Son of Man, Son of God 9780773593077

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 The Question and Three Answers
2 Earlier Answers
3 Jesus' Estimate of Himself
4 Jesus the Son of Man
5 Jesus the Son of God
6 The Christological Debate : Tertullian to the Council of Chalcedon
7 The Chalcedonian Definition : Modem Criticisms and Restatements
8 The Appeal to Record, Experience, and Reason
Notes
Index

Citation preview

SON OF MAN SON OF GOD

SON OF MAN SON OF GOD

E. G. Jay, Ph.D. Dean of the Faculty of Divinity and 'Professor of Historical Theology McGill University

MONTREAL

McGill University Press 1965

Printed in Great Britain by The Talbot Press (S.P.C.K.) Saffron Walden, Essex © E. G. Jay, 1965

CONTENTS Acknowledgemen is

vii

1 The Question and Three Answers

1

2 Earlier Answers

7

3 Jesus' Estimate of Himself

19

4 Jesus the Son of Man

32

5 Jesus the Son of God

44

6 The Christological Debate : Tertullian to the Council of Chalcedon

52

7 The Chalcedonian Definition : Modem Criticisms and Restatements

74

8 The Appeal to Record, Experience, and Reason

98

Notes

105

Index

115

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due to the following for permission to include copyright material : A. and C. Black Ltd, Harper and Row, Inc., New York—Early Christian Doctrines, by J. N. D. Kelly. Cambridge University Press—"Towards a Christology for To-day", an article in Soundings, edited by A. R. Vidler. Clarendon Press, Oxford—The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Volume 2, Psalm 17 of the extra-canonical Psalm of Solomon, translated by G. B. Gray. Collins Publishers—Letters and Papers from Prison, by D. Bonhoeffer. Faber and Faber Ltd, Harper and Row, Inc., New York—The Gospels: their Origin and their Growth, by F. C. Grant. Faber and Faber Ltd—God was in Christ, by D. M. Baillie. Hodder and Stoughton Ltd—The Gospel of Mark (Moffat Commentary), by B. H. Branscornb. Macmillan and Co. Ltd, St Martin's Press, Inc., New York—The Names of Jesus, by Vincent Taylor. James Nisbet and Co Ltd, University o! Chicago Press—Systematic Theology, by Paul Tad,. Oxford University Press and the Very Reverend W. R. Matthews— The Problem of Christ in the 20th Century. Oxford University Press—The Early Church Fathers, by H. Bettenson. Oxford University Press—Documents of the Christian Church (second edition), by H. Bettenson. S.C.M. Press Ltd, Harper and Row, Inc., New York—An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament, by Alan Richardson. S.C.M. Press Ltd, Westminster Press, Philadelphia—The Christology of the New Testament, by 0. Cullmann.

S.C.M. Press Ltd, Westminster Press, Philadelphia—Honest to God, by J. A. T. Robinson. S.C.M. Press Ltd, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York—The Theology of the New Testament, by Rudolf Bultmann. The scripture quotations in this book are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946 and 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches and used by permission.

I THE QUESTION AND THREE ANSWERS Who do men say that I am? (Mark 8. 27); Who do men say that the Son of man is? (Matt. 16. 13); Who do men say that I am? (Luke 9. 18).1 It is an odd question, and not one which most men ask their friends. It may be true that a great many people are anxious about what is now called their public image; for example, perhaps, some politicians when an election is impending. "What are people saying about me?" may sometimes be asked of their best friends by adolescents, hoping for a comforting answer. But the question put by Jesus is clearly not the question of one who is anxious about his public image in this way. Rather it seems to have been intended to prompt his disciples to give deeper thought to the significance of his person and his mission than they had yet done; and it is followed quickly by the further and more searching question : "But who do you say that I am?" 2 New Testament scholars frequently tell us that the Gospels, being the writings of the early Church, are more reliable evidence for what Christians at the end of the first century thought about Jesus than for what Jesus actually did and said. This assertion will claim our attention later,3 but we may say at once that even if we grant its substantial truth, it by no means follows that the account of Jesus in the Gospels is entirely untrustworthy. In any case, the fact that the question is recorded by the authors of the first three Gospels not many decades after Jesus' life-time, at least suggests both that there was a strong tradition that the incident occurred, and that these authors believed the question to be significant. 1

The question provides a suitable starting point for a book which seeks to inquire into the belief of the Christian Church about Jesus of Nazareth. "Who do men say that I am?" he asked. Who do people to-day say that Jesus was? Three distinct answers will be given by different groups of people. Some will give the same kind of answer that they would give to the question "Who was Julius Caesar?". He was an historical character of the past. They come across his name from time to time, perhaps rather more frequently than that of Julius Caesar. They are aware that some kind of cult has arisen in connection with Jesus in which a great many people participate, and that those who do so "go to church"; but they have little knowledge of the significance of this. If the name "Jesus" is ever on their lips, it is probably as an oath, and almost certainly they never reflect why this should be so.4 For them Jesus was a man who was possibly important in his own day; but that day is not our day. Jesus is just part of past history. If one feels so inclined one can read about him. No doubt one will then find that the account is embroidered with tales of wonders and extravagant claims such as are to be found in the records of many an ancient personage. There was not much historical sense in those days. Doubtless if the truth could now be sifted out, it would appear that Jesus was an admirable enough man. But it is all past history, and they are content to leave him there along with Julius Caesar and many another, whose significance for this scientific and technological twentieth century must really be said to be minimal. Such would be the answer to the question by a very large number of people of the western world in what is often referred to as this post-Christian age. The attitude is primarily one of indifference. Modern western man is preoccupied with things rather than with persons. Modern technology has presented him with any number of "things" to engage his attention; and being so engaged he finds it difficult to believe that Jesus, or any other person in the historic past, can have any importance for him. If he is at all aware of the Christian belief that Jesus has a special relationship with God, he is inclined to assert 2

that science has now shown God to be an invention of the superstitious mind of the past. Therefore any claim that Jesus is divine is incomprehensible. Jesus was a figure of past history, taken to be important, perhaps rightly or perhaps mistakenly, in bygone ages, but having little, if any, relevance or interest for those who live in an age of science.s But there are others who are anxious to say more than this. Jesus, they would say, is not only a figure of past history, but a most significant figure of history. He was in the line of the world's great pioneers in the realm of moral (and, some would add, spiritual) values. He discerned man's needs and man's capabilities more clearly perhaps than any previous teacher. He had psychological insight in advance of his time; and this is sometimes offered as the explanation of some of the healings attributed to him. His greatest qualities were his recognition of men and women as persons always to be treated as ends in themselves and never as instruments, and his consequent exalting of the principle of love, not merely as a kindly sentiment, but as the active expression of a will to serve the ultimate good of others. They admire the way in which he exemplified this principle in his own actions, and his readiness to suffer for it. If it can be said of any that they are inspired by a divine spirit (and some would not admit this), they would want to make the claim that Jesus was pre-eminently so inspired. They are prepared to say that in the line of the great ethical teachers of history, Moses, Confucius, Gautama, Socrates, the place of Jesus is of great importance. They will probably not rule out the possibility that other teachers may appear who will contribute even more to the world's moral resources, and they may also want to suggest that the universal validity of his teaching was limited because it was conditioned by current Jewish thought forms and beliefs. Nevertheless they hold him in honour, and even reverence, as a very great and good teacher. Something like this represents the view held about Jesus by several different groups of people. They are usually men and women who are greatly concerned for social and moral 3

righteousness. They are attracted to Jesus because they see in his teaching the seed of many progressive social and moral developments which have occurred, though often belatedly, in western history, and because they are convinced that a more radical acceptance of his ethical teaching would lead to vastly improved conditions of life at every level, personal, national, and international. Amongst them are some agnostics who, although they have reservations concerning Jesus' teaching about God, are still convinced of the value of his ethical teaching. Probably few atheists are to be found among them. The convinced atheist usually holds that belief in God is not only a stupid superstition, but a positively harmful influence which has inculcated subservience and long delayed mankind's "coming of age" in self-dependence. The atheist, therefore, is often concerned to show that Jesus' faith in God vitiated his ethical teaching, and tends to search the Gospels for examples to support this contention.6 A similar estimate of Jesus is also held by many who are theists, and who would claim to be Christians. They would accept substantially his teaching about God, and indeed would see in his faith in God the fount and inspiration of his ethical teaching. They would want to point out that for Jesus the doctrine of the fatherhood of God is the basis of his teaching about the brotherhood of man, and that his insistence on the principle of love in human relations is rooted in his conviction that love is the nature of God. But they are not convinced that Jesus had any relationship with God which is not in principle possible for other men, and cannot, therefore, accept any doctrine of incarnation. A third answer to the question is provided by those who would agree with much that is said by the second group, but want to say more. They are those who accept the traditional affirmations of the Christian Church, finding them in accord with an inner conviction which enables them to find meaning and purpose in their lives. This answer is that Jesus is the eternal Son of the eternal Father who by the will of the Father, and in complete unanimity with that will, and through the 4

power of God's Spirit became incarnate : in the words of the Apostles' Creed,? he "was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary". He became man, experiencing to the full the passions and pains of men; yet, in the words of the Nicene Creed,8 he was "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father"; that is, he was not one who appeared on earth simply as a fine flowering of the evolutionary process, but one who, possessing complete unity of nature, will, and creative power with the very source of the evolutionary process and all things else, entered into the melee of historical existence through a human life. In the fifth century, the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) declared that in the one person of Jesus Christ both divine nature and human nature were to be acknowledged, not mixed together to produce, as it might be, a being like one of the demi-gods of Greek mythology, but each whole and entire in a perfect unity, distinct but not separate; so that in Jesus humanity was offering itself freely and wholly to deity, and deity was operating unhindered within humanity. Thus the Chalcedonian Fathers elaborated the words "God was in Christ" 9 which expressed St Paul's conviction. Those who thus answer the question of Jesus see in his life and teaching deeper significance than our second group. Indeed they see in Jesus the utmost significance for mankind, for they hold that he is a revealing of the nature of him who is the creator and of his purpose for man, that in his human life he reveals the heights which a truly human life may reach, and that in him is a dynamic source for the redemption from frustration of all human life. With St Paul they would want to complete the sentence quoted above : "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself". This is the answer of those who are within the orthodox Christian tradition. In stating these three answers we have, of course, been guilty of over-simplification. In none of the groups which we have somewhat arbitrarily delineated would there be complete unanimity. In the first group we may find some whose attitude 5

is frankly "I couldn't care less", while others may wistfully entertain for a moment a wish that they could really believe what they once heard in Sunday school before dismissing Jesus as part of dead and gone history. In the second group there are those who will say no more than that Jesus was a man of great insight and a fine ethical teacher, while others will admit that he possessed some degree of divine inspiration. In our third group are, of course, many who believe in Jesus as God incarnate with sincere conviction, but without any great ability to give a reasoned account of their faith; and there are theologians who differ much among themselves, for example, on the mode in which the Incarnation was effected, and upon the relationship of the divine and the human in Jesus. But these are the main answers given to-day to the question : "Who do men say that I am ?" Jesus was a figure in ancient history, of interest possibly to historians, but of no relevance for the stern realities of life to-day; Jesus was a figure in ancient history, but a most important and influential one, who if his insights were shared and his ethical teaching adopted could have great relevance for the modern world; Jesus was the incarnate expression of the love of God, the source of all things. In him, as the Fourth Gospel puts it, the Word of God became flesh (John 1. 14), and he is, therefore, in the words attributed to the Apostle Thomas in the same Gospel (20. 28), "My Lord and my God".

