Exploring Christology and Atonement E-Book

Andrew Purves

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 523

Beschreibung

Andrew Purves, the author of many works in pastoral theology, has spent his life exploring the significance of Jesus Christ for the life of the church. As a professor of historical theology, he has also investigated the significance of patristic and Reformed theology for understanding Christ. In Exploring Christology and Atonement, Purves brings these concerns together. If pastoral theology is about the person and work of Christ, then the study of Christology and atonement is essential to the ministry of the church. Drawing on his own Scottish heritage, Purves engages in a critical conversation about Christ?s person and work with three eminent Scottish theologians whose legacy stretches over two hundred years: John McLeod Campbell, Hugh Ross Mackintosh and Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Purves shows how their respective contributions to our understanding of Jesus Christ shape and inform the practice of the faith. The ministry of the church is rooted first and foremost in the ministry of God.

Leseprobe

Exploring Christology & Atonement

Conversations with John McLeod Campbell H. R. Mackintosh T. F. Torrance

Andrew Purves

www.IVPress.com/academic

In grateful memory of Rev. Alasdair I. C. Heron, ThD (1942–2014).

With thankfulness for the three Scottish doctors of the church who have for long been my theological companions:

John McLeod Campbell Hugh Ross Mackintosh Thomas Forsyth Torrance.

To my students who were exposed to this manuscript fresh from its writing: thank you for your affection, trust and interest.

David A. Bindewald, James R. Downey, PhD, Robert (Deacon) Dressing, Travis L. Fernald, Steven D. Gallego, Lance R. Hershberger, Charissa A. Howe, Matthew A. Jones, Randy T. Maki, Craig T. Meek, Rachel R. Riggle, Mary Louise Russell, MD, Benjamin R. Schneider, Jean A. Smith, Matthew C. Williams (who helped with the editing and footnote checking), Christopher Garrett Yates.

And, as always, a huge “thank you” to Cathy for her love and support.

CONTENTS

Preface: Christology and Atonement

Introduction: Locating Theology

1 Christology: Who Is the Incarnate Savior of the World?

2 Christology: The Mystery of Christ—the Homoousion and the Hypostatic Union

3 Christology: The Magnificent Exchange and Union with Christ

4 Atonement: John McLeod Campbell’s Theology of Satisfaction

5 Atonement: Hugh Ross Mackintosh and the Experience of Forgiveness

6 Atonement: Thomas F. Torrance on the Atonement as Ransom, Priestly Atonement, Justification, Reconciliation and Redemption

7 Christology and Atonement: Faith and Ministry

Notes

Author Index

Subject Index

Praise for Exploring Christology & Atonement

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Copyright

PREFACE

Christology and Atonement

THIS BOOK OFFERS AN ACCOUNT of the relations between Jesus Christ, who is the incarnate Son, and the Father, the result of which is the atonement, for in the incarnate Son the relation between God and humankind is savingly established. We cannot reflect on who Christ is, on his person, without having to reflect on his purpose and work. To cite the notable words of the German Reformer Philipp Melanchthon, “This is to know Christ, to know his benefits.” To reflect on Christology or atonement as separate categories would be to deal with abstraction. Thus the topic is Christology and atonement, the doctrine of Jesus Christ and, its consequence, the work of salvation. The consideration of who Jesus was and what he did must in every way be held together, for the one can be understood only in view of the other. That is to say, the hypostatic or personal union of God and humankind as the man Jesus of Nazareth and the atonement that he effects as the meaning and purpose of the incarnation belong together. Christ’s being and action are one reality.1

Clearly, too, this account of Christology and atonement must cast light on the doctrine of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for as the man Jesus, God, from the Father and by the Spirit, became incarnate for us and for our salvation. This undoubtedly is the great and central mystery of Christian faith, as it is also the central message of Christian proclamation.

Theology, however, exists not for its own sake. Certainly, one trusts, theology is offered to God as the voice of faith thinking about what faith confesses. But as a work of the church, theology also has a responsibility to lay forth its claims for the sake of ministry. For this reason, the conclusion of what we explore in the following pages addresses the relation between Christology, atonement and pastoral care. This is offered in view of the great need today for pastoral ministry to be fully informed at every point by theology and especially, it seems obvious to say, by the central doctrines of Christian faith. There is a sense, then, in which this is a work of pastoral theology, even of practical theology, for there is no knowledge of a nonacting God, and there is no God other than the God who acts for us in Jesus Christ. Reflection on Christology and atonement is reflection on the God who acts; this is the first and primary meaning of practical theology.

The exploration of Christology and atonement is done here by way of a presentation of the relationship between the Father and the incarnate Son as I am guided by the theologies of John McLeod Campbell, Hugh Ross Mackintosh and Thomas Forsyth Torrance. These three Scottish Presbyterian theologians, beginning with the induction of Campbell to the parish of Rhu in Dumbartonshire in 1825 and concluding with the death of Torrance on the first Sunday of Advent in 2007, represent a trajectory in Scottish Reformed theology that was both ecumenical and pastoral, drawing insight as much from the Greek church fathers as from the principal Reformers while also seeking to speak to the ministry of the church in Scotland. In due course, all three, especially Torrance, have become known beyond their native borders. All three were committed churchmen, with a heart for ministry and an evident, passionate piety.

