Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective

Marc Cortez

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780310516422
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

What does it mean to be "truly human?" In Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective, Marc Cortez looks at the ways several key theologians—Gregory of Nyssa, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, John Zizioulas, and James Cone—have used Christology to inform their understanding of the human person. Based on this historical study, he concludes with a constructive proposal for how Christology and anthropology should work together to inform our view of what it means to be human.

Many theologians begin their discussion of the human person by claiming that in some way Jesus Christ reveals what it means to be "truly human, " but this often has little impact in the material presentation of their anthropology. Although modern theologians often fail to reflect robustly on the relationship between Christology and anthropology, this was not the case throughout church history. In this book, examine seven key theologians and discover their important contributions to theological anthropology.

CHAPTER 1

Beyond Genitalia

Gregory of Nyssa’s Transformative Christology and the (Re)orientation of Sexuality

The scope of our proposed enquiry is not small: it is second to none of the wonders of the world, — perhaps even greater than any of those known to us, because no other existing thing, save the human creation, has been made like to God.

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, preface¹

AT FIRST GLANCE, GREGORY OF Nyssa might seem an unusual starting point for our study in christological anthropology. Some might even question whether Gregory offers a truly christological anthropology at all. Although no one would deny that Christology sits at the heart of Gregory’s theological project, and several scholars have specifically labeled Gregory as a “christocentric” theologian,² questions can be raised about the extent to which Gregory offered an explicitly christological approach to theological anthropology. In his famous On the Making of Man, one of the few treatises in the early church dedicated entirely to theological anthropology, Christology played a relatively limited role. Indeed, Gregory explicitly referred to Jesus only a handful of times in the entire manuscript.³ How can his theological anthropology be meaningfully informed by Christology when it makes almost no reference to Christ?

Additionally, Gregory is famous, even infamous, for construing human sexuality such that it appears not to be a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. Instead, he seems to suggest that sexuality is an extraneous “add on” to human nature, and thus something that will not characterize humanity in its resurrected form. In the eschaton, we will transcend sexuality as we finally achieve the “true” and non-sexed humanity that God always intended.⁴ But one might legitimately wonder, how can a theological anthropology that starts with Jesus Christ and takes seriously the reality of the incarnation along with the fact that Jesus was male, avoid the apparently obvious conclusion that sexuality is important for being human?

Issues like these raise legitimate questions as to whether Gregory really qualifies as having developed a christological understanding of the human person. Nonetheless, as we move through this chapter, we will see that Gregory’s anthropology is thoroughly christological, albeit rooted in a vision of human transformation that began with the incarnation and will continue on into eternity. Understanding this will help us appreciate Gregory’s surprising interpretation of sexuality. Contrary to what some might think, Gregory was not simply captive to Greek suspicions of physicality in general and sexuality in particular. Instead, we will see that his vision of human sexuality flows from an anthropology that is transformational, eschatological, and ultimately apophatic, all three of which flow directly from his christological starting point.

Despite initial impressions, then, Gregory of Nyssa stands as one of the earliest theologians to develop a thoroughgoing theological anthropology rooted in Christology. That he does so in ways that produce startling conclusions about the human person in general and human sexuality in particular, conclusions that often challenge modern assumptions about what it means to be human, makes him an interesting interlocutor for our anthropological project.

WEIRDER THAN YOU THINK: THE PROBLEM OF THE “HUMAN”

Gregory’s understanding of the human person is framed by three theological loci: the imago Dei, the incarnation, and the resurrection. And it is not difficult to see why, since all three loci introduce challenging questions about what it means to be human. According to many theologians, the imago Dei claims that fallen and finite beings somehow “image” the infinite and glorious divine being. Yet the attributes and actions of the divine and the human seem so radically contrary that it becomes difficult to imagine what it could possibly mean for one to image the other. Our imaginations are stretched even further when we consider the incarnation and its claim that two such disparate natures are actually joined in one person. And finally, the resurrection presents a vision of transformed humanity, leading to questions about whether there is any real continuity with our present existence and whether we remain truly human in such a radically transformed state.

Many theologians engage these issues by wrestling with how such things can be possible. Gregory, on the other hand, although he was certainly willing to ask how questions, prefers a logic flowing in a different direction. Instead of beginning with an existing understanding of the human person and focusing on how that kind of being can possibly image God or be united with a divine nature, Gregory allows his discourse to be directed by the that — given that humans image God, given that the incarnation is a reality, and given that the resurrection will take place, what must we believe about human nature? Taking these theological convictions as his starting point, Gregory offers a radical reinterpretation of what it means to be human.

Mirrors of God: Finite Images of an Infinite Reality

Like many theologians, Gregory begins his anthropological reflection with what it means to be made in the image of God. As he says at the beginning of On the Making of Man, the human person is “second to none of the wonders of the world” because the human person is the only creature “who truly was created after God, and whose soul was fashioned in the image of Him Who created him.”⁵ Thus, the human person is a “mirror” of God that functions as an image so long as it “keeps its resemblance to the prototype.”⁶ This is what distinguishes the human person from the rest of creation and establishes the value and dignity of the human person before God.⁷

Despite this confident beginning, however, Gregory later argues that understanding the imago is far from easy. Indeed, it serves as one of the fundamental problems of a Christian anthropology, one that may well transcend our ability to comprehend. In Gregory’s words, “How then is man, this mortal, passible, short-lived being, the image of that nature which is immortal, pure, and everlasting? The true answer to this question, indeed, perhaps only the very Truth knows.”⁸ Gregory’s discussion of the imago, then, is an attempt to explain — or, more accurately, to speculate about possible explanations of — how finite and fallen human creatures can be said to “mirror” the divine being in any sense.⁹

