: AMBIGUITY AND PROMISE PHILIP J. ROSATO, S.J. St. Joseph's College, Pa.

[wo AT FIRST seemingly unrelated phenomena form the Sitz im Leben Τecclesiae of this essay on Spirit Christology. The first is that Chris­ theologians, engaged in a multifaceted dialogue with other cultures and ideologies, are groping for an effectual Christological paradigm which is both identical with their tradition and relevant to the empiri­ cal, socially critical, and future-oriented outlook of modern man. The second is that the same theologians are being challenged by the lively spirituality of the charismatic renewal to reflect on ' own relation­ ship to the . What influence do these divergent yet impelling cultural situations have on the Christian theologian? They first corrobo­ rate his own suspicion that a new Christological model is necessary; though valid in itself, the prevailing model of dogmatic Christol­ ogy is not totally adequate to the pressing issues which face fundamen­ tal and pastoral . These very issues also stir him to return to the earliest Christology, that based on a Pneuma model, which was formu­ lated to meet the needs of the primitive in a social and religious milieu surprisingly not unlike the present one. What was the positive intention of that early Spirit Christology? Why was it deemed ambigu­ ous, rejected, and, except for sporadic reoccurrences, all but forgotten? Can it possibly be rejuvenated? If so, what adjustments would have to be made in such a Christological design in light of significant modern advances, especially in ? This essay will attempt a preliminary answer to these questions and then propose a paschally oriented Spirit Christology as a paradigm which might well allow Christian theologians to present Jesus in a way more under­ standable to contemporary secular culture and also more appropriate to the current spiritual and pastoral needs in the Christian community.

CROSS-DISCIPLINARY INTEREST IN SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY In his recent work on Christology, Walter Kasper, a leading Catholic dogmatician at the University of Tubingen, has opted quite clearly for a pneumatological approach to Christology.1 Kasper arrives at this posi­ tion by considering the weaknesses of those which explic­ itly adopt either the perspective of philosophy, anthropology, and cos­ mology or the perspective of world history. The main difficulty with

1 W. Kasper, Jesus der Christus (Mainz: Grunewald, 1975) 296. The English transla­ tion, Jesus the Christ (New York: Paulist, 1977), is now available. 423 424 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES either ' Logos Christology, Rahner's Christology in a transcen­ dental-anthropological context, Teilhard's cosmic Christology, or Pan- nenberg's Christology in the context of world history is that the univer­ sal character of Jesus Christ is preserved and enhanced at the expense of his uniqueness.2 As important and necessary as a universal context is for a genuine Christology, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ is equally necessary and important. Kasper argues, therefore, that the danger in the above-mentioned Christologies is that they begin with a particular universal framework, into which at a later point the person Jesus Christ must somehow be inserted. Although one could object that the Scriptures themselves set Jesus into the existing framework of the Hellenistic-Jewish world with its many philosophical, anthropological, cosmological, and historical pre­ suppositions, Rasper's argument is still convincing: it was primarily into an inherently biblical framework that Jesus was inserted in the , that is, into the framework of biblical . Apparently this was done precisely in order to protect both the universal and the unique character of the person of Jesus Christ. The New Testament authors chose the biblical notion of the Spirit of Yahweh as the mediating principle with which both the continuity and the disconti­ nuity of the Christ-event with the could best be ex­ plained. It appears from the New Testament's point of view that Chris­ tology is a function of an overarching pneumatology.3 Walter Kasper is not alone in opting for a pneumatological approach to Christology. In the recent past, exegetes, historians, dogmaticians, and moralists have come to see that it was, in fact, the Spirit-filled Church of the first century which set the person and the significance of Christ into the framework of Yahweh's promise to pour out His Spirit on all flesh—a promise which they believed was uniquely fulfilled in the person of Jesus, not because but just as that promise was the central reality of their own existence in the early community. Once current theologians attempt to enter into the minds of their first-century coun­ terparts, they gradually discover that the New Testament itself, the history of the early Church, its dogmas, its liturgy, and its moral teachings resulted from the conviction that the entire life of the commu­ nity was analogous to the Spirit-filled life of Jesus. It was primarily in light of their own personal experience of the Spirit that they could understand how uniquely and how universally Yahweh was at work in the personal history of Jesus. Even if it is true that the explicit teachings on the Spirit in the third 2 W. Kasper, "Einmaligkeit und Universalität Jesu Christi," Theologie der Gegen­ wart 17 (1974) 5-6. 3 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 298. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 425 article of the were chronologically the last ones to be formalized in dogmatic statements, this fact does not deny the actual experience of the early Church as it is recorded in Scripture. It was apparently from a pneumatological point of view that not only the relationship of Yahweh to Jesus was understood, but also the relationship of the community itself to Yahweh and to Jesus.4 In effect, it was from the as yet unformu­ lated third article of the Christian Creed—from the experience of the Spirit, of the community, of , and of eschatological hope— that the community was driven on to allow the first and second articles to come into being. It was a lived but as yet implicit Spirit theology from which a theology of the Father, a Christology, an , a sacra­ mental, liturgical, and moral theology were originally developed. This insight into the centrality of pneumatology has always been the particu­ lar hallmark of the Orthodox theology in the East, but it has recently become a central realization of Western theology in the wake of renewed biblical and historical research. A brief survey of these developments in various theological disciplines can shed light on the current revival of Pneuma theology in the area of Christology. Exegetes have always known that Pauline and Lukan Christology is explicitly pneumatic. But it has become consistently clearer that the other Synoptic as well as the Word-oriented of John contain significant pneumatological statements about Jesus at key points in their evaluation of his person and mission. Bruce Vawter's commentary on of John points out the important role of the Spirit in the Christology and of that Gospel; and C. K. Barrett's The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition considers the essen­ tial connection between Pneuma theology and eschatology in the Synop­ tics.5 Furthermore, it is precisely this essential relationship between Spirit theology and eschatology which links what have rightly been called the two divergent strands of Spirit theology in the : the Old Testament stress on the Spirit of Yahweh as His life-giving, eschatologi­ cal power and the New Testament's emphasis on the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus who now directs, aids, teaches, and fills the eschatological community of the Church.6 In both Testaments the outpouring of the

4 E. Käsemann, "Geist und Geistgaben im Neuen Testament," RGG3 2, 1272-79, and E. Schweizer, "Pneuma," TWNT 6 (1959) 394-403. 5 B. Vawcer, "Johannine Theology" JBC 80:39-47; C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: University Press, 1960) 213-27, and C. K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (5th corrected impression; London: SPCK, 1970) 153. 6 F. Hahn, "Das biblische Verständnis des Heiligen Geistes: Exegetische Grundlagen einer vergleichenden Pneumatologie," Materialdienst des Konfessionskundlichen Insti­ tuts Bensheim 23 (1972) 90-95; Κ. H. Schelkle, Theologie des Neuen Testaments 2 (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1973) 235-48. 426 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Spirit marks an eschatological act of ; Yahweh's Spirit breaks His silence and gives life and promise to the people He has called. The Bible, therefore, seems to offer its own universal and explicitly theological framework into which God's eschatological acts can be inserted: the unique, self-mediating power of God's Spirit. When the Jesus of the Gospels is placed in this pneumatological framework, the definitive, eschatological nature of Yahweh's union with him is preserved. But at the same time the universal significance of that union both for the Old and for the is fully respected. Historians of the Church point out that both the early suppression of the Spirit Christology developed by Jewish converts to and the long neglect of a fully adequate dogmatics of the Spirit have contin­ ually proved to be an unbearable strain on the unity of the Church.7 A lamentable law of Church history seems to be that Spirit theology in its various forms has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, a renewed Spirit theology has often revitalized the institutional Church and led to a rejuvenation of its inner life and outer mission. New Pentecoste swept over the Church at the time of Athanasius and the Cappadocians, at the time of the mystics and of the monastic reformers during the , at the time of Johann Möhler and the contact of the with romanticism and idealism, and in our own time through the charismatic movement following Vatican II. But it is also true that Spirit theology stood at the center of almost every major in the Church. The rejection of the and their Pneuma Christology was one factor which led to the split between the Church and the Synagogue. The controversy over the resulted in the splintering of East from West. The central issues of the were also decidedly pneumatological, since a consensus concerning Scripture and , Church life and Church authority, could not be reached as long as the relationship of the Spirit of Christ to the organized spiritual and liturgical life of the community was not clear. In short, the unresolved problems concerning the Spirit's relationship to the Word, the community, and the individual have led to the most promising innovations and to the most painful divisions in the course of Church history.8 Any reconciliation of the separated groups would seem to have to depend on the development of a Spirit theology which could narrow the gap between Jew and Christian, East and West, Protestant and Catholic. The ecumenical movement will have to retrace the once painful road of pneumatology, which now ironically seems to offer it