McLeod Campbell, Mackintosh and Torrance worked with a critically realist view of the incarnation in which the pattern and nature of God in Christ were allowed to shape their thinking. Indeed, obedience demanded it. In, through and as Jesus Christ, God had in fact taken on human flesh, becoming as we are, to do from the side of God and from the side of humanity, in the unity of his incarnate personhood, that which was necessary for us to have a new life with God. Thus the atonement was worked out in such a way that it was entirely of God and entirely as human being, in that God as the man Jesus was wholly God and wholly human while remaining one person. That surely is the great mystery at the heart of the gospel that was grasped so clearly by the theologians with whom we will be in conversation. Rejected was any sense that the atonement was an instrumental or external act of God, the results of which are imputed to us; affirmed was the utter seriousness of the becoming flesh of God as the man Jesus so that the atonement was worked out within his incarnate life in history, atoning from the inside, as it were. In this way, these theologians cast Christology and atonement in historical and ontological terms rather than external or instrumental terms.

Central to the common perspective of these three theologians, each in his own voice, was the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ. That is, they saw Christ’s humanity not merely as exemplary but rather as through and through substitutionary, in which the covenant between God and humankind was entirely completed in and by him for us. God’s coming as the man Jesus was the act from the side of God and from the side of humankind that forged a new relationship in which everything that God requires of us is given by God and to God on our behalf by Jesus Christ. In this way, these theologians stood in the lineage of Athanasius of Alexandria, who taught that Jesus ministers the things of God to us and the things of humankind to God, all in the unity of his divine-human person. At the heart of this bidirectional ministry of Christ is the filial relationship between the Father and the Son wherein Jesus offers the Father in our stead the human life of obedience, trust and love that gladdens the Father’s heart. In this way, especially through Christ’s active obedience, the atonement is presented as a kinetic, relational and personal event entirely worked out through the relationship between the Father and the incarnate Son. This relationship is not something worked “above our heads,” as it were, but is stubbornly a divine act within history that establishes our relationship with God and acts upon us in such a way that we become changed persons. McLeod Campbell and Mackintosh especially, as we will see, repeatedly pull their readers back to what Mackintosh called an “experimental” faith, as by the Holy Spirit’s mediation of Christ we, with the apostle Paul, must speak of God in Christ for us, and we in Christ for God.2 Theology and piety belong together; theology and ministry belong together.

McLeod Campbell, Mackintosh and Torrance, arguably, are linked as a trajectory in Scottish theology that is more at home with the Scots Confession of 1560 than with the Westminster Confession of 1647. That is, the three theologians placed emphasis on Christology, with attention to the doctrines of the person, life and work of Jesus Christ, rather than on covenant theology construed in theistic rather than christological terms. Their arguments were conducted a posteriori and inductively rather than deductively and rationalistically. However, I do not think they constitute a theological “school” in the tight sense that word suggests. Each clearly remains himself. Nevertheless, Mackintosh was familiar with and somewhat critical of McLeod Campbell, and Torrance sat in Mackintosh’s classroom in Edinburgh in the early 1930s and writes affectionately of the influence his teacher had upon him. Torrance too remained deeply and critically appreciative of McLeod Campbell. (Full disclosure: I in turn sat in Torrance’s classroom in Edinburgh.)

My manner of approach here is to take up a number of themes that bear upon Christology and atonement as they arise in the writings of McLeod Campbell, Mackintosh and Torrance and engage in reflective discussion with them. The intended result, then, will be more than a monograph on three Scottish theologians. The goal is that by way of this process a case will be made for the relation between Christology and atonement that can guide the church today in preaching, teaching and pastoral care. In view is a contemporary presentation of Christology and atonement as that arises out of the discussions as they proceed.

So-called atonement theory is a wide-ranging and multifaceted inquiry. Whether we consider the shape of soteriology or typologies of atonement theories,3 the fact is that the ecumenical church (excepting particular denominations) never canonized any single theory in a manner similar to the doctrine of Christ or the trinitarian doctrine of God. Yet even given the accepted christological and trinitarian creedal formulations of the ecumenical church, much remains unexplained, as if the language used by the church fathers is intended to protect the central mysteries of God and Christ rather than explain them. With the atonement, certainly, we confront the great saving mystery of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ. If we think we have explicated it, we haven’t! It is surely a mystery to be adored and received rather than a theological problem to be picked apart, analyzed and solved. Nevertheless, I wish in what follows to suggest one way, arising from engagements with the authors named, in which Christology and soteriology can be helpfully and hopefully construed. While offering this way, I recognize that no attempt at understanding can cover, much less explain, the mystery of our salvation in Christ.

There is a significant mass of material to draw from, especially in the case of Torrance, who produced a very substantial and often difficult body of published work. What follows draws mainly from principal publications in which the themes with which I deal are already apparent in the book titles. My working texts are John McLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement (1856); H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (1912) and The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (1927); and T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (2008) and Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ (2009), both edited by Robert T. Walker and published posthumously. I will draw upon other work as required, and en route will note secondary sources, but with the intent to keep that at a minimum.

Allow me to offer a personal note. I have cast what follows as critical theological engagements. I do not mean that lightly. All thinking, whatever the subject, surely involves a conversation with received tradition. At the most elementary level, to use language is to be situated in a received context; otherwise we would not be able to communicate, and I doubt that we could think. Theology is a traditioned discipline, and necessarily so, because Jesus Christ is a historical event, and the church is a historical community of worship, discourse and service of God. To do theology is to be plunged into history. By selecting these three theologians as my conversation partners, I am owning my lineage and receiving it thankfully. Yet I am also seeking to understand it more fully while engaging it critically. But more, I believe that John McLeod Campbell, Hugh Ross Mackintosh and Thomas Forsyth Torrance were doctors of the church. They were theologians—men who knew God in Jesus Christ. To read them is to be spiritually and not just intellectually and theologically elevated. In their company one is drawn into their love for Jesus Christ, shaped by the intensity and quality of their theological grappling with the God who encountered them, and invited to stand and look with them for a while. We, in turn, under their instruction, may also catch a glimpse of the beauty and glory of God given in the face of Jesus Christ.

