is a contradictory being, in the sense that it has him satisfying complementary pairs of predicates. I also argue, however, that by attending to a distinction between predicate negation and sentence negation, this view can be upheld without positing any classical logical contradictions. I argue that the resulting Christological view has several advantages over Beall’s: It is more conservative about (...) avoiding contradiction, exhibits greater logical neutrality, and comports better with Christian tradition. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to distill the Christological elements from his voluminous corpus in a manner that shows the range, the coherence, and the value of Erasmus' thinking on matters Christological. While Erasmus works within the broad parameters of orthodox teaching, his critical skills with languages, accent on rhetoric in theology, keen sense of irony, appreciation for the limits of human knowledge, incipient sense of history, emphasis on the welfare of humanity, and passionate defense of peace, give his (...) work a distinctive stamp and thereby make a singular contribution to the history of Christology. (shrink)

This text critically examines the methodologies and arguments that guide how Black theology specifically affirms Black Christology as the definitive paradigm for authentic Christianity. Significantly, the racialized character of Black theology immediately sets this discourse within the context of philosophy of race.