7 G. S. Hendry, The Holy Spirit in (rev. ed.; Philadelphia: West­ minster, 1965) 53-71. 8 Y. Congar, "Pneumatologie et 'christomonisme' dans la tradition latine," ETL 45 (1969) 394-416. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 427 genuine promise.9 Spirit Christology might, therefore, be able to serve the function of leading ecumenical discussion back to the central histori­ cal event of the Spirit-filled Jesus, who was able to unite the Jew and the Greek into a new religious community. Moralists and liturgists have found new impetus in Spirit theology both for further research in their respective disciplines and for coopera­ tive efforts at linking the moral life of the Christian community to sacramental theology. Bernard Häring has successfully attempted to revive a nineteenth-century insight into the as the biblically attested foundation of the moral life of the Christian.10 At key points in his personal psychological growth the Christian is brought by the com­ munity into a liturgical encounter with the dead and risen Lord, who gives him the power to live out the new challenges of his life out of love. Central to this connection between the sacraments and morality is a Spirit theology, since the Spirit of Christ, who is at work in the sacra­ ments, brings about in the Christian an ontological correspondence between what he is as a result of receiving the sacraments and what he does in living out the which the sacrament signifies. Furthermore, since it has become commonplace to consider the person of Jesus as the original and perfect sacrament, it might be most helpful to examine what insights a Pneuma Christology could contribute to a better understanding of the analogy between Jesus' Spirit-filled life and the sacramental life of the Spirit-encountered Christian. No doubt, such a pneumatic relationship between and ethics would seem to counteract the current trend of many Chris­ tian moralists towards an autonomous ethics. But if, as Karl Barth has suggested, "con-science" and "syn-eidesis" mean "knowing with," pneu­ matic understanding of Christian morality would preserve both the autonomous role of man and the concomitant role of the Spirit in ethical choices.11 The apparent paradox of Christian parénesis—"But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Gal 5:18)—leads directly back to the cultic and social life of Jesus of Nazareth who freely gave himself up and acted out his life in accordance with what he was ontically by the power of the Spirit.12 A Pneuma Christology seems inherently able to respect both the autonomous acts of Jesus and his

9 K. Barth and H. U. von Balthasar, Einheit und Erneuerung der Kirche (Freiburg: Paulus, 1968) 12; cf. also A. Dulles, "The Church, the Churches, and the Catholic Church," TS 33 (1972) 221-24. 10 Β. Häring, Christian Renewal in a Changing World (New York: Desclee, 1964) 14- 24, and Christian Maturity (New York: Herder, 1967) 19-26. 11 K. Barth and H. Barth, Zur Lehre vom Heiligen Geist (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1930) 101. 12 Häring, Christian Renewal 55-58. Cf. also I. de la Potterie and S. Lyonnet, The Christian Lives by the Spirit (Staten Island: Alba, 1971) 145-61. 428 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES obedience to his ontic relationship with Yahweh's Spirit. Such an under­ standing of Jesus could prove fruitful in discovering what is unique and what is universal in . All of these converging trends in biblical, historical, sacramental, and moral theology provide a new challenge to systematic theologians in the West. Orthodox theologians have always been in the vanguard with respect to Pneuma theology in general and Pneuma Christology in particular. A survey of Orthodox theology reinforces what Paul Evdoki- mov has observed: "The mystery of is christological, but not pan-christological. . . . Pneumatology is given its proper place in the East."13 The century-long concentration in the West on Word theology seems to be on the wane even among Protestants, who have understand­ ably been its strongest supporters. Paul Tillich's theology leaves ample room for a Pneuma Christology within his all-embracing scheme of God's spiritual presence among men.14 Even Karl Barth, the staunch defender of Logos Christology, found it imperative to include Pneuma Christology in his Church Dogmatics when he came to discuss the person of Jesus as the model of : "Jesus has the Holy Spirit lastingly and totally. He is the man to whom the creative movement of God has come primarily, originally and therefore defini­ tively."15 Walter Rasper's recent pneumatological turn in Christology has been prepared over the years by such Catholic systematicians as Heribert Mühlen, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger.16 Even Karl Rahner's transcendental approach to Christology has been interpreted by Wilhelm Thüsing as essentially in accord with the Pauline notion of Pneuma Christology.17 The current importance of Spirit theology for a Christian understanding of God and of Jesus Christ is clearly reflected in the titles of two essays by Heribert Mühlen: "The Christ-event as the Work of the Holy Spirit" and "The Current Necessity for a Pneumatolog-

13 P. Evdokimov, L'Orthodoxie (Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1949) 147-48. 14 P. Tillich, 2 (Chicago: University Press, 1967) 121-25, and 3, 144-49. For a critique of Tillich's Spirit Christology, cf. W. Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968) 126. 15 K. Barth, Church Dogmatics 3/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1968) 334. 16 H. Mühlen, Una mystica persona: Die Kirche als das Mysterium der Identität des Heiligen Geistes in Christus und den Christen: Eine Person in vielen Personen (Munich: Schöningh, 1967); H. U. von Balthasar, Skizzen zur Theologie 3: Spiritus Creator (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1970); J. Ratzinger, "Bemerkungen zur Frage der Charismen in der Kirche" in Die Zeit Jesu: Festschrift für Heinrich Schlier (ed. G. Bornkamm and K. Rahner; Freiburg: Herder, 1970) 257-83. 17 K. Rahner and W. Thüsing, Christologie—systematisch und exegetisch: Arbeits­ grundlagen für eine interdisziplinäre Vorlesung (Freiburg: Herder, 1972) 100-101, 165- 166; K. Rahner, Theological Investigations 1 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961) 155. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 429 ical Starting Point to the Doctrine of God."18 These new pneumatological insights in the field of systematic theology clearly stem from the ground­ work which has recently been done in almost all the other theological disciplines. Thus a rather consistent picture emerges: cross-disciplinary theological studies are coverging on the most ancient of Christologies, the Pneuma-sarx Christology of early Jewish Christianity.

DANGER AND PROMISE OF SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY Before these new pneumatological insights are treated at greater length, a few sober lessons from Church history have to be learned with great care, so that from the very start the difficult problems which Pneuma Christology necessarily poses will not be lightly overlooked. Spirit Christology never was, nor can it ever be, a facile answer to all the questions which a genuine Christology inevitably raises. The first pages of the history of Christian dogmatics seem in retrospect to be an uncanny prefigurement of what would later evolve as the perennial problem with almost every new formulation of a Pneuma-sarx Christol­ ogy: the of .19 Even the thought of revitalizing first- century Pneuma-sarx Christology confronts the theologian with the nagging question: Can any attempt to go back to a pre-Chalcedonian Christology avoid the danger of adoptionism and thereby preserve the absolute uniqueness of Jesus as the God-man? What can prevent any new articulation of a Pneuma-sarx Christology from concluding with the various adoptionists that Jesus Christ was simply a human being who was possessed by the divine Spirit in a special manner and "adopted" at some point in his life by God as His Son? The annals of Church history report the repeated attempts at a Pneuma Christology which resulted in condemnation and oblivion. At this point a brief sketch of one of those attempts seems necessary.20 An understanding of the mistakes made and the vistas opened by the adoptionists may