A Brief Theological Reflection on Colossians 1:15-20

Many biblical references could be brought to bear to set the ground for the journey ahead. I will allow a passage from Colossians to do duty for them all. Here we have a very early confession of the church’s faith; it also incorporates many of the major subjects of theology, treating especially the relation between Christology and the atonement.

Jesus Christ is “the image of the invisible God.” Reference is made here to the incomprehensibility of God and to Jesus Christ as both God himself and the revelation of God. Notice: we start with Jesus Christ, not with speculative metaphysical or epistemological questions. An Deus sit? (Does God exist?) is not the opening question. The opening question is, “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:5), as we will see in due course. There is no independent reference, no extrinsic epistemological authority or ground in the common currency of human discourse to which appeal is made a priori. God either has or has not come among us as the man Jesus. Faith trusts that this is true on the singular ground that God has met us in revelation, and that all subsequent faith, knowledge and life is post hoc, after that fact.

He is “the firstborn of all creation.” The reference is to Christ in the flesh affirmed as Lord. God for us is an actual event in history as the man Jesus.

“In him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible.” The reference is made to Christ’s role in creation; he is the creator Word. Note also the reference to “all things,” and to the fact that in creation there is more than meets the eye. Not just in revelation, but even in creation itself, not all is clear and immediate to inspection and human control. We are confronted even in revelation with God’s veiling, with things invisible.

“All things have been created through him and for him.” The reference is now made to Christ as both the source and the goal of creation; he is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Again we note the reference to “all things.”

“He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” The reference is made here to Christ’s ontological priority. He is Lord, and without him all things—again, twice—fall apart. He is the Pantocrator, the Lord of the cosmos. By now the sheer size of the Christology is overwhelming. (For a parallel thought, see Eph 1:10 for God’s plan to sum up or gather up [anakephalaiōsasthai, “to gather up together under a head”] all things in heaven and on earth in Christ.)4

“He is the head of the body, the church.” The text now moves from reference to God, through Christ’s role in creation and lordship over all, to the church, of which Christ is the head, the place wherein he continues to work in his continuing visible body.

“He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.” The text now affirms Christ’s resurrection. He who was before all things were created is declared to be the firstborn of the dead. Thus again Christ’s ontological priority is stressed.

“For through him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” In a circling move, the text declares the doctrine of the incarnation. Jesus Christ, bodily, is the fullness of God, whole God. There is no God behind the back of Jesus. Who we see God to be in, through and as Jesus Christ is who God is.

“And through him God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” And now, of course, reference is made to atonement, and again all things are brought within the sweep of his salvation. Reconciliation (apokatallassō, an intensive compound) here indicates restoration of peace and love that had been destroyed. The relation between redemption and creation is fully established, reaching out to include all things. God, as always, is the acting subject, through Christ. Now all things are in complete unity in Christ in a vast cosmic peace.5 (Parallel reference may be made to Eph 2:13-16, where the phragmos, the hedge or wall that divides, is broken down, thus making peace.) This peace is through the blood of Christ, by which God has satisfied the will of his love in taking our judgment on himself and bearing it in our stead. God in Christ enters into our separation from God, which is caused by our perversity, and God’s separation from us because of his holiness and therefore God’s judgment on our sin. The consequence is that God in Christ assumes us, as well as all things, into fellowship or, better, into communion with himself.

Note how Paul moves from Christ, Lord, to God, to creation, to church, to resurrection, to incarnation and atonement. Note again the sweep: all things. The movement of this passage will be reflected in our journey as we move from Christology to atonement. At each point our plumb line will be Jesus Christ, “the image of the invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” and “through whom God was pleased to reconcile all things.”

INTRODUCTION

Locating Theology

WHAT IS THEOLOGY? What kind of activities does it involve? What is the scope of the discipline? This chapter serves as an introduction to a way of doing theology that is indebted to the work of Thomas F. Torrance. Although Torrance is often cited in the pages that follow, and therefore he serves as guide and teacher, the intent is to give my own account of theology rather than a detailed account of theological method in Torrance’s theology. Two major themes are discussed: the relation between theology and baptism, and realism and fallibility in Christology and soteriology. A number of subdivisions will mark the discussion as it proceeds. This introduction should serve as a methodological signpost to aid the journey ahead as it unfolds.

Theology and the Community of the Baptized

The chapel at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where I teach, has recently been reformed. The old pews, bolted to a slate floor in a series of rigid rows that allowed napes to be piously considered, were unbolted and disposed of. The immovable pulpit was moved (a crane was seen one day!), consigned to some other use. Fresh paint, with color, was applied. And new, expressly designed chairs, font, table and pulpit were moved into (movable) place. Now, students, administrators and faculty who gather to worship must enter this beautiful, flexible space negotiating the baptismal font, which is placed, awkwardly but with intent, right in the middle of the entrance to the chapel. In order to worship we must enter through baptism. This is a wonderful metaphor for a theological seminary.

We do theology because we are baptized. Theology is a work of the communion of saints, a work of faith in which we try to understand the God who in Jesus Christ has claimed us and bound us to himself, and thereby made us the church. Theology is an expression of our baptismal identity in and of our belonging to God. It is a work not just of the theologian but also of the church as a historical theological community. Theology does not seek to know about God in an abstract, speculative manner (how, in any case, could the living God be known in such a manner?), but seeks to know God more fully as the God who in and as Jesus Christ has joined us to himself and made us the community of the baptized, the community bound to Jesus Christ.