6

2 EARLIER ANSWERS The three answers which would be given to-day to Jesus' question, "Who do men say that I am?" imply very different attitudes to Jesus. This is not something new. The same three attitudes can be paralleled throughout the Christian centuries, and even in Jesus' lifetime. It would be possible to make a very long list of Christian writers of the nineteenth century who were concerned to state and defend the traditional Christian teaching about Jesus. The philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-73) represents those who gave the second answer. An agnostic, frankly incredulous of the miraculous element in the New Testament, and critical of much of its teaching, he nevertheless writes in Theism: About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight, which if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity. Other examples have been collected in an interesting book edited by H. Osborne with the title Whom do men say that I 7 2

am?.1 Here are included the answers of a number of theologians, Catholic and Protestant, of Jews and Muslims, of scientists, philosophers, and men of literature. Some of the last three groups express extremely critical views of Jesus, others a great admiration without subscribing to any doctrine of his divinity. It is much harder to provide documentation even in the nineteenth century for the first answer to our question : that Jesus is simply a figure of past history, of no particular contemporary significance. For clearly anybody who took the trouble to write about him thought that he was more than this. But had we been able to put our question to artisans hurrying home from a Lancashire or Yorkshire mill in the year 1850 this is the answer we should have received from many of them. If we travel back to the second century, we find the same. To most inhabitants of the Graeco-Roman world in which the Christian Church struggled for existence, Jesus of Nazareth, if they knew of him at all, was merely an historical figure who had a disturbing influence on society. The historian Tacitus (c.60 to c.120) speaks of "Christus" as the source of the "pernicious superstition" which caused trouble during Nero's reign. Tacitus alleges that Nero, suspected of causing a destructive fire which occurred in Rome in the summer of A.D. 64, ordered severe punishment of Christians to divert attention from himself. "Christus", he writes, "from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the Procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius" (Annals XV. 44). The Roman biographer Suetonius (c.75-c.160) in his life of the Emperor Claudius (XXV. 4) mentions "Chrestus" (sic) as the instigator of disturbances leading to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in A.D. 52. Pliny the Younger (62c.113), Roman Governor of Bithynia, writing to the Emperor Trajan seeking advice about dealing with Christians who refused to offer incense before the Emperor's statue, mentions that they are "accustomed to meet before daybreak and to recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ, as to a god".2 These writers clearly regard Christ as an historical figure, perhaps 8

of somewhat more than ordinary importance, but only because he was the founder of a movement which was proving troublesome to the authorities. Early in the second century also there existed in Palestine Jewish groups known as Ebionites who seem to have been the successors of the Jewish Christians mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as teaching that Christians should observe the Jewish law in its totality.3 The Ebionites regarded Jesus as a man born of Joseph and Mary, but believed him to have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit from the time of his baptism. Irenaeus, who became Bishop of Lyons in A.D. 177, says that their beliefs were similar to those of Cerinthus 4 who "represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while nevertheless he was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men. Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler".5 The meaning of this is not entirely clear, but it indicates a belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, who for two or three years was in some way specially endowed by God, and enabled to do the things recorded in the Gospels. There were others outside the Jewish world who had a similar opinion of Jesus. Theodotus, the cobbler, taught in Rome towards the end of the second century that Christ was a mere man who was inspired by the Holy Spirit. The technical theological term for this type of belief about the person of Jesus is Psilanthropism, which may be rendered "the mere man theory" (Greek, psilos anthr5pos, mere man).6 But the Christian Church as a whole, pondering on the implication of the tradition it had received, its past history, and upon the experience of contemporary Christians found that it had to make stronger affirmations than this. The Christian writings of the second century which have been collected together under the heading of "The Apostolic Fathers" provide evidence here. One or two examples must suffice. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in Syria, wrote several letters to Churches in the course of a journey under guard to 9

Rome where he suffered as a martyr about A.D. 115. In several he emphasizes the complete reality of the human nature of Jesus. This was in opposition to a doctrine known as Docetism,7 held by some Gnostics,8 the doctrine that Christ was a divine being who appeared in a humanity which was unreal and phantasmal (a strong contrast to the Psilanthropism of the Ebionites). Ignatius insists strongly on the reality of Jesus' manhood : he was "truly born, and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died", But he insists equally strongly upon his divinity : "There is one only physician, of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true life in death, son of Mary and son of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord." 10 He speaks of Jesus' sufferings as "the passion of my God"." It is a doctrine of incarnation, that the Son of God, who pre-existed, united human nature to himself in the historical Jesus. From the West also, a similar insistence on both the divinity and humanity of Jesus can be abundantly documented. Clement of Rome, writing to the Church in Corinth about A.D. 96, underlines the lesson of humility by reference to the incarnation : "The sceptre of the majesty of God, even our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the pomp of arrogance or of pride, though He might have done so, but in lowliness of mind." 12 Half a century later Justin Martyr wrote, "The truth is that Jesus Christ alone has been begotten as the unique Son of God, being already his Word, his First-Begotten, and his Power. By the will of God he became man, and gave us this teaching for the conversion and restoration of mankind." 13 A little later, many passages in the writings of Irenaeus who has already been mentioned witness to the same doctrine : "There is one God, who by his Word and Wisdom made and ordered all things . . . His Word is our Lord Jesus Christ who in these last times became man among men." 14 In Jesus Christ the pre-existing Word of God who had performed the Father's will in the creation of all things had again performed the Father's will in becoming man. 10

If we press our inquiry back into his own lifetime we shall find the same three attitudes to Jesus. The Gospels received their final casting several decades after Jesus' death, being the products of the early Christian community, written to meet the community's needs in worship, teaching standards, and ethical guidance. The memories of individuals and groups were drawn on, and previously existing documents incorporated, lists of sayings of Jesus, collections of parables, accounts of healings and incidents, such as were used by the earliest Christian preachers and teachers. The literary process which resulted in the Gospels (of which the first to be written was St Mark, probably about A.D. 68 to 70) was therefore lengthy. It included the compilation, at an early stage, of the abovementioned lists and collections as aids for evangelists, the search for oral traditions, inquiry as to their recollections of individuals who had known the original disciples and even Jesus himself, the making of selections amongst all this material, and the final editing. But throughout the process it was the Church which was at work : "The New Testament", writes Professor F. C. Grant, "is the church's book. Its contents were produced for the church's edification, enlargement, defence, encouragement or consolation." 15 And integral to the New Testament are "the Synoptic Gospels, incorporating earlier documents or blocks of oral tradition and resting upon a steadily growing body of evangelistic preaching (kerugma) and of church teaching didache which reached back to the earliest days of the church's history and to the events and the Person recorded". 16 That the Gospels came out of the life and needs of the Church commands very general assent to-day. Grant reminds us that it is not an entirely new suggestion. But what is new, or comparatively so, is the recognition that we must be prepared to find in the Gospels a tendency to heighten and even to exaggerate in the interest of honouring the memory of Jesus, or of giving support to some later point of Church doctrine or practice. To keep in mind this possibility (which may be somewhat shocking to those 11

who meet it for the first time), will at all events protect us from using the evidence of the Gospels in too facile a way. Yet, bearing in mind this warning, it is indicative of the honesty of the records, that they make clear that the great majority of people were untouched by Christ's teaching and ministry, and that even those who flocked around him were attracted mainly by his reputation as a wonder-worker. There is no attempt to give the impression that Jesus swept all before him, or that all acknowledged his divinity. The scribes rejected his teaching, and attributed his power to demonic possession (Mark 3. 22). Early in his ministry "his friends" (a term which may include his relatives) attempted to restrain him, believing him mad (Mark 3. 21). The authorities of a Samaritan village refused to admit him (Luke 9. 53). His actions were often freely criticized; for example, his consorting with tax collectors and others whom the Pharisees despised (Luke 15. 2). In Jerusalem the leading Jews bluntly challenged his authority (Mark 11. 28), and, seeing in him only an impostor who threatened their security, prevailed on the Roman authorities to treat him as a menace to the imperial rule. Here, then, are many who met Jesus face to face who, if asked what they thought of him, although they might have described him variously as an oddity, a trouble-maker, an impostor, would have said he was a man just like many another oddity, trouble-maker, impostor known to history, and of no more significance than this. All these stand out in the story. But behind them were thousands who had seen and listened to Jesus on whom he made even less impression. Although in the early stages of his ministry Jesus was continually pressed by enthusiastic crowds," at the end only the very small group he called his disciples remained, and they were full of puzzlement and doubt. Just before the end, there was a spontaneous outbreak of enthusiasm on the part of the crowds going up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast (Mark 11. 8-10), but it quickly evaporated. No doubt these people had many important things to do in Jerusalem that week, religious observances to be performed, relatives to be visited, friends 12

to be hunted up, business to be transacted, pleasures to be indulged. Whatever they thought of Jesus, clearly no convictions were engendered strong enough to distract them from their own preoccupations.18 Nevertheless, the Gospels provide evidence that some would have given the second answer to our question. Many "were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority" (Mark 1. 22). Some of Jesus' healings evoked a wonder which was not merely an ignorant gaping at the extraordinary : "They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We never saw anything like this' !" (Mark 2. 12). There were individuals whose lives had been changed by their meeting with him, Mary Magdalene (Luke 8. 2), Zacchaeus (Luke 19. 1), and the Roman centurion, whose servant Jesus healed, and of whom he said, "Not even in Israel have I found such faith" (Matt. 8. 5-13; cf. Luke 7. 1-10). There was also the other centurion who, having witnessed the dying of Jesus, is reported to have said, "Truly this man was a son of God !" (Mark 15. 39; Matt. 27. 54. Luke 23. 47 has "Certainly this man was innocent !"). Even if St Mark's and St Matthew's version be preferred, the centurion is not ascribing divinity to Jesus in the full Christian sense. The phrase is not "the Son of God". But he is expressing great admiration. The greatest heroes and leaders of Rome were accounted sons of God; Jesus is no less than they. But is there evidence in the Gospels that there were any in Jesus' lifetime whose answer to the question regarding his person was substantially that of later Christian orthodoxy, that Jesus was the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, both divine and human in his one person ? Several passages spring to the mind. One is the incident at Caesarea Philippi and the answer given by the Apostle Peter to Jesus' further question, "But who do you say that I am ?" Each of the three Synoptic Gospels gives an account of this incident. According to Mark 8. 29, St Peter's reply is, "You are the Christ"; according to Luke 9. 20, "The Christ of God"; and according to Matt. 16. 16, "You are the Christ, the Son of 13