18 H. Mühlen, "Die epochale Notwendigkeit eines pneumatologischen Ansatzes der Gotteslehre," Wort und Wahrheit 28 (1973) 275-87; "Das Christusereignis als Tat des Heiligen Geistes," Mysterium salutis 3/2 (ed. J. Feiner and M. Löhrer; Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1969) 524-530. 19 A. Schilson and W. Kasper, Christologie im Präsens: Kritische Sichtung neuer Entwürfe (Freiburg: Herder, 1974) 149. 20 For the sake of brevity, this study will confine itself solely to a description of Ebionite Christology which developed from the primitive Pneuma-sarx Christology of Paul and . A fuller study would have to include the thought of various later adoptionist Christologies such as those of in the fourth century, of Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel in the eight century, and of the habitus Christology and the assumptus-homo theology of the twelfth century. For an overview of this history, cf. "Adoptionism," NCE 1 (1967) 140. 430 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES delineate the parameters within which a revised Pneuma-sarx Christol­ ogy might still be possible. It is now an accepted fact that early Christianity experienced great tension in forging a theology which accounted both for the salvific function and the personal nature of Jesus. This tension existed from the very beginning of Christianity and is clearly reflected in the Pneuma- sarx Christology of Paul in Rom 1:3-4: "Jesus Christ was descended from David according to the flesh and was designated in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his from the dead." This same two-stage Christology is recognizable in Phil 2:6-11, in 1 Pet 3:18, and in Ignatius of Antioch'sLetter to theEphesians 7, 2.21 A tension existed between the functional, soteriological role of Jesus as the risen Lord of the community and the substantial, ontological role of Jesus as the Son of the Father. Modern biblical scholarship has led systematic theologians to admit that the soteriological function of Jesus as risen Lord was the primary concern of the early community, and that the ontological nature of Jesus as the eternal Son of the Father became a problem only as the Church developed. It is therefore unfair to judge Paul and the other New Testament writers by using the clearer criteria which emerged from the later Christological controversies and the writings of the patristic theologians: the interest of the former group was different from that of the latter.22 It can, however, be stated with surety that the earliest attempt at expressing God's presence in Jesus was a Pneuma-sarx Christology. This Christology accounted for the uniqueness of Jesus in terms of the intensity of his union with the Spirit of Yahweh. This is true even of the canonical New Testament writers, as indicated above. Fragmentary evidence, however, reveals that in the first and second centuries some Jewish Christians accepted Jesus as Messiah but, in contrast to Paul, never intended thereby to depart from the strict required by the Jewish . These early Jewish monarchianists, who held firmly to the belief that Yahweh is the "sole source" {monarchia) of all reality, tried to link Jesus to the God of the Old Testament by means of his impersonal by the Spirit of Yahweh during his lifetime, and thus to skirt entirely the question of the pre-existence of Jesus.23

21 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 271-73. 22 Hendry, The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology 32-39. 23 Pannenberg, Jesus —God and Man 116-20; cf. also A. Grillmeier, Christ in Chris­ tian Tradition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965) 90. For a positive evaluation of the Ebionite elevation Christology, cf. P. Smulders, "Dogmengeschichtliche und Lehramt­ liche Entfaltung der Christologie," Mysterium salutis 3/1 (ed. J. Feiner and M. Löhrer; Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1970) 391-99. Smulders argues that the Ebionites did not advocate that the man Jesus was simply raised to the state of messiahship; with the concept of the Holy Spirit, they intended to develop a Christology open to the reality of Jesus' pre- existence, but in a way different from that of Paul or John. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 431 These dynamic, or adoptionist, monarchianists were the Ebionites. Most modern patristic scholars believe that the Ebionites were a heterodox group of Jewish Christians who departed from the of other groups such as the Nazarenes.24 The adoptionist Christology of the Ebionites was certainly not characteristic of all Jewish Christians; on the contrary, many Gentile Christians seemed to hold an adoptionist position in opposition to Jewish believers.25 One theory about the origin of the Ebionites ("the poor ones") was that they were offshoots of the main branch of Jewish Christianity which left for Transjor­ dan, Alexandria, and around the beginning of in A.D. 66.26 They apparently evolved from a specific group of Jewish converts to Christianity who violently opposed the Hellenistic flavor of Paul's more developed theology and thereby became a conservative and sectarian community of Jewish Christians. Irenaeus, who first attested to the teachings of the Ebionites, did not seem to have an independent source of knowledge concerning them, but rather regarded them sum­ marily as a legalistic Jewish-Christian .27 The early Fathers appar­ ently did not understand the complex nature of Jewish Christianity, but tended instead to schematize various groups under a single heresiologi- cal category. In contrast to Irenaeus and Hippolytus, presented a much more complex picture of early Jewish Christologies by asserting that there were both those who saw Jesus as a "mere man" (psilanthro- pists) and those who held to some form of pre-existence.28 One explana­ tion of this generalizing tendency is that it was the theologians of Rome who tried to force the polymorphic entity of Jewish Christianity into a single mold which could lightly be characterized as deviant.29 Jewish Christianity as a whole thus unfairly became identified with Ebioni- tism. One distinctive characteristic of the Ebionites was their close affinity to the theology and spirituality of the . This fact led Jean

24 J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (Chicago: Regnery, 1964) 8. 25 W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (transi, of the second German version by R. A. Kraft and G. Krodel; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) 274. 26 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (2nd ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1960) 139. 27 Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 3, 19, 1, and 1, 26, 1-2. Cf. also Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy 278; Smulders, "Dogmengeschichtliche Entfaltung" 392-93, where it is shown that was more tolerant than Irenaeus in his judgment of Jewish Christians, e.g. in Dial, cum Tryph. 47 and 48. 28 Origen, Contra Cels. 5, 61. Contrast this with Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 4, 33, 4; 5, 1, 3; and Hippolytus, Philosoph. 7, 34; 10, 22. Cf. also J. A. Fitzmyer, "The Qumran Scrolls, the Ebionites and Their Literature," in Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament (London: Chapman, 1971) 441-44; H. B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church: A Study of Christian Teaching in the Age of the Fathers (reprint of original ed. of 1912; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1966) 95-98. 29 Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy 284-85. 432 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Daniélou to agree with Oscar Cullmann in identifying the Ebionites with the remnants of the Qumran sect who were assimilated into the Jewish Christian community in the East district.30 Hans- Joachim Schoeps and Joseph Fitzmyer, on the other hand, attribute the elements of Essene teaching in Ebionitism simply to contact between the two groups in Transjordan.31 In either case, all these authors agree that Epiphanius was correct in linking the "Two Ways" and the "Two Angels" doctrine of Ebionite Christology to the Essenes. Central to the Ebionites' understanding of Jesus was the belief that he had obtained as his lot the future world, and that the devil, "the Black One," had control over the present world; Christ was the 'first of the archangels," the "Teacher of Righteousness" and "Prince of Light," who reigned over the angels and all the works of the Almighty.32 It is true that there was a strong trace of Jewish angel-worship not only among the Ebionites but also among the writers of the Jewish apocrypha and even among ortho­ dox Jewish Christians. But this emphasis of the Ebionites on angelol- ogy, coupled with certain ascetical and ritual elements which were particularly characteristic of the Essenes, necessitates positing a direct influence of the latter on the former. As their name suggests, the Ebionites shared the ascetical ideal of nomadic poverty which marked the Essenes. Furthermore, the fact that the Ebionites refused to use wine at the , since the idea of a bloody sacrifice, along with the whole Temple cult of later Judaism, was abhorrent to them, closely echoes the extreme cultic antipathy of the Essenes.33 It is therefore typical of the Ebionites that Christianity was not to be understood as a religion of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ, but rather as a religion which teaches the full observance of the original Mosaic law which Christ came to reinstate. It can thus be said that the Ebionites originated "from a Jewish which pushed to its logical conclusion the Essene break with the official cultus."34 Besides being influenced by the theology and spirituality of the Es­ senes, the Ebionites were also steeped in the apocalyptic tradition of Jewish . An indication of the importance of this aspect of