The relation between baptism and theology is reciprocal in this way. Baptism leads to theology in order to understand as faithfully as we can who it is in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), while theology is more or less pointless without baptism, a mere chasing after God-thoughts fitfully flitting around in our brains (Calvin).1 Theology reminds us that baptism is not an empty ritual devoid of content. One goal of baptism surely is living in Christ Jesus, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as we were taught (Col 2:6-7). In this case, one goal of theology is pietas. Baptism reminds us that theology is a holy work of the people of God, part of the vowed life of discipled people whose lives are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2). Julie Canlis has pointedly summed up this perspective: we attempt to do theology in terms of “the belief that we are neither isolated Christians nor objective scientists, but rather within a church and stream of tradition.”2 We are after what John Webster once called “theological theology,” by which he meant theology that dares to think God, relationally and experientially, as it were, rather than think about God, as at some kind of distance, remotely and neutrally.3

As baptism is a public act of the church, likewise theology is a public work of the church, for the glory of God, one hopes, but also for the sake of the church, for testing proclamation and teaching, for guiding ministry, and for nurturing and maturing intelligent and well-informed faith and life. In this sense, theology is for the sake of the baptized, with particular concern for the sanctification of mind leading to well-instructed faith, well-informed worship and well-guided ministry. Theology has little obvious purpose otherwise. However, far too often it seems that this bond between theology and baptism as they intersect in and for the faith, worship and ministry of the church is much unloosed. Theology can be arcane, obscure and downright technical, a discipline for experts with terminal degrees, having little apparent contribution to make to the situational demands of congregational and personal life. Unmoored from baptism, theology easily becomes lord over its own life, a discipline of the academic guild rather than the church. But, there is nothing wrong with expertise when it is put to the right use, and when it is offered with humility in view of the enormity of its task and mindful of its subject of study. Theology is in service to the church.

Clearly, when the connections between theology and the community of the baptized become unloosed, both suffer. Theology without baptism has lost its anchor and its purpose, becoming a discipline listlessly wandering the corridors of the academy, whimpering for a seat at the table. Baptism without theology never matures into Christians having the mind of Christ. The meager fruit can be cliché-ridden piety or a drift toward narcissistic experience-centered authoritarianism. Both a theology that is no longer accountable to baptism and an unthinking faith, surely, are offensive to the gospel. If these are caricatures, perhaps enough of truth abides to make a valid point.

Theology can be learned. A discipled life takes discipline. Both living the life of a thoughtful Christian and doing theology can be hard work. They involve skill sets to be learned, just as we need education to do physics or plant a garden or raise children. Gathering information and the thoughtful interpretation of experience interact in all knowing. Further, knowledge draws upon received wisdom. A theologian works in gratitude for a tradition handed down, not to be followed uncritically of course, but received with respect and delight. And this is done within communities of discourse that at some point express faith through common worship and shared ministry. Thus the relation between baptism and theology is caught up in a multilayered series of connections and responsibilities. If baptism is the empirical point of entrance to the Christian life, theology is part of God’s provision for the purpose of growth and maturity in that life. Theology is for the building up of the church. The goal of both baptism and theology is Christian identity and formation so that the Christian lives and thinks “in Christ.”

Hugh Ross Mackintosh (d. 1936) once noted, “Theology is simply a persistent and systematic attempt to clarify the convictions by which Christians live.”4 We cannot do theology in neutral terms. This is borne out when we place a central Christian conviction before us for consideration: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19). We cannot know God without being reconciled to God, for there is no God to know except the God who has come among us savingly as the man Jesus. The logos tou theou (2 Cor 2:17), the word of God, cannot in Christian terms be other than the logos tou staurou (1 Cor 1:18), the message about the cross. Christian faith claims knowledge of an acting and saving God. Jürgen Moltmann notes, “It is he, the crucified Jesus himself, who is the driving force, the joy and the suffering of all theology which is Christian.”5 Our task as theologians is to make faithful witness to this God who encounters us in, through and as the man Jesus Christ, as he is attested by Scripture and as we are led by the Holy Spirit together as the body of Christ to share in the communion of love between the Father and the Son. The subject matter is God whom we know in Jesus Christ to be Savior and Lord. The theologian tries to make some sense of this in spite of the fact that God is not reducible to our sentences. Our task in theology, then, as T. F. Torrance notes, is to yield the obedience of our minds to what is given, which is God’s self-revelation in its objective reality, Jesus Christ.6 Our approach “can only be from the standpoint of sinners whose sins have been forgiven, and for whom Christ is the Son of the living God become flesh in order to reconcile the world to God.”7 Theology is a confessional discipline, obedient to and humble before the mystery of Christ (e.g., Col 2:25-27; Eph 3:4), seeking to learn what is to be known of God from that mystery as he declares himself to us.

This is exactly what we find in a famous sentence from Philipp Melanchthon at the beginning of his Loci Communes (1521): Hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere; “This is to know Christ, to know his benefits.”8 We know Jesus Christ insofar as we know him to be Lord over us, to be Savior for us and as such know him as God who encounters us. To cite Torrance again: “The knowledge of Christ arises in the knowledge of his salvation. How we know Christ and what we know of him belong inseparably together.”9 What is important here, and what was central for Melanchthon, is that it is not because Christ brings us benefits that he is Lord for us, but that he reveals God to us, and as such we know ourselves to be sheltered and healed in him.10

