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INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTOLOGY
Chalcedonian Categories for the Gospel Narrative
Fred Sanders
Chapter Summary
Axioms for Christological Study
- Christology is an interdisciplinary theological project requiring insight from biblical, historical, philosophical, practical, and systematic theologians.
- To think rightly about the Trinity, the incarnation, or the atonement, the theologian must think about them all at once, in relation to each other.
- The good news of Jesus the Savior presupposes the long story of the eternal Son of God's entering into human history, and the doctrinal categories provided by Chalcedon are a helpful conceptual resource for making sense of it.
KEY TERMS
ecumenical council
patristics
systematic theology
hypostatic union
nature
anathema | philosophical theology
biblical theology
constructive theology
Chalcedonian Definition
Cyrillian
dyophysites/diphysitism/
two-nature | historical theology
practical theology
theanthropic person
person
Cyril of Alexandria
anhypostatic/
enhypostatic
Christology |
| Heresies | Arianism
Nestorianism | Apollinarianism
Eutychian
monophysitism |
| Greek terms | homoousios
taxis | hypostasis |
Christology is one of the most difficult doctrines in all of theology, perhaps second only to the doctrine of the Trinity. Since the goal of this book is to explore the theological project of Christology accessibly and at an introductory level, what sense does it make to combine one difficult doctrine with another? Putting Christology into trinitarian perspective sounds like multiplying complexity times complexity, or explaining one unclear thing by another thing even more unclear: obscurum per obscurius! For the sake of analytic clarity, it would seem more promising to isolate the doctrine of Christ as strictly as possible from all other considerations and make sense of it on its own terms first. But the thesis of this book, and the conviction of each author, is that the intellectual work of Christology is best undertaken in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Even at the introductory level, trinitarian resources best equip the student of theology to grasp Christian teaching on the incarnation, person, and work of Christ. We could say many things about Jesus and the salvation available through him, but the logic built in to the central Christian truths requires us to confess what the fifth ecumenical council said in the year 553: âthat our lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in his human flesh, is truly God and the Lord of glory and one of the members of the holy Trinity.â1 To say the truth about Jesus, we must keep him in trinitarian perspective and say, with this ancient council, that one of the Trinity died on the cross.
Recognizing Jesus as one of the Trinity is a conceptual breakthrough that throws light on all the great central beliefs of Christianity. The six chapters of this book explore the implications of jesus' identity as one of the Trinity, tracing the long arc from God's eternal being to humanity's redemption. We begin (insofar as is humanly possible, and strictly on the basis of God's self-revelation) above all worlds in the homeland of the Trinity, with a richly elaborated doctrine of the eternal Trinity as an interpersonal fellowship of structured relations among the perfectly coequal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Horrell, chap. 2). From that height we trace the act of infinite condescension in which the preexistent eternal Son of God becomes the incarnate Son of God by taking on a full human nature. The resulting doctrine of the person of Christ is elaborated with guidance from the church fathers (Fairbairn, chap. 3), and its terms are clarified, disciplined, and disambiguated by analytic philosophy (DeWeese, chap. 4). Because the incarnation took place âfor us and for our salvation,â as the Nicene Creed states, we complete the trajectory by attending to the way the incarnate Logos accomplished our redemption in his death and resurrection (Ware, chap. 5), and how, as the Son, he is the example of a truly human life of faith, radical dependence on God, and being filled with the Holy Spirit (Issler, chap. 6).
In this introductory chapter, I will do four things. First, I will explain why it takes an interdisciplinary team of authorsâthree systematicians, a historical theologian, a philosophical theologian, and a practical theologianâto put Jesus into trinitarian perspective and make the case that one of the Trinity died on the cross. Second, I will summarize the classic ground rules laid down in the logic of the fourth ecumenical council's Chalcedonian Definition of 451 for thinking biblically about Jesus: that he is one person in two unmixed, unconfused, undivided natures. Third, I will argue that contemporary Evangelical theology can and should take one step beyond Chalcedon, embracing as well the guidance of the fifth ecumenical council (Constantinople II, 553), which took the decisive step of placing Christology in its proper trinitarian context. Finally, I will summarize the five remaining chapters and give an overview of the way they relate to one another and to the total project of placing Christology in trinitarian perspective.
Saying Everything at Once
A preliminary question may already be forming in the minds of some readers: Why take on such a difficult task as this? Could such an extended theological project possibly be of any assistance for Christians in living faithfully and carrying out the work committed to the church in our time? Or is a detailed book on Christology in trinitarian perspective merely an academic exercise with no bearing on Christians outside the confines of scholarship? Could an argument covering so much doctrinal territory be relevant to the gospel?
Once upon a time, the people most committed to the gospel were the people most inclined to serious theological thought. The deepest doctrines of Christianity, the ones that are not on the surface of the Scriptures but lie waiting in its depths, were quarried through disciplined theological meditation and patient discernment. It was not academics or aesthetes with too much time on their hands who did this work, but busy pastors, suffering martyrs, and bishops overseeing the evangelization of entire cities. As they preached and taught and suffered for the gospel, they worked out the deep logic of the revelation of the Trinity, the incarnation, and redemption. The more seriously they took the life-changing power of the good news, the more concentration they devoted to the details of sound doctrine.