30 Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 64, and O. Cullmann, "Die neuentdeck­ ten Qumrantexte und das Judenchristentum der Pseudoklementinen," BZNW 21 (1954) 45-51. 31 H.-J. Schoeps, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church (Phila­ delphia: Fortress, 1969) 29. Cf. also J. A. Fitzmyer, "Qumran Scrolls" 477-80, where he agrees generally with Schoeps, although he denies Schoeps's assertion that the Qumran sect was already a form of Gnostic Judaism. 32 Epiphanius, 30, 18; cf. Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 141-44, and Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 119-120. 33 Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 121, and Fitzmyer, "Qumran Scrolls" 478. 34 Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 64. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 433 their teaching is that they repeatedly refer to Christ as the Son of Man, a term which is not used in the Qumran writings of the Essenes.35 Whereas they shared with the Essenes the angelic aspects of Jewish apocrypha, the Ebionites were unique in their belief in the resurrection of the dead and in the establishment of a supernatural angelic kingdom, which Jesus, now transformed into the heavenly Messiah and angelic being, would realize when he returned in . This apocalyptic-escha- tological understanding of Jesus as the Son of Man makes the Ebionite acceptance of the angelic elements in Essene theology understandable, but accounts at the same time for the significant difference between Ebionitism and Essenism. Ebionite seems, therefore, to be a continuation of Jewish temporal millenarianism. For this reason it can be said that Ebionite doctrine was a fusion of the apocalyptic and the Essene traditions.36 This distinctive blend of two important traditions has led Schoeps, in opposition to Daniélou, to deny that there were Gnostic elements in Ebionism. On the contrary, the Ebionites were anti- Gnostic, in that they insisted against Marcion on the absolute continu­ ity of the Old and New Covenants.37 This original combination of Jewish and Essene thought tinged with a coloring of Christianity inevitably led the Ebionites to be rejected by both the Synagogue and the Church. If the Ebionites were responsible for the use of the title "Son of Man" in the Synoptics, they may have been equally responsible for rendering the title unusable as Christology developed. Their strong insistence on eschatology and their temporal, millenarian expectations concerning the kingdom may also have ac­ counted for the gradual rejection and condemnation of apocalyptic ex­ cesses by the main branch of Christianity. It was precisely the postpone­ ment of the Parousia and the eventual slackening of eschatological tension in the fourth and fifth centuries that brought the Ebionite movement to an end;38 for although the Ebionites used the same concep­ tual system as orthodox Jewish Christians, their anti-Trinitarian ten­ dency and their refusal to consider Jesus' relationship to Yahweh as anything but an impersonal one doomed their half-Jewish, half-Chris­ tian position to oblivion.39 All these considerations make it clear why Ebionite Christology cen­ tered exclusively on the function of Jesus as the True . On the

35 Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 62-65. 36 Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 144. 37 Compare Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 354, and Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 121. Cf. also Grillmeier, Christ in 92, where he sides with Daniélou against Schoeps. 38 Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 65. 39 W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge: University Press, 1972) 105. 434 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES one hand, the Ebionites shared the general Jewish-Christian belief that the true prophetic Messiah had come in the person of Jesus. For this reason, all early Jewish Christians could regard following Jesus as identical with fulfilling the . On the other hand, the Ebionites were exclusive and conservative in their understanding of Jesus as the New Moses; their exclusivity is shown by the fact that the Gospel of the Ebionites was a mutilated version of Matthew's Gospel, in that the former eliminated the account of the virgin birth and the infancy narratives from the latter.40 Ebionite Christology was, there­ fore, essentially federal theology, since both Moses and Jesus were sent to establish covenants with mankind which were identical; conversion to Jesus was reconversion to the unadulterated covenant of Moses. Thus Ebionite understanding of the divine Spirit traced a continuous line from Adam to Moses and from the to Jesus the Messiah, in whom this divine Spirit became incarnate and found complete realiza­ tion.41 The Spirit of the True Prophet had come to rest forever on the Messiah Jesus. Therefore, the Ebionites rejected the and considered him a man who had been born normally of Joseph and Mary. But at his Jesus received the Spirit—or, in some Ebionite texts, "the Christ" or "the angel"—and was adopted or elected as the predestined Messiah who would return in glory to reign on the earth.42 This "natural Christology" of the Ebionites was essentially a doctrine based on the concepts of external inspiration and impersonal adoption of Jesus by the Spirit of the True Prophet. In light of these facts, it can be said that in Ebionite Christology not only Jesus but also the Spirit of the True Prophet are both relegated to the realm of beings touched and employed by Yahweh, but necessarily inferior to His divine nature. Therefore, although the Ebionites, by accepting Jesus as the Messiah, had separated themselves from the Jews, their insistence on Jesus as the True Prophet adopted by Yah­ weh's Spirit severed them as well from the Church's Trinitarian theol­ ogy. This is indicated by the fact that the Preaching of Peter, a second- century Ebionite text, actually eliminated from the Old Testament writings those passages which could in any way suggest a plurality in God and could therefore lead to a destruction of Jewish monotheism.43 Thus, the psilanthropist position of the Ebionites stemmed from Essene dualism, from Jewish angelology and eschatology, from a strong rejec-

40 Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy 277-78. 41 Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 68-73. Cf. Smulders, "Dogmengeschichtliche Entfal­ tung" 398-99, for a defense of Jewish Christianity's use of the term "Holy Spirit" as a means of explaining Jesus' essential relationship to God. 42 Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 57. 43 Ibid. 63 n. 21, and Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition 91. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 435 tion of Pauline Christology as well as from an antitrinitarian concept of Jesus as the True Prophet adopted and inspired by Yahweh's Spirit to complete the Mosaic covenant. As a way of drawing the various threads of adoptionist Christology together, the generalization can be made that this Christology was in effect not Christology at all, but rather a blend of Father theology and Spirit theology to the exclusion of Son theology. The first and third articles of the Creed became so important that the second became unnecessary. Emphasis on a strict monotheism on the one hand and on a theology of grace on the other made any assertion about Jesus Christ's unique ontological role in the very nature of God superfluous. Instead, God's absolute transcendence and man's universal participation in grace through the Spirit reduced Jesus the Messiah to the model of man's own relationship to God, to the paradigm of man's own adoption as son of God, and to the quintessential symbol of the graced existence of Chris­ and of the moral and eschatological dimensions ofthat existence.44 The "natural Christology" of the Ebionites and of the later adoptionists was, therefore, essentially soteriological and not ontological in charac­ ter. The purely moral, impersonal, functional, external, and millenar- ian understanding of Jesus' relation to Yahweh and to His Spirit was a poorly disguised effort to skirt the particularity of Jesus, in order to enhance the of man himself—or, to put it bluntly, the apotheosis of man—apart from Jesus. Yet, once this flaw in Ebionite Spirit Christology has been clearly pointed out, it becomes imperative to defend its positive contribution to dogmatic theology with as much vigor as its critique demanded. The laudatory and original character of adoptionist Christology rests in its three main features: its biblical, as opposed to an exclusively philosophi­ cal, nature; its eschatological, as opposed to a merely personal, perspec­ tive; and its soteriological, as opposed to purely ontological, emphasis. In other words, the very weakness of this Christology is ironically its strength. Had Spirit Christology's weakness not been so exaggerated, its strength would have remained a permanent legacy to the later Christological treatises of classical Scholastic and Protestant theology. Its weakness, of course, was its denial of the ontological significance of Jesus. But its strength was its ability, far superior to that of exclusively ontological Christology, to incorporate within it the essentially biblical, eschatological, and soteriological implications of the Christ-event.45 On-