The danger in our task is that in seeking to bring knowledge of God to faith­ful expression we strip God of his glory. After all, theologians most likely are masters of divinity and doctors of philosophy. How easy it is to forget that here we speak of holy things, we who are not holy. How easy it is to forget that there is no humanly rational explanation for incarnation and atonement, or for the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, or for knowledge of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Rather, in theological knowledge, and in order to know God in a Godly manner, our minds must undergo a profound metanoia, a change of mind that involves radical alteration in our thinking (see Rom 12:2). Explanation assumes some kind of continuity between God and us, and that exactly is what we do not have. Thus the gospel is foolishness, unreason, to “the Greeks” (1 Cor 1:22-25).11 Only in God’s light do we see light (see Ps 36:9; 119:105). Or to put that christologically, only in the light of Christ, and thinking out from a center in him, can we come to know God rightly, coming to know the Father as Jesus the Son reveals him to us (see Mt 11:27). Knowledge of God can happen only according to the way that Christ himself provided for our understanding. Not only with respect to discipleship, but also in theology, we must learn to follow Christ. By God’s grace and in the communion of the Holy Spirit theological knowledge is the fruit of sharing in Christ’s life.

We approach our task with humility, drawing near to the throne of grace only because we are summoned, having access through Christ in one Spirit to the Father (Eph 2:18). We neither storm the gates of heaven nor gather theological arguments like arrows in a quiver to use as weapons to advance our theological cause. We approach our work with an attitude of worship, with the deepest respect for the task before us, and perhaps with a sense of amazement that we are here to be about this duty in the first place. Let gratitude be the mark of our endeavor, that Almighty God has called us to bring his gospel to expression as we fulfill the work of theology.

God chooses to be known by us. Christian faith itself and the church’s work of explication, interpretation and proclamation of God’s revelation arise singularly from God’s gracious willingness to reveal himself as savior and draw us into a knowing communion with himself. Jesus Christ is both the crucifixion of all theology that is not Christian and the resurrection, and therefore the possibility, of all theology that is Christian. That statement may seem overly harsh, but I see no alternative to it if Jesus is who the New Testament says he is.

That is to say, Jesus Christ is not an addendum to the doctrine of God or some important but outer ring some way from the supposed theistic center. Jesus Christ is at once both the center of and the entryway into the doctrine of God. “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11:27). Here, as elsewhere throughout the New Testament, we find the ontological relation between the Father and the Son in being and act to be the sole ground of revelation and salvation. In the final analysis, this is the singular content of preaching and teaching. Thus theology, and in particular the doctrine of God, is a knowledge of the Father, through the Son, and in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Such theology is at all points thoroughly trinitarian, for knowledge of God is mediated through Jesus Christ, and therefore God is known through encounter, for God is Spirit.

Our task is more rather than less faithful knowledge of God who encounters us, with the end of a right relationship with God and the faithful living of the Christian life. In a recent book Matthew Myer Boulton noted, “For Calvin, Christian doctrine is properly conceived and articulated in the first place for the sake of Christian formation”; the goal of theology is “practical life in God.”12 When we get God wrong, we get living in the world wrong. Theology is education in godly piety and to that end is paideutic; it is “grateful love and reverence for God induced by relational, pragmatic knowledge of divine benefits.”13 In a similar vein John Webster argues,

The end of theology is practical knowledge of God, that is, knowledge which aims at the furtherance of the life of the Christian community, the salvation of humankind, and godly discipline. Theology is thus more a process of moral and spiritual training and an exercise in the promotion of common life than it is a scholarly discipline. “Skills” are kept firmly tied to their end; in and of itself, the cultivation of learning is profitless because, unless directed to holiness, it is not only unattached but vicious.14

Realism and Fallibility in Christology and Soteriology: All Theology Is En Route

On August 17, 1560, the Scottish Parliament adopted a document that was four days in its writing as “doctrine founded upon the infallible Word of God.” The confession is a setting forth of the faith of the Scottish Reformers. But, as the preface to the confession notes, it is open to amendment and correction should it be found to be contrary to God’s word.

If any man will note in our Confession any chapter or sentence contrary to God’s Holy Word, that it would please him of his gentleness and for Christian charity’s sake to inform us of it in writing; and we, upon our honour, do promise him that by God’s grace we shall give him satisfaction from the mouth of God, that is, from Holy Scriptures, or else we shall alter whatever he can prove to be wrong.15

As is common within Reformed traditions, confessions are understood as subordinate or provisional standards, not as static and timeless declarations. In keeping with the notes by which the true church is determined, the confession of Christ Jesus rather than the confession of the Scots Confession is avowed, and this in local congregations rather than in some abstraction called the universal church.16

This historical reference illustrates how theology is an “open” discipline—open, that is, to correction as Christ continues to shape the mind of the church and as the church is consequentially repentant of its theology (see Rom 3:4). There is no eternal theology; all theology is en route, hopefully to a deeper faithfulness. Theology is never in itself the truth, for that truth lies in Christ, to whom theology bears witness. As human statements, theology suffers from all manner of problems, not the least of which is the theologian’s sin. Likewise, there is no eternal Christology and soteriology. Even the most sublime references to Jesus Christ and what he does for us do not contain the whole truth in them, but remain wracked by sin in some way or another. That is to say, Christology and soteriology as written by theologians and even as attested in official creeds of the church are fallible. Torrance has noted, “The very beliefs which we profess and formulate as obediently and carefully as we can in fidelity to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ are themselves called into question by that revelation, for they have their truth not in themselves but in him to whom they refer.”17 God, in other words, is not a sentence, and certainly is not containable within our sentences. At best we try to be more rather than less faithful in our references to Christ. But God is not reducible to sentences and arguments, for God is personal being, uncontainable within our ideas.