the living God". Although there is some variation between manuscripts in these verses, these are the generally accepted versions of Peter's reply. Whatever dislike we may have for the use of critical methods on the New Testament, we cannot here really avoid it. Peter cannot have given all three replies. Which did he give, or which of the three most closely represents what he said? It is likely that St Mark here is closest to Peter's original answer. This is not because Mark's is the earliest Gospel, for a later Gospel may sometimes preserve a truer tradition. But in this case it is more probable that Matthew added the words "the Son of the living God", than that Mark omitted them if he had received the tradition that they were spoken. But the point may not be of great importance. Luke's form of the reply, "The Christ of God", adds nothing to the meaning, since by definition the expected Christ was to be an emissary of God; and Professor Alan Richardson suggests that Matthew's addition, "the Son of the living God", may have been a current messianic title," in which case it too adds nothing to the meaning. All three versions are simply stating that Peter expressed the conviction that Jesus was the Christ. Some radical critics have doubted whether the Caesarea Philippi incident is historical, considering it to be a pious legend, a carrying back into Jesus' lifetime of the faith of the Church after belief in his resurrection was established." But such a conclusion is by no means self-evident. There is nothing intrinsically impossible in the story, and some elements in it are difficult to explain except on the hypothesis of its truth. Professor B. H. Branscomb, commenting on Jesus' rebuke of Peter, "Get behind me, you Satan", writes, "This is surely not an imagined scene. The rebuke you Satan to the chief of the apostles must go back to some historical basis" 2i It is neither unlikely that Jesus asked the questions recorded in order to elicit from the disciples the extent of their understanding, nor that Peter should have given the reply recorded in Mark. Expectation of the coming of the Christ was lively at this period. It is difficult to think that the group of men known as the disciples could have given up their livelihood to 14

be with Jesus for so many months without the thought occurring to them that he might be the expected Christ. But what did Peter mean by his declaration, "Thou art the Christ"? What estimate of Jesus' person is implied? The word "Christ" is from the Greek Christos, which means "anointed one", and is the equivalent of the Hebrew mashiach, usually anglicized as Messiah. Christ, then, and Messiah mean the same. The term refers to a long-standing expectation of the Jews. The basic hope was that God would raise up a leader to deliver his people from their oppressors, and to reign over them. The establishing of his rule would mark "the last times"; the Messianic age would be the end of this age (the present world order) and bring to fulfilment God's purpose for his people. The belief that God would "visit and redeem his people" (Luke 1. 68) expressed itself in different forms in Jewish literature; but the most common idea was of a king of the type of David, a "son of David". There is a strong expression of this hope in Psalm 17 of the extra-canonical Psalms of Solomon which are to be dated about 50 B.c. "Behold, 0 Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son of David . . . that he may reign over Israel Thy servant . . . he shall destroy the godless nation with the word of his mouth . . . he shall reprove sinners for the thoughts of their heart. And he shall gather together a holy people, whom he shall lead in righteousness . . . and he shall have the heathen nations to serve him under his yoke".22 The New Testament itself bears witness to the popularity of such a conception. The question of Jesus in Mark 12. 35, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?" is a reference to it. The quotation from the Psalms of Solomon shows that the hope of a Messiah was frequently bound up with the nationalistic aspirations of the Jews which were naturally strong in periods when they were under foreign domination. Cullmann says that "in the New Testament period the prevailing Messiah type was . . . that which we roughly designate the 'political Messiah' ". It is not easy to say in what sense the Apostle Peter used the 15

word, assuming as we have done that the Caesarea Philippi incident is substantially historical. There is evidence that others closely associated with Jesus were thinking of him in terms of political Messiahship. The request of the sons of Zebedee (or of their mother, according to Matthew) for places of honour in Jesus' "glory" witnesses to this (Mark 10. 35ff), and Acts 1. 6 hints that even at a later stage a materialistic and nationalistic conception of Messiahship lingered in the Apostles' minds. It would be tempting to assume that Peter had a deeper insight, but those elements in the tradition about him which indicate his impetuous character suggest caution. But at the very least it must be said that the recognition of Jesus as the Christ by Peter and others means that they perceived in him one who had a mission of salvation, who was raised up by God and stood therefore in a special relation to him, who spoke and acted in the name of God, and to whom was due loyalty and reverence. The Gospel of John also apparently provides several instances of the recognition of Jesus during his lifetime as the divine Son of God : at the outset of his ministry John the Baptist says of Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world !" (1. 29), and "This is the Son of God" (1. 34). Nathanael declares, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God ! You are the King of Israel !" (1. 49). Martha says, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God" (11. 27). Moreover, throughout this Gospel the miracles are regarded as signs pointing to Jesus' divinity (e.g. 2. 11; 4. 54; 6. 14), and in his discourses Jesus is represented as speaking openly of himself as the Son of God who has an essential relationship with the Father : "I and the Father are one" (10. 30); "Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee" (17. 21). This is in great contrast with the few passages where the Synoptic Gospels record the recognition of Jesus as the Christ, and with what they imply of his own reticence about such a title. Again a critical judgement is forced upon us. St Mark's Gospel and St John's Gospel cannot both be right. Which of them, then, gives the more accurate account of this matter? It seems clear that we must accept the conclusion on which the majority of 16

modern scholars are agreed. As the introduction to any modern commentary on the Fourth Gospel will show, there is no unanimity among them' about its authorship, date, place of origin, and purpose. But they have little doubt that the Fourth Gospel is a theological rather than an historical work. This is not to say that the author was indifferent to historical fact : "It is of fundamental importance to John", writes Dr C. K. Barratt, "that Jesus did in fact live and die and rise from the dead; but he uses the material in his Gospel so that men may recognize their relation to God in Jesus, rather than to convey interesting information about him" 23 What he has done is to present Jesus as the eternal Son or Word of God who was made man for man's illumination and salvation, and he writes out of the conviction engendered by meditation and the experience of his life in his Christian community. What he has not done, and did not intend, is to "compile a narrative" or to "write an orderly account" (Luke 1. 1-4) of the life of Jesus and the steps by which the Church's faith in him was consolidated. In effect he is declaring, "This is the inner significance of what you have read in St Mark's Gospel : Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father, the divine Word who shares fully in the creative and redeeming work, and in the glory of God, who became incarnate to redeem mankind." Thus he presents Jesus from the very beginning of his account. He has given us one of the great religious books of all time. If we ask what Jesus Christ was in the estimation of a devout and penetrating Christian mind at the end of the first, or beginning of the second century, the Fourth Gospel answers us. But since we are asking about the impression made by Jesus in his lifetime, it is in the Synoptic Gospels, and especially in St Mark, that we must look for the answer, remembering, as we have tried to do, that the Synoptic Evangelists also write from the standpoint of their belief in Jesus' resurrection and their experience of life in the Spirit. But that his disciples, those who companied with him, and shared his work and the joys, privations, and dangers it entailed, came to believe him to be the Christ, cannot with any plausibility be denied. "The 17

story of Caesarea Philippi", writes Professor B. H. Branscomb, "seems to go back to a definite historical recollection in which the place and chief spokesman are recalled. It is confirmed by the request of the sons of Zebedee for the places on Jesus' right and left hand in his glory—a story which would hardly have been invented. The strongest evidence of this belief, however, is the virtual impossibility of assuming that the belief in Jesus' resurrection, His Messiahship and His apocalyptic office would have arisen after his execution had there been no such belief earlier." 24 The belief of the Apostles that Jesus was the Christ, tangled as it was with current political hopes, and needing the correction which, as we shall try to show, Jesus patiently sought to supply, was the seed from which grew the conviction expressed with such artistry in the Fourth Gospel, and in more technical theological language by the Fathers of the fourth and fifth century councils.

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3 JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF The question of Jesus' own attitude to the suggestion that he was "The Christ" now arises. In theological discussion this is known as the question of the Messianic Consciousness. Was he conscious of being the Messiah, and if so in what terms did he conceive of his Messiahship? What was Jesus' estimate of his own person, authority, and mission? In asking this we are asking a difficult historical question. The point may be illustrated by another question which is not dissimilar. The military successes of Julius Caesar brought him great popularity, and he was hailed as a god by the people. Caesar's successor, Octavian, allowed himself to be addressed as "dens" and "divus" during his principate as the Emperor Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14). Did they believe themselves to be gods? Few historians of Roman antiquity would be prepared to give unhesitating answers to this question. To the words quoted at the end of the last chapter Branscomb adds, "But this evidence of the disciples' belief during Jesus' lifetime indicates that Jesus Himself held some such conviction" 1 and a little later, "Without the assumption that Jesus accepted His disciples' expression of faith in Himself as `the Anointed One', the story of His last days and of the rise of the Christian movement becomes a series of unrelated and almost incomprehensible facts"? Branscomb is aware that the Gospels were written from the standpoint of the later beliefs of the Church, and admits that "proof and absolute certainty are out of the question", but he holds, and many scholars agree, that the continued existence as a group of the apostles after 19

