Methodological questions in Christology
WHO DO YOU SAY I AM? Christology: What it is & why it matters - studying Jesus Christ and his teachings
Commonweal, March 22, 2002 by Robert A. Krieg
The biblical scene is well known. Jesus turns to his disciples and asks, "Who do people say that I am?" Various people reply, "John the Baptist" or "Elijah" or "one of the prophets." Then Jesus asks, "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter answers, "You are the Christ" (Mark 8:29).
Although this startling encounter first occurred two thousand years ago, the question remains with us. To every Christian of every era, the Lord Jesus asks: "But who do you say that I am?" And like Peter, we respond. Terminally ill, someone considers anew what she really believes about the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Or preparing to marry, a couple discuss how they see their marital lives in relation to the risen Lord. Or helping in a homeless shelter, someone senses that he is meeting Christ among the women, children, and men in the dining room. Jesus' question, "Who do you say I am?" has many correct answers, including: You are the crucified Messiah, the Christ of Cana, and the Son of Man among the poor.
Whenever we try to say who Jesus is for us, we engage in Christology. Christology is the attempt to understand the identity of Jesus as the Christ, as God's anointed one, as God's Son and the Second Person of the Trinity. We do not take up this question as spectators. Like Saint Peter or Martha (John 11:27), we are already deeply involved with the Lord Jesus. For us to reflect on Jesus' identity is simultaneously to describe Christ's relationship with us, with his disciples, and even with those who have never heard of him. What composes our belief in Jesus Christ is crucial to our individual lives and to the church's life. Therefore, the fuller our answers to the question of Jesus' identity, the fuller our lives as we face each day, care for one another, and participate in the Mass.
Christology is, of course, a technical term. It denotes an area of scholarly expertise that often seems hopelessly abstruse, even superfluous, to many believing Christians. Still, it is also a topic of current creativity and conflict in the church. As many Commonweal readers know, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has inquired into the orthodoxy of some Catholic theologians, most prominently the Jesuits Roger Haight and Jacques Dupuis. The specific works in question are Haight's Jesus Symbol of God (Orbis, 1999) and Dupuis's Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis, 1997). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the CDF have expressed skepticism about the efforts of Haight and Dupuis to reconcile traditional Christological doctrine with pressing issues related to contemporary culture and non-Christian religions. I shall return to Haight and Dupuis, but first I want to sketch out the broader theological context of the discussion.
Christology from above and from below Recent decades have seen the emergence of two distinct ways of reflecting on the mystery of Jesus Christ. What is known as "Christology from above" begins with the Second Person of the Trinity, with the preexisting divine Word in relation to the Father and the Holy Spirit. This methodology then proceeds "downward" to the Incarnation, to the event in which the Word or Logos became man in Jesus Christ. Finally, this approach to Christology draws our attention to how the Word made flesh suffered and died for our sins, and then rose from the dead and returned to God's "right hand." This more traditional way of thinking about Jesus Christ is often called "high" Christology because of its emphasis on the divinity of Jesus Christ. Prominent examples of this approach can be found in Joseph Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity (1968), The Person of Christ (1981) by Jean Galot, S.J., the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), and in the CDF's declaration, Dominus Iesus (September 5, 2000). A high Christology also pervades the writings of Romano Guardini and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
The other way of reflecting on the mystery of Jesus Christ is called "Christology from below." Theologians who espouse this approach start with the human figure of Jesus. Often the analysis begins either by considering in general what it means to be human, or by reconstructing the historical figure of Jesus as a Jew in Galilee during the reigns of Herod the Great (d. 4 b.c.) and his son Herod Antipas (d. a.d. 39). This kind of theological thinking then proceeds "upward" by reflecting on Jesus' singular union with God during his earthly life, as evident in his prayer to God as Abba, in his teachings, in his extraordinary personal authority, and in his compassion for others, including his miracles. Finally, Christology from below inquires into the mystery of Jesus' suffering, death, and Resurrection, asking why Christ is more than one martyr among others and also about the character of his Resurrection appearances. Christology from below is also known as "low" Christology, and is characterized by the emphasis it places on the humanity of Jesus Christ. It usually relies to some extent on the results of historical-critical studies of the Bible. Monika Hellwig's Jesus: The Compassion of God (1983), Gerard Sloyan's Jesus in Focus (1983), as well as Jesus: A Gospel Portrait (1992) by Donald Senior, C.P., and Christology (1995) by Gerald O'Collins, S.J., are widely respected examples of this approach. Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, S.J., Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, and Jon Sobrino, S.J., are all identified with Christology from below.
Both ways of thinking about Jesus Christ are based in Scripture and doctrine. Christology from above is inspired by the prologue to John's Gospel: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth" (1:14). By contrast, Christology from below takes seriously the testimony that "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard in his godly fear" (Hebrews 5:7). Further, both methods are anchored in the doctrine, promulgated by the Council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451), that Jesus Christ is "truly God" and "truly man" in "one person." In other words, Christology teaches that Jesus Christ unites all of the qualities belonging to God (such as omniscience) and all of the traits of a human being (such as a finite, explicit self-consciousness). Surely, the Chalcedonian doctrine formulates the paradox at the heart of Christian belief in Jesus Christ--the presence of two natures in one person--that gives rise to both Christology from above and Christology from below.
There are strengths and weaknesses in each approach. A merit of Christology from above is that it perceives Jesus Christ within the mystery of the triune God, thereby highlighting his divinity and the uniqueness of the Incarnation--that the divine Logos has become a full human being in only one individual, Jesus Christ. However, because of its top-down perspective and categories, Christology from above risks not saying enough about Christ's full humanity. A high Christology can implicitly convey a Docetism, the view that the Son of God only appeared to be human during his earthly life. Further, it tends to read the New Testament exclusively through the lens of John's prologue or the captivity epistles like Colossians, thereby overlooking the diversity--some would argue the contradictions--of the early church's testimony concerning Christ, and hence to some extent the complexity of Christ's identity.
One merit of Christology from below is that it illumines Jesus Christ's solidarity with us. "He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved" (Gaudium et spes, 22). Christology from below shows that Jesus is "one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Another merit of this approach is that it appeals to many people today. Since we tend to think in historical terms, we want to know when Jesus lived, how he fit into the Jewish world of his day, and why he was such a threat to the Romans. If done properly, Christology from below keeps in focus the human figure of Jesus of Nazareth while not neglecting Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God. Saying too little about the divinity of Christ and his unique singularity within history is the risk involved. In other words, Christology from below can move toward Ebionitism, the heresy that views Jesus as merely a man who was filled with the Holy Spirit at his baptism.
The Vatican's recent inquiries
It is the danger of losing sight of the divinity of Jesus Christ that Cardinal Ratzinger was anxious to combat by issuing Dominus Iesus on September 5, 2000. Jesus Christ "is endangered today by relativistic theories," the CDF statement asserted. Hence, "it is necessary above all to reassert the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ." Six months later (February 26, 2001), as a seeming sequel to Dominus Iesus, Ratzinger announced that the CDF had concluded its two-year investigation of Jacques Dupuis's book. Henceforth, all printings of Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism must include a "notification" from the CDF that gives eight pertinent theological principles, of which the following four specifically concern Jesus Christ:
1. "It must be firmly believed that Jesus Christ, the son of God made man, crucified and risen, is the sole and universal mediator of salvation for all humanity."
2. "It is therefore contrary to the Catholic faith to not only posit a separation between the Word and Jesus, or between the Word's salvific activity and that of Jesus, but also to maintain that there is a salvific activity of the Word as such in his divinity, independent of the humanity of the Incarnate Word."
3. "It is therefore contrary to the Catholic faith to maintain that revelation in Jesus Christ (or the revelation of Jesus Christ) is limited, incomplete, or imperfect."
4. "It is consistent with Catholic doctrine to hold that the seeds of truth and goodness that exist in other religions are a certain participation in truths contained in the revelation of or in Jesus Christ. However, it is erroneous to hold that such elements of truth and goodness, or some of them, do not derive ultimately from the source-mediation of Jesus Christ."
According to the CDF, this notification is necessary in order to prevent readers from experiencing "serious confusion and misunderstanding, which could result from this book." Dupuis has replied that he upheld the CDF's eight theological principles in his book, and commentators on the book agree. Yet, the CDF wanted to leave no doubt about these teachings. It seems clear that Ratzinger and the CDF were concerned about the clarity of Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism because of their general uneasiness with Christology from below.
Dupuis upholds Chalcedon's doctrine about Jesus Christ as truly God and truly a human being by presenting him as the "concrete universal." By this Dupuis means that Jesus Christ is at once the Logos and an utterly unique historical figure. While discussing Jesus Christ as God's eternal, universal Word who became man in Jesus Christ, Dupuis has also presented Jesus Christ as the historical individual who expressed his teachings and himself in ways determined by his Galilean culture and Jewish beliefs. Given the historical particularity of Jesus Christ, Dupuis has proposed that the Logos, while completely revealed in Jesus Christ, is simultaneously free to act in other, less complete manifestations throughout history. Because of the universality of the Logos, non-Christian religious traditions may in fact participate in the mediation of Jesus Christ. This seemingly controversial claim was promoted in Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter, Redemptoris missio (December 7, 1990). In sum, by combining Christology from above with Christology from below, Dupuis has affirmed the divinity of Jesus Christ and at the same time affirmed the humanity of Jesus Christ.
The CDF's concerns about Christology from below are not new. They began twenty years ago with inquiries into Hans Kung's On Being a Christian (1974) and Edward Schillebeeckx's Jesus (1974). In this regard, the CDF also issued statements about the dangers of the liberation theologies of Latin America in 1984 and 1986. More recently, Ratzinger voiced similar concerns about the writings of Anthony De Mello, S.J., and Tissa Balasuriya, O.M.I.
The CDF has not yet concluded its inquiry into Roger Haight's Jesus Symbol of God. However, it has suspended his right to teach at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In an effort to make belief in Jesus Christ more intelligible in today's postmodern culture, Haight relies solely on Christology from below. Inspired by Schillebeeckx's Christ: The Sacrament of Encounter with God (1960) and Jesus (1974), Haight speaks of God being "present and active for human salvation" in Jesus. Jesus is "God's authentic revelation and salvation of human existence," "a historical symbol of God's salvation of humankind." In other words, Jesus is God's sacrament. "Jesus is salvation by being a revealer of God, a symbol for an encounter with God, and an exemplar of human existence."
With his attentiveness to the differences among people because of history, culture, gender, race, or economic class, Haight's perspective makes the mystery of Christ more accessible to readers with a "pluralistic consciousness." Reviewers have acknowledged the value of this approach, some regarding Jesus Symbol of God as a benchmark in contemporary Christology. More controversially, though, Haight does not explicitly state that Jesus Christ is God's only begotten Son and the one savior of creation. It seems that such traditional affirmations would be inconsistent with Haight's thorough Christology from below. For this reason, John Cavadini has pointed out that "when it comes to calling Jesus a 'symbol' of God, many Christians will worry: Is that all? Merely a symbol?" (Commonweal, October 8, 1999). Similarly, Dermot Lane has noted: "Some will be concerned that the salvation of God mediated by Jesus appears to be on a par with the offer of God's salvation found in other religions" (Theological Studies 50; 1999).
These are reasonable concerns. Still, it is worth noting that the CDF has never undertaken a formal inquiry into a book that relies solely on Christology from above. No inquiries have ever been initiated into theologians who make too little of the humanity of Jesus Christ. Karl Rahner (d. 1984) noted as much in 1951 on the fifteen hundredth anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon. According to Rahner, Catholicism is always flirting with a "latent monophysitism," a one-sided emphasis upon the divinity of Christ. In Rahner's judgment, the church has difficulty accepting that Jesus was a full human being. If Rahner is correct, then Rome is more likely to inquire into the orthodoxy of theologians who work with a Christology from below than into the possible Docetism of theologians who follow a Christology from above.
Is some middle ground possible in this often neuralgic dispute? Some theologians hold that neither Christology from below nor Christology from above is adequate in itself. Each must be complemented by the other so that there emerges a fuller glimpse of the mystery of Jesus Christ. Rahner himself combined both approaches in his Foundations of Christian Faith (1974). Brian McDermott, S.J., has done the same in Word Become Flesh (1993). As already noted, Dupuis has used both approaches in Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. Moreover, Walter Kasper, who was made a cardinal in February 2001 and soon afterward the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, also combined the two methods in his Jesus the Christ (1974).