44 Barth, Church Dogmatics 112, 20-21, where he discusses Ebionitism as the ecstatic apotheosis of a stimulating man, a worship of the heroic personality of Jesus, the model of all men. The abstract worship of the humanity of Jesus ultimately makes his dispensable. Cf. also Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 85. 45 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 272-73, 279, and 306. 436 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES tological Logos Christology attempted in its own way to balance out the antimetaphysical excesses to which adoptionism had led. But, in doing so, Logos Christology lost sight of the genuine advantages which Spirit Christology, for all of its faults, intended to retain. First, the early Christology was biblical to the core. The person of Jesus was set into a larger framework—that of the spiritual, federal, and political concept of the Spirit of Yahweh, who was active in the history of the judges, the kings, and the prophets of the Old Covenant. As the true Prophet, the new Moses, and the anointed Messiah, Jesus was rightly seen in the continuum of Spirit-filled figures of Judaism.46 Furthermore, the biblical-pneumatological context of adoptionist Chris­ tology rightly highlighted the notion of Jesus as the new creation who was hovered over and breathed upon by the same creative Spirit of Yahweh who brooded over the chaos in Gen 1:2. Such a pneumatic perspective offered Christology not only biblical profundity but also cosmic validity. This cosmic scope was certainly the prime intention of the Synoptic accounts of the conception and the , who was seen as the creation solely of the creative Spirit of Yahweh.47 These biblical, political, and cosmic dimensions were later lost by a Logos Christology which in reaction was forced to borrow more from purely Hellenistic than from Jewish-Hellenistic thought. Secondly, the Spirit Christology which eventually led to adoptionism was primarily concerned with the eschatological significance of Jesus for all men, and not simply with the personal ascent of one man to God— though some versions of adoptionism, such as that of , did emphasize Gnostic elements to an excess.48 But, despite the millenarian and apocalyptic overstatements of some of its adherents, Spirit Christol­ ogy maintained, more than Logos Christology ever could, the eschato­ logical, temporal, and universal character of the person of Christ. By placing Jesus into an eschatological setting with the help of the biblical category of Yahweh's Spirit, the adoptionists again remained faithful in a surprisingly authentic way to one of the main emphases of Pauline Christology.49 This was no small contribution in light of the later loss of eschatological perspective which marked so much of Christology until our own century. In view of this fact, it can be said that many of the

46 Mühlen, "Das Christusereignis" 519-20, where he shows that the Christian Jews in the Diaspora first understood the title "Son of God" in an economic, functional, or soteriological way, so that Jesus was seen as the "bearer of the Spirit," who could communicate the Spirit to others as did the Old Testament prophets. 47 Barrett, The Holy Spirit 23-24 and 45. 48 Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity 84-85. 49 L. Cerfaux, Christ in the Theology of St. Paul (New York: Herder, 1959) 284-96; J. A. Fitzmyer, " and the Spirit," in "Pauline Theology," JBC 79:75-79. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 437 subsequent personal pneumatologies which focused on inner enlighten­ ment and "God and I" theology both in the Middle Ages and from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were a reaction to the failure of Logos Christology to preserve the eschatological, historical, and univer­ sal dimensions of Christ. Had Christology remained pneumatological and had pneumatology remained eschatological, many of the exces­ sively pietistic Spirit would have had little dogmatic ground on which to stand. As it was, a Christology devoid of eschatology led to a pneumatology centered on the personal experience of the individual Christian with the eternal Son, to the detriment of Jesus' central message concerning the coming of the kingdom of God to all men at the end of history. Thirdly, Pneuma-sarx Christology did leave more room for a genuine theology of grace than did the later Logos Christology. It is true that the soteriological aspect of the former was so excessive that the latter was constrained to root itself firmly in an ontology severed fromhistory . The result of this one-sided ontological emphasis was a separation of Trini­ tarian theology from a theology of grace. Christology was divorced from salvation history. God-in-Himself was inadvertently divorced from God- for-us, as is evidenced even in ' separation of the tracts De Deo uno and De Deo trino; the outward reach of the triune God which is known only through salvation history was thus simply appended to an already complete ontological concept of God as self-sufficient, eternal, and unchanging; furthermore, since any of the divine persons could have become man, it seemed that God did not act in history in accord­ ance with what He is in Himself from eternity. The balance between a theology of the and a theology of salvation history has only been rediscovered in this century; only now do theologians see the danger of separating the immanent from the economic Trinity, that is, of severing God's internal being from God's historical activity.50 Being and history were, it is true, not adequately brought together in adoptionist Christol­ ogies; history took precedence over being, and over ontol­ ogy, in most early Spirit Christologies. But, for all their overemphasis on the person of the Spirit-filled Jesus of history, the adoptionists were closer to the soteriological dimensions of the Christ-event than were the Logos Christologies which removed the person of Jesus almost entirely into the realm of a remote ontology. In summary, it can be said that a biblical, an eschatological, and a soteriological concern marked Pneuma-sarx Christology from the out­ set. Had that Christology equally stressed the pre-existent, the ontologi­ cal, and the Trinitarian character of the person of Jesus, the history of 50 K. Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Seabury, 1974) 21-24. 438 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Christology would have been quite different. The unachieved potential of Pneuma-sarx Christology was that it could have and should have shown that Jesus became in history what he already was from eternity. Instead, that Christology insisted on having Jesus become in history the Spirit-filled, eschatological, and paradigmatic figure which he was not beforehand. The latent promise of such a Christology was, from the standpoint of today's developments, far greater than the actual short­ comings of the Logos Christology which in fact historically supplanted it. ADVISABILITY OF REVITALIZING EARLY SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY As mentioned at the beginning of this study, Kasper has attempted in Jesus der Christus to fashion a modern version of Pneuma-sarx Chris­ tology which is decidedly biblical, eschatological, and soteriological and thus takes up again the positive aspects of adoptionist Christology. But Kasper is most concerned that such a Pneuma-sarx Christology also be essentially open to the question of Jesus' pre-existence and therefore to Trinitarian and ontological statements—characteristics of a Christology which alone can offset the narrowly impersonal, external, and economic understanding of Jesus' relationship to the Spirit of Yahweh which marked adoptionism.51 It is interesting, however, that Kasper's move­ ment in this direction is implicitly denied by Pannenberg, who insists that only a historically grounded Christology can retain the absolute uniqueness of Jesus' fate and thus raise the question of his pre-exis­ tence. Only the historical fact of Jesus' resurrection from the dead can avoid the adoptionist tendency to associate his person simply with the inspired prophets of the Old Testament. In his Jesus—God and Man, Pannenberg clearly characterizes an independent and isolated Pneuma Christology as a dead end.52 Thus it would be profitable at this point to examine both Kasper's and Pannenberg's positions in some detail in order to find out if it is worth while to pursue any future development of an explicit Spirit Christology. The main thrust of Kasper's argument in favor of a pneumatologi- cally-oriented Christology is that the New Testament writers them­ selves inevitably conceive of Jesus in terms of the central Old Testament concept of the Spirit of Yahweh. It is Jesus' Spirit-filled existence which chiefly accounts for his unparalleled uniqueness in the eyes of the Evangelists. Jesus, the Messiah, is the one who is totally the bearer of the Spirit (Isa 11:2), the one who is anointed with the Spirit (Lk 4:21).

51 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 195. Here Kasper insists that a theology of the economic and soteriological mission of Jesus (Sendungstheologie) necessarily cannot be separated from a theology of the being of Jesus (Seinstheologie). 52 Pannenberg, Jesus —God and Man 139. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 439 But this important stress on Jesus' Spirit-filled person, work, and message would in itself not be a sufficient argument for his uniqueness over the prophets, for example, were another aspect of Jesus' spiritual nature left out. This other aspect is, of course, the clearly unique significance of Jesus' resurrection, which completely transformed him, as no prophet ever was transformed, into a "spiritual body," a "life- giving spirit" (1 Cor 15:44-45), a creature fully in the dimension of God. This uniqueness in turn grounds the universal significance of Jesus, in that he is the first man capable of opening the way for all other human persons to such a new form of being with God.53 In other words, Jesus is not only unique as the prophetic bearer of the Spirit and the royal one anointed with the Spirit; he is also divinely vindicated as the one who sends the Spirit to all men, because he has become the head and lord of all creation through the power of Yahweh's Spirit, who effected his resurrection and (Rom 8:11 and 1 Pet 3:18) as well as his incarnation and human existence (Lk 1:35). Therefore, according to Kasper, the absolute uniqueness of Jesus' ontic human life can only be understood in terms of the unquestionable universality of his resurrected and glorified existence. The biblical means of explaining both Jesus' singularity and his cosmic significance is precisely a pneumatic Christology. Jesus' real identity can be ac­ counted for solely in terms of an unprecedented relationship to the Spirit of Yahweh. This Spirit is, in the Old Testament, the life-giving power of the Creator, who is explicitly responsible for the break-through of the totally new and unforeseen into the history of the cosmos. The Spirit continually inaugurates the eschatological age of healing and of hope as He leads the composite course of natural and towards its completion.54 Thus Kasper can say that the Bible itself contains a unique and universal setting into which Christ can be placed without doing violence to his ontological singularity. The Spirit can effect in the person of Jesus what the Spirit is in Himself: God's own openness to history. The Spirit, as the divine self-mediating principle, is the "tran­ scendental-theological possibility of a free self-communication of God to man in history."55 To understand Jesus fully, one must appreciate his unique union with God's own principle of communicating Himself to man in history, that is, to the Spirit. This fact opens up a Trinitarian and an ontological ground of Jesus' uniqueness and universality without destroying the personal and his-