Jesus' death, their preaching, their liturgy, their growth in numbers, their readiness to face danger, and the crystallizing of their beliefs about Jesus' person and work, are simply an historical puzzle, a social and psychological improbability, unless Jesus had given some indication of his own belief in his divine mission. Had he repudiated any suggestion that he had such a mission, had he remained uncommunicative about what he was doing and why he was doing it, the motive of the apostles as they undertook the things which are recorded of them is very hard to guess. But there is a school of New Testament theologians who disagree entirely with such a view. The best known of them is Rudolf Bultmann, formerly Professor of New Testament in the University of Marburg. In order to present their position, I propose to summarize, as objectively as possible, the section which he devotes to "The Question of the Messianic Consciousness of Jesus" in his Theology of the New Testament? (It will be noted that Bultmann discusses the possibility of Jesus' application to himself of other titles than "The Christ"; for example, "Son of Man", to which we shall give detailed attention in chapter 4). Bultmann begins by stating that the common opinion is that the belief of the earliest Church that Jesus was the Messiah "rests upon the self-consciousness of Jesus; i.e., that he actually did consider himself to be the Messiah, or the Son of Man". This agrees with the view of the writers of the Gospels, but there is the question "whether they themselves have not superimposed upon the traditional material their own belief in the Messiahship of Jesus". At this point Bultmann says that even if it could be proved that Jesus was conscious of being the Messiah this would not prove that he was the Messiah. Moreover, the acknowledgement of Jesus as Messiah, or Son of Man, or Lord "is a pure act of faith independent of the answer to the historical question whether or not Jesus considered himself the Messiah". The argument that the Church's belief in Jesus as the Christ is only comprehensible if he himself was conscious of it and 20

represented himself as such to his disciples is not valid. "It is just as possible that belief in the Messiahship of Jesus arose with and out of belief in his resurrection." Those parts of the Gospel which suggest Jesus' consciousness of Messiahship are Easter stories "projected backward into Jesus' life time" (the Caesarea Philippi incident, and the Transfiguration) or heavily overlaid by legend (the account of the baptism, the temptation story, the entry into Jerusalem, and "to a considerable degree" the Passion-narrative). The synoptic tradition itself makes clear that Jesus' life and work was not messianic as the messianic function was traditionally understood. Jesus appeared not as a king, or heavenly judge, but a prophet, rabbi, and exorcist. Paul did not understand his work as messianic. Phil. 2. 6-11 indicates that he "conceives Jesus' life as that of a mere man without messianic glory". Moreover, Acts 2. 36 "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified", and Rom. 1. 4 "designated Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead", show that the early Church dated Jesus' Messiahship from the Resurrection. But what of the suggestion that Jesus reinterpreted and spiritualized the current concept of the Messiah? Bultmann finds no trace of any criticism of the traditional concept. The nearest approach is Mark 12. 35-7 where Jesus appears to criticize the idea of the Christ as the Son of David, but this offers no help in interpreting Jesus' own prophetic and teaching activity as messianic. Again it has been suggested "that Jesus was conscious of being the one destined to be the future Messiah", that he did not think of himself as the Christ in his ministry in Galilee and Judea, but believed he would return as the triumphant and glorious Messiah. To support this the sayings about the coming Son of Man are quoted, Mark 8. 38 (=Luke 12. 80, Matt. 24. 27, 37, 44 (=Luke 11. 30). Bultmann does not believe this to be possible. He notes that in these verses Jesus speaks of the Son of Man in the third person. The evangelists no doubt identified this Son of Man with Jesus, but Jesus himself did not. The 21

Gospels contain no saying in which Jesus says that he himself will return. If he had believed this, he must have conceived of himself as to be removed from the earth and raised to heaven so that he could reappear to perform the messianic work of bringing in the Reign of God. How would he have thought of this removal from the earth; as a miraculous translation, a natural death or a violent death? Among his recorded words there are no references to any miraculous translation, or to any expectation of natural death. There are recorded sayings about a violent death (Mark 8. 31; 9. 31; 10. 33f), but these are all vaticinia ex eventu—written into the accounts as "prophecies" in the light of later knowledge of what actually happened. Moreover, these sayings about the suffering of the Son of Man say nothing about his coming in glory. Likewise the sayings about the Son of Man coming in glory say nothing about this Son of Man having previously been on earth and having died. In other words the two sets of Son of Man sayings, those relating to his suffering, and those relating to his coming, are of separate origin. The Son of Man coming sayings occur in the material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, material commonly thought to go back to a very early source document which scholars speak of as Q; but Q has no Son of Man suffering sayings. Therefore Bultmann holds that the Son of Man coming sayings are early, even possibly words spoken by Jesus, although not of himself but of some supernatural person other than himself. The Son of Man sayings concerning suffering and death are later products of the Church which, knowing that Jesus had in fact been crucified, carried "the idea of the suffering Son of Man back into Jesus' own outlook". Bultmann does not believe that Jesus could have predicted his passion and death. Nor does Bultmann believe that Jesus thought of himself in connection with the Servant of God whose vicarious sufferings are described in Isa. 53. The idea that Jesus is the Suffering Servant, too, is a later conception of the early Church. It is clearly referred to in Acts 8. 32f, in 1 Pet. 2. 22-5, and in Heb. 9. 28, but the few references to it in the Synoptic Gospels (e.g. 22

Luke 22. 37) are a reading back into Jesus' own mind of a later belief. When the early Church had taken root in Hellenistic circles and Jesus had become the centre of a cultus as Son of God, it seemed evident that Jesus "should have legitimated himself as such even in his earthly activity". The Gospel account of his ministry was therefore written in order to suggest this. Mark does so by manipulating the traditional material at his disposal in such a way as to let it appear that Jesus knew he was the Christ, but desired his Messiahship to remain secret until after the Resurrection. The demons who recognize him as the Christ are commanded to silence, and after St Peter's confession and the Transfiguration secrecy is also enjoined. The fact, says Bultmann, that the verses which speak about the "Messianic Secret" are editorial (i.e. explanatory comments, and connecting sentences) and "not in the body of the traditional units" tells against accepting the "Messianic Secret" theme as part of the original tradition, and as historical fact. Bultmann concludes the section by reiterating the impossibility of supposing that Jesus spiritualized the conception of the Messiah's function in terms of his own activity as prophet, teacher, and servant, or of attributing to Jesus the belief that he was the future Son of Man. Bultmann's position then, may be summarized as follows : (a) The belief that Jesus was the Christ, or Son of Man, arose after his lifetime. (b) It was then assumed that he must have been conscious of being the Christ, and the accounts of his life were accordingly written to give this impression. (c) To suppose that he did in fact believe himself to be the Christ in respect of his earthly work is impossible, because the manner of his life was quite unlike what was commonly expected of the Christ. (d) Nor did Jesus reinterpret the current expectations about the Christ in the direction of a suffering and dying Messiah. The suggestions of this in the Gospels 23 3

have been put there in the light of the knowledge that Jesus did actually suffer and die. (e) Nor did Jesus believe that he would come again in the future as the Christ (or Son of Man), for this would mean that he must have foreseen his removal from the earth in such a way as to be able to return in glory. His teaching contains no such hints, for Bultmann does not regard the predictions of death as genuine sayings of Jesus, but as the work of the early Church. (I) The Gospel sayings about a Son of Man who is to come in glory may have been words of Jesus, but if so, he was speaking of some other person. (g) St Mark's suggestion that Jesus (and certain others like the demons) knew he was the Christ, but that this was to be kept secret, is also written into the record by the Evangelist. This position is shared with Bultmann by a number of theologians, but there are also many who would take issue with it. I proceed now to summarize some of their objections, and begin with two points of detail. 1. Bultmann argues that Paul, although in view of the Resurrection he believed Jesus to be the Christ, did not understand his life and work as messianic. In support of this he cites Phil. 2. 6-11 which "conceives Jesus' life as that of a mere man, without messianic glory". But this life, culminating in the obedience to death led to messianic exaltation. Is it possible then that Paul could have thought of Jesus' life as quite unrelated to his Messiahship ? Surely Bultmann's words here are inappropriate. Moreover, Bultmann's argument is questionbegging. He assumes that a sense of obedience to die (which is certainly present in the passage) does not belong to any idea of a Messiah which Jesus could have entertained. Therefore the passage has no messianic reference; and therefore Paul did not believe Jesus in his lifetime to be the Messiah. But the point assumed is the very thing which needs proof—that conscious24

ness of a duty to die was not thought of by Paul—or by Jesus—as messianic. We have here an example of the circular argument which many scholars detect at other points in Bultmann's thought. 2. Bultmann asserts that the Markan passages about the "Messianic Secret" have their "literary location in the editorial sentences of the evangelist, not in the body of the traditional units". These are passages like "And he charged them to tell no one about him", in 8. 30 (after Peter's confession); "As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of man should have risen from the dead", in 9. 9 (after the Transfiguration). Bultmann has decided that these passages, and seven or eight other injunctions to silence are editorial, and do not go back to any earlier tradition. Some undoubtedly are (e.g. 1. 34), but others appear to be well embedded in the stories. It is by no means the almost self-evident fact which Bultmann suggests it is, that the command to silence cannot possibly be a part of the original story. There are scholars who disagree with Bultmann on this point. Cullmann, for example, can write : "Jesus himself, not the early church is the source of the command not to proclaim him the Messiah . . . Bultmann is not right in saying that the restraint of Jesus appears only in `editorial sentences'." 4 This again may appear to be a point of detail, but again it is an example of the special pleading in which many feel that the school of Bultmann indulge. 3. Bultmann declares that the Gospels provide no evidence that Jesus protested against current ideas of Messiahship : "Where, in the words of Jesus", he asks, "is there polemic against the conventional Messiah-concept? It is no more to be found than is any criticism of the Jewish conception of the Reign of God !" But reinterpretation can be conveyed not only negatively by a "polemic" against a current notion, but also by positive 25

and patient teaching which replaces old notions by new. And the Gospels do provide evidence of this. According to the early source Q, John the Baptist, from prison, sent messengers to ask Jesus, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (Matt. 11. 2ff ; Luke 7. 19ff). The words "he who is to come" are clearly synonymous for the Messiah : it is not difficult to realize what lies behind the question. The Baptist, who taught men to have high expectations of Jesus, being now in prison, experienced doubts; or possibly grew impatient. Why, he wondered, had Jesus not yet begun to do the messianic works? We do not know how John envisaged the Messiah's work, but clearly what Jesus was content to do fell short of his expectations. Jesus' reply to John was, "Go and tell John what you hear and see : the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them" (Matt. 11. 4, 5; cf. Luke 7. 22). In these words there is precisely what Bultmann implies is absent—a correction of current ideas about the Messiah. It is as though Jesus here tells the Baptist, and all who may be expecting an assertion of military or political power, that there are scriptural passages which speak of the messianic work in a very different way. He refers them to the prophecies contained in Isa. 35. 5, 6 and 61. 1 which speak of the very kind of work in which he was engaged, a ministry to the sick and poor. Here is no "polemic against the conventional Messiah-concept" but nevertheless a firm and positive correction of it. Moreover, the passages in which Jesus predicts his suffering and death are also a correction of current popular messianic ideas. The first such passage stands in Mark 9. 29 immediately after St Peter's confession of faith. It is understood that Bultmann does not accept these predictions as genuine teaching of Jesus, but regards them as an invention of the evangelists. But here again a certain ingenuousness shows itself. Bultmann cuts away the passages which are inconvenient to his presupposition (that Jesus did not reinterpret the idea of the Messiah) and then blandly declares that Jesus' teaching 26