Theology's two foci: retrieval and dialogue
Whether or not theologians approach the mystery of Jesus Christ from above or from below, they work in relation to two distinct, though inseparable, foci. On the one hand, they rely on Scripture and tradition, and, on the other, they attend to the issues and ideas in today's church and society. In other words, theologians engage to some extent in both retrieval and dialogue, in a critical correlation of the church's past testimony and its present reality. For example, both Dupuis and Haight have declared that they are intent upon bringing God's revelation as attested to in Scripture and tradition into conversation with today's church and contemporary life. In this regard, Walter Kasper acknowledged the importance of theology's two foci at the outset of his Jesus the Christ. Citing Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God (1972), Kasper observed that Christology must unfold in continuity or "identity" with the Bible and tradition, and simultaneously it must remain "relevant" to contemporary life and thought.
Still, theologians differ among themselves as to how they in fact engage in retrieval and dialogue. Some place more weight on mining Scripture and tradition than on explicitly taking up contemporary ideas, while others stress dialogue without letting go of retrieval. Here is a significant difference between Ratzinger's way of doing theology and Kasper's. This difference shapes their respective views about Christology.
In Dominus Iesus, Ratzinger emphasizes the retrieval of Scripture and tradition and all but ignores dialogue. Biblical verses and phrases are cited in a synthetic manner, presenting the New Testament as a harmonious chorus of voices singing in praise of God's singular work in Jesus Christ but never attending to possible theological differences, or even contradictions, among the texts. Ratzinger also draws heavily on patristic texts, the documents of Vatican II, and the encyclical letters of Pope John Paul II. Here, the declaration smoothes over the diversity of Christian teachings. Further, although the declaration recognizes the issues facing the church today, its presentation of contemporary ideas is broad-brush, summarizing them in propositional statements and writing them off as "relativistic theories."
In response to Dominus Iesus, Kasper published an essay that conveys a more positive regard for interreligious dialogue. In "Jesus Christ: God's Final Word" (Communio 28; Spring 2001), Kasper upholds belief in Jesus Christ as the one redeemer of all people and simultaneously acknowledges that theological conversations among Catholics and representatives of other religions can "open certain aspects of the mystery of Christ more deeply to us." Although Kasper makes many references to Scripture and church teachings concerning Jesus Christ as the one mediator between God and man, he also undertakes an empathetic, yet critical account of postmodern thought. In this, he demonstrates that he has taken seriously the concerns and ideas of contemporary philosophers and theologians while also anchoring his thought in church teachings. For this reason, his words ring true when he states that "interreligious dialogue is no one-way street; it is a genuine encounter, which can be an enrichment for us as Christians." He insists that Catholic theology must be marked by "dialogue and diakonia [service]."
How much weight should be given to mining the riches of the Bible and Christian tradition, and how much to listening to the testimony of the living church? At what point does retrieval become mere repetition of biblical verses and doctrinal formulations at the expense of meaning? And, at what point does dialogue collapse into a monologue that unthinkingly privileges the fashionable ideas of the day? Obviously, these are crucial questions.
The Third Vatican Council
Cardinal Ratzinger gave an address to the synod of bishops in Rome on October 6, 2001, in which he sharply criticized Christology from below. He stated: "The central problem of our time is the emptying out of the historical figure of Jesus. It begins with denying the virgin birth, then the Resurrection becomes a spiritual event, then Christ's awareness of being the Son of God is denied, leaving him only the words of a rabbi. Then the Eucharist falls, and becomes just a farewell dinner."
These are strong words. They indicate that Ratzinger is troubled not only by specific Christological texts but also by Christology from below in general, especially when it relies heavily on the historical-critical method. Unfortunately, his description bears only a faint resemblance to the sophisticated work of reputable Catholic scholars. In any case, Ratzinger surely sees this approach to Jesus Christ as a threat to Christian faith.
A full and vital understanding of Jesus Christ is essential for the Christian faith and the church's life. In response to Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?" Catholics must honor the mystery of the Lord Jesus by identifying him in different ways, for example, as the crucified Messiah, the Christ of Cana, and the Son of Man among the poor. Just as Catholicism accepts various models of the church because the church itself is a complex, indeed mysterious, reality, so too Catholicism embraces a range of images and views of Jesus Christ who is an absolute mystery. Catholics are increasingly interested in reflecting on Jesus Christ in relation to such religious figures as the Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Muhammad, and Moses. This is especially the case for Catholics outside of North America and Europe. For this reason, Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., has observed that "the next wave [of Christology] to rise and roll into the church's consciousness will be that of non-Western Christologies, as the young and growing churches of Africa, Asia, and India formulate their own answer to the Christological question in words and concepts taken from their own cultures" (Consider Jesus, Crossroad, 1990). But what are the limits of this spectrum of Christologies?
In his address to the synod of bishops, Ratzinger said that the issues currently facing the church would resolve themselves if the church would come to a greater awareness of the living Christ. Whether or not one agrees with Ratzinger's evaluation of Christology, one can see that he has identified a central issue: the unity and diversity of the church's views of Jesus Christ. This issue is so vital to the church and so global that it cannot be adequately addressed only by local churches and their theologians. The time may be approaching when the church must convene its Third Vatican Council. Whereas the First Vatican Council (1869-70) clarified the character of papal authority and the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) illuminated the church's nature and mission, the Third Vatican Council may choose to shed fresh light on the very center of the church's faith. That is, Vatican III may respond anew to the question that Jesus posed to Peter, "But who do you say that I am?"
Robert A. Krieg is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent book is Romano Guardini: A Precursor of Vatican II (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).
COPYRIGHT 2002 Commonweal Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
Monday, June 30, 2008
JESUS CHRIST IN HISTORY AND TRADITION
Gerard hall, "Jesus the Christ"
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/gehall/XTOLOGY.htm
Chapter Six
JESUS CHRIST IN HISTORY AND TRADITION
# The post-biblical approach to Jesus
# Early debates
# Logos-christology
# From Arius to the Council of Nicea
# From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
# Interpreting the doctrines today
Having surveyed the New Testament understanding and experience of the historical and risen Jesus, it would be tempting to by-pass the history of the ways in which Jesus Christ has been interpreted in order to bring the Christ mystery into immediate dialogue with our contemporary situation. However, since we carry the history of our tradition with us, it is important that we acknowedge the way that it shapes our lives and understanding. We are, if you like, part of a living, changing Jesus tradition that influences both the questions we ask and the answers we give to the Jesus event. We are part of an ongoing story.
In this regard, William Thompson highlights the importance of giving attention to the historical unfolding of the Jesus tradition:
It is simply artificial, even naively uncritical, to think that one can jump directly from the biblical inheritance into the modern period. The tradition-bound nature of our humanity and faith means that the way we experience Christianity today is, in theory and practice, at least partially the result of the entire tradition from which we spring. [ William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 299. ]
This is not a matter of taking sides in the old Protestant-Catholic debate on the question of scripture versus tradition. Today, centrist biblical scholars and theologians, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, acknowledge both the normative nature of the bible and its mediation via the effective history of the Church. This does not mean that we are bound to an uncritical acceptance of the tradition. In fact, it is only by being aware of the tradition that we are then able to learn from its strengths and avoid or overturn its weaknesses.
Lest this approach be misunderstood, we may also like to say with the easter liturgy that 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow', but that our experience and understanding of this central mystery of our christian faith is always contingent or finite. Some appreciation of the historical unfolding of the interpretation of Jesus Christ enables us to recognise the ways in which culture and history always enter into our attempts to explain the christian mystery. Moreover, such explanations are closely entwined with practical expressions whether personal (liturgy and life-style), ecclesial (church life and organization) or political (relationship of church to wider society). In our discussion, we should not lose sight of this intimate connection between theory and practice.
The post-biblical approach to Jesus
'We ought to think of Jesus Christ as of God' said Clement of Rome in a late first century sermon. Beyond christian sources, Pliny the Younger writes to his fellow Romans that these 'christians' would gather to sing 'a hymn to Christ as though to a god'. It is evident, then, from sources both within and beyond christianity, that the divine status of Jesus continues to be a central affirmation of the christian movement. The theoretical and practical implications of this fact would take many centuries before reaching a point of equilibrium.
In the early christian centuries of the Roman empire, to express belief in the divinity of Jesus was not a matter of idle speculation or mere academic debate. It was a highly political and dangerous act as is evidenced by the fact that many christians were prepared to be--and quite often were--martyred rather than renounce their belief. After all, the Romans had already afforded their emperor with divine honours and so were not about to be troubled by a group of christian enthusiasts keen to recognise divinity in someone else. Rome reasoned that, whatever else this incipient christian movement's claim represented, it was a potential threat to the life and order of the empire. As history would show, it was a reasoning process that proved quite correct.
If Rome was captivated by the political implications of Jesus' acclaimed God-status, christians themselves had their own problems in reconciling their confession of faith with both Hebrew and Greek notions of divinity. Apart from the old problem of reconciling Jewish monotheism with a divine-human Jesus, the progressive Hellenization of christianity (that is, the deepening influence of Greek thought on christian self-understanding) brought new problems. How could the all-powerful and unchanging God of Aristotle--and, to a lesser extent, of Plato--be in any way identified with a humiliated and crucified figure of history?
Early debates
Debates in the second century focus on this issue of reconciling the human figure with the divine identity of Jesus. These debates led to the final split of Christianity from Judaism which, however, did little to lessen the internal divisions within Christianity itself as it struggled to account for the human-divine identity of Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it is not just a matter of striking the right formula (seeing things aright), but also a matter of being converted to a new way of naming and experiencing the perfect divine presence in our most imperfect human world.
One of the earliest groups of faithful Jews who also wanted to acknowledge the special status of Jesus were the Ebionites. They recognised Jesus as God's chosen prophet who had come to put an end to the Old Testament priesthood. However, in expressely denying the virginal birth of Jesus and the pre-existence of the Son, they found themselves on the outside of accepted christian belief and practice. Their position was not dissimilar to that of the Moralists who spoke of Jesus as a unique, 'moral' figure of human history, endowed with special powers, and who could serve as an example for others to follow.
Even after the separation from Judaism, Christians continued to identify themselves as monotheists. Influenced by Greek thought, the Monarchists and Adoptionists struggled with the idea of God's absolute, unchanging reality. This led the former group to speak of God's 'monarchy' and to deny any distinction between the Father and the Son. In this scenario, the divinity of the Son, Jesus, is achieved through denying his true individuality and humanity. The latter group tried to solve the problem by suggesting that Jesus was 'adopted' as God's Son and thereby was not fully or truly divine.
Another widespread movement in early christianity was known as Gnosticism because its members claimed to be 'gnostics', that is, those who possessed secret knowledge. Part of their 'knowledge' involved an understanding of the material world as either evil or unreal and therefore not created by God who is both good and real. It is interesting for us to note that such a negative view of the world and creation generally has often plagued Cristianity as many another religion and culture. Early Christian gnostics logically reasoned that the incarnation was not an acceptable doctrine. Their christology is best expressed by the Docetists who said that Jesus only 'appeared' to be human or that he took a human form in the manner of a 'costume'.
It is customary to divide these early movements into those which deny the full divinity of Jesus (Ebionites, Moralists and Adoptionists) and those that declaim Jesus' true humanity (Monarchists, Gnostics and Docetists). While this is no doubt the case, there is much more at stake in these debates, namely, the inability to understand or experience the divine as the pathos of love and compassion and the inability to understand or experience the human as the locus of genuine divinity. Neither side of these christological debates is able to breakthrough the dualistic separation of an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God and a messy, changeable all too human (= too corrupt) created world.
In essence, these debates represent a failure to fully depth the mystery of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and of Jesus whose pathos and world-involvement are constantly evident. They likewise represent a failure to relate to the human and creative possibilities that are manifested to us in the life of Jesus (itself based on the Jewish experience of the essential goodness of all creation that springs from God). The issue of Jesus identity really comes down to the issue of how God is, or even can be, present to the world. Certainly, this was the key-issue behind the christological debates in the second and third centuries.