In modern times, things have been different: we take for granted that there must be an absolute divide between vital Christian experience on the one hand and careful doctrinal theology on the other. To us, action and reflection seem mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to Christian faith. The last thing we would expect to find is gospel and theology flowing from the same passionate commitment. But in the long sweep of Christian history, that is how it has usually been, from the church fathers and the scholastics through the Reformers and Puritans. All of them recognized that simple, saving faith could and should be elaborated into the Trinitarianism of Nicaea and the incarnational theology of Chalcedon. It took the crafty liberal theologians of the nineteenth century to popularize the argument that central Christian doctrines were, in Adolf Harnack's words, âa work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the gospelâ2 and a betrayal of the simplicity of jesus' message. At that time, conservative theologians disagreed. One of the great ironies of modern theological history is that the heirs of those conservatives who opposed high liberalism have become the chief bearers of the Harnackian bias against doctrine. Whenever we assume that the best way to embrace the simple gospel is to eschew the difficulties of doctrine, Evangelicals are unconsciously adopting the position of their historic opponents and standing in contradiction to their own best interests. In doing so, they take themselves out of the very stream of power that made their movement possible in the first place: the gospel stream of doctrine and devotion that flows from the church fathers to the first fundamentalists. J. I. Packer once defined Evangelicalism as âfidelity to the doctrinal content of the gospel,â3 counseling Evangelicals not to bypass the âdoctrinal contentâ in the rush to get to a gospel. Fidelity to the gospel requires us to recognize doctrinal content, and those who would preach the gospel must make use of the tools of theology.
Christology is the doctrinal locus where Christianity has the greatest need for theological precision. To be wrong here is to be wrong everywhere. It also happens to be the place where the greatest thinkers in the history of the church have expended the most effort most productively, and have left their achievements as a heritage to contemporary theologians.
Consider the confession âJesus died for me.â Anyone who believes this simple sentence has entered the sphere of Christian faith and has learned the one thing that God is concerned to teach his human creatures in order to bring them into his school for all further lessons. âJesus died for meâ is knowledge that can be grasped by anyone. It is not a truth restricted to the leading intellects of an age, or to scholars with enough leisure time to include theology among their academic pursuits. It is truth that proves itself by its ability to âcome to the unlearned, the young, the busy, and the afflicted, as a fact which is to arrest them, penetrate them, and to support and animate them in their passage through life.â4 Yet, because Christian faith does not exhaust itself at the level of simplicity, there are depths in this confession that invite further search and inquiry. The prepositional phrase âfor meâ is loaded with possible meanings, and the verb died is not normally the carrier of good news outside of this strange sentence. And perhaps most important, who is this Jesus, the subject to whom this strangely âgoodâ death happens? This is the crucial question, because only when one knows who Jesus really is can one establish the meaning of died and âfor me.â
By asking these questions, evangelical faith seeks theological understanding, and the project of Christology in trinitarian perspective is an example of that âfaith seeking understanding.â Christian theology should always start out from the gospel story (Jesus died for me) and explore the staggering theological claims that Christians are committing themselves to when they say such things. In particular, this book takes seriously the Christian claim that the person called Jesus is a person who is God, and belongs in the Trinity as the eternal second person. He is âthe Sonâ from the formula âthe Father, the Son, and the Holy Spiritâ (Matt 28:20), and he is precisely the same one who went to the cross, undergoing and overcoming death for our salvation. The Christian church has confessed this truth since the early centuries, and finally stated it in classical form at the second council of Constantinople with the slogan, âone of the Trinity suffered in the flesh,â which might be better paraphrased for modern ears as âone of the Trinity died on the cross.â Though the doctrine is biblical, has deep roots in Christian history, and commends itself as reasonable and practical, it has been denied by a variety of modern theologies.5 Refuting those denials would be a worthwhile task, but the goal of the present book is more constructive, seeking to clarify the doctrine itself for the benefit of those who desire to know what they are believing when they believe.
Something remarkable happens during the passage from simple belief in the gospel to complex theological understanding. When simple faith's straightforward statements are elaborated in fully developed theological systems, theologians are compelled to hold together a vast number of details without losing hold of their original unity. You could say that the one idea of the gospel becomes inwardly complex, and whole regions of doctrine become apparent within it. The assertion that one of the Trinity died on the cross unfolds itself as a series of interconnected claims about the doctrine of the triune God, the preexistence of Christ, the incarnation, the death of Christ, and redemption. Which of these things should be said first, since all of them remain linked together as closely as they were in the simple expression that Jesus died for me? Pity Christian theologians: they have to say everything at once, but they cannot. This tension is probably felt by scholars in a wide variety of nontheological fields, as they try to articulate the details of their subject in light of the whole field, and the whole field in light of all its details. This tension is present in each of the subtopics of theology, such as the doctrine of humanity, where the central idea is a twofold statement: humanity is in God's image and also radically fallen. But even if a theologian leaves aside all the details and only tries to say the one main thing that makes Christian faith what it is, the one main thing includes within itself the three gigantic doctrines of atonement, incarnation, and Trinity.
Though the body of Christian truth is made up of a great many doctrines, perhaps hundreds of them, there are only three great mysteries at the very heart of Christianity: the atonement, the incarnation, and the Trinity. All the lesser doctrines depend on these great central truths, derive their significance from them, and spell out their implications. Each of these three mysteries is a mystery of unity, bringing together things which seem, in themselves, to be unlikely candidates for unification. The Christian doctrine of atonement describes reconciliation between the holy God and fallen man. The Christian doctrine of the incarnation confesses that the complete divine nature and perfect human nature are united in the person of Jesus Christ. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms that the one God exists eternally as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, atonement, incarnation, and Trinity are directly related to one another in a particular way. The good news of salvation is that Jesus Christ accomplished the...