contains no reinterpretation of the conventional Messiahconcept! 4. Underlying Bultmann's argument seems to be a conviction that it was impossible for Jesus to have foreseen his sufferings and death. Nowhere does he state his reasons for this conviction. Concerning the predictions of the Passion he merely asks the question, "Can there be any doubt that they are all vaticinia ex eventu?" and assumes that the answer is No. Bultmann speaks of "misgivings which must be raised as to the historicity of the predictions of the passion", but gives no hint about the cause of these misgivings, except the suggestion that Jesus could not possibly have counted on a violent death as a certainty. But why should it have been impossible for Jesus to predict his death? He had for some months been engaged in a course of action which had made him beloved of the common people, and which had implied criticism of the Jewish religious authorities, criticism which sometimes received strong expression in words. The religious and political situation being what it was, it must have been apparent to any man of intelligence that, if persisted in, this would end in some such way as it did. This argues no unusual prophetic gift. There were many people in the England of Henry VIII and in the Germany of Adolf Hitler who knew quite certainly that acts and words which were critical of the regime would be punished by a violent death. But if it be allowed that Jesus possessed not only intelligence, but also a rare spiritual insight, need there be any "misgivings" in assuming that he knew that the course to which he had given himself would result in suffering and death? 5. The picture of Jesus which appears out of Bultmann's treatment of the Gospels is of one who was little different from any holy man who had appeared in the course of Jewish history. It was "as a prophet and a rabbi that Jesus appeared— and, one may add, as an exorcist". He did not claim to be the Christ; nor to be in any special relationship with God; he did not foresee or foretell his passion and death. He gave no hint of any convictions about his person and his mission which were 27

essentially different from the convictions of the greater Jewish prophets. If Bultmann is right, the extraordinary thing to be explained is why Jesus, and not for instance John the Baptist, became the centre of the cultus. Why did the early Church come to believe in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, if such designations and the divine functions they imply were far from his own mind? Bultmann can say that "the earliest Church called Jesus Son of God (messianic) because that was what the resurrection made him".5 Yet he is sceptical about the Resurrection as an objective event involving an empty tomb and post-crucifixion appearances. He prefers to speak of "the rise of the Easter faith" rather than of the resurrection event, and declares that "how the Easter faith arose in individual disciples . . . is not of basic importance".6 This increases the puzzle. Jesus, who himself made no such special claims is proclaimed by the early Christians as Messiah and Son of God and Lord because of a "rise of faith". And when we ask, as we are likely to do with our modern interest in psychology, what caused this movement of their minds, we are told that it is of little importance ! 6. Another similar difficulty which Bultmann's position raises is that it requires us to hold that most, if not all, of the distinctive ideas of the Christian religion, of redemptive suffering, of eternal life, of the Church as the Congregation of God's people, as well as the whole concept of a revelatory and redemptive act of God incarnate in history, originated in the minds of members of the early Church. If this is so we shall expect to find among them some spiritual genius, some person of theological insight, capable of producing the seedthoughts which gave rise to a theology which was to mould the thought of the western world for centuries. St Paul, and the author of the Fourth Gospel were men of religious genius, but neither qualifies as the originator we are seeking. The author of the Fourth Gospel was clearly working on material which was already before him, although he brought to his work the insight of a brilliant and devout mind. St Paul 28

insists in more than one passage that he is expounding a tradition which he has himself received? We must therefore seek our originator in the years prior to the period of Paul's evangelistic work and writings. Can he have been the Apostle Peter? But, man of vigorous action though he was, there is nothing in the tradition concerning Peter which suggests that his was the mind which produced the distinctive seed-thoughts of Christian theology. The little we know of the other apostles and apostolic men gives us no reason to suppose that any of them was an outstanding theological pioneer. But why should we conduct our investigation further when the whole New Testament points to Jesus of Nazareth as "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith"? 8 7. Finally, a question-mark must be put against Bultmann's statement that "the acknowledgment of Jesus as the one in whom God's word decisively encounters man, whatever title be given him—`Messiah (Christ)', 'Son of Man', `Lord'—is a pure act of faith independent of the answer to the historical question whether or not Jesus considered himself the Messiah". If this means that the rise of faith in Jesus as the Christ is an historical fact that cannot be denied even if it be shown that Jesus did not believe himself to be the Christ, then it is so obvious as hardly to be worth saying. If it means that faith in Jesus as the Christ may be regarded as a valid, effective, and saving faith, even if it be shown that Jesus did not believe himself to be the Christ, then the statement is open to grave objection. For it would seem that such a faith is mistaken in its central affirmation—that Jesus is the Christ. How then could we be sure that it was not mistaken in much else? Or could we suppose that the faith of the early Church is a true faith, and that Jesus was wrong in not believing himself to be the Christ? But is there not serious difficulty in supposing that he who in fact was "the one in whom God's word decisively encounters man", to use Bultmann's phrase, was in error concerning his own status as God's agent? Bultmann and his school appear to acknowledge that Jesus' 29

coming was God's decisive act for man's salvation, and to hold that this faith is valid and of ultimate importance (their published sermons bear this out), but yet to be saying that this faith is independent of what Jesus believed about himself. In their radical treatment of the Gospels they are at pains to prove that Jesus did not believe of himself the things which the New Testament writers believed of him. Jesus did not think of himself as the Christ (Messiah) either in the traditional sense, or in some revised sense; he did not foresee and foretell his sufferings; consequently he did not think of his death as having any part in God's plan of redemption. But is not this the absurdity of a man who sits on a wall enjoying the view on the other side, and denies the existence of the ladder by which he climbed up? Bultmann values faith in Jesus as God's decisive word, who as the risen Christ and Lord lays his claim upon every man; and to commend this faith is the aim of his sermons. But in his role as New Testament critic he denies that this faith had any foundation in the teaching of Jesus himself. By what means, if for a moment we may continue to use this illustration, did the early Church climb to the top of the wall of their faith? What gave rise to the belief that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, who had come to reveal the Father's will, and to give his life as a ransom for men? Was it a bright theological idea occurring to some disciple soon after the crucifixion? As we have seen, the New Testament gives us not a clue as to who this might have been. Was it a movement in the minds of men who evolved a theology of salvation as an answer to what they conceived to be contemporary intellectual and emotional needs, and then used the historical figure of Jesus as a peg on which to hang their fabrication to make it acceptable to simple people? This posits an odd mixture of cleverness and dishonesty which is difficult to imagine in the circle of friends and acquaintances of Jesus. It also posits an extraordinary gullibility in those to whom the Gospel of Jesus as the Christ was first preached. This writer holds that the rise of this faith in Jesus was occasioned in the way the New Testament suggests, by what 30

Bultmann and his school sometimes call "the Christ-event". This Christ-event was the appearance of Jesus in Galilee and Judea, his ministry, his sufferings and death, and the occurrences which his followers interpreted as evidence of his resurrection from death and as authenticating his words and works. The Christ-event included, must have included, Jesus' teaching about himself and his mission. Jesus was imperious neither in his acts nor teaching; his teaching about himself no doubt was cautiously given, with the intention of drawing out the trust of his disciples. But it must have been sufficiently clear to have provided something for the resurrection occurrences to authenticate : something which, in the light of the death and resurrection, they were able to realize they had previously misunderstood; something which, as they now thought it out, pointed clearly through their misunderstandings to the conviction which the resurrection experience so strongly suggested, that God was in Christ. We hold then that Jesus did speak to the disciples of his person and his sense of divine mission. We find it too great a psychological improbability to suppose that the early Church, or any member, or group of members of it, invented a christology which attributed to Jesus a status of which he had given them no hint and had even denied. New Testament critics, as we have said, warn us that the accounts of Jesus' life and teaching in the Gospels are coloured by the convictions of the early Church. Bearing this in mind we shall nevertheless expect, as a most natural thing, to find indications of the way in which Jesus influenced the minds of his disciples in their thinking about himself. The indications are there, and are to be found especially in his use of the title Son of Man, and (pace Bultmann) in his references to his foreseen death. This will occupy us in the next chapter.

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4 JESUS THE SON OF MAN Even though the Gospel account of the teaching of Jesus is presented in the light of the early Church's post-Resurrection faith, we may expect to find, and do find indications that he gave guidance to his disciples about his own sense of relationship to God and his understanding of his mission. His recorded use of the title "Son of Man" provides an important instance. Son of Man has been taken throughout most of the Christian centuries to denote the humanity of Jesus, as Son of God points to his divinity. But recent scholarship has made clear that the title "Son of Man" could have a most exalted meaning in the first century. Theologians and historians are still investigating the use of this phrase in Jewish and non-Jewish writings. Every modem treatment of the theology of the New Testament includes a section on "Son of Man", and we do not find complete unanimity about its meaning in the Gospels as Jesus' designation of himself.' But certain points can be made with some certainty. The first supplies the reason why we must reject Bultmann's contention that Jesus did not speak of himself as Son of Man at all. "Son of Man" occurs eighty-one times in the Gospels, sixtynine of them in the Synoptic Gospels. It is found in each of the primary sources which scholars have detected in the Synoptic Gospels, in Mark, in the non-Markan material common to Matthew and Luke (Q), in the material peculiar to Matthew (M), and that peculiar to Luke (L). This points to a widely based tradition that Jesus used the phrase. It is striking that in all the occurrences in the Synoptic Gospels 32