Logos-christology
In fact, the Jewish notion of Logos -- God's divine Word active in creation and history--had already provided a way of expressing how divine transcendence acts in the world. The Word, understood as of God and in God, was also the means by which God created and sustained the universe. Logos is the creative word of Genesis, the prophetic word of the Jewish prophets and, in Johannine theology, the pre-existent, divine reality that becomes incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. This would seem to be an adequate Jewish model for depthing the way in which the divine mystery is especially revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
However, the very success of Christianity in spreading itself throughout the Graeco-Roman world led to the increasing pressure to explicate its mysteries and beliefs in the high intellectual Greek philosophy of the day. It so happened that Hellenistic philosophy also used the word Logos in a subtly but significantly different way to Hebrew thought. For the Greeks, Logos was the principle of unity, order and reason within the universe. It too had its origins in God but, under the influence of Platonic thought, Logos tended to be separate from God. We might say that, whereas the Jewish Logos was a non-created and fully divine power, the Greek Logos tended to be interpreted as a created, semi-divine power.
The result was a series of masterful attempts to blend the Jewish and Greek understandings of Logos to explicate how the divine reality was present in the human Jesus. However, under the increasing influence of the Greek understanding of the Logos, most of these christologies were subordinationist: that is, they were unable to account for the equality of the Father and the Son:
For Justin, the Logos was derivative of God. For Irenaeus, the Son was not quite equal to the Father. For Tertullian, the Father and the Son are of the same substance, but not equal. And for Origen, the Logos is indeed an image of God, but is clearly not God. [ Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 218f. ]
However, there was an equal problem in that many of these christologies also failed to account for the genuine humanity of Jesus. Jesus becomes a kind of 'third-entity' between divinity and humanity. We remain caught in the bind of inadequate understandings of both the divine mystery and the human reality. This is most evident with regard to the teachings of Arius (d.336).
From Arius to the Council of Nicea
Arius was one of the early Christian monks who brought matters of Jesus' divine-human identity to a point of crisis. He was probably more a popularizer of prevailing ideas than an original thinker himself. Indeed, apart from his evident preaching abilities, part of his appeal was in the fact that he lived a holy, austere and moral life. As is often the case with religious politics, it is only when ideas stir the people--to the point, it is said, that there were massive demonstrations in the streets of Alexandria--, that civil and religious authorities take note and react. And react they did, to the point of banishing Arius and calling the first full-scale Council in the church's history.
What was it that Arius and his followers, the Arians, taught that created such a stir? Arius held that the Logos was a demi-God interceding between God and the world. The Logos was not God but a creature, albeit of exalted status; nor, strictly speaking, could the Logos be identified with a purely worldly reality. This meant that Jesus, in whom the Logos was uniquely present, was neither fully divine nor truly human, but something in between both. If Arius was only baldly declaring what had been implied in earlier teachings, history was to present him with the role of scapegoat for holding a doctrine contrary to orthodox Christian belief.
Whether we call it fate or providence, the fact is that the Arian dispute occurred at a point in history where Christian unity was considered essential for the unity of what came to be called the 'Holy Roman Empire'. The emperor Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith in 312 CE, soon santioned Christianity with 'official religion' status. This meant that any source of inner-religious division was likely to boil over into political and civil unrest. History records that it was Constantine rather than the bishop of Rome or the patriarch of Alexandria who actually decreed the Council at Nicea in 325 CE. It was likewise the emperor Constantine who opened the Council and confirmed its decrees.
Evidently, religion and politics had become entangled to the point where matters of theological debate were significant for social harmony. Over two hundred bishops gathered at Nicea in a mood of enthusiasm and optimism. As much as anything, the Council symbolized the wonderful advances of Christianity--from a Jewish sect to a Gentile church and from a persecuted minority to the established religion of the empire--in fewer than three hundred years.
The Council also responded to the theological matter at hand: it condemned the teachings of Arius and upheld that Jesus was not a demi-God but indeed 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, . . .' Most significantly, Nicea defended Jesus' divine status not just in scriptural terminology but through the use of Greek language--'homoousios' ('translated 'one in substance' or 'one in being') with the Father. Effectively, Nicea established the principle of the necessity of translating the Christian message into the language and the culture of the people to whom it is being addressed. This is sometimes called the incarnational, sacramental or missionary principle of Christian faith which has been so significant in the ability of the church to make its message heard in diverse cultures throughout the centuries.
What, then, are we to make of Nicea's christological achievements? By affirming the full divinity of Jesus, Nicea actually saves Christianity from the excesses of Greek philosophy which held on to a totally changeless and immutable God who is somehow immune from any real contact with the created world. Because the divine mystery is fully present in the human Jesus, this works as a powerful symbol for the reality of God's pathos and love in human history. Moreover, properly understood, this links in with a notion of salvation that consists, not in flight from the (evil) world, but in commitment to a (healing) world. In these ways, Nicea reiterates the central insights of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, Nicea's single focus on the divinity of Jesus leaves us with a most unbalanced picture. What about the other dimensions of the Jesus event such as his humanity, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection? In essence, where is the connection to the historical Jesus to be made in all this talk of divine status? It would seem that Nicea affirms Jesus' divinity but then severs it from the concrete reality of his human existence. Neither should we forget that there are political dimensions to the Council which are related to the cause of the Roman empire: Jesus is now the triumphant, imperial Lord rather than one who sides with the oppressed, alienates the powerful, and goes to his death in a state of abject humiliation.
Evidently, one Council cannot achieve everything. Consequently, we need to read Nicea's 'high christology' in relation to the christology of the humiliated Jesus presented to us in the writings of the early Christian martyrs. This may also be a place to mention that the more masculine Word/Logos-christology adopted by the 'early fathers' should be complemented by more attention to the feminine Wisdom/Sophia-christology of the Scriptures. [ See Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1995), 131-162; and Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God (Homebush: St Paul's, 1995), 19-68. ] It is surely significant, that as Christianity lost contact with its more radical roots, it relegated the feminine, along with the poor and outcast, to a less than central position in its life and self-reflections. In all this, there is a loss of contact with the biblical understanding of Jesus.
In any event, the Council of Nicea was a significant ecclesial and political event in Christian life and self-understanding. Its promotion of the divinity of Jesus soon affected the church's liturgy which moved away from the sense of communal meal and celebration towards the more private experience of worship. Nicea was also a symbol of the new unity of church and state. Henceforth, as Constantine had predicted, Christianity would 'play a role similar to that which the old State religion of Rome had played'. [Cited by William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 310. ] Moreover, the articulation of the Christian mystery would now become increasingly dependant on Greek philosophy rather than the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, as history would soon reveal, Nicea does not have the last word on the issue of Jesus' identity. Its many unanswered questions were soon to flare up in a new series of controversies.
From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
The issue that Nicea failed to address could be summarized as follows: if Jesus is both divine and human, how are these two realities united in his personhood? One answer solves the problem by simply accepting the 'other half' of Arianism (the 'half' that Nicea does not directly condemn) which states that Jesus' humanity is a 'costume' or 'mask' which he wore to conceal his real (divine) identity. This is only a solution to the extent that it dissolves the problem: Jesus is not genuinely human at all. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched kind of answer, it is actually the image of Jesus that has underpinned many a Christian theology and piety throughout the ages.
A couple of extreme examples of this solution to the issue of Jesus' identity are the following:
For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the mind of those who were with him to entertain a different opinion of him. (Clement of Alexandria)
Our Lord felt the force of suffering but without its pain; the nails pierced the flesh as an object passes through the air, painlessly. (Hilary of Poitiers) [ Clement of Alexandria and Hilary of Poitiers respectively, cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ]
Athanasius (d.373), who had attended the Council of Nicea as a deacon, and had subsequently been appointed bishop to the influential see of Alexandria, sought to explain Nicea's teaching on the divinity of Jesus without falling into this trap of comprimising his humanity. Athanasius taught that, unless Jesus was both genuinely human and truly divine, then the purpose of the incarnation--the divinization of humanity--could not be achieved.
The approach of Athanasius and the Alexandrian School is sometimes called 'Word-flesh' christology. It begins by affirming the divinity of the pre-existent Logos which is then united to the human flesh of Jesus. To the question of whether Christ really suffered--a prospect which Hilary of Poitiers clearly denies (see the quotation above)--, Athansius says that Christ, the Word, the divine Logos does suffer 'in his body' but 'not in himself'. For Athanasius and Alexandrian christology generally the divine in Jesus always takes precedence over the human. Specifically, it does not seem to provide a place for the human 'soul' (intellect, emotions and will) of Jesus. Nonetheless, Athanasius' attempt to explicate the divine-human identity of Jesus does take us some steps forward.
An extreme form of Alexandrian teaching, which shows its inherent weakness, is evident in Apollinaris (d.390) who outrightly denies that Jesus has a human mind and soul. For Apollinaris, Christ was the 'heavenly man' who, he says, 'is neither fully man nor God, but a mixture of God and man'. For Apollinaris, the divine Logos is the human consciousness of Jesus: that is another way of saying that the historical Jesus did not have human consciousness at all. This teaching was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Evidently, there was need for another model to explain how the divine could be present in the human Jesus. It so happened that an alternative approach was being developed--not in Alexandria, but in the rival city of Antioch.
As often happens with rival cities, not only are they divided on matters of food and custom, but they also develop their own ideologies, theologies and ways of thinking about life. Followers of the Antiochene School developed what is called a 'Word-man' christology. By beginning their reflections with the human Jesus rather than the pre-existing Logos, they hoped to safeguard the humanity of Christ. One of their chief ploys and lasting impacts was to speak of 'two natures' in Jesus Christ, one human, the other divine. Consequently, they were able to locate Jesus' real human soul in his human nature while allowing for another, separate, divine nature. If there was a problem with this apprroach, it is that we are still left with the issue of understanding how these two natures could co-exist in the one identity. Surely, if there were two natures, there must be two Christs!
Of course, to our ears today, all this sounds very abstract as well as being devoid of any real interest in the historical realities of Jesus' earthly life. However, we should not think that, for the ordinary Christian folk of the fourth and fifth centuries, these matters were either uninteresting or reserved for scholarly church debate. Elizabeth Johnson tells the story of one bishop going out to buy a loaf of bread and finding that 'even the baker' wanted to discuss whether there were one or two natures in Christ! [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ] In fact, debate was beginning to rage over this issue. One catch-cry was: 'Cut him in two who divides Christ!' [ Cited by Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 225. ] Alexandria and Antioch were in conflict.
Unfortunately, what followed in the first half of the fifth century was a most turbulent and unseemly period in Christian history that owed as much to political intrigue as to theological argument. There were rigged Councils, banished bishops, imprisonments, ecclesiastical witch-hunts and even physical fights resulting, in one case, with the death of a bishop (Flavian, patriach of Constantinople). The church was, in many ways, reflecting the power-play that was occurring in the Roman empire, a power-play that acted out the rivalries between East and West and eventually led to Marcion's unconstitutional seizure of the emperor's throne.
Significantly, it was Marcion, the new emperor, who called the Council to meet at Nicea to decide once and for all on this problem of understanding Jesus' identity. Fights broke out again and the Council had to be aborted. It then reconvened at Chalcedon in 451 CE. The central christological issue was how to maintain appreciation of Jesus' identification both with God and with humanity. Pope Leo I stated the matter succinctly: 'It is as dangerous an evil to deny the truth of the human nature of Christ as it is to refuse to believe that his glory is equal to the Father'. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 9. ]
In many ways, the Council of Chalcedon provided a masterful compromise of Alexandrian and Antiochene teachings. Thus, it accepted (with the Antiochenes) that there were indeed 'two natures' in Christ so that he should be understood as both 'perfectly human' and 'perfectly divine'--'one in being with Father as to divinity and one in being with us as to humanity'. Consequently, Jesus' humanity is not just a costume or mask: he had a human body that suffered and a human will that made human decisions in the face of doubt and risk.
Yet (with the Alexandrians), Chalcedon also taught that Jesus' dual natures did not in any way compromise the essential unity of his 'person' since there is only 'one and the same Christ'. Effectively, Chalcedon had 'solved' the problem of Jesus' identity by using Greek categories of 'substance', 'person' and 'nature': Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father and the same substance as us; and although possessing two natures, divine and human, these are united in the one person. This unity of Christ's personhood was also expressed in the Council's teaching (against Nestorius d.451) that Mary is not only the mother of Christ ('christotokos') but, indeed, the mother of God ('theotokos'). To say otherwise, it reasoned, would be to 'split Christ'.
