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Christology for Amateurs

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Christology for Amateurs Christology for Amateurs An introduction to Christology from the apostles to Chalcedon (451) This article arose from a Guided Reading Course that I teach at Emmanuel Evangelical Church in London, where I serve as Minister. This two-year course is designed to give students an overview of historic Christian theology by exposing them to some of the best theology from previous centuries as well as some leading contemporary theological writing. The students do four hours of set reading each week, assisted by questions to help them focus on the key points, and then we get together for each week for a two-hour tutorial. By the end of the course, students will have a reasonable grasp of the main topics in Reformed evangelical theology. When we came to the doctrine of the incarnation, I encountered a problem. The best book I had come across was Thomas Weinandy’s Does God Change? – an outstanding work of historical theology that covers the development of the doctrine of the incarnation from the post-apostolic era to the 20 th century. Unfortunately, even the introduction and first two chapters (up to the Council of Chalcedon, AD 451) proved too complex and long to be covered in four hours of reading. Yet at the same time, I didn’t want to dumb down such an important topic. I therefore decided to try an experiment, and this article is the result. It is intended as a heavy abridgement of the preface, introduction and first two chapters of Weinandy’s book, from the apostles to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Of course, there were some significant Christological developments and controversies after that point – the monothelite controversy, for example, and the rise of kenotic theology. But Christological reflection reached a degree of maturity with the Council of Chalcedon. As Weinandy points out, the developments that took place during the next eight hundred years “were primarily the unfolding of the Council of Chalcedon and the maturing of its doctrine” (67). This article is not an attempt to replace, much less improve upon, Dr Weinandy’s book. Rather, it is a mark of appreciation, and an attempt to make a complicated book accessible to a wider audience. At times I have followed Weinandy’s logic quite closely, at other points I’ve re-ordered material slightly. In some places I’ve expanded his discussion; elsewhere I’ve skipped over large sections. Page numbers are given in brackets, and questions are provided along the way to assist with study and reflection. Where anything is wrong or unclear, the fault is mine and not his; if anything is useful, thank him and not me. Better still, thank God for the One who made it all possible. After all, when it comes to Christology, all of us except One are amateurs. 1 Outline Preface Introduction A. Biblical Basis B. Early patristic development 1. Docetism . 2. Monarchianism . 3. Tertullian and Origen . 4. The Trinitarian and Christological Questions . I. Nicea’s Homoousion: Defining God’s Begetting and Becoming A. The Trinitarian Question 1. Arius . 2. Nicea and Athanasius . B. The Christological Question 1. Arius . 2. Athanasius . 3. Apollinarius . 4. The Inadequacy of the Logos/Sarx Framework . II. Chalcedonian Christology: “Become” as Personal/Existential A. Antioch and Alexandria B. The School of Antioch: Nestorius D. Ephesus and the aftermath E. The Council of Chalcedon 2 Preface “This book basically treats two concerns. The first concern is the relationship between the immutability of God and the Incarnation” (xvi). The Bible teaches that God is immutable; that is, he does not change. But this seems hard to square with the fact that in the incarnation God became man, for “becoming” would seem to imply change. This raises the first question: how can God become man while remaining immutable? “The second concern is the passibility of God as man” (xvii). The Bible teaches that God is impassible; that is, “he does not experience suffering, pain, and sorrow,” or indeed “changing intellectual, psychological, and emotional states as men do” (xviii). Yet the Bible also seems to teach that God incarnate experienced all these passions and more besides. This raises the second question: how can God be born, suffer, die and love as man while remaining impassible? 1. What two issues does Weinandy’s book address? Can you explain why these issues are so puzzling? Introduction A. Biblical Basis The issues addressed in this study cannot easily be answered directly from the pages of Scripture. “The difficulty is not so much that there is no biblical foundation for this study, but rather that the Bible, as such, does not explicitly raise or treat the problem treated here” (xix). The Bible does, however, provide plenty of implicit data. “The biblical basis for this study ... arises out of the Old Testament’s dual conception of God” (xix). First, “the Old Testament sees God as a ‘living God’ ... who is actively and personally present to his people” (xix). 