Gregory’s definition of the imago Dei is fascinating and multifaceted. Although he is often lumped together with those who define the imago as humanity’s capacity for rationality, and he did describe the image in such terms on a number of occasions,¹⁰ he presents a more complex view of the image, one that includes an equal emphasis on both love and free will.¹¹ And Gregory goes further, claiming that “the image is properly an image so long as it fails in none of those attributes which we perceive in the archetype.”¹² Rather than limiting the image to a particular attribute like rationality, then, Gregory argues that humans image the divine being in all of its attributes, even attributes typically viewed as inimical to creaturely existence. Thus, for example, Gregory argues elsewhere that human persons image even divine simplicity.¹³ Ultimately, Gregory concludes that imaging God is about participating in God’s own goodness and all of its associated virtues.¹⁴

To make the picture even more complex, unlike many early thinkers Gregory does not limit the image to the soul alone. Although the soul is the proper seat of the image, he refuses to exclude the body entirely. Instead, the body images the soul in much the same way as the soul images God: “it too is adorned by the beauty that the mind gives, being, so to say, a mirror of the mirror.”¹⁵ God specifically designed the human body as an instrument uniquely suitable for the task of imaging God in the world.¹⁶ This means the body itself is mediately involved in imaging the divine nature.

This seems to create an impossible tension. How can a finite, creaturely nature manifest all of the divine attributes? Or, as Gregory himself asks, “How then is man, this mortal, passible, short-lived being, the image of that nature which is immortal, pure, and everlasting?”¹⁷ As mentioned earlier, however, the logic of Gregory’s argument flows in another direction. Rather than wrestle with whether it is possible for a human creature to image the divine nature, Gregory began with the theological conviction that humans in fact do so. Thus, Gregory’s real question is this: Given that humans image the divine nature, what must we conclude about human nature? And the only possible conclusion Gregory can identify is that human nature is far more glorious than we imagine. Gregory recognizes that a finite human nature will never exemplify the divine attributes in the same way that the divine nature will,¹⁸ but the fact that a human nature can do so in any way suggests that our definition of “human” is far too limited.

Indeed, Gregory argues that human nature itself ultimately transcends our ability to understand. And this should come as no surprise. We were created to image an incomprehensible God, so we should expect that incomprehensibility would be part of the image itself. Thus, “since the nature of our mind, which is the likeness of the Creator evades our knowledge, it has an accurate resemblance to the superior nature, figuring by its own unknowableness the incomprehensible Nature.”¹⁹ For Gregory, an apophatic anthropology is the only possible result. We are more than we imagine, indeed, more than we can imagine.

In the Ocean of the Divine: Incarnation and the Transformation of Human Nature

Like the imago Dei, Gregory’s theology of the incarnation presses us to understand that humanity is far more than we could possibly imagine. Indeed, Gregory presents an anthropology in which the union of the divine and the human in Christ, and the corresponding transformation of human nature, is the lens through which we come to understand what comprises true humanity.

Gregory articulates much of his understanding of the incarnation in his writings against Apollinarius and his followers. In this context, his real concern is to show how the incarnation requires a real union of divine and human. Thus, Gregory is sharply critical of the incomplete human that he thought Apollinarius was proposing with his union of the human body with the divine mind.²⁰ For Gregory, such an approach necessarily denigrates the true humanity of Christ, turning it into a mere “beast of burden” since it lacks the soul that is an essential aspect of any truly human being.²¹ Like his fellow Cappadocians, Gregory insists that the incarnation must involve the Son taking on a complete human nature, including a human soul, if it is going to result in the salvation of human persons. In short, any aspect of human nature not included in the incarnation would not be healed.²²

However, it is precisely this union of the divine and the human that raises so many critical questions. How is it possible for the two to be joined in one person? Although Gregory wrestled with this question in the face of Apollinarian objections to the coherence of the Cappadocian account of the incarnation, here as well his anthropological focus rests on what must be true of human nature given the reality of the incarnation. In other words, if the incarnation is a reality, and if our understanding of human nature is incompatible with the incarnation, then it is our understanding of human nature that must change. From this perspective, Gregory argues for a christological transformation of human nature that, while remaining creaturely, becomes something far more amenable to union with the divine.

One of the primary ways in which Gregory distinguishes the creature from the Creator is the creature’s liability to change. For Gregory, “all things that are seen in the creation are the offspring of rest and motion.”²³ This is the necessary result of having been “brought into being by the Divine will.”²⁴ The simple fact that all creatures have changed from non-being to being means creaturely nature is necessarily malleable. And for Gregory, this stands in obvious contrast to the immutable divine being since “that which may happen to move or change would cease to admit of the conception of Godhead.”²⁵ Although this causes problems for understanding what it means for humans to image God, the essential malleability of humanity’s creaturely nature also creates resources for dealing with th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: A Christ-Centered Lens: What Does It Mean for Anthropology to Be “Christological”?
• 1. Beyond Genitalia: Gregory of Nyssa’s Transformative Christology and the (Re)orientation of Sexuality
• 2. All Will Be Well: Suffering and Redemption In Julian of Norwich’s Cross-Shaped Anthropology
• 3. The Chief Article of Our Humanity: Justification and Vocation In Martin Luther’s Anthropological Vision
• 4. The Feeling of Being Human: Friedrich Schleiermacher and the Ecclesial Mediation of True Humanity
• 5. Embodied Souls: The Ontological Determination of the Human In Karl Barth’s Anthropology
• 6. Personal Being: John Zizioulas and the Christological Grounding of Human Personhood
• 7. The Black Messiah: Race, Liberation, and the Actualization of Humanity In James Cone’s Christological Anthropology
• 8. Developing Christological Visions of the Human Person
• Select Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index