Following Chalcedon, two further so-called Christological Councils were held at Constantinople in 553 and 680-681 CE. respectively. Their major contribution was to refine aspects of Chalcedonian christology. Constantinople II, for example, specified that Jesus possessed two fully functioning wills, divine and human. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that christological development essentially stopped with Chalcedon. It became the benchmark upon which all further christology was measured. Moreover, it seemed that christianity was exclusively tied to the 'one person--two natures' manner of expressing who Jesus was and is.
Only in 1951, on the fifthteenth hundred anniversary of Chalcedon, was there any serious attempt in Catholic theology to 'go beyond' Chalcedon. German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote an essay entitled: Chalcedon: End or Beginning? [ Karl Rahner, Chalcedon: End or Beginning? redacted as Current Problems in Christology, Theological Investigations 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. ] He spoke of the sorry and stagnant state of christology which seemed to be so opposed to new ways of expressing the reality of Jesus and his significance for our world today. He was especially critical of the fact that most Christians seemed to ignore the deep truth that Chalcedon had tried to express--Jesus Christ, Word and Son of God, was indeed genuinely human. Evidently, Chalcedon and the classical christological doctrines were in need of review.
Interpreting the doctrines today
The problem is essentially one of translating fifth century Greek language and thought into the twentieth century. To begin, we need to ask what it can possibly mean for us today to speak of 'substance' ('ousion') in either God or humanity? To our way of thinking, 'substance' is normally associated with 'inert matter' which is clearly an inappropriate and unhelpful way of describing either divine or human reality. In fact, the Greek 'ousion' is better translated as 'being'--a more dynamic, living category--than 'substance' which is passive and static. Yet, even here, we need to ask what it can possibly mean to apply the same notion--whether 'substance' or 'being'--to refer to two such totally different realities as God and humanity.
As well, our modern understanding of 'person' ('prosopon') is at odds with Chalcedon. We understand 'person' in psychological terms as the ego-centre of human consciousness, freedom and action. By contrast, Chalcedon used the notion of 'person' to describe in abstract language how there was a 'centre of divine-human unity' in Jesus Christ. If anything, to contemporary ears, this seems to devalue the human personhood of Jesus. In fact, Chalcedon had used the word 'nature' ('phusis') to describe the reality of Jesus' human personhood. But, in modern usage, 'nature' sounds more like an abstract quality than a dynamic source of human life and activity.
In the wake of these kinds of difficulties, it may be more important for us today to attempt to express the christological mystery in different language. This approach seeks to be faithful to the intentions of the classic doctrines, and yet open to the insights of contemporary psychological, historical and biblical scholarship. Today we might begin with the question of what it means to be a person and then apply this to our understanding of the mystery of the person of Jesus. Our 'answer' may look something like the following.
To 'be a person' is essentially to 'be in relationship' with the physical world of nature, with the social reality of human others and institutions, with oneself, and with the divine mystery. These are all dynamic, living, growing dimensions of what it means to be a human person. We might even say that 'personhood' is not so much who one is as who one becomes through interaction and relationship. Applying this to the mystery of the personhood of Jesus, we can recognise that he shares in all these relationships. If we can speak of a unique or superior personhood of Jesus, this does not in any way deny his full human reality. To the contrary, Jesus' uniqueness resides precisely in the fact that he lives out all these relationships--with the world of nature, with others, with himself, and with God--to a superior degree.
In fact, the classical christological doctrines can be interpreted in this light. Chalcedon's intuition is surely to do with the reality that Jesus' identity is a dynamic, living relationship with divinity and with humanity. His relationship with the divine mystery does not annul his genuine humanness, but crowns it. We have seen how some of the early Fathers saw the human project in terms of the 'divinization' of humanity; today, there is more talk of the need for 'humanization'. The story of Jesus is the story that says divinization and humanization are not opposed projects, but different dimensions of the one human-divine process in which we are all called to play a part. Christian faith acclaims that this process has been lived most fully and completely in Jesus Christ.
This approach, then, has important implications for our appreciation of Jesus' humanness, an appreciation that is underscored by the Second Vatican Council:
Human nature as (Christ) assumed it was not annulled. . . . He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin. [ Dogmatic Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, article 22. ]
This understanding of Jesus is very different to the kind of one-sided power-christology that is unfortunately often associated with the classical doctrines. However, it should not be thought that a genuine appreciation of Jesus' human status was absent from the best interpreters of the tradition. For example, Cyril of Alexandria (d.444), a strong defender of the divinity of Jesus, had this to say:
We have admired his goodness in that for love of us he has not refused to descend to such a low position as to bear all that belongs to our nature, included in which is ignorance. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 46. ]
These quotations from such diverse sources as Vatican II and Cyril of Alexandria not only express belief in Jesus' genuine and complete humanity; they also understand that it is precisely in his humanity that the divine mystery is disclosed.
Consequently, the recovery of the human Jesus is equally a new and profound disclosure of the self-emptying divine love present in his earthly life and especially symbolized in the mystery of the cross. This kenotic--'self-emptying'--christology is expressed in an early Christian hymn:
The state of Jesus Christ was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are: and being as we are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. . . . (Philippians 2:6-11)
This represents a double disclosure: it alters our perceptions of the divine mystery (God is pure pathos and compassionate love); and it stretches our horizons of what it means to be human (to live one's life in loving service of God and others even, or especially, in the face of evil and death). Properly understood, this does not glorify the evil of the cross, but shows us that God's love in Jesus transforms evil and death into goodness and life. Such divine love is also open to those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus' life of love and service. A kenotic christology leads to a christology of discipleship.
In fact, discipleship christology is more evident in the writings of the Christian martyrs, saints and mystics than in the classical doctrines of Nicea and Chalcedon. It is also more evident in the writings of some of the reformers (such as Martin Luther) who, while accepting the teachings of the Councils, focus their meditations more directly on the historical Jesus of the scriptures and the humiliated Jesus of the cross. This is a timely reminder of the fact that any set of propositions regarding Jesus Christ will always be inadequate. It is also a reminder that we need to search within the whole Christian tradition to find undercurrents that off-set a too dogmatic and authoritarian approach to the Christ-mystery.
On the other hand, we stand within a living Christian tradition which has, in large measure, been formed by the classical christological doctrines. They were important moments in the history of our Christian self-understanding. Consequently, we acknowledge our debt for the way in which they helped clarify the Christian mystery in their own historical context--ambiguities notwithstanding. Nonetheless, as indicated earlier, we do not merely repeat the past: ours must be a creative fidelity. Hopefully, this brief attempt to reinterpret the classical doctrines of Christ within a larger framework has provided some light for our contemporary understanding of who Jesus Christ is for us and our world-situation today.
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/gehall/XTOLOGY.htm
Chapter Six
JESUS CHRIST IN HISTORY AND TRADITION
# The post-biblical approach to Jesus
# Early debates
# Logos-christology
# From Arius to the Council of Nicea
# From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
# Interpreting the doctrines today
Having surveyed the New Testament understanding and experience of the historical and risen Jesus, it would be tempting to by-pass the history of the ways in which Jesus Christ has been interpreted in order to bring the Christ mystery into immediate dialogue with our contemporary situation. However, since we carry the history of our tradition with us, it is important that we acknowedge the way that it shapes our lives and understanding. We are, if you like, part of a living, changing Jesus tradition that influences both the questions we ask and the answers we give to the Jesus event. We are part of an ongoing story.
In this regard, William Thompson highlights the importance of giving attention to the historical unfolding of the Jesus tradition:
It is simply artificial, even naively uncritical, to think that one can jump directly from the biblical inheritance into the modern period. The tradition-bound nature of our humanity and faith means that the way we experience Christianity today is, in theory and practice, at least partially the result of the entire tradition from which we spring. [ William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 299. ]
This is not a matter of taking sides in the old Protestant-Catholic debate on the question of scripture versus tradition. Today, centrist biblical scholars and theologians, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, acknowledge both the normative nature of the bible and its mediation via the effective history of the Church. This does not mean that we are bound to an uncritical acceptance of the tradition. In fact, it is only by being aware of the tradition that we are then able to learn from its strengths and avoid or overturn its weaknesses.
Lest this approach be misunderstood, we may also like to say with the easter liturgy that 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow', but that our experience and understanding of this central mystery of our christian faith is always contingent or finite. Some appreciation of the historical unfolding of the interpretation of Jesus Christ enables us to recognise the ways in which culture and history always enter into our attempts to explain the christian mystery. Moreover, such explanations are closely entwined with practical expressions whether personal (liturgy and life-style), ecclesial (church life and organization) or political (relationship of church to wider society). In our discussion, we should not lose sight of this intimate connection between theory and practice.
The post-biblical approach to Jesus
'We ought to think of Jesus Christ as of God' said Clement of Rome in a late first century sermon. Beyond christian sources, Pliny the Younger writes to his fellow Romans that these 'christians' would gather to sing 'a hymn to Christ as though to a god'. It is evident, then, from sources both within and beyond christianity, that the divine status of Jesus continues to be a central affirmation of the christian movement. The theoretical and practical implications of this fact would take many centuries before reaching a point of equilibrium.
In the early christian centuries of the Roman empire, to express belief in the divinity of Jesus was not a matter of idle speculation or mere academic debate. It was a highly political and dangerous act as is evidenced by the fact that many christians were prepared to be--and quite often were--martyred rather than renounce their belief. After all, the Romans had already afforded their emperor with divine honours and so were not about to be troubled by a group of christian enthusiasts keen to recognise divinity in someone else. Rome reasoned that, whatever else this incipient christian movement's claim represented, it was a potential threat to the life and order of the empire. As history would show, it was a reasoning process that proved quite correct.
If Rome was captivated by the political implications of Jesus' acclaimed God-status, christians themselves had their own problems in reconciling their confession of faith with both Hebrew and Greek notions of divinity. Apart from the old problem of reconciling Jewish monotheism with a divine-human Jesus, the progressive Hellenization of christianity (that is, the deepening influence of Greek thought on christian self-understanding) brought new problems. How could the all-powerful and unchanging God of Aristotle--and, to a lesser extent, of Plato--be in any way identified with a humiliated and crucified figure of history?
Early debates
Debates in the second century focus on this issue of reconciling the human figure with the divine identity of Jesus. These debates led to the final split of Christianity from Judaism which, however, did little to lessen the internal divisions within Christianity itself as it struggled to account for the human-divine identity of Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it is not just a matter of striking the right formula (seeing things aright), but also a matter of being converted to a new way of naming and experiencing the perfect divine presence in our most imperfect human world.
One of the earliest groups of faithful Jews who also wanted to acknowledge the special status of Jesus were the Ebionites. They recognised Jesus as God's chosen prophet who had come to put an end to the Old Testament priesthood. However, in expressely denying the virginal birth of Jesus and the pre-existence of the Son, they found themselves on the outside of accepted christian belief and practice. Their position was not dissimilar to that of the Moralists who spoke of Jesus as a unique, 'moral' figure of human history, endowed with special powers, and who could serve as an example for others to follow.
Even after the separation from Judaism, Christians continued to identify themselves as monotheists. Influenced by Greek thought, the Monarchists and Adoptionists struggled with the idea of God's absolute, unchanging reality. This led the former group to speak of God's 'monarchy' and to deny any distinction between the Father and the Son. In this scenario, the divinity of the Son, Jesus, is achieved through denying his true individuality and humanity. The latter group tried to solve the problem by suggesting that Jesus was 'adopted' as God's Son and thereby was not fully or truly divine.
Another widespread movement in early christianity was known as Gnosticism because its members claimed to be 'gnostics', that is, those who possessed secret knowledge. Part of their 'knowledge' involved an understanding of the material world as either evil or unreal and therefore not created by God who is both good and real. It is interesting for us to note that such a negative view of the world and creation generally has often plagued Cristianity as many another religion and culture. Early Christian gnostics logically reasoned that the incarnation was not an acceptable doctrine. Their christology is best expressed by the Docetists who said that Jesus only 'appeared' to be human or that he took a human form in the manner of a 'costume'.
It is customary to divide these early movements into those which deny the full divinity of Jesus (Ebionites, Moralists and Adoptionists) and those that declaim Jesus' true humanity (Monarchists, Gnostics and Docetists). While this is no doubt the case, there is much more at stake in these debates, namely, the inability to understand or experience the divine as the pathos of love and compassion and the inability to understand or experience the human as the locus of genuine divinity. Neither side of these christological debates is able to breakthrough the dualistic separation of an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God and a messy, changeable all too human (= too corrupt) created world.