53 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 169 and 305-6. Cf. also I. Hermann, und Pneuma: Studien zur Christologie der paulinischen Hauptbriefe (Munich: Kösel, 1961) 62. 54 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 304. 55 Ibid. 300. 440 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES toxical nature of his human experience. The Spirit, who mediates be­ tween the Father and the Son in God's own inner life, is the same Spirit who mediates between the freedom of God and the freedom of the man Jesus at the center of human history. Kasper thus asserts that the universal mediating function of the Spirit in the Scriptures in general becomes most transparent in the concrete person, work, message, and fate of Jesus of Nazareth; for in Jesus the Spirit of Yahweh was at work to create an ontologically different form of human existence; this activ­ ity of the Spirit accounts for the uniqueness of Jesus' being and mission. But the Spirit also inaugurates in Jesus' resurrection a totally new form of human participation in the Trinitarian life of God.56 Thus the univer­ sal spiritual love-intention of God now has its locus in the actual person of the risen Christ, the center and head of the new creation. God's triune being is now objectively open for all men and women who must subjec­ tively respond to God's openness to them through the power of the Spirit of the risen Jesus; this activity of the same Spirit who brought about Jesus' uniqueness also accounts for the universality of the being and the mission of Jesus. It is noteworthy that Kasper's insistence on the ontological and Trini­ tarian perspectives which are the consequence of a properly developed Spirit Christology leads him to an understanding of God which harks back to the Greek concept of the economic trinity (God in history) instead of the Latin stress on the immanent trinity (God in Himself). For the former concept conceives of God as necessarily open to human history and not as a closed triangle at the beginning of time which is unrelated to the history of man and his world. Even though Kasper admits the ontological validity of both concepts, he maintains with Rahner that an overemphasis on the Latin concept deprives Trinitarian theology of its inherent relation to salvation history; both concepts must be kept in dialectical tension. Thus, the Western model never intended to deny the Eastern concept that God the Spirit is primarily the outward reach of the Father and the Son into the human community and not simply the inward love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father.57 The Spirit is the overflow of God's love into time, and thus it is the Spirit who not only prepares the cosmos for the entrance of the Son into the human family but also creates in the obedience and the glorifi­ cation of the Son a real possibility for all men and women of sharing in the love-intention of the triune God. Thus a Spirit Christology can

56 Ibid. 296. 57 Kasper, Christologie im Präsens 149. Cf. also H. U. von Balthasar, "Der unbek­ annte Jenseits des Wortes," in Spiritus Creator 97-100, and J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (New York: Seabury, 1969) 197. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 441 better express the relationship between God's inner life and His outward self-communication with man than a Logos Christology can.58 In the framework of a Spirit Christology, Jesus can be seen as the incandescent point at which the universal love-intention of the triune God becomes a unique historical person and in turn opens the possibility that others can enter into the inner life of God through the very Spirit who permeated Jesus' existence in history, just as He permeates God's existence from eternity. Adoptionist Christology meant to safeguard this universal sweep of the Spirit's activity, but overlooked the unique place which the person and the being of Jesus had not only in God's external mission to men but also in God's internal being. Kasper con­ tends that a revised Spirit Christology could join both the mission and the nature of Jesus inseparably to the very essence of God.59 The contemporary opponent of any attempt to revitalize Spirit Chris­ tology is Wolfhart Pannenberg, who claims that no Christology which begins with the presence of the Spirit in Jesus can avoid an inevitable lapse into adoptionism, no matter how careful it is not to do so. The presence of God's eschatological Spirit in Jesus is not sufficient ground for maintaining his divinity, because this power of God which fills the man Jesus is not able to express the unique self-revelation and the unique self-presence of God in him.60 In a Spirit Christology, according to Pannenberg, the person of Jesus would not really be God, but God would be present in Jesus "only as the power of the Spirit which fills this man."61 Thus any Christology which begins with the Spirit-filled nature of Jesus can easily lead to the conclusion that Jesus was simply a prophetic, charismatic figure, a mere man, adopted by God through the bestowal of the Spirit; such an opinion essentially denies the unity of Jesus with God.62 The problem with most Spirit Christologies is that they look at the prophetic life of Jesus in isolation from the final vindication of Jesus' person and claim at the Resurrection, and thus reject the essential unity of Jesus with God, since Jesus is not seen to be any different from other charismatic individuals. For Pannenberg, this unity of Jesus with God could only be perceived by examining the historical fact of the Resurrection, which event in turn made it possible for primitive Christianity to accept the account of Jesus' baptism, for example, as a part cf [its] tradition, and thus to link the Spirit of God to Jesus from the very start of his life. Only in retrospect—that is, from the