The fallibility of Christology and soteriology is the predicate of the nature of God, of God’s incomprehensibility, holiness and majesty, yet too of our humanity with all of its frailty and misknowing. But note these words from Karl Barth: “As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability, and by that very recognition give God the glory.”18 We are called thus to do what we cannot do except as God enables us by a mighty act of grace in giving himself to be known.

All theology is en route. Barth’s question, “What as Christians do we really have to say?”19 leads to an observation: all theology not only comes out of encounter with Spirit and Word, as transmitted through a tradition, and not only comes from a theologian or church, but also comes in a form that it is written or spoken for today. Barth’s question, from his Dogmatics in Outline, was posed in 1946 amid the bombed-out ruins of Bonn University. One imagines him waving his arms at the devastation as he asks his question. We may crave certainty, but what we have is theology that is circumstantial.20 Nevertheless, what do we have to say? We may attempt to write something magisterial and definitive; nevertheless, such good intentions cannot erase provisionality or fallibility. Even with our best theological sentences we see as in a mirror dimly. Creeds and theologies arise out of geographical and, indeed, political placement, and they give guidance for the church at a particular time. Theology is always en route, always open for correction and revision, always trying to become more faithful.

John Knox of Edinburgh burned his sermons after they were preached in the High Kirk of St. Giles. They were for this congregation, on this day. Likewise, theology is written for today, not for the future and certainly not for eternity. The cry “Back to Nicaea!” or “Back to Westminster!” fails to understand the provisional nature of theology. Theology is not the worse for that, for the occasional character is the nature of the case. All theology, like all science, is both kinetic and open-ended, and faithfulness must be worked out in terms of these given processes rather than in propositions and deductions that are static and closed. Theology, alas, is provisional and messy.

In knowing God in Christ we are up against a fundamental mystery that is not explicable in terms of our abilities or deducible a priori, from first principles. Rather, from the side of God in the flesh of our humanity, Jesus Christ, in the presence of the Spirit, confronts and encounters us, and he does so on his own terms. We know God by faith. As theologians our task is to clarify that knowledge by bringing it to faithful expression. But we can do so only in terms of the nature of this mystery, and not by transmuting it into something that we can grasp on our own terms or in terms of predetermined criteria for knowledge. We must learn to be real in our thinking by thinking in a manner appropriate to that which we seek to know. At the end of the day, the teaching of Evagrius of Pontus from the fourth century marks the bounds of theology: “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. If you pray truly, you are a theologian.”21

Realism in theology: some illustrations and observations. An illustration may be helpful here. After around seventy pages clearing the ground for his presentation on the nature of the atonement, John McLeod Campbell offers a programmatic statement on method: “It is in the way of studying the atonement by its own light, and of meditation on what it is revealed to have been, that I propose to proceed in seeking positive conclusions as to its nature, its expiatory virtue, and its adequacy to all the ends contemplated.”22 McLeod Campbell has no interest in asking an abstract question after the fashion of “What is an atonement for sin?” Rather, the thing itself is to be studied on its own terms, in its own light. The intent is absence of speculation; the method is a posteriori. The procedure has the character of “What do we have here?” What we have here is Jesus Christ and an atonement accomplished by him.

The theologian who stands head and shoulders above everyone else in modern times, and who tried to write his theology according to the proper form of theological reason, was Karl Barth. However, the theologian who brought theological reason or theological rationality to its fullest expression in terms of meaning and method, and notably was in dialogue with both Barth and the philosophy of science of his day, was Thomas F. Torrance. Turning now to reflect on the nature of reason in theology, we will be guided by Torrance along the way.

A basic point is to distinguish between reason/rationality and rationalism. Rationalism is reason abstracted from its object, operating solely out of itself without attention to what is given. It is thinking dictated by reason alone, severed from objects of knowledge as they are given to be known. Rationalism is ordered by first principles and formed by logically deducted propositions. An example of rationalist theology is found in the so-called ontological proof for the existence of God that goes back to St. Anselm in the eleventh century. He states that the concept of God is “a being than which no greater can be conceived.” Since existence is possible, and to exist is greater than not to exist, then God must exist (if God did not exist, then a greater being could be conceived, but that is self defeating—you can’t have something greater than that which no greater can be conceived!). Therefore, God must exist. Later Descartes did much the same thing, starting from the idea of a perfect being. Thus we have an a priori argument where existence is a predicate of definition. But this argument is seen by many thinkers to have been destroyed by David Hume (who argued that there is no being whose nonbeing implies contradiction) and then Immanuel Kant (who argued that existence is not a predicate).23

Rationality, on the other hand, refers not to something that lies within reason itself, but rather to our ability to relate thought and action to objective intelligible realities.24 The Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (d. 1976) observed, “The rationality of thought does not lie in the thought itself, as a quality of it, but depends upon reference to the external world as known in immediate experience”; and again, “Reason is the capacity to behave consciously in terms of what is not ourselves. We can express this briefly by saying that reason is the capacity to behave in terms of the nature of the object, that is to say, to behave objectively. Reason is thus our capacity for objectivity.”25

We distinguish between thinking that is characterized by deductive logical processes, thinking that is independent of experience, a priori thinking, and thinking that seeks to know what is present to experience, a posteriori thinking. New knowledge cannot be raised in abstraction, but only concretely—not a priori, but a posteriori. In theology we are concerned with positive thinking, thinking that is obedient to what is given, empirical thinking.