Jesus is the speaker.2 There is no instance of its use in the Gospels as a title given to Jesus by others, or by the evangelists themselves, for example, in any editorial and explanatory passages. Outside the Gospels, apart from three references to Old Testament passages (Heb. 2. 6; Rev. 1. 13 and 14. 14)3 the phrase occurs only once, in Acts 7. 56, on the lips of the martyr Stephen. These facts strongly suggest, first that Son of Man was not a title used of Jesus by the early Church (and we know that Messiah (Christ), Son of God, and Lord were the titles usually attributed to him), and secondly that Jesus did in fact so speak of himself. If the title was not used by the early Church, what reason could the evangelists have had for so uniformly recording that Jesus thus spoke of himself, except that they knew that he did so, found it contained in the sources they were using, and faithfully recorded it. The interpretation of "Son of Man" is, then, as Professor Alan Richardson says, "of the first importance for our understanding of our Lord's teaching concerning his own person and mission".4 What, then, did Jesus mean by the phrase? There are certain signs that the evangelists themselves were not entirely clear about its meaning. "Son of Man" is a literal translation of the Greek huios tou anthr5pou. This in its turn is a literal translation of bar nasha in Aramaic, the language which Jesus and the disciples customarily spoke. Now the Aramaic bar nasha can have the ordinary and untechnical meaning of "man". It has been suggested that in some of its occurrences in the Gospels "Son of Man" (huios tou anthr5pou) has this meaning; for example, that in Mark 2. 10 Jesus is declaring that man has authority to forgive sins, and in Mark 2. 28 is stating that man is lord of the Sabbath. Professor Richardson with justice says that there are grave theological difficulties in supposing that Jesus made such statements. It is also difficult to suppose that Mark, whose Greek, if not elegant, was adequate, should have "perpetrated the howler" of rendering bar nasha (if he understood it to mean simply man) by the cumbrous ho huios tou anthropou, when a perfectly ordinary Greek word (anthropos) would have 33

been the obvious choice. It is much more likely that he understood bar nasha to have been used here with some special meaning, and translated it accordingly by the somewhat odd Greek phrase, ho huios tou anthropou (The Son of Man).5 What then is this special meaning? What clues can be found in Jewish writings? Its most frequent occurrence in the Old Testament is in Ezekiel, where it is God's mode of address to the prophet; "Son of man, stand upon your feet, and I will speak with you" (2. 1), "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel" (3. 17). This phrase in Ezekiel, which occurs some ninety times, appears to have been chosen as a solemn designation of one who is conscious at once of his humble status as a man, and of the dignity of being God's emissary and "a sign for the house of Israel" (Ezek. 12. 6). Professor Richardson holds that Jesus' use of the title was suggested by Ezekiel : "The choice of the actual term 'Son of Man' is not hard to explain. Jesus regarded himself, as Ezekiel had regarded himself (Ezek. 12. 6; 24. 24), as a sign to his generation. The sign of the Son of Man indicated to those who would 'hear' that God's purpose of salvation was about to be accomplished." 6 He points out the closeness of thought between Ezek. 34 and Jesus' teaching about shepherding and judgement (e.g. in Matt. 25. 31ff). Other scholars believe that Jesus' use of "Son of Man" was influenced by the imagery of the "one like a son of man" of Dan. 7. 13, 14 : "I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days (i.e. God) and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." The Book of Daniel is largely concerned with eschatology (from the Greek eschaton, "end"). Daniel belongs to a type of literature which arises out of the Jewish conviction that God, being the creator of the world and Lord of history, will bring 34

all things to the eschaton which he wills. This "end" will be a state of things, often described in highly imaginative, and sometimes highly nationalistic, terms, in which Israel will be vindicated, and acknowledged to be God's elect people. God will be acknowledged to be God and, his enemies being subdued, will reign supreme over all. This type of literature is called "Apocalyptic" (again from a Greek word, apokalupto, to reveal), because the writers claim to reveal hidden things of the future. The apocalyptists were usually convinced that the "end" was to come quickly. The passage quoted above from Daniel follows a description of a vision of God's judgement (7. 9, 10) and of the destruction of God's enemies (the beasts of verses 11 and 12). It describes a further vision in which God appoints a mysterious personage, described as "one like a son of man" who comes "with the clouds of heaven", to be his vice-gerent, holding authority over a kingdom. This kingdom is final, "one that shall not be destroyed". It is the eschaton, the establishing of God's final purpose, a kingdom in which God is supreme, but which he commissions "one like a son of man" to inaugurate and in which he gives him a continuing authority. Several of the Son of Man sayings in the Gospels have a possible connection with this passage : Mark 14. 61b, 62. "The high priest asked him, 'Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?' And Jesus said, 'I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven' " (cf. Matt. 26. 64, and Luke 22. 69). Mark 13. 26. "And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory (cf. Matt. 24. 30 and Luke 21. 27). Mark 8. 38. "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory 35

of his Father with the holy angels" (cf. Luke 12. 8, 9; but in the parallel Matt. 10. 32, 33, the phrase Son of man is not used). It is hard to escape the conclusion that these three sayings are derived from reflection upon Dan. 7. 13 in view of the use of the imagery of clouds, the significant word "glory", and the implication that this Son of Man is to come to inaugurate the "end". But are these genuine words of Jesus? So far we really only have the witness of Mark, for it is probable that in their parallels Matthew and Luke are using Mark as their source. Is there then any evidence from the other sources, Q and M and L, that Jesus spoke of a Son of Man who was to do the things which are spoken of in Daniel, to usher in the "end", and to bear authority in God's Kingdom? For brevity's sake we shall call these "eschatological Son of Man sayings". In Q there are several, among them "The Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect" (Luke 12. 40= Matt. 24. 44) and "As the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day" (Luke 17. 24= Matt. 24. 27).7 Matthew's special material includes four eschatological Son of Man sayings : "You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes" (10. 23); "Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (19. 28); "Then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven" (24. 30a); "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne" (25. 31). Luke's special material includes the following eschatological Son of Man sayings : "When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (18. 8b); "But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man" (21. 36). 36

Thus, each of the sources which scholars have detected in the Synoptic Gospels provides examples of Jesus' use of the title which suggest the description of "one like a son of man" in Daniel. The references to clouds, angels, throne, and glory (the same imagery as in Dan. 7), and the concept of one who is to "come" at a time of judgement and inaugurate God's Kingdom strongly suggest that the Daniel passage is behind these sayings. And the unanimity of the sources is strong evidence that Jesus did speak of the Son of Man in this sense. Passages from other Jewish apocalypses written later than Daniel have also been suggested as the source of the eschatological Son of Man sayings in the Gospels. But for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of dating some of them, certainly is impossible. A case in point is the Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch, in part of which (chapters 37-71, known as the Similitudes of Enoch) there are a number of references to a heavenly Son of Man. This Apocalypse was clearly influenced by Daniel, but whether in its turn it influenced Jesus' use of the term is a matter of dispute among scholars. What does seem certain is that there were some Jewish circles in Jesus' day (but how extensive they were cannot be determined) whose messianic hope centred upon a supernatural Son of Man rather than upon an earthly king of David's type. It may be that Jesus' preference for the term Son of Man over Messiah (Christ), which however he never rejected outright, is by way of correcting the materialistic and nationalistic associations which often surrounded the latter term. The present writer believes that in the eschatological Son of Man sayings Jesus had Dan. 7 in mind rather than Enoch. The Son of Man figure in Dan. 7 has one important characteristic which is absent in the Enoch description, but which accords with a great deal of New Testament thought about Christ, and also finds expression in Jesus' own teaching. This is the concept of the Son of Man as a corporate personality. The one who is "like unto a son of man" in Dan. 7 is not in fact thought of as an individual, nor simply as a representative personage, but as identical with the People of God. In verse 14, 37

"To him [the one like a son of man] was given dominion and glory and kingdom", and his kingdom is said to be "one that shall not be destroyed". In verse 18, "The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, for ever and ever". That is to say, the one like a son of man and the saints of the Most High are identified. The earlier part of the chapter records a vision of "four great beasts", and we are told in verse 17 that "these four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth". Most scholars identify these beasts as the four kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, and the Greek Empire of Alexander's successors, under one of whom, Antiochus Epiphanes, Israel was suffering at the time Daniel was written. As the four great beasts are four kingdoms, so the one like a son of man is Israel, the true Israel or "the saints of the Most High". This kind of language is one expression of the thoroughly Hebraic conception of corporate personality, which sees the people as a whole as the unit which is the object of God's care (although the Jews also came to see that God's care for the individual was none the less for this). It is in line with this that in Hebrew thought Adam is not only the first man, he is man. All mankind is in solidarity with him. Abraham is not only the father of the faithful. The faithful are in solidarity with him. It is an idea which is not easily grasped in our modern western society, in which, in spite of movements towards a corporate sense,8 the structure of life is still mainly such that "men appear as unrelated atoms"? As Dr Best has pointed out, in earlier days the idea was better understood, for the conception of human solidarity had not yet succumbed to the cult of the "successful" (the clever, the wealthy, the powerful) which is the outcome of the competitive spirit engendered by the "industrial revolution". As one expression of this understanding of the idea of solidarity he quotes the familiar words of John Donne : "No man is an Band, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, . . . any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Man38

kinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." The suggestion, then, is that by applying the title "Son of Man" to himself, Jesus is expressing a conviction that his own role is to be the "inclusive representative" 10 of God's people. Thus he identifies himself with mankind in its manifold needs. He is the hungry or thirsty man, the stranger and the ill-clad, the sick man and the prisoner, so that those who minister—or fail to minister—to them, are doing so or failing to do so to him (Matt. 25. 31-46). The same claim is made in Mark 9. 37 : "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me", and in Luke 10. 16 : "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me" (cf. Matt. 10. 40); it is found in the Fourth Gospel also : "He who receives any one whom I send receives me" (John 13. 20). Dr C. H. Dodd maintains that the term Son of Man in the Fourth Gospel "retains the sense of one who incorporates in himself the people of God".0 The same idea is behind St Paul's description of the baptized believer as being "in Christ" (e.g. Rom. 6); his use of the idea of Jesus as the new Adam, the representative man (1 Cor. 15. 22 and Rom. 5. 15 11); and his frequent treatment of the Christian community as a "body" in solidarity with Christ (e.g. 1 Cor. 12. 12). In more than one place (e.g. 1 Cor. 11. 23; 15. 3) Paul declares that his teaching is based upon tradition which he received from his teachers in the faith. It is not far-fetched to suppose that his teaching about the representative and corporate nature of Jesus Christ's person is also based upon a tradition which he received, even though he deals with the idea in a highly original way. This supposition is the more likely in view of the evidence that this concept originated with Jesus himself. But it is time to turn to another group of Son of Man sayings, those in which, according to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus spoke of himself as the Son of Man who is to suffer and die : "And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again" 39 4

(Mark 8. 31). Altogether St Mark's Gospel has nine Son of Man suffering sayings,12 most of which are reproduced in St Matthew and St Luke, and there are four which St Luke seems to have derived from his special source." They speak of the Son of Man, in the fulfilment of his earthly work, as encountering rejection, mockery, suffering, and death. Jesus is not only the Son of Man of Daniel's vision, the inclusive personality who represents God's whole people; but in being this, he must suffer and die. He is a Son of Man who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10. 45). This has often been understood as a reinterpretation of the Son of Man concept in terms of the suffering Servant of God who is described in Isa. 53. Dr Cullmann, for example, says that Jesus "unites the title Son of Man with the suffering of the Servant of God"." The assumption that Jesus himself had in mind the Isaianic figure of the Suffering Servant has recently been challenged." Be that as it may, the prima facie evidence of the Gospels is that Jesus thought and spoke of himself as one whose vocation is both to be the Son of Man in the exalted sense of Daniel's vision, and to represent God's whole people in suffering and dying for them. Cullmann remarks that here there is a combination of two strongly contrasted concepts, one "the highest conceivable declaration of exaltation in Judaism", and the other "the expression of the deepest humiliation"." But what of the suggestion that it was not Jesus himself who brought together these two concepts in relation to his own person and work? It is suggested that this was the work of the early Church, and that the evangelists worked it into their Gospels, making it appear as an expression of the mind of Jesus. As we saw in chapter 3, this is the position of Rudolf Bultmann. He is prepared to concede that Jesus may have uttered the Son of Man eschatological sayings, but if so, he was speaking of a personage other than himself whose coming to inaugurate the Kingdom he looked for. But he will not allow that the Son of Man suffering sayings are genuine words of 40