In essence, these debates represent a failure to fully depth the mystery of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and of Jesus whose pathos and world-involvement are constantly evident. They likewise represent a failure to relate to the human and creative possibilities that are manifested to us in the life of Jesus (itself based on the Jewish experience of the essential goodness of all creation that springs from God). The issue of Jesus identity really comes down to the issue of how God is, or even can be, present to the world. Certainly, this was the key-issue behind the christological debates in the second and third centuries.
Logos-christology
In fact, the Jewish notion of Logos -- God's divine Word active in creation and history--had already provided a way of expressing how divine transcendence acts in the world. The Word, understood as of God and in God, was also the means by which God created and sustained the universe. Logos is the creative word of Genesis, the prophetic word of the Jewish prophets and, in Johannine theology, the pre-existent, divine reality that becomes incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. This would seem to be an adequate Jewish model for depthing the way in which the divine mystery is especially revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
However, the very success of Christianity in spreading itself throughout the Graeco-Roman world led to the increasing pressure to explicate its mysteries and beliefs in the high intellectual Greek philosophy of the day. It so happened that Hellenistic philosophy also used the word Logos in a subtly but significantly different way to Hebrew thought. For the Greeks, Logos was the principle of unity, order and reason within the universe. It too had its origins in God but, under the influence of Platonic thought, Logos tended to be separate from God. We might say that, whereas the Jewish Logos was a non-created and fully divine power, the Greek Logos tended to be interpreted as a created, semi-divine power.
The result was a series of masterful attempts to blend the Jewish and Greek understandings of Logos to explicate how the divine reality was present in the human Jesus. However, under the increasing influence of the Greek understanding of the Logos, most of these christologies were subordinationist: that is, they were unable to account for the equality of the Father and the Son:
For Justin, the Logos was derivative of God. For Irenaeus, the Son was not quite equal to the Father. For Tertullian, the Father and the Son are of the same substance, but not equal. And for Origen, the Logos is indeed an image of God, but is clearly not God. [ Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 218f. ]
However, there was an equal problem in that many of these christologies also failed to account for the genuine humanity of Jesus. Jesus becomes a kind of 'third-entity' between divinity and humanity. We remain caught in the bind of inadequate understandings of both the divine mystery and the human reality. This is most evident with regard to the teachings of Arius (d.336).
From Arius to the Council of Nicea
Arius was one of the early Christian monks who brought matters of Jesus' divine-human identity to a point of crisis. He was probably more a popularizer of prevailing ideas than an original thinker himself. Indeed, apart from his evident preaching abilities, part of his appeal was in the fact that he lived a holy, austere and moral life. As is often the case with religious politics, it is only when ideas stir the people--to the point, it is said, that there were massive demonstrations in the streets of Alexandria--, that civil and religious authorities take note and react. And react they did, to the point of banishing Arius and calling the first full-scale Council in the church's history.
What was it that Arius and his followers, the Arians, taught that created such a stir? Arius held that the Logos was a demi-God interceding between God and the world. The Logos was not God but a creature, albeit of exalted status; nor, strictly speaking, could the Logos be identified with a purely worldly reality. This meant that Jesus, in whom the Logos was uniquely present, was neither fully divine nor truly human, but something in between both. If Arius was only baldly declaring what had been implied in earlier teachings, history was to present him with the role of scapegoat for holding a doctrine contrary to orthodox Christian belief.
Whether we call it fate or providence, the fact is that the Arian dispute occurred at a point in history where Christian unity was considered essential for the unity of what came to be called the 'Holy Roman Empire'. The emperor Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith in 312 CE, soon santioned Christianity with 'official religion' status. This meant that any source of inner-religious division was likely to boil over into political and civil unrest. History records that it was Constantine rather than the bishop of Rome or the patriarch of Alexandria who actually decreed the Council at Nicea in 325 CE. It was likewise the emperor Constantine who opened the Council and confirmed its decrees.
Evidently, religion and politics had become entangled to the point where matters of theological debate were significant for social harmony. Over two hundred bishops gathered at Nicea in a mood of enthusiasm and optimism. As much as anything, the Council symbolized the wonderful advances of Christianity--from a Jewish sect to a Gentile church and from a persecuted minority to the established religion of the empire--in fewer than three hundred years.
The Council also responded to the theological matter at hand: it condemned the teachings of Arius and upheld that Jesus was not a demi-God but indeed 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, . . .' Most significantly, Nicea defended Jesus' divine status not just in scriptural terminology but through the use of Greek language--'homoousios' ('translated 'one in substance' or 'one in being') with the Father. Effectively, Nicea established the principle of the necessity of translating the Christian message into the language and the culture of the people to whom it is being addressed. This is sometimes called the incarnational, sacramental or missionary principle of Christian faith which has been so significant in the ability of the church to make its message heard in diverse cultures throughout the centuries.
What, then, are we to make of Nicea's christological achievements? By affirming the full divinity of Jesus, Nicea actually saves Christianity from the excesses of Greek philosophy which held on to a totally changeless and immutable God who is somehow immune from any real contact with the created world. Because the divine mystery is fully present in the human Jesus, this works as a powerful symbol for the reality of God's pathos and love in human history. Moreover, properly understood, this links in with a notion of salvation that consists, not in flight from the (evil) world, but in commitment to a (healing) world. In these ways, Nicea reiterates the central insights of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, Nicea's single focus on the divinity of Jesus leaves us with a most unbalanced picture. What about the other dimensions of the Jesus event such as his humanity, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection? In essence, where is the connection to the historical Jesus to be made in all this talk of divine status? It would seem that Nicea affirms Jesus' divinity but then severs it from the concrete reality of his human existence. Neither should we forget that there are political dimensions to the Council which are related to the cause of the Roman empire: Jesus is now the triumphant, imperial Lord rather than one who sides with the oppressed, alienates the powerful, and goes to his death in a state of abject humiliation.
Evidently, one Council cannot achieve everything. Consequently, we need to read Nicea's 'high christology' in relation to the christology of the humiliated Jesus presented to us in the writings of the early Christian martyrs. This may also be a place to mention that the more masculine Word/Logos-christology adopted by the 'early fathers' should be complemented by more attention to the feminine Wisdom/Sophia-christology of the Scriptures. [ See Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1995), 131-162; and Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God (Homebush: St Paul's, 1995), 19-68. ] It is surely significant, that as Christianity lost contact with its more radical roots, it relegated the feminine, along with the poor and outcast, to a less than central position in its life and self-reflections. In all this, there is a loss of contact with the biblical understanding of Jesus.
In any event, the Council of Nicea was a significant ecclesial and political event in Christian life and self-understanding. Its promotion of the divinity of Jesus soon affected the church's liturgy which moved away from the sense of communal meal and celebration towards the more private experience of worship. Nicea was also a symbol of the new unity of church and state. Henceforth, as Constantine had predicted, Christianity would 'play a role similar to that which the old State religion of Rome had played'. [Cited by William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 310. ] Moreover, the articulation of the Christian mystery would now become increasingly dependant on Greek philosophy rather than the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, as history would soon reveal, Nicea does not have the last word on the issue of Jesus' identity. Its many unanswered questions were soon to flare up in a new series of controversies.
From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
The issue that Nicea failed to address could be summarized as follows: if Jesus is both divine and human, how are these two realities united in his personhood? One answer solves the problem by simply accepting the 'other half' of Arianism (the 'half' that Nicea does not directly condemn) which states that Jesus' humanity is a 'costume' or 'mask' which he wore to conceal his real (divine) identity. This is only a solution to the extent that it dissolves the problem: Jesus is not genuinely human at all. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched kind of answer, it is actually the image of Jesus that has underpinned many a Christian theology and piety throughout the ages.
A couple of extreme examples of this solution to the issue of Jesus' identity are the following:
For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the mind of those who were with him to entertain a different opinion of him. (Clement of Alexandria)
Our Lord felt the force of suffering but without its pain; the nails pierced the flesh as an object passes through the air, painlessly. (Hilary of Poitiers) [ Clement of Alexandria and Hilary of Poitiers respectively, cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ]
Athanasius (d.373), who had attended the Council of Nicea as a deacon, and had subsequently been appointed bishop to the influential see of Alexandria, sought to explain Nicea's teaching on the divinity of Jesus without falling into this trap of comprimising his humanity. Athanasius taught that, unless Jesus was both genuinely human and truly divine, then the purpose of the incarnation--the divinization of humanity--could not be achieved.
The approach of Athanasius and the Alexandrian School is sometimes called 'Word-flesh' christology. It begins by affirming the divinity of the pre-existent Logos which is then united to the human flesh of Jesus. To the question of whether Christ really suffered--a prospect which Hilary of Poitiers clearly denies (see the quotation above)--, Athansius says that Christ, the Word, the divine Logos does suffer 'in his body' but 'not in himself'. For Athanasius and Alexandrian christology generally the divine in Jesus always takes precedence over the human. Specifically, it does not seem to provide a place for the human 'soul' (intellect, emotions and will) of Jesus. Nonetheless, Athanasius' attempt to explicate the divine-human identity of Jesus does take us some steps forward.
An extreme form of Alexandrian teaching, which shows its inherent weakness, is evident in Apollinaris (d.390) who outrightly denies that Jesus has a human mind and soul. For Apollinaris, Christ was the 'heavenly man' who, he says, 'is neither fully man nor God, but a mixture of God and man'. For Apollinaris, the divine Logos is the human consciousness of Jesus: that is another way of saying that the historical Jesus did not have human consciousness at all. This teaching was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Evidently, there was need for another model to explain how the divine could be present in the human Jesus. It so happened that an alternative approach was being developed--not in Alexandria, but in the rival city of Antioch.
As often happens with rival cities, not only are they divided on matters of food and custom, but they also develop their own ideologies, theologies and ways of thinking about life. Followers of the Antiochene School developed what is called a 'Word-man' christology. By beginning their reflections with the human Jesus rather than the pre-existing Logos, they hoped to safeguard the humanity of Christ. One of their chief ploys and lasting impacts was to speak of 'two natures' in Jesus Christ, one human, the other divine. Consequently, they were able to locate Jesus' real human soul in his human nature while allowing for another, separate, divine nature. If there was a problem with this apprroach, it is that we are still left with the issue of understanding how these two natures could co-exist in the one identity. Surely, if there were two natures, there must be two Christs!
Of course, to our ears today, all this sounds very abstract as well as being devoid of any real interest in the historical realities of Jesus' earthly life. However, we should not think that, for the ordinary Christian folk of the fourth and fifth centuries, these matters were either uninteresting or reserved for scholarly church debate. Elizabeth Johnson tells the story of one bishop going out to buy a loaf of bread and finding that 'even the baker' wanted to discuss whether there were one or two natures in Christ! [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ] In fact, debate was beginning to rage over this issue. One catch-cry was: 'Cut him in two who divides Christ!' [ Cited by Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 225. ] Alexandria and Antioch were in conflict.
Unfortunately, what followed in the first half of the fifth century was a most turbulent and unseemly period in Christian history that owed as much to political intrigue as to theological argument. There were rigged Councils, banished bishops, imprisonments, ecclesiastical witch-hunts and even physical fights resulting, in one case, with the death of a bishop (Flavian, patriach of Constantinople). The church was, in many ways, reflecting the power-play that was occurring in the Roman empire, a power-play that acted out the rivalries between East and West and eventually led to Marcion's unconstitutional seizure of the emperor's throne.
Significantly, it was Marcion, the new emperor, who called the Council to meet at Nicea to decide once and for all on this problem of understanding Jesus' identity. Fights broke out again and the Council had to be aborted. It then reconvened at Chalcedon in 451 CE. The central christological issue was how to maintain appreciation of Jesus' identification both with God and with humanity. Pope Leo I stated the matter succinctly: 'It is as dangerous an evil to deny the truth of the human nature of Christ as it is to refuse to believe that his glory is equal to the Father'. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 9. ]
In many ways, the Council of Chalcedon provided a masterful compromise of Alexandrian and Antiochene teachings. Thus, it accepted (with the Antiochenes) that there were indeed 'two natures' in Christ so that he should be understood as both 'perfectly human' and 'perfectly divine'--'one in being with Father as to divinity and one in being with us as to humanity'. Consequently, Jesus' humanity is not just a costume or mask: he had a human body that suffered and a human will that made human decisions in the face of doubt and risk.