Knowledge of Jesus Christ is sought a posteriori (known from experience), not a priori (deduced from first principles). We begin not by asking, “Can we know God or Christ?” but rather, “God and Christ are known; who, then, is God?” It is in this way that Paul’s question in Acts 9:5, “Who are you, Lord?” is the controlling christological question, as we will see in the next chapter. With this manner of reasoning we reach conclusions on the basis of what has earlier been observed or experienced. The conclusions arrived at, however, are never absolutely certain. They are suggested in varying degrees of strength, or, in the language of the analytic philosophers, with greater or lesser robustness. A classic example is the conviction that tomorrow the sun will rise. This conviction is grounded on the observation that every day in the history of noticing these things, the sun has always risen. But there can be no absolute certainty that just because the sun rose every day in the past, it will rise again tomorrow morning. The conclusion is very strongly suggested, of course, and really it entails a practical necessity, or we would never get out of bed. But it remains unproven in any absolute sense. In spite of common assumptions to the contrary, indicated by the use of the philosophically vague word fact, empirical science also works in this way, with its “faith” in the likes of probability and conclusions drawn from experience rather than in ironclad “laws” such as causality or assertions about absolute time and space.

A concrete biblical illustration may be helpful at this point: the disciples’ experience of the risen Christ. While the disciples had no experience of the resurrection of Jesus as an event, their experience of the risen Jesus seemed reasonably to entail such an event. Assuming lack of pathology, delusion, utter confusion or lying, one would hardly experience and attest someone to be alive in some way whom one knew to be dead. If we accept the disciples’ accounts of encountering Jesus to be testimony in good faith—and why would we do otherwise?—their witness is worthy of attention. Add to that our own sense of being encountered through the Holy Spirit by Jesus as a living Lord, and the case gets stronger by the minute. The conclusion that the resurrected Jesus lives is not absolutely provable, but then no conclusion derived from experience ever is—as is also the case with empirical science.

Methodologically, then, we do not start with the resurrection and draw conclusions deductively from it. Rather, we start with the experience of faith and with the disciples’ testimony that they were encountered by the resurrected Jesus. The New Testament has no interest in inquiring into the possibility of this encounter in a prior way: can such a thing as a resurrection happen? Nor at this point are we asking an epistemological question: how do we know? We cannot determine in advance what would verify the truth of the experience of being encountered by someone who was dead but is now raised from the dead. The encounters are “given.” In theology, therefore, we go on to ask who is this Jesus who encountered the disciples (again, the centrality of Acts 9:5 for Christology) and who today encounters us through their witness and our life together as the church by means of the gift of the Holy Spirit. In knowing God in Christ we are up against a fundamental mystery that is not explicable in terms of our abilities or deducible a priori, from first principles.

Calvin on realism in theology. What, then, is the nature of theological rationality? The following is largely taken from Torrance, Theological Science, a monumental work on the philosophy of theology written in dialogue with mid-twentieth-century philosophy of science. Although his conversation partner is now a bit dated, the thrust of the argument seems to hold.

A place to begin is with what today we call “antifoundationalism,” though it is not a term that Torrance used. Given God’s incomprehensibility, we can know and understand God only out of God’s own rationality and under the determination of the divine being—that is, in active obedience to the demands of God’s reality and self-giving. As such, modern theology in its distinctive Protestant form began with Calvin.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin reversed the order of questioning and knowing that had obtained throughout the medieval period, and in doing so he put theology onto a new footing. First, Calvin reversed the order of scientific questions. Rather than ask first of all, “What sort of thing? Can that exist? What sort of existence is it?” Calvin made primary the question, “What is it?” Colloquially put, he began by asking, “What have we here?” In doing so he changed the nature of science, asking genuinely interrogative questions that were not governed by previous abstractions and metaphysical assumptions. This is the theological ground for modern empirical science. The question led to new knowledge. Calvin wanted to begin with actuality: What is it that we have here? In theology specifically this became the “Who?” question. Thus, for example, Acts 9:5 (“Who are you, Lord?”) is the primary christological question.

Second, Calvin insisted that in theology knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves are bound together in mutuality. We cannot know God apart from the fact that we know God; theology cannot be cut off from the fact that God has addressed us. Thus there is a human pole in all proper knowing, even of God, and subject-object relations are integral to how we know. Knowing God is a personal knowing of which a relationship with God is a vital part.

Third, within these actual relations our knowledge of God must be put to the test. The principle here is called the analogia fidei, in which we test the fidelity of our knowledge by tracing it back to its ground in the reality known. Perhaps a problem with so much theology today is that the second point got out of hand. When personal knowledge is not tested by critical thinking that directs us back to the object of knowledge, it leads to personalism and subjectivism in which ostensible statements about God become statements about ourselves. We look into the theological well and see only our own reflection looking back at us.

Calvin brought theology back to its own ground in God—God who is person not concept, God who is known on God’s terms and not according to prior and previously determined criteria; thus we speak now of antifoundationalism in theology. This is in opposition to Kantian foundationalism, which is so dominant still today: “Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. . . . [We must ask] whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.”26 Theology as Calvin intended rejects the attempt to fit knowledge of God into a previously given foundation for knowledge. For him, that would be idolatry. Instead, he tried to operate with a radical openness toward God, demanded by the very nature and mystery of God. In Torrance’s mind this means that again and again we must reconstruct the constructs that we use to speak of God and by which we seek to refer truthfully to God.

Critical realism in theology. Generally, realism involves knowing things in a manner appropriate to them, and within subject-object relations of knower and something known. In perception and knowledge, as far as we are able, meaning is displaced away from ourselves and the sign that signifies, to rest upon what is indicated.27 Thus, I look at you, I see you through the lens of my glasses, I speak of you with my words, but what I refer to is not myself, my glasses or my words. I refer to you, although it is I who looks and speaks. I can have an idea of you, but in order to know you more faithfully I must bring my idea of you, and the words I use to express that idea, to honest testing. As you disclose yourself to me, I should come to a deeper knowledge of you. And the words and sentences that express that deeper knowledge will themselves be subject to correction and revision. My knowledge of you is never complete.