1 Second, the Old Testament depicts God as “wholly other” than the creation (xx). “He is above time and history”; he is “unlike man”; he transcends creation. 2 These two paradoxical perspectives can be summarised in this way: “God reveals himself in time any history as the one who transcends time and history. He is present as the wholly other ” (xx, italics original). This conception of God is revealed most “radically” (xx) in the incarnation. In Christ God is present as never before – not merely through “judges, kings, and prophets” (xx), but in person. And yet he is simultaneously more wholly other than ever before – it is “the divine Logos himself” (xx) who is revealed in Christ (cf. Jn 1:1–14). 1 Weinandy cites Gen 12; Ex 2:23-25; 3:6; 13:17 ; 17:6; Dt 10:14-18; 28:1-5; 2 Sam 3:18; Jdg 8:19; 1 Ki 17:1; Amos 3 :2 in support of his claim that “to the Hebrew people God revealed himself as an active personal being in their midst” (xx). 2 Weinandy cites Gen 1:1;Ex 20:4; Dt 4:32–30; 5:8; Ps 47:2, 3; 97:5; 102:27; 135; Is 6:5; 40:18, 25; 41:4; 43:10-11; 44:6; Hos 11:2; Amos 4:2; Mic 4:13 here. (He also cites the apocryphal text Judith 9:17, which does not in fact exist. Perhaps he intended to cite Judith 9:12, which reads, “Hear, O hear me, God of my father, God of the inheritance of Israel, Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of the waters, King of all thy creation, hear my prayer!” [RSV].) 3 2. Why, according to Weinandy, is it hard to answer his questions directly from the pages of Scripture? Do you agree? 3. What “implicit data” does Weinandy use to approach his questions? What biblical evidence does he cite? Do you agree with the conclusions he draws from these biblical texts? 4. How does Weinandy summarise his “dual conception” of God? 5. How is this conception of God related to the incarnation? B. Early patristic development The early patristic theologians never questioned God’s immutability or impassibility. This picture of God was regarded as a “self-evident axiom, accepted by all” (xxi, quoting J. Pelikan). They were therefore concerned not with defending it, but rather with the question of how to reconcile it with “the new reality of Christ” (xxi). The theological developments that arose from the attempts to address this issue centred around three questions, each of which flows from one of the words in John’s declaration, “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). The first question might be called “the Trinitarian question” (xxi), and flows from the word “Word”. “If the Word is divine, how can he be from the Father without destroying the oneness of God and thus the immutable nature?” (xxi). The second question is an incarnational question, and flows from the word “became”. “If the Word is God, does he change in becoming man?” (xxi). The third question is about “the manhood of the Son” (xxi), and flows from the word “flesh”. “If the divine word is man, do his experiences as man effect a change in his divinity?” (xxi). The second and third questions can together be described as Christological. These questions were discussed over several centuries during a series of theological controversies. Let’s work through them chronologically. 6. Can you explain the three questions that formed the focus of Christological discussion in the early patristic period? 1. Docetism . The word “Docetism” comes from the Greek verb dokeo , which means “I seem”. The Docetists believed that Jesus was not really a man; he only seemed to be a man. His humanity was merely an illusion; it wasn’t real. The logic of Docetism worked like this: The Docetists were absolutely convinced of God’s immutability and impassibility, and sought to hold onto it at all costs. They thought that if God were really united to flesh his immutability and impassibility would be compromised. So they “denied the physical and real humanity” of Christ, arguing instead that “God only appeared to be a man” (xxii). Underlying the docetist position lay two further considerations. First, they regarded matter as somehow inherently evil. Clearly, therefore, a real union between God and matter would be unthinkable. Second, they derived their notion of divine transcendence from the idea, prominent among some Greek philosophers, that for God to be transcendent meant that he was completely unable to have any direct 4 relationship with man. Such God-man relationships were possible only through intermediaries; any direct contact between God and creation was unthinkable.
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