58 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 279. 59 Ibid. 320. 60 Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man 120-21. 61 Ibid. 122. 62 Ibid. 115-19. 442 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Resurrection backwards—can Jesus' Spirit-filled existence have any significance.63 Thus it is not Spirit Christology as such, but historical study of the Resurrection, which guarantees the identity of Jesus with the Father through the Spirit. Pannenberg's objection to Spirit Christology in particular is consis­ tent with his general disdain for any theological system which uses the person of the Holy Spirit to explain what cannot be explained either from an examination of the historical facts of Jesus' existence or from an appreciation of the convincing power of the Word of God itself which is found in Jesus' claims.64 To understand the Holy Spirit as God's noetic power who alone guarantees the validity of Jesus' person and message is to misuse the Spirit, and to fail to let the evidence which can be found in the history of Jesus speak for itself. The Holy Spirit is not some superna­ tural source of knowledge as much as He is the creative power of God who gives new life to Jesus and to all who are convinced by the very message of the gospel. Thus the divinity of Jesus and his unity with the Father are known through the Resurrection alone. In retrospect, the Christian community could understand Jesus' whole life to have been what it was at the Resurrection, that is, a Spirit-filled, life-giving union with the Father. According to Pannenberg, to say that Jesus became at a given point the representative of God for the world, as the adoptionists claim, is insufficient. Only the Resurrection can show that Jesus always was what he became most clearly at the end of his life; for, as the claim of Jesus at least implicitly concerned his own person, the Resurrection establishes retroactively that Jesus as a person is not to be separated from God in any way and at any time.65 Not a Spirit Christology but the trustworthiness of Jesus' own claim and the vindication ofthat claim by his Father at the Resurrection is the source of our knowledge of his divinity, and thus of his Spirit-filled nature even before the Incarnation. By comparing Kasper's and Pannenberg's positions, it is possible to find essential agreement on one central point, despite the apparent disagreement which characterizes each of their evaluations of the valid­ ity of a Spirit Christology today. This central point is the uniqueness of the Resurrection. For Pannenberg, the Resurrection alone is reason enough to put any attempt at a Spirit Christology into question; for the Resurrection itself points to Jesus' true identity and does not need to be supported, and thus weakened, by alluding to any other Spirit-oriented explanation of his unique identity. For Kasper, stress on the Resurrec­ tion is equally important, but since the Resurrection is understood as 63 Ibid. 135-37. 64 W. Pannenberg, The ' Creed in the Light of Today's Questions (Philadel­ phia: Westminster, 1975) 130-33. 65 Pannenberg, Jesus —God and Man 141. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 443 the complete fulfilment of the Spirit's continual action in Jesus, the fact of the Spirit's presence in Jesus even before the Resurrection warrants adequate development and will not necessarily lead to a modern form of adoptionism. The reason why this is so is that a biblically grounded Spirit Christology can demonstrate that Jesus' essential unity with God was already an ontological reality before the Resurrection; what became fully clear at the Resurrection was in fact true of Jesus' life as a whole.66 In other words, the transformation and vindication of Jesus by the Spirit of Yahweh at the Resurrection is not sufficient ground for underplaying his Spirit-filled nature from the beginning of his existence altogether, but reason for dwelling upon his preresurrection union with the Spirit. Thus, both Kasper and Pannenberg rightly stress the Resurrection as the singular proof of Jesus' unity with the Father. But whereas Pannen­ berg feels that the Resurrection wholly precludes the necessity of any kind of Spirit Christology which might falsely imply adoptionist cate­ gories, Kasper is of the opinion that a Spirit Christology which takes its lead from an analysis of the role of the Spirit at the Resurrection can avoid adoptionist overtones and actually enhance the essential unity of Jesus with Yahweh from the beginning of his human existence and even before it. It therefore seems that, contrary to Pannenberg's own refusal to adhere to any form of Spirit Christology, he in fact bases the perma­ nent unity of Jesus with the Father on the retroactive clarity of the Resurrection event, which in turn is explicitly attributed in the New Testament to the Spirit, as Kasper points out by his references to Rom 8:11 and 1 Pet 3:18.67 A harmony can therefore be found between Kasper and Pannenberg, in that both theologians, while giving the Resurrection prime impor­ tance in discovering the essential unity between Jesus and the Father, equally accent the retroactive character of the Resurrection; for the exaltation of Jesus proves that he did not become the Son of God, but was the Son of God from the very start of his human life. Whether one explains this retroactive character in terms of Jesus' historical claims alone (Pannenberg) or in terms of the presence of the Spirit in Jesus (Kasper) seems in a certain sense to be a matter of personal theological preference. However, to avoid the powerful tradition behind Spirit Christology just for the sake of skirting adoptionist categories alto­ gether seems, in light of the evidence, unwarranted on Pannenberg's

66 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 194, and Pannenberg, Jesus — God and Man 118. Cf. also Brian O. McDermott, "Pannenberg's Resurrection Christology: A Critique," TS 35 (1974) 716, where the author questions Pannenberg's insistence on the primacy of the Resurrec­ tion to the point where Jesus' preresurrectional earthly history does not seem to be the definitive presence of God among men. 67 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 305-6. 444 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES part. Kasper appears to take the more licit route of broadening the myopic narrowness of early adoptionism by linking the power of the Spirit in Jesus' whole life to the clearly pivotal and definitive role of the Spirit at the Resurrection. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY ROOTED IN PASCHAL MYSTERY It seems appropriate at the end of this study to draw a sketch of a pneumatologically-oriented Christology which might be capable of de­ velopment in the future. The main lines of such a sketch would be inspired by both Kasper's and Pannenberg's insistence on the central role of the Resurrection in any dogmatic attempt to understand both the uniqueness and the universality of the Christ-event as a whole. Thus, in opposition to Ebionite Christology, a revised Spirit Christology would have to begin not at the baptism of Jesus but at his glorification. The entire series of happenings which are called the paschal mystery will have to mark the starting point of a Pneuma Christology which intends to link the best insights of adoptionism with a contemporary biblical and dogmatic understanding of the meaning of Jesus Christ.68 The chief reason for this need to emphasize the paschal mystery is that adoption­ ism, as has been pointed out, sufficiently considered the baptism and public life of Jesus and also the expectation of his cosmic return in glory, but failed thereby to guarantee Jesus' uniqueness. This was so because glaringly absent from adoptionist Christology was any speculation con­ cerning the meaning of Jesus' death and resurrection. In fact, some versions of adoptionist Christology, in order to avoid any connection between Jesus and the Temple cult, explicitly maintain that the Spirit of Yahweh left Jesus before his passion and would only return to him at his coming in glory as the lord of the cosmos.69 It thus seems mandatory for any future Spirit Christology to make up for this serious lack of reflection on the Spirit's role in the paschal event. The future of Spirit Christology will have to see the early events of Jesus' life retroactively from the viewpoint of his death, resurrection, and glorification. The incandescent happenings which crowd together at the close of Jesus' earthly existence should shed light both backwards and forwards in any contemporary version of Pneuma Christology.70 This possibility is very promising, since much of modern theology focuses on the centrality of the paschal mystery in order to find its 68 For a thorough systematic treatment of the unity of the paschal mystery, cf. E. Schillebeeckx, Christ, the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963) 13-36. 69 Schoeps, Jewish Christianity 62 and 83. 70 J. Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) 256-66 ("Trinity and Eschatology"). SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 445 guiding historical locus. For example, a theology of the Trinity might view the paschal event as the glowing point at which the cone-like love- intention of the Father, Son, and Spirit towards the cosmos zeroes in on a momentary point of time and then opens up, again in cone-like fashion, to include the whole of humanity in the dynamic love-energy of the triune God.71 Likewise, a Spirit Christology which is Trinitarian in nature and ontological in scope should adopt the same form as an over­ all Trinitarian theology. The activity of the Spirit of the Father and the Son could be understood as a spiraling cone of energy which fills in the fulness of time the person of Jesus, and at the point of the Resurrection wholly includes his history into its own, opens up his history as a possibility for all men, and through the unique fate of one man embraces all of natural and human history in a spiraling motion towards future union in the kingdom. It is true that much of adoptionist Christology had this cosmic sweep, but the incandescent center point of Jesus' resurrection and exaltation was noticeably absent. A future Spirit Christology would therefore find its chief task in filling out this vacant center. If—to follow through with the image of two cones meeting at a common point—the paschal mystery were seen as the center of two spiraling motions of God towards man in the course of human history, then a revitalized Spirit Christology must begin precisely at this point. At the paschal event a human being enters totally into the dimension of God through the power of God's Spirit, that is, through God's self- communicating mediation of Himself to history in freedom and love.72 In this way the absolute uniqueness of Jesus is affirmed, a uniqueness which before this event was certainly extant but was clouded in ambigu­ ity. At the same moment of Jesus' glorification his universal signifi­ cance for all mankind and thus the inclusion of all men into the paschal event also becomes patent. The action of the Spirit on Jesus at the Resurrection consequently takes on cosmic significance. This realization seems to be at the base of the four accounts in Scripture which attribute the directly to the action of Yahweh's Spirit. Rom 1:4 was quoted at the beginning of this study to indicate the centrality of Pneuma-sarx Christology in the early Church. In Rom 8:11 Paul again dwells specifically on the cosmic implications of the Spirit's activity at the Resurrection: "If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through the Spirit which dwells in you." In 1 Tim 3:16 the "mystery of our religion" is that in Jesus God Himself "was