Yet (with the Alexandrians), Chalcedon also taught that Jesus' dual natures did not in any way compromise the essential unity of his 'person' since there is only 'one and the same Christ'. Effectively, Chalcedon had 'solved' the problem of Jesus' identity by using Greek categories of 'substance', 'person' and 'nature': Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father and the same substance as us; and although possessing two natures, divine and human, these are united in the one person. This unity of Christ's personhood was also expressed in the Council's teaching (against Nestorius d.451) that Mary is not only the mother of Christ ('christotokos') but, indeed, the mother of God ('theotokos'). To say otherwise, it reasoned, would be to 'split Christ'.
Following Chalcedon, two further so-called Christological Councils were held at Constantinople in 553 and 680-681 CE. respectively. Their major contribution was to refine aspects of Chalcedonian christology. Constantinople II, for example, specified that Jesus possessed two fully functioning wills, divine and human. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that christological development essentially stopped with Chalcedon. It became the benchmark upon which all further christology was measured. Moreover, it seemed that christianity was exclusively tied to the 'one person--two natures' manner of expressing who Jesus was and is.
Only in 1951, on the fifthteenth hundred anniversary of Chalcedon, was there any serious attempt in Catholic theology to 'go beyond' Chalcedon. German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote an essay entitled: Chalcedon: End or Beginning? [ Karl Rahner, Chalcedon: End or Beginning? redacted as Current Problems in Christology, Theological Investigations 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. ] He spoke of the sorry and stagnant state of christology which seemed to be so opposed to new ways of expressing the reality of Jesus and his significance for our world today. He was especially critical of the fact that most Christians seemed to ignore the deep truth that Chalcedon had tried to express--Jesus Christ, Word and Son of God, was indeed genuinely human. Evidently, Chalcedon and the classical christological doctrines were in need of review.
Interpreting the doctrines today
The problem is essentially one of translating fifth century Greek language and thought into the twentieth century. To begin, we need to ask what it can possibly mean for us today to speak of 'substance' ('ousion') in either God or humanity? To our way of thinking, 'substance' is normally associated with 'inert matter' which is clearly an inappropriate and unhelpful way of describing either divine or human reality. In fact, the Greek 'ousion' is better translated as 'being'--a more dynamic, living category--than 'substance' which is passive and static. Yet, even here, we need to ask what it can possibly mean to apply the same notion--whether 'substance' or 'being'--to refer to two such totally different realities as God and humanity.
As well, our modern understanding of 'person' ('prosopon') is at odds with Chalcedon. We understand 'person' in psychological terms as the ego-centre of human consciousness, freedom and action. By contrast, Chalcedon used the notion of 'person' to describe in abstract language how there was a 'centre of divine-human unity' in Jesus Christ. If anything, to contemporary ears, this seems to devalue the human personhood of Jesus. In fact, Chalcedon had used the word 'nature' ('phusis') to describe the reality of Jesus' human personhood. But, in modern usage, 'nature' sounds more like an abstract quality than a dynamic source of human life and activity.
In the wake of these kinds of difficulties, it may be more important for us today to attempt to express the christological mystery in different language. This approach seeks to be faithful to the intentions of the classic doctrines, and yet open to the insights of contemporary psychological, historical and biblical scholarship. Today we might begin with the question of what it means to be a person and then apply this to our understanding of the mystery of the person of Jesus. Our 'answer' may look something like the following.
To 'be a person' is essentially to 'be in relationship' with the physical world of nature, with the social reality of human others and institutions, with oneself, and with the divine mystery. These are all dynamic, living, growing dimensions of what it means to be a human person. We might even say that 'personhood' is not so much who one is as who one becomes through interaction and relationship. Applying this to the mystery of the personhood of Jesus, we can recognise that he shares in all these relationships. If we can speak of a unique or superior personhood of Jesus, this does not in any way deny his full human reality. To the contrary, Jesus' uniqueness resides precisely in the fact that he lives out all these relationships--with the world of nature, with others, with himself, and with God--to a superior degree.
In fact, the classical christological doctrines can be interpreted in this light. Chalcedon's intuition is surely to do with the reality that Jesus' identity is a dynamic, living relationship with divinity and with humanity. His relationship with the divine mystery does not annul his genuine humanness, but crowns it. We have seen how some of the early Fathers saw the human project in terms of the 'divinization' of humanity; today, there is more talk of the need for 'humanization'. The story of Jesus is the story that says divinization and humanization are not opposed projects, but different dimensions of the one human-divine process in which we are all called to play a part. Christian faith acclaims that this process has been lived most fully and completely in Jesus Christ.
This approach, then, has important implications for our appreciation of Jesus' humanness, an appreciation that is underscored by the Second Vatican Council:
Human nature as (Christ) assumed it was not annulled. . . . He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin. [ Dogmatic Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, article 22. ]
This understanding of Jesus is very different to the kind of one-sided power-christology that is unfortunately often associated with the classical doctrines. However, it should not be thought that a genuine appreciation of Jesus' human status was absent from the best interpreters of the tradition. For example, Cyril of Alexandria (d.444), a strong defender of the divinity of Jesus, had this to say:
We have admired his goodness in that for love of us he has not refused to descend to such a low position as to bear all that belongs to our nature, included in which is ignorance. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 46. ]
These quotations from such diverse sources as Vatican II and Cyril of Alexandria not only express belief in Jesus' genuine and complete humanity; they also understand that it is precisely in his humanity that the divine mystery is disclosed.
Consequently, the recovery of the human Jesus is equally a new and profound disclosure of the self-emptying divine love present in his earthly life and especially symbolized in the mystery of the cross. This kenotic--'self-emptying'--christology is expressed in an early Christian hymn:
The state of Jesus Christ was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are: and being as we are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. . . . (Philippians 2:6-11)
This represents a double disclosure: it alters our perceptions of the divine mystery (God is pure pathos and compassionate love); and it stretches our horizons of what it means to be human (to live one's life in loving service of God and others even, or especially, in the face of evil and death). Properly understood, this does not glorify the evil of the cross, but shows us that God's love in Jesus transforms evil and death into goodness and life. Such divine love is also open to those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus' life of love and service. A kenotic christology leads to a christology of discipleship.
In fact, discipleship christology is more evident in the writings of the Christian martyrs, saints and mystics than in the classical doctrines of Nicea and Chalcedon. It is also more evident in the writings of some of the reformers (such as Martin Luther) who, while accepting the teachings of the Councils, focus their meditations more directly on the historical Jesus of the scriptures and the humiliated Jesus of the cross. This is a timely reminder of the fact that any set of propositions regarding Jesus Christ will always be inadequate. It is also a reminder that we need to search within the whole Christian tradition to find undercurrents that off-set a too dogmatic and authoritarian approach to the Christ-mystery.
On the other hand, we stand within a living Christian tradition which has, in large measure, been formed by the classical christological doctrines. They were important moments in the history of our Christian self-understanding. Consequently, we acknowledge our debt for the way in which they helped clarify the Christian mystery in their own historical context--ambiguities notwithstanding. Nonetheless, as indicated earlier, we do not merely repeat the past: ours must be a creative fidelity. Hopefully, this brief attempt to reinterpret the classical doctrines of Christ within a larger framework has provided some light for our contemporary understanding of who Jesus Christ is for us and our world-situation today.
Early Christological controversies
Early Christological controversies
http://www.theoasis.org.au/content/view/58/
Some background information:
Early debates
Debates in the second century focus on this issue of reconciling the human figure with the divine identity of Jesus. These debates led to the final split of Christianity from Judaism which, however, did little to lessen the internal divisions within Christianity itself as it struggled to account for the human-divine identity of Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it is not just a matter of striking the right formula (seeing things aright), but also a matter of being converted to a new way of naming and experiencing the perfect divine presence in our most imperfect human world.
One of the earliest groups of faithful Jews who also wanted to acknowledge the special status of Jesus were the Ebionites. They recognised Jesus as God's chosen prophet who had come to put an end to the Old Testament priesthood. However, in expressely denying the virginal birth of Jesus and the pre-existence of the Son, they found themselves on the outside of accepted christian belief and practice. Their position was not dissimilar to that of the Moralists who spoke of Jesus as a unique, 'moral' figure of human history, endowed with special powers, and who could serve as an example for others to follow.
Even after the separation from Judaism, Christians continued to identify themselves as monotheists. Influenced by Greek thought, the Monarchists and Adoptionists struggled with the idea of God's absolute, unchanging reality. This led the former group to speak of God's 'monarchy' and to deny any distinction between the Father and the Son. In this scenario, the divinity of the Son, Jesus, is achieved through denying his true individuality and humanity. The latter group tried to solve the problem by suggesting that Jesus was 'adopted' as God's Son and thereby was not fully or truly divine.
Another widespread movement in early christianity was known as Gnosticism because its members claimed to be 'gnostics', that is, those who possessed secret knowledge. Part of their 'knowledge' involved an understanding of the material world as either evil or unreal and therefore not created by God who is both good and real. It is interesting for us to note that such a negative view of the world and creation generally has often plagued Cristianity as many another religion and culture. Early Christian gnostics logically reasoned that the incarnation was not an acceptable doctrine. Their Christology is best expressed by the Docetists who said that Jesus only 'appeared' to be human or that he took a human form in the manner of a 'costume'.
It is customary to divide these early movements into those which deny the full divinity of Jesus (Ebionites, Moralists and Adoptionists) and those that declaim Jesus' true humanity (Monarchists, Gnostics and Docetists). While this is no doubt the case, there is much more at stake in these debates, namely, the inability to understand or experience the divine as the pathos of love and compassion and the inability to understand or experience the human as the locus of genuine divinity. Neither side of these Christological debates is able to breakthrough the dualistic separation of an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God and a messy, changeable all too human (= too corrupt) created world.
In essence, these debates represent a failure to fully depth the mystery of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and of Jesus whose pathos and world-involvement are constantly evident. They likewise represent a failure to relate to the human and creative possibilities that are manifested to us in the life of Jesus (itself based on the Jewish experience of the essential goodness of all creation that springs from God). The issue of Jesus identity really comes down to the issue of how God is, or even can be, present to the world. Certainly, this was the key-issue behind the Christological debates in the second and third centuries.
From Arius to the Council of Nicea
Arius was one of the early Christian monks who brought matters of Jesus' divine-human identity to a point of crisis. He was probably more a popularizer of prevailing ideas than an original thinker himself. Indeed, apart from his evident preaching abilities, part of his appeal was in the fact that he lived a holy, austere and moral life. As is often the case with religious politics, it is only when ideas stir the people--to the point, it is said, that there were massive demonstrations in the streets of Alexandria--, that civil and religious authorities take note and react. And react they did, to the point of banishing Arius and calling the first full-scale Council in the church's history.
What was it that Arius and his followers, the Arians, taught that created such a stir? Arius held that the Logos was a demi-God interceding between God and the world. The Logos was not God but a creature, albeit of exalted status; nor, strictly speaking, could the Logos be identified with a purely worldly reality. This meant that Jesus, in whom the Logos was uniquely present, was neither fully divine nor truly human, but something in between both. If Arius was only baldly declaring what had been implied in earlier teachings, history was to present him with the role of scapegoat for holding a doctrine contrary to orthodox Christian belief.
Whether we call it fate or providence, the fact is that the Arian dispute occurred at a point in history where Christian unity was considered essential for the unity of what came to be called the 'Holy Roman Empire'. The emperor Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith in 312 CE, soon santioned Christianity with 'official religion' status. This meant that any source of inner-religious division was likely to boil over into political and civil unrest. History records that it was Constantine rather than the bishop of Rome or the patriarch of Alexandria who actually decreed the Council at Nicea in 325 CE. It was likewise the emperor Constantine who opened the Council and confirmed its decrees.
Evidently, religion and politics had become entangled to the point where matters of theological debate were significant for social harmony. Over two hundred bishops gathered at Nicea in a mood of enthusiasm and optimism. As much as anything, the Council symbolized the wonderful advances of Christianity--from a Jewish sect to a Gentile church and from a persecuted minority to the established religion of the empire--in fewer than three hundred years.