Jesus. Jesus, he holds, could not possibly have foreseen his suffering and death. Such sayings are imported into the Gospel account and placed on the lips of Jesus out of the early Church's knowledge that Jesus actually did suffer and die.17 In the same chapter we have given reasons for refusing to agree with Bultmann in this, and we need not go over the ground again. But it is to be remembered 18 that Bultmann's thesis assumes the existence in the early Church of a theological thinker who conceives the idea of applying the eschatological Son of Man concept to Jesus; of another who conceives the idea of attributing to Jesus predictions of his suffering; and perhaps even a third who brings the two ideas together. Surely Occam's razor is applicable here : "Entities must not be needlessly multiplied." 19 Why should we assume the existence of an otherwise unknown pioneer, or group of pioneers, in religious thought in the first century A.D. when we already know of Jesus of Nazareth? To the present writer Professor Vincent Taylor's proposed solution of the problem of the Son of Man sayings is attractive 20 He defines the problem as consisting of two main difficulties. The first is that the Son of Man title is "used both as a communal and a personal term", referring sometimes to the elect community of God's people, and sometimes to Jesus by himself. The second is the apparent sharp contrast between the Son of Man suffering sayings and the eschatological Son of Man sayings, and the fact that the Gospels suggest that Jesus spoke of himself as the suffering Son of Man before speaking of the Son of Man who will come. Dr Taylor believes that the order of these sayings in the Gospels is due to editorial arrangement. The Son of Man coming sayings were misinterpreted by the primitive Church, as referring to a second coming, and in the Gospels they were placed in order to suggest that they were the climax of Jesus' teaching about himself : thus, he teaches that as Son of Man he must first suffer and die; but he will be raised from death, and then will come again in glory. But Dr Taylor considers it more likely that the Son of Man coming sayings were spoken by Jesus 41

at an early stage in his ministry. Of these sayings only Jesus' reply to the high priest in Mark 14. 62, and Matt. 10. 23 which is closely related to the missionary journey of the Twelve, need belong to the closing stages of the ministry. Taylor reconstructs in this way. Jesus' ministry began with the announcement that "the Kingdom of God is at hand", and the Son of Man is to come. This Son of Man is the Elect People of God who are to share in the life and reign of the Kingdom, the establishment of which is shortly to bring all things to the End (eschaton) which God wills. But experience of his ministry, reflection upon it, and prayer lead Jesus to conclude that the Kingdom has already begun. The indications of this are in the details of his own work (Matt. 11. 4; 12. 28). There are occasions when he speaks of himself as the Son of Man, yet not in such a way as to exclude the idea that the Son of Man is the corporate personality of the whole people of God. If Jesus as Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (Mark 2. 10), this authority is to be given also to the Church (Matt. 16. 19; 18. 15-18). If Jesus as Son of Man is accused of gluttony and drunkenness, because he associated with "sinners" (Matt. 11. 19), so may it be of his disciples (Mark 2. 18) who likewise are sent into the world (as St Paul clearly saw, 1 Cor. 5. 9ff). If Jesus as Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Luke 9. 58), so may his disciples have to leave their homes, and venture out, travelling light, and finding a night's lodging where they may (Luke 10. 1, 4, 7, 10). Vincent Taylor suggests that as it became apparent that his preaching of the Kingdom was being rejected, Jesus realizes that his vocation is to suffer and die (Mark 8. 31; cf. Matt. 16. 21; Luke 9. 22) so that the Kingdom may be inaugurated in the power of sacrificial love. In saying "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected . . . and be killed", Jesus is voicing his understanding of his own personal vocation. But even here the corporate sense of "Son of Man" is not entirely absent, for, according to Mark, immediately afterwards Jesus teaches that any one who would come after him 42

must deny himself and take up his cross and follow him (Mark 8. 34). There were "repeated and vain attempts to impart this teaching",21 and finally his ministry ended, as he had foreseen, in Jerusalem with his rejection and death; but also with the rising again which was the divine sign declaring the truth of Jesus' own estimate of his person and work. It is not that Jesus substitutes one interpretation of "Son of Man" for another. "The process is one of unfolding and enlargement." 22 Before the high priest, already rejected and with death imminent, and so with the prediction of his suffering as Son of Man in process of fulfilment, Jesus can declare that the high priest will see the fulfilment of the vision in the Book of Daniel of a Son of Man reigning in divine power. In this declaration "all the interpretations of the Son of Man meet us”.23 Such a reconstruction, as Dr Taylor admits, is necessarily speculative. It is always possible that discoveries of ancient Jewish and Near-Eastern writings will shed new light, and give us a more accurate understanding of the use of the term "Son of Man" in the Gospels. As things stand there is every reason to believe that Jesus spoke of himself as Son of Man, and that in doing so he was conscious both of a divine vocation, and of a unique relationship with God.

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5 JESUS THE SON OF GOD There is a further indication that Jesus was conscious of a unique relationship with God in the passages in which he speaks of himself as Son in a special sense in relation to the Father. But are these genuine sayings of Jesus? It is not in doubt that the early Church thought and spoke of Jesus as Son of God. Terms like "Son of God", "His Son", "The Son", "A Son", "My Son",1 "The Son of the Father", "His only-begotten Son", occur twice in Acts, seventeen times in the Pauline Epistles, twelve in the Epistle to the Hebrews, twentyfour in the Epistles of John, and once in Revelation? The Acts, in speaking of Paul's preaching in Damascus, says that "he proclaimed Jesus, saying, 'He is the Son of God' " (Acts 9. 20). "God sent forth his Son, born of a woman", writes St Paul (Gal. 4. 4); those who forsake their faith "crucify the Son of God on their own account", asserts the Epistle to the Hebrews (6. 6); 1 John seems to refer to a primitive creed in the words, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God" (1 John 4. 15). In the Gospels also the title Son, or Son of God, is frequently used of Jesus. In the account of his Baptism, a heavenly voice declares "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased (Mark 1. 11; cf. Matt. 3. 17; Luke 3. 22). The temptation of Jesus (Matt. 4. 1-11 and Luke 4. 1-13) is described as a temptation coming to him as Son of God. In the Transfiguration account the voice also speaks of Jesus as the "beloved Son" (Mark 9. 7; cf. Matt. 17. 5, and Luke 9. 35, "My Son, my Chosen"). Mark speaks of Jesus as "the Son of 44

God" in the title of the Gospel (1. 1). The Fourth Gospel uses the titles "Son of God", "Only begotten Son", and "The Son" twenty-seven times. The evangelist declares that his purpose in writing is that his readers "may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (20. 31). Vincent Taylor comments that this usage "is interpretative, reflecting the theology of the Evangelist. . . . but it is interpretation based on tradition, as the Synoptic evidence shows".3 We have not yet referred to instances in which Jesus is recorded as speaking of himself in this way. But we shall first consider Bultmann's suggestion 4 that the title "Son of God" was given currency by Hellenistic converts. In the Hellenistic world "Son of God" was a title given to kings (of Egypt, for example) who were believed to be descended from gods. In the first century A.D. the title was being accorded also to Roman emperors. In the Graeco-Roman world the term was used even more widely, and anybody who was believed to possess miraculous power might be called "Son of God". Bultmann argues that although the primitive Church may sometimes have used the title "Son of God" of Jesus as a synonym for Messiah (Christ), its wide use in the New Testament is derived from Hellenistic usage. Since it connoted a wonder worker who has physical descent from a god, it was a distortion of the early Christian tradition, and is an instance, Bultmann maintains, of the Hellenization of primitive Christianity. That such a transformation of the Christian Gospel into something alien from Jewish thought took place, not only with the consent but with the encouragement of Paul, is unlikely in the extreme. Paul claimed to have been "A Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee" (Phil. 3. 5). He declared his longing for the grafting in of the Jews, his "kinsmen by race", into the New Israel, remembering the privileges of which they had been the recipients, and the promises of God of which they were the heirs (Rom. 9. 1-5, and the whole argument of chapters 9 to 11). Could such a man have countenanced the uprooting of Christianity from its Jewish soil and its transplanting into a soil of mixed oriental 45

and Greek elements? The improbability is great, and the suggestion is faithfully dealt with in an essay by the late Dr N. P. Williams in Essays Catholic and Critical.5 Can, then, the New Testament designation of Jesus as Son of God have its roots in the primitive Jewish-Christian tradition, and ultimately in the teaching of Jesus himself? It is to be noted that the phrase "Son of God" has a history in the Old Testament. It is used of God's representatives in three ways : of angelic beings (Gen. 6. 2; Job 1. 6; 2. 1; 38. 7); of kings (2 Sam. 7. 14; Ps. 2. 7); 6 of Israel as a whole (Ex. 4. 22; Hos. 11. 1).7 Whether or not in Jewish thought the title Son of God was ever applied to the Messiah cannot be proved. It is certain that Christians interpreted Ps. 2 messianically and looked on it as a prophecy fulfilled in Jesus. Its use in the Transfiguration narrative (Mark 9. 7, and parallels) and in Heb. 1. 5 makes this clear. We must now consider whether Jesus himself so spoke or thought of himself, and, if he did, in what sense. The evangelists record a number of occasions when Jesus used the words "Son of God" or "Son" of himself. Though we reject Bousset's and Bultmann's thesis that this represents the influence of Hellenistic Christians upon the editing of the Gospels, it is possible, as Oscar Cullmann points out "that the Palestinian early Church first put the designation in Jesus' mouth".8 "Son of God", unlike "Son of Man", was a title which the Church in very early days commonly applied to Jesus. We are therefore deprived of any argument similar to that which we put forward for the use of "Son of Man" by Jesus of himself? We must therefore study particular passages in which the Synoptic Gospels show Jesus as using the term "Son of God" and "Son", hoping to find an indication whether he did in fact so speak of himself. Instances occur in all the generally recognized sources in the Synoptic Gospels. Q. (Matt. 11. 27=Luke 10. 22) "All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son 46