71 J. Moltmann, Kirche in der Kraft des Geistes: Ein Beitrag zur messianischen Ekklesiologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1975) 73-77. 72 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 309. 446 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit." The content of 1 Pet 3:18 is very similar: "For Christ also died for once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit." In these texts the unique nature of Jesus is not established at the expense of the cosmic import of his uniqueness.73 In other words, Jesus' function, his relevance for us, is not severed from his nature, his being for God. Here is found the for enhancing the legitimate cosmic sweep of the adop­ tionists with an equally legitimate consideration of the ontological role of the singular person, Jesus the Christ. Once the centrality of the Resurrection forms the germ of a revised Spirit Christology, it can validly be stated that the Spirit, who raised Jesus to lordship over the whole creation, must have been active in Jesus throughout his whole human existence, and must have planned to include Jesus' concrete fate into the eternal love-intention of the triune God from the very beginning of time.74 In fact, all the Evangelists who stress the Spirit-filled nature of Jesus' conception, birth, and baptism as well as his Spirit-driven mission of preaching and healing are saying precisely this: if Jesus was lord at the Resurrection, he must have been lord at his suffering, throughout his mission, at his baptism, at his birth, even from the very genesis of salvation history in the eternal love- intention of the triune God. This is essentially the backward sweep which a paschally-oriented Spirit Christology makes clear. From the fulcral point of the death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus, a spiraling cone of the Spirit's activity expands back into the very begin­ ning of the cosmos, when God opened up His being to the possibility of loving a world extrinsic to Himself. Along the same lines of argumentation, a cone of love-activity on the part of the Spirit opens forwards from the center point of the paschal mystery. The whole cosmos is taken up in this spiral. All creation now has the possibility of being encountered by the same Spirit who gave life to Jesus, dwells in him unendingly, and establishes him as the head and goal of all things.75 Thus the eschatological dimension of Spirit Christol­ ogy completes and complements all that the Spirit has done since the beginning of time to realize God's love-intention in history. Now not

73 Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity 256. Ratzinger argues forcefully that theo­ logical metaphysics should not be separated from a theology of history; the history of salvation should not be merely "Salvationist" but also metaphysical. Jesus' history and Jesus' being belong together; this is the core of Trinitarian speculation about the past and the future being of the Messiah of history. 74 Moltmann, Kirche in der Kraft des Geistes 66-73. 75 W. Pannenberg, "The Doctrine of the Spirit and the Task of a Theology of Nature," Theology 75 (1972) 9. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 447 only the history of man but also the history of the material cosmos is caught up in the spiritual activity of God, which had reached its point of convergence in the Resurrection and is therefore the guarantee, the first fruits, of the Parousia.76 Being in the Spirit and being in Christ can now be identified, since Christ is fully in the dimension of God, and because of his unique position Christ himself is in fact the reality and the possibility of ultimate liberation for all men of all times. Thus, from the point of the Resurrection, a spiraling cone of the Spirit's activity opens into the future, when the Spirit will lead all to the Son, who is one with Christ Jesus, and the Son will hand over the kingdom to the Father. There are a few significant advantages inherent in the paschally- rooted Spirit Christology which has been sketched here. (1) It offers contemporary cross-disciplinary efforts at revitalizing Spirit Christol­ ogy a solid framework which is biblical, eschatological, and soteriologi­ cal, and therefore not as extraneous to Scripture as the philosophical framework of a Logos Christology necessarily is. (2) It corrects the ontological and Trinitarian deficiencies of Ebionite Christology by not merely dwelling on the functional significance of Jesus, but insisting that Jesus' universal function is unavoidably rooted in his unique being, which pre-exists with the being of the triune God; in other words, it links the first and third articles of the Creed to the second article. (3) It has its starting point in the historical event of the paschal mystery and, in retroactive fashion, guarantees Jesus' uniqueness even before the beginning of his existence; in eschatological fashion, however, it opens up the universal significance of his being for all mankind and for the whole cosmos. Put somewhat differently, it can be said that a revised Pneuma Christology which is grounded on the Resurrection offers con­ temporary dogmatic theology the promising opportunity of engaging more profoundly in inter-Christian, interfaith, and international dia­ logue. A word on each of these three enticing prospects would fittingly close this study of the benefits of Spirit Christology. Inter-Christian dialogue could come to an intellectual impasse in the West if Catholics, in following Rahner, were to insist on stressing the first article of the Creed, that is, belief in the Father, so as to protect the ability of every man to come to a natural knowledge of God; this knowledge is seen as the first step towards recognizing Jesus as God's only Son. Another cause of ecumenical frustration would arise if Protes­ tant theology, by following Barth, were to emphasize the centrality of the second article of the Creed, that is, belief in the Son, so as to guarantee the biblically-attested conviction that the Son is the only way to the Father. A Spirit Christology, rooted in the paschal mystery, 76 Fitzmyer, "The Letter to the Romans," JBC 53:88. 448 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES might lead both Catholic and Protestant theologians to center their attention, as Orthodox theologians still do, on the connection between the second article and the third article of the Creed, that is, on belief in the Holy Spirit. Since God is "Spirit" (Jn 4:24), Catholics should find no difficulty in explaining man's spiritual drive towards Absolute Being as an innate, grace-given readiness to encounter the God who is Spirit.77 It is the Spirit who can then lead to the Father through the Son. Likewise, Protestants would benefit from concentrating more on the Spirit of the risen Lord as the last and most complete self-revelation of God to man and thus as the sure way by which man can confess that Jesus is Lord.78 Spirit Christology might offer inter-Christian dialogue in the West a fruitful starting point, in that it links the Spirit inseparably to the person of the glorified Jesus. In doing so, Spirit Christology not only opens the way back to the Father, but also looks to the full participation of man in the life of the Trinity at the end of time. Interfaith dialogue with Judaism and with other world religions has generally put dominant stress on the fatherhood of God and the brother­ hood of all men as sons of the Father. However, since early Jewish Christology, while adamantly monotheistic, was very preoccupied with the Spirit of Yahweh, it might be fascinating to stress the Spirit of the Creator in Christian-Jewish dialogue more than has been done in the past. It was the Spirit of Yahweh who inspired the judges, the kings, and the prophets, and who thus made possible Yahweh's true self- communication with men in history. This pneumatic presence of Yah­ weh in Jesus was naturally the key insight of adoptionist Christology. By centering on the event of the Resurrection rather than on the baptism of Jesus, however, it might be possible to point out to Jews that Christians find in the glorified Jesus nothing less than the completion of Israel and the total outpouring of the Spirit of Yahweh on human flesh. The result of this approach is that the man Jesus cannot be separated from the very being of God Himself at any point. Spirit Christology would thus necessarily set Jesus in a Jewish context, and yet point out that Jesus' uniqueness is grounded in his total entrance into God's dimension at his glorification, which in turn is also the revelation of his oneness with the Father from all time. In dialogue with religions other than Judaism, a similar kind of inductive approach to Jesus' uniqueness could be developed from a Spirit Christology. The Spirit of God, who is at work in all signs of religious faith, can be presented as the one who totally filled Jesus of Nazareth and who therefore made him the goal of every religious manifestation among the nations.79

77 Kasper, Jesus der Christus 320. 78 H. U. von Balthasar, "Improvisation über Geist und Zukunft," in Spiritus Creator 153. 79 A. Dulles, "The Theology of Hans Küng: A Comment," USQR 27 (1972) 141-42. SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 449 International dialogue between religious and secular groups, and especially between Christians and Marxists, could profit from the fact that Spirit Christology by its very nature situates Jesus in an eschato­ logical framework which opens up the possibility for all men and women of all ages to find spiritual and corporeal fulfilment in the kingdom of the Father; for whereas too great a stress on Logos Christology forced the mystery of Jesus to recede back into the beginning of time, the eschatological dynamism of Spirit Christology of necessity projects the mystery of Jesus Christ into the future. More than any other perspective into which Christology can be placed, whether it be anthropological, cosmological, or historical, Spirit Christology is both explicitly cosmic and biblical, political and Trinitarian, social and religious. The hope which Spirit Christology affirms is present in Jesus, a particular person at the center of history, is also the hope which is grounded in Jesus' universal role at the beginning and at the end of the cosmic process.80 By setting the person of Jesus into a cosmic drama which is therefore not devoid of social, political, ecological, and salvific import, Spirit Christol­ ogy, rooted as it should be in the unique and total liberation of the one man Jesus of Nazareth, offers a sure promise of liberation to all men. Early adoptionism was not able to join all these perspectives together in such a way that Jesus was more than a paradigm of human hope. Spirit Christology, with a starting point in the paschal mystery, might offer the possibility of viewing Jesus' identity as both cosmic and unique. This is its main promise: Jesus will be seen not only as the temporal paradigm but also as the eternal principle of man's hope.

80 W. Kasper, Einfuhrung in den Glauben (Mainz: Grunewald, 1972) 168-69.