The Council also responded to the theological matter at hand: it condemned the teachings of Arius and upheld that Jesus was not a demi-God but indeed 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, . . .' Most significantly, Nicea defended Jesus' divine status not just in scriptural terminology but through the use of Greek language--'homoousios' ('translated 'one in substance' or 'one in being') with the Father. Effectively, Nicea established the principle of the necessity of translating the Christian message into the language and the culture of the people to whom it is being addressed. This is sometimes called the incarnational, sacramental or missionary principle of Christian faith which has been so significant in the ability of the church to make its message heard in diverse cultures throughout the centuries.
What, then, are we to make of Nicea's Christological achievements? By affirming the full divinity of Jesus, Nicea actually saves Christianity from the excesses of Greek philosophy which held on to a totally changeless and immutable God who is somehow immune from any real contact with the created world. Because the divine mystery is fully present in the human Jesus, this works as a powerful symbol for the reality of God's pathos and love in human history. Moreover, properly understood, this links in with a notion of salvation that consists, not in flight from the (evil) world, but in commitment to a (healing) world. In these ways, Nicea reiterates the central insights of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, Nicea's single focus on the divinity of Jesus leaves us with a most unbalanced picture. What about the other dimensions of the Jesus event such as his humanity, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection? In essence, where is the connection to the historical Jesus to be made in all this talk of divine status? It would seem that Nicea affirms Jesus' divinity but then severs it from the concrete reality of his human existence. Neither should we forget that there are political dimensions to the Council which are related to the cause of the Roman empire: Jesus is now the triumphant, imperial Lord rather than one who sides with the oppressed, alienates the powerful, and goes to his death in a state of abject humiliation.
Evidently, one Council cannot achieve everything. Consequently, we need to read Nicea's 'high Christology' in relation to the Christology of the humiliated Jesus presented to us in the writings of the early Christian martyrs. This may also be a place to mention that the more masculine Word/Logos-Christology adopted by the 'early fathers' should be complemented by more attention to the feminine Wisdom/Sophia-Christology of the Scriptures. [ See Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1995), 131-162; and Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God (Homebush: St Paul's, 1995), 19-68. ] It is surely significant, that as Christianity lost contact with its more radical roots, it relegated the feminine, along with the poor and outcast, to a less than central position in its life and self-reflections. In all this, there is a loss of contact with the biblical understanding of Jesus.
In any event, the Council of Nicea was a significant ecclesial and political event in Christian life and self-understanding. Its promotion of the divinity of Jesus soon affected the church's liturgy which moved away from the sense of communal meal and celebration towards the more private experience of worship. Nicea was also a symbol of the new unity of church and state. Henceforth, as Constantine had predicted, Christianity would 'play a role similar to that which the old State religion of Rome had played'. [Cited by William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 310. ] Moreover, the articulation of the Christian mystery would now become increasingly dependant on Greek philosophy rather than the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, as history would soon reveal, Nicea does not have the last word on the issue of Jesus' identity. Its many unanswered questions were soon to flare up in a new series of controversies.
From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
The issue that Nicea failed to address could be summarized as follows: if Jesus is both divine and human, how are these two realities united in his personhood? One answer solves the problem by simply accepting the 'other half' of Arianism (the 'half' that Nicea does not directly condemn) which states that Jesus' humanity is a 'costume' or 'mask' which he wore to conceal his real (divine) identity. This is only a solution to the extent that it dissolves the problem: Jesus is not genuinely human at all. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched kind of answer, it is actually the image of Jesus that has underpinned many a Christian theology and piety throughout the ages.
A couple of extreme examples of this solution to the issue of Jesus' identity are the following:
For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the mind of those who were with him to entertain a different opinion of him. (Clement of Alexandria)
Our Lord felt the force of suffering but without its pain; the nails pierced the flesh as an object passes through the air, painlessly. (Hilary of Poitiers) [ Clement of Alexandria and Hilary of Poitiers respectively, cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ]
Athanasius (d.373), who had attended the Council of Nicea as a deacon, and had subsequently been appointed bishop to the influential see of Alexandria, sought to explain Nicea's teaching on the divinity of Jesus without falling into this trap of comprimising his humanity. Athanasius taught that, unless Jesus was both genuinely human and truly divine, then the purpose of the incarnation--the divinization of humanity--could not be achieved.
The approach of Athanasius and the Alexandrian School is sometimes called 'Word-flesh' Christology. It begins by affirming the divinity of the pre-existent Logos which is then united to the human flesh of Jesus. To the question of whether Christ really suffered--a prospect which Hilary of Poitiers clearly denies (see the quotation above)--, Athansius says that Christ, the Word, the divine Logos does suffer 'in his body' but 'not in himself'. For Athanasius and Alexandrian Christology generally the divine in Jesus always takes precedence over the human. Specifically, it does not seem to provide a place for the human 'soul' (intellect, emotions and will) of Jesus. Nonetheless, Athanasius' attempt to explicate the divine-human identity of Jesus does take us some steps forward.
An extreme form of Alexandrian teaching, which shows its inherent weakness, is evident in Apollinaris (d.390) who outrightly denies that Jesus has a human mind and soul. For Apollinaris, Christ was the 'heavenly man' who, he says, 'is neither fully man nor God, but a mixture of God and man'. For Apollinaris, the divine Logos is the human consciousness of Jesus: that is another way of saying that the historical Jesus did not have human consciousness at all. This teaching was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Evidently, there was need for another model to explain how the divine could be present in the human Jesus. It so happened that an alternative approach was being developed--not in Alexandria, but in the rival city of Antioch.
As often happens with rival cities, not only are they divided on matters of food and custom, but they also develop their own ideologies, theologies and ways of thinking about life. Followers of the Antiochene School developed what is called a 'Word-man' Christology. By beginning their reflections with the human Jesus rather than the pre-existing Logos, they hoped to safeguard the humanity of Christ. One of their chief ploys and lasting impacts was to speak of 'two natures' in Jesus Christ, one human, the other divine. Consequently, they were able to locate Jesus' real human soul in his human nature while allowing for another, separate, divine nature. If there was a problem with this apprroach, it is that we are still left with the issue of understanding how these two natures could co-exist in the one identity. Surely, if there were two natures, there must be two Christs!
Of course, to our ears today, all this sounds very abstract as well as being devoid of any real interest in the historical realities of Jesus' earthly life. However, we should not think that, for the ordinary Christian folk of the fourth and fifth centuries, these matters were either uninteresting or reserved for scholarly church debate. Elizabeth Johnson tells the story of one bishop going out to buy a loaf of bread and finding that 'even the baker' wanted to discuss whether there were one or two natures in Christ! [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ] In fact, debate was beginning to rage over this issue. One catch-cry was: 'Cut him in two who divides Christ!' [ Cited by Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 225. ] Alexandria and Antioch were in conflict.
Unfortunately, what followed in the first half of the fifth century was a most turbulent and unseemly period in Christian history that owed as much to political intrigue as to theological argument. There were rigged Councils, banished bishops, imprisonments, ecclesiastical witch-hunts and even physical fights resulting, in one case, with the death of a bishop (Flavian, patriach of Constantinople). The church was, in many ways, reflecting the power-play that was occurring in the Roman empire, a power-play that acted out the rivalries between East and West and eventually led to Marcion's unconstitutional seizure of the emperor's throne.
Significantly, it was Marcion, the new emperor, who called the Council to meet at Nicea to decide once and for all on this problem of understanding Jesus' identity. Fights broke out again and the Council had to be aborted. It then reconvened at Chalcedon in 451 CE. The central Christological issue was how to maintain appreciation of Jesus' identification both with God and with humanity. Pope Leo I stated the matter succinctly: 'It is as dangerous an evil to deny the truth of the human nature of Christ as it is to refuse to believe that his glory is equal to the Father'. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 9. ]
In many ways, the Council of Chalcedon provided a masterful compromise of Alexandrian and Antiochene teachings. Thus, it accepted (with the Antiochenes) that there were indeed 'two natures' in Christ so that he should be understood as both 'perfectly human' and 'perfectly divine'--'one in being with Father as to divinity and one in being with us as to humanity'. Consequently, Jesus' humanity is not just a costume or mask: he had a human body that suffered and a human will that made human decisions in the face of doubt and risk.
Yet (with the Alexandrians), Chalcedon also taught that Jesus' dual natures did not in any way compromise the essential unity of his 'person' since there is only 'one and the same Christ'. Effectively, Chalcedon had 'solved' the problem of Jesus' identity by using Greek categories of 'substance', 'person' and 'nature': Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father and the same substance as us; and although possessing two natures, divine and human, these are united in the one person. This unity of Christ's personhood was also expressed in the Council's teaching (against Nestorius d.451) that Mary is not only the mother of Christ ('christotokos') but, indeed, the mother of God ('theotokos'). To say otherwise, it reasoned, would be to 'split Christ'.
Following Chalcedon, two further so-called Christological Councils were held at Constantinople in 553 and 680-681 CE. respectively. Their major contribution was to refine aspects of Chalcedonian Christology. Constantinople II, for example, specified that Jesus possessed two fully functioning wills, divine and human. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that Christological development essentially stopped with Chalcedon. It became the benchmark upon which all further Christology was measured. Moreover, it seemed that christianity was exclusively tied to the 'one person--two natures' manner of expressing who Jesus was and is.
Only in 1951, on the fifthteenth hundred anniversary of Chalcedon, was there any serious attempt in Catholic theology to 'go beyond' Chalcedon. German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote an essay entitled: Chalcedon: End or Beginning? [ Karl Rahner, Chalcedon: End or Beginning? redacted as Current Problems in Christology, Theological Investigations 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. ] He spoke of the sorry and stagnant state of Christology which seemed to be so opposed to new ways of expressing the reality of Jesus and his significance for our world today. He was especially critical of the fact that most Christians seemed to ignore the deep truth that Chalcedon had tried to express--Jesus Christ, Word and Son of God, was indeed genuinely human. Evidently, Chalcedon and the classical Christological doctrines were in need of review.
http://www.theoasis.org.au/content/view/58/
Some background information:
Early debates
Debates in the second century focus on this issue of reconciling the human figure with the divine identity of Jesus. These debates led to the final split of Christianity from Judaism which, however, did little to lessen the internal divisions within Christianity itself as it struggled to account for the human-divine identity of Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it is not just a matter of striking the right formula (seeing things aright), but also a matter of being converted to a new way of naming and experiencing the perfect divine presence in our most imperfect human world.
One of the earliest groups of faithful Jews who also wanted to acknowledge the special status of Jesus were the Ebionites. They recognised Jesus as God's chosen prophet who had come to put an end to the Old Testament priesthood. However, in expressely denying the virginal birth of Jesus and the pre-existence of the Son, they found themselves on the outside of accepted christian belief and practice. Their position was not dissimilar to that of the Moralists who spoke of Jesus as a unique, 'moral' figure of human history, endowed with special powers, and who could serve as an example for others to follow.
Even after the separation from Judaism, Christians continued to identify themselves as monotheists. Influenced by Greek thought, the Monarchists and Adoptionists struggled with the idea of God's absolute, unchanging reality. This led the former group to speak of God's 'monarchy' and to deny any distinction between the Father and the Son. In this scenario, the divinity of the Son, Jesus, is achieved through denying his true individuality and humanity. The latter group tried to solve the problem by suggesting that Jesus was 'adopted' as God's Son and thereby was not fully or truly divine.
Another widespread movement in early christianity was known as Gnosticism because its members claimed to be 'gnostics', that is, those who possessed secret knowledge. Part of their 'knowledge' involved an understanding of the material world as either evil or unreal and therefore not created by God who is both good and real. It is interesting for us to note that such a negative view of the world and creation generally has often plagued Cristianity as many another religion and culture. Early Christian gnostics logically reasoned that the incarnation was not an acceptable doctrine. Their Christology is best expressed by the Docetists who said that Jesus only 'appeared' to be human or that he took a human form in the manner of a 'costume'.
It is customary to divide these early movements into those which deny the full divinity of Jesus (Ebionites, Moralists and Adoptionists) and those that declaim Jesus' true humanity (Monarchists, Gnostics and Docetists). While this is no doubt the case, there is much more at stake in these debates, namely, the inability to understand or experience the divine as the pathos of love and compassion and the inability to understand or experience the human as the locus of genuine divinity. Neither side of these Christological debates is able to breakthrough the dualistic separation of an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God and a messy, changeable all too human (= too corrupt) created world.