In all knowing there is a contrast between idea and reality, between sign and thing signified, as we move back and forth, as it were, from one pole to the other in the semantic relation—between reality and our words about it. Knowledge depends on the actual bearing of the signs or symbols (words or numbers) upon the realities to which they refer. If I try to describe you and say, “Pink banana,” a break has occurred between sign (pink banana) and reality (you), communication has failed, and there is no knowledge. But neither can sign image reality completely, which would be an ultrarealist position whereby we mistake sign for reality. That sort of mirroring relation between words and reality is the root of biblical fundamentalism and is, ironically, a form of epistemological positivism, which in philosophical clothes rejects what cannot be empirically verified. (On that basis quantum physics must go out of business!) Signs, rather, must have a certain detachment from that which is signified. The Word of God is Jesus Christ, and while the Bible bears witness to that Word, it is not itself the exact mirror of the Word; there is a distance between the Word of God, the incarnate Son, and biblical words about him. But neither can the sign be an artificial construct so as to be completely detached from the object of knowledge. The Bible is given by God as an appropriately detached sign, but also as a unique and Spirit-inspired sign. That is the tension within which we must work in theology.

We use the term realism to describe the orientation of thought in science, philosophy and theology in which we try to make a connection between our thinking/speaking and “something out there.” Alister McGrath has provided the following helpful definitions:

Naïve realism: Reality impacts directly upon the human mind, without any reflection on the part of the human knower. The resulting knowledge is directly determined by an objective reality within the world. [This means that there can be perception without interpretation, which is nonsense.]

Critical realism: Reality is apprehended by the human mind, which attempts to express and accommodate that reality as best it can with the tools at its disposal—such as mathematical formulae or mental models. [This is the mature position. All knowing is in process, it intends something “out there” but never completely encompasses it by thought, number or word. It allows for subject-object relations to be taken seriously. In such a scheme a fact is really a metaphysical myth. Critical realism calls for knowing that is kinetic, full of onward movement, and always open to correction and change.]

Postmodern anti-realism: The human mind freely constructs its ideas without reference to an alleged external world.28

Let me try to bring this into clear focus for theology and theological rationality. On the table thus far: (1) God gives himself to be known: revelation; (2) faith is a profoundly personal sense of trust and hope in God and is integrally related to knowledge of God; (3) Scripture is the testimony or witness to that revelation, the putting of it into words, most often in narrative form. And all of this frames the common life of the church and the individual lives of believers. Revelation, faith and Scripture: How are they related, and where does theology fit in? God gives himself to be known. There is something or someone “out there” that has grasped us. The prime christological question is, “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:5). The Bible is the Spirit-given testimony to this God who encounters us. Faith is the Spirit-given gift of being in relation with this God and thus knowing God. Theology is the attempt to sort this out as best we can. We know that our words never entirely encompass the reality of God, yet we know that some words do better than others. Thus we find ourselves in the position of critical realists. There is a God who gives himself to be known in faith, but there remains always a degree of detachment between God and our words concerning God, while we seek always to bring our words into a deeper faithfulness with respect to God’s self-givenness. Even so, there remains an ineffable but wondrous sense that in theology, as in love, we know more than we say. An apophatic gap remains between what we say and the God who encounters us as the man Jesus Christ.

Actual knowledge of God. In trying to give, briefly, the compass of theological rationality I have discussed antifoundationalism and critical realism. I turn now very briefly to another aspect of theological rationality that Torrance has advanced: knowledge according to the nature of the object of study, or what William J. Abraham calls “proper epistemic fit.”29 Christian theology arises out of the actual knowledge of God given in time and space. It is knowledge of God who meets us and gives himself to be known in, through and as Jesus Christ. It is positive, concrete knowledge. Our thinking, then, is profoundly limited by the actual way in which God has given himself to be known. There is posited here an objective ontological reality, but one of a kind, sui generis, with no corresponding analogy in human experience. We can know, in such a case, only from a center in God—theo-logic. God, as it were, objectifies himself for us. Thus we must keep before us the absolute primacy of God, who is the Lord over all our knowing of him. We have knowledge of God only as grace, as forgiven sinners, and as personal knowledge—both knowledge of God as personal being and of ourselves as persons knowing. Given this, the possibility of theological knowledge of God cannot be discussed outside of God’s own reality as the God who is in gracious interaction with the creaturely world by which God redemptively presents himself to us and for us.

In science as well as theology a general rule obtains: we know something only in accordance with its nature—kata physin. And we develop our knowledge as we allow its nature to prescribe the mode of rationality appropriate to it. In order to know God we must enter into a mode of rationality appropriate to the nature of God. Or to put it otherwise, in order to get theological answers we must ask theological questions appropriate to the nature of God. And again, in order to know God we have to interrogate God in a manner appropriate to God. It is on the mark to say that given its subject matter, theology is a pious discipline.

I set out to reflect on theological rationality and now find myself coming back to baptismal identity. Theological rationality has its home within the experience of being Christian, of being encountered by the living God, and being a person of faith, worship and Christian life, a participant within the community of the baptized. Theological rationality is thinking “in Christ,” and it is always part of the experience of living “in Christ,” which is the meaning of being baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And with this we have come full circle, having arrived at the place where we began.

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CHRISTOLOGY

Who Is the Incarnate Savior of the World?

A Preface to the Next Three Chapters

John McLeod Campbell’s axiom marks out the parameters for our consideration: “The faith of atonement presupposes the faith of the incarnation.”1