In essence, these debates represent a failure to fully depth the mystery of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and of Jesus whose pathos and world-involvement are constantly evident. They likewise represent a failure to relate to the human and creative possibilities that are manifested to us in the life of Jesus (itself based on the Jewish experience of the essential goodness of all creation that springs from God). The issue of Jesus identity really comes down to the issue of how God is, or even can be, present to the world. Certainly, this was the key-issue behind the Christological debates in the second and third centuries.
From Arius to the Council of Nicea
Arius was one of the early Christian monks who brought matters of Jesus' divine-human identity to a point of crisis. He was probably more a popularizer of prevailing ideas than an original thinker himself. Indeed, apart from his evident preaching abilities, part of his appeal was in the fact that he lived a holy, austere and moral life. As is often the case with religious politics, it is only when ideas stir the people--to the point, it is said, that there were massive demonstrations in the streets of Alexandria--, that civil and religious authorities take note and react. And react they did, to the point of banishing Arius and calling the first full-scale Council in the church's history.
What was it that Arius and his followers, the Arians, taught that created such a stir? Arius held that the Logos was a demi-God interceding between God and the world. The Logos was not God but a creature, albeit of exalted status; nor, strictly speaking, could the Logos be identified with a purely worldly reality. This meant that Jesus, in whom the Logos was uniquely present, was neither fully divine nor truly human, but something in between both. If Arius was only baldly declaring what had been implied in earlier teachings, history was to present him with the role of scapegoat for holding a doctrine contrary to orthodox Christian belief.
Whether we call it fate or providence, the fact is that the Arian dispute occurred at a point in history where Christian unity was considered essential for the unity of what came to be called the 'Holy Roman Empire'. The emperor Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith in 312 CE, soon santioned Christianity with 'official religion' status. This meant that any source of inner-religious division was likely to boil over into political and civil unrest. History records that it was Constantine rather than the bishop of Rome or the patriarch of Alexandria who actually decreed the Council at Nicea in 325 CE. It was likewise the emperor Constantine who opened the Council and confirmed its decrees.
Evidently, religion and politics had become entangled to the point where matters of theological debate were significant for social harmony. Over two hundred bishops gathered at Nicea in a mood of enthusiasm and optimism. As much as anything, the Council symbolized the wonderful advances of Christianity--from a Jewish sect to a Gentile church and from a persecuted minority to the established religion of the empire--in fewer than three hundred years.
The Council also responded to the theological matter at hand: it condemned the teachings of Arius and upheld that Jesus was not a demi-God but indeed 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, . . .' Most significantly, Nicea defended Jesus' divine status not just in scriptural terminology but through the use of Greek language--'homoousios' ('translated 'one in substance' or 'one in being') with the Father. Effectively, Nicea established the principle of the necessity of translating the Christian message into the language and the culture of the people to whom it is being addressed. This is sometimes called the incarnational, sacramental or missionary principle of Christian faith which has been so significant in the ability of the church to make its message heard in diverse cultures throughout the centuries.
What, then, are we to make of Nicea's Christological achievements? By affirming the full divinity of Jesus, Nicea actually saves Christianity from the excesses of Greek philosophy which held on to a totally changeless and immutable God who is somehow immune from any real contact with the created world. Because the divine mystery is fully present in the human Jesus, this works as a powerful symbol for the reality of God's pathos and love in human history. Moreover, properly understood, this links in with a notion of salvation that consists, not in flight from the (evil) world, but in commitment to a (healing) world. In these ways, Nicea reiterates the central insights of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, Nicea's single focus on the divinity of Jesus leaves us with a most unbalanced picture. What about the other dimensions of the Jesus event such as his humanity, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection? In essence, where is the connection to the historical Jesus to be made in all this talk of divine status? It would seem that Nicea affirms Jesus' divinity but then severs it from the concrete reality of his human existence. Neither should we forget that there are political dimensions to the Council which are related to the cause of the Roman empire: Jesus is now the triumphant, imperial Lord rather than one who sides with the oppressed, alienates the powerful, and goes to his death in a state of abject humiliation.
Evidently, one Council cannot achieve everything. Consequently, we need to read Nicea's 'high Christology' in relation to the Christology of the humiliated Jesus presented to us in the writings of the early Christian martyrs. This may also be a place to mention that the more masculine Word/Logos-Christology adopted by the 'early fathers' should be complemented by more attention to the feminine Wisdom/Sophia-Christology of the Scriptures. [ See Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1995), 131-162; and Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God (Homebush: St Paul's, 1995), 19-68. ] It is surely significant, that as Christianity lost contact with its more radical roots, it relegated the feminine, along with the poor and outcast, to a less than central position in its life and self-reflections. In all this, there is a loss of contact with the biblical understanding of Jesus.
In any event, the Council of Nicea was a significant ecclesial and political event in Christian life and self-understanding. Its promotion of the divinity of Jesus soon affected the church's liturgy which moved away from the sense of communal meal and celebration towards the more private experience of worship. Nicea was also a symbol of the new unity of church and state. Henceforth, as Constantine had predicted, Christianity would 'play a role similar to that which the old State religion of Rome had played'. [Cited by William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 310. ] Moreover, the articulation of the Christian mystery would now become increasingly dependant on Greek philosophy rather than the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, as history would soon reveal, Nicea does not have the last word on the issue of Jesus' identity. Its many unanswered questions were soon to flare up in a new series of controversies.
From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
The issue that Nicea failed to address could be summarized as follows: if Jesus is both divine and human, how are these two realities united in his personhood? One answer solves the problem by simply accepting the 'other half' of Arianism (the 'half' that Nicea does not directly condemn) which states that Jesus' humanity is a 'costume' or 'mask' which he wore to conceal his real (divine) identity. This is only a solution to the extent that it dissolves the problem: Jesus is not genuinely human at all. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched kind of answer, it is actually the image of Jesus that has underpinned many a Christian theology and piety throughout the ages.
A couple of extreme examples of this solution to the issue of Jesus' identity are the following:
For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the mind of those who were with him to entertain a different opinion of him. (Clement of Alexandria)
Our Lord felt the force of suffering but without its pain; the nails pierced the flesh as an object passes through the air, painlessly. (Hilary of Poitiers) [ Clement of Alexandria and Hilary of Poitiers respectively, cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ]
Athanasius (d.373), who had attended the Council of Nicea as a deacon, and had subsequently been appointed bishop to the influential see of Alexandria, sought to explain Nicea's teaching on the divinity of Jesus without falling into this trap of comprimising his humanity. Athanasius taught that, unless Jesus was both genuinely human and truly divine, then the purpose of the incarnation--the divinization of humanity--could not be achieved.
The approach of Athanasius and the Alexandrian School is sometimes called 'Word-flesh' Christology. It begins by affirming the divinity of the pre-existent Logos which is then united to the human flesh of Jesus. To the question of whether Christ really suffered--a prospect which Hilary of Poitiers clearly denies (see the quotation above)--, Athansius says that Christ, the Word, the divine Logos does suffer 'in his body' but 'not in himself'. For Athanasius and Alexandrian Christology generally the divine in Jesus always takes precedence over the human. Specifically, it does not seem to provide a place for the human 'soul' (intellect, emotions and will) of Jesus. Nonetheless, Athanasius' attempt to explicate the divine-human identity of Jesus does take us some steps forward.
An extreme form of Alexandrian teaching, which shows its inherent weakness, is evident in Apollinaris (d.390) who outrightly denies that Jesus has a human mind and soul. For Apollinaris, Christ was the 'heavenly man' who, he says, 'is neither fully man nor God, but a mixture of God and man'. For Apollinaris, the divine Logos is the human consciousness of Jesus: that is another way of saying that the historical Jesus did not have human consciousness at all. This teaching was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Evidently, there was need for another model to explain how the divine could be present in the human Jesus. It so happened that an alternative approach was being developed--not in Alexandria, but in the rival city of Antioch.
As often happens with rival cities, not only are they divided on matters of food and custom, but they also develop their own ideologies, theologies and ways of thinking about life. Followers of the Antiochene School developed what is called a 'Word-man' Christology. By beginning their reflections with the human Jesus rather than the pre-existing Logos, they hoped to safeguard the humanity of Christ. One of their chief ploys and lasting impacts was to speak of 'two natures' in Jesus Christ, one human, the other divine. Consequently, they were able to locate Jesus' real human soul in his human nature while allowing for another, separate, divine nature. If there was a problem with this apprroach, it is that we are still left with the issue of understanding how these two natures could co-exist in the one identity. Surely, if there were two natures, there must be two Christs!
Of course, to our ears today, all this sounds very abstract as well as being devoid of any real interest in the historical realities of Jesus' earthly life. However, we should not think that, for the ordinary Christian folk of the fourth and fifth centuries, these matters were either uninteresting or reserved for scholarly church debate. Elizabeth Johnson tells the story of one bishop going out to buy a loaf of bread and finding that 'even the baker' wanted to discuss whether there were one or two natures in Christ! [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ] In fact, debate was beginning to rage over this issue. One catch-cry was: 'Cut him in two who divides Christ!' [ Cited by Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 225. ] Alexandria and Antioch were in conflict.
Unfortunately, what followed in the first half of the fifth century was a most turbulent and unseemly period in Christian history that owed as much to political intrigue as to theological argument. There were rigged Councils, banished bishops, imprisonments, ecclesiastical witch-hunts and even physical fights resulting, in one case, with the death of a bishop (Flavian, patriach of Constantinople). The church was, in many ways, reflecting the power-play that was occurring in the Roman empire, a power-play that acted out the rivalries between East and West and eventually led to Marcion's unconstitutional seizure of the emperor's throne.
Significantly, it was Marcion, the new emperor, who called the Council to meet at Nicea to decide once and for all on this problem of understanding Jesus' identity. Fights broke out again and the Council had to be aborted. It then reconvened at Chalcedon in 451 CE. The central Christological issue was how to maintain appreciation of Jesus' identification both with God and with humanity. Pope Leo I stated the matter succinctly: 'It is as dangerous an evil to deny the truth of the human nature of Christ as it is to refuse to believe that his glory is equal to the Father'. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 9. ]
In many ways, the Council of Chalcedon provided a masterful compromise of Alexandrian and Antiochene teachings. Thus, it accepted (with the Antiochenes) that there were indeed 'two natures' in Christ so that he should be understood as both 'perfectly human' and 'perfectly divine'--'one in being with Father as to divinity and one in being with us as to humanity'. Consequently, Jesus' humanity is not just a costume or mask: he had a human body that suffered and a human will that made human decisions in the face of doubt and risk.
Yet (with the Alexandrians), Chalcedon also taught that Jesus' dual natures did not in any way compromise the essential unity of his 'person' since there is only 'one and the same Christ'. Effectively, Chalcedon had 'solved' the problem of Jesus' identity by using Greek categories of 'substance', 'person' and 'nature': Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father and the same substance as us; and although possessing two natures, divine and human, these are united in the one person. This unity of Christ's personhood was also expressed in the Council's teaching (against Nestorius d.451) that Mary is not only the mother of Christ ('christotokos') but, indeed, the mother of God ('theotokos'). To say otherwise, it reasoned, would be to 'split Christ'.
Following Chalcedon, two further so-called Christological Councils were held at Constantinople in 553 and 680-681 CE. respectively. Their major contribution was to refine aspects of Chalcedonian Christology. Constantinople II, for example, specified that Jesus possessed two fully functioning wills, divine and human. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that Christological development essentially stopped with Chalcedon. It became the benchmark upon which all further Christology was measured. Moreover, it seemed that christianity was exclusively tied to the 'one person--two natures' manner of expressing who Jesus was and is.
Only in 1951, on the fifthteenth hundred anniversary of Chalcedon, was there any serious attempt in Catholic theology to 'go beyond' Chalcedon. German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote an essay entitled: Chalcedon: End or Beginning? [ Karl Rahner, Chalcedon: End or Beginning? redacted as Current Problems in Christology, Theological Investigations 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. ] He spoke of the sorry and stagnant state of Christology which seemed to be so opposed to new ways of expressing the reality of Jesus and his significance for our world today. He was especially critical of the fact that most Christians seemed to ignore the deep truth that Chalcedon had tried to express--Jesus Christ, Word and Son of God, was indeed genuinely human. Evidently, Chalcedon and the classical Christological doctrines were in need of review.
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