except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." Mark 13. 32. "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Mark 14. 61, 62. Mark represents Jesus' reply to the high priest's question "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" as an affirmative, although he at once interprets the description in terms of the Son of Man. Mark 12. 6, 7 (cf. Matt. 21. 37, 38; Luke 20. 13, 14). The Parable of the Wicked Husbandman; "He had still one other, a beloved Son" refers to his own relationship with God. Mark 14. 36 (cf. Matt. 26. 39; Luke 22. 42). Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane; Mark records the use of the Aramaic word Abba, suggesting a reminiscence of the exact form of address Jesus used in prayer. It is one of special intimacy such as was used by a child. M. and L. In the material peculiar respectively to Matthew and Luke there are a number of instances in which Jesus speaks of God as Father in a way which suggests consciousness of an intimate relationship. In Matthew "My heavenly Father" is found at 15. 13; 18. 35; "My Father who is in heaven" at 16. 17; 18. 10, 14, 19; "My Father" at 25. 34 and 26. 53. In Luke we find "My Father" at 22. 29 and 24. 49; and "Father" at 23. 34, 46, the prayers from the Cross. There is therefore a strong tradition, imbedded in all the sources upon which the Synoptic Evangelists drew, that Jesus thought and spoke of himself as having a relationship with God of a specially intimate kind. To those brought up in the Christian tradition there is nothing startling about the phrase "My Father" or "My Father who is in heaven", or about speaking of oneself as a son of God, but this is not the way 47

in which even the devout Jew of the first century spoke. If Jesus so spoke, he was implicitly making a claim to divine sonship in a sense in which others do not have it. That sense is drawn out in the Q saying, "All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matt. 11. 27; Luke 10. 22).1° But the possibility of this particular saying being a genuine utterance of Jesus has been strongly challenged. It is pointed out that it bears strong similarities to the thought of the Fourth Gospel : "Anyone who knows anything at all about the Gospel of John will immediately recognize here one of its major themes." 11 The suggestion is that as the Fourth Gospel is a theologizing upon the tradition of Jesus, so this passage bears the marks of later theologizing. It is pointed out also that the passage is the second strophe of a poem consisting of three strophes, the first being Matt. 11. 25, 26 (=Luke 10. 21, "I thank thee Father. . . . gracious will"), and the thfrd being Matt. 11. 28-30 ("Come to me. . . . my burden is light") which is omitted in the Lucan parallel. It is therefore suggested that the verse is part of a hymn, composed for use in Hellenistic worship and therefore a later construction. But the poetic form of the Greek by no means compels the conclusion that Jesus could not have uttered the substance of it in the Aramaic which he spoke. Indeed his Aramaic may well have been in poetic form. Large portions of the Hebrew scriptures were poetic, and the use of Hebraic poetic forms was probably as familiar to his hearers as to himself. There are some scholars who, as soon as they detect a poetic flavour about a New Testament passage, at once suspect that it must be late, and Hellenistic. Nor is resemblance to the thought of the Fourth Gospel 12 sufficient reason to suppose that the saying was not uttered by Jesus. At many points the Fourth Gospel takes up and treats afresh themes which are in the Synoptic Gospels. For example, the theme of the opposition of light to darkness is prominent 48

in John (1. 4, 5; 8. 1). But we cannot conclude from this that the cognate theme in Matt. 5. 14-16 is not genuine. Certainly, as Cullmann says, "The particular theme of the Son's complete unity with the Father in his revelatory action toward the world is very prominent in the Gospel of John"." But this in itself is no proof that John invented it, or that Jesus was not the first to employ it. There is nothing in Matt. 11. 27 which compels us to label it as Hellenistic. There is in Hebrew thought a theology of the knowledge of God and of God's knowledge which is by no means foreign to the sense of this verse.14 "I see no reason", writes Cullmann, "to deny that Jesus spoke the words of Matthew 11. 27 simply because of their close resemblance to a favourite theme of John"; and Vincent Taylor concludes his discussion of the passage with the words : "There is no reason why Jesus . . . should not have said that only the Father knew him, and that He alone knew the Father, and was able to reveal him to others. The saying is in line with the development of the prophetic consciousness carried to a higher, and indeed to an incomparable degree." Is And he adds, "If this view is accepted, the use of the title 'the Son of God' is grounded in the thought and teaching of Jesus Himself." One of the "Son of God" sayings noted above almost certainly cannot have been invented. Mark 13. 32 records Jesus as speaking of the final judgement : "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." It is difficult to believe that such a profession of ignorance would have been attributed to Jesus by early Christians, unless it had been known that the words were his. The strong presumption of the genuineness of this saying, then, supports the genuineness of the other sayings in which Jesus speaks of himself as the Son. And it is to be noted that Mark 13. 32 indicates that Jesus was conscious of Sonship to God in a sense which is not applicable to men or angels : "no one . . . not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son". "It belongs to the self-consciousness of Jesus", says Vincent 49

Taylor, concluding his discussion of this topic in The Names of Jesus, "that He believed Himself to be the Son of God in a pre-eminent sense". The language of Sonship testifies to his deep sense of intimacy with God. It is more than likely, in view of the Old Testament references to Israel as God's son, that it also testifies to an awareness of his vocation to fulfil God's purpose for Israel, to be the corporate personality of the people of God. If so, there is a close link between the titles "Son of Man" and "Son of God". THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST

This chapter must end with a brief section on a subject which needs a chapter to itself. In later New Testament books the conviction that Jesus is Son of God broadens into a doctrine of pre-existence. He who was experienced still as the everpresent and living Lord in the continuing life of the People of God is declared to have had a prior existence. He who by his death and resurrection had wrought a new creative act for humanity is declared to have been the Father's agent in the first creation. Jesus' Sonship is rooted in an eternal relationship with the Father. "He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created. . . . He is before all things" (Col. 1. 15ff). "He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power" (Heb. 1. 3). The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel says of him : "In the beginning was the Word (Greek, logos). . . . He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him" (John 1. 1-3). The Word by which God has ever been speaking and revealing himself has now become flesh. The Greek word logos also means "reason". The Stoics and some Platonists amongst contemporary Greek philosophers held a doctrine of logos as the rational principle which permeated the universe, though they conceived of it as impersonal. Whether or not the Prologue of John had this in mind is disputed. But early Christian apologists were quick to see 50

that here was a point of contact with the Greek world. They could, in effect, say, "That logos of which you Greeks speak is no impersonal principle, but the eternal expression of God's wisdom who in Jesus 'became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth' (John 1. 14)."

51

6 THE CHRISTOLOGICAL DEBATE : TERTULLIAN TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON

In chapter 2 we referred to second-century thinkers who upheld the divinity of Jesus against the Ebionites, and his complete humanity against the Docetists. Theirs was a doctrine of incarnation, that in Jesus the eternal Son or Word of God, being born of Mary, had taken human nature and lived and died, to reveal the will of the Father and reconcile man to God. This assertion posed a number of questions about the relationship between the divine and human in Jesus. Could there be some "part" of the divine nature of the eternal Son lacking in the historical Jesus—which perhaps could not be appropriately included in the incarnate state? Was there lacking some "part" of human nature—which perhaps was unnecessary since its place was taken by a divine equivalent? Was there some kind of fusion or mixture of divine and human in him?' We must now trace the development of Christian thought as it wrestled with this kind of question, and led to the definition of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 which became the accepted standard of orthodoxy. This chapter in the history of Christian doctrine has often been written, and finds a place in all standard histories of the early Church? Here we shall mention only the more important theologians and occasions in this dialogue. So far as possible we shall avoid technical theological terms, and we shall try to explain those that must be used. 52

THE THIRD CENTURY

Orthodox christology was defined as a result of controversy during the fourth century and the first half of the fifth. But foundations had already been laid, and two theologians of the third century must receive brief mention in this connection. Tertullian Tertullian was a presbyter of North Africa (c.150-c.240) and a strong opponent of Docetism. He asserted the reality of Christ's flesh against Gnostic suggestions that was phantasmal, or composed of some specially ethereal substance. And by "flesh" Tertullian meant not merely the chemical substances of the body, but humanity in its completeness, soul as well as body.3 Yet in Jesus the pre-existing divine Son or Word of God entered into the human sphere. I twas not that a good man was deified or adopted by God. Tertullian's christology is one of incarnation not of adoption. In Jesus, therefore, there are two natures, divine and human. Tertullian's word for "nature" is substantia, which may be translated literally "substance". It is derived from the Latin participle substans, "standing beneath", and means "that which stands beneath a thing", what underlies its outward appearance, its essential reality. In ancient philosophical or theological writers substantia does not necessarily have the modern sense of "physical stuff", as in the phrase "a chemical substance". When they speak, for example, of the substantia of God they are not necessarily implying that God is composed of matter,' but are speaking of his essential being. Tertullian, therefore, in asserting two substances in Christ, of flesh and spirit,5 means that in him there is the essential being of man, and the essential being of God. The two natures belong to the one person of Jesus. There is no transformation of one into the other, nor mixture of the two. Each retains its own qualities and functions : "The spirit (i.e. the divine nature) carired out in him his own activities : the powers and works and signs; while the flesh (i.e. the human nature) underwent the experiences proper to it : hunger . . . 53

thirst . . . weeping . . . troubled even unto death." 6 Such a passage, suggesting as it does that at one time Jesus was acting as God and at another was acting or suffering as man, has given rise to the criticism that Tertullian does not sufficiently secure the unity of Jesus' personality, in contrast with the Gospels which present him as a completely unified and integrated person. Origen In another part of Africa a younger contemporary of Tertullian was upholding a doctrine of incarnation both against Docetism and Adoptionism. This was Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-254). He made a valuable contribution to the Trinitarian doctrine of God in putting forward the idea of the eternal generation of the Son as descriptive of the relation between the Father and the Word. Christians, following the New Testament, had always held that the relationship was one of fatherhood and sonship, but had not always realized the inadequacy of the analogy. Origen's point is that it must not be taken to imply that the Father is prior to the Son. It is an eternal relationship : "The Father eternally begets him." 7 Origen was a daring and speculative thinker, and the Church by no means accepted all his views. His basic philosophy was Platonic. With the Platonists he made a sharp distinction between body and soul (or nous, the higher and intellectual aspect of human nature), and held that souls existed before the creation of the material universe, and therefore prior to the bodies to which they were eventually to be joined. One preexisting soul, remaining faithful whilst others rebelled, was so deeply attracted to the eternal Word of God that it became inseparably united with him. Since the destiny of pre-existing souls is, in God's time, to be joined to a body, this human soul, united with the Word, was a pre-eminently suitable means for bringing the infinite Word of God into intimate relation with the finite and material world. Therefore it was united with a human body which was created by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. In this way, for Origen there were two stages 54

in the process of incarnation. This interesting theory, in which the traditional doctrine is stated in terms of Platonic presuppositions, gained little acceptance. The Church has never formally accepted a doctrine of the pre-existence of souls. Like Tertullian, Origen asserts that the Incarnate Christ possessed two natures, manhood and divinity. Writing in Greek, his usual word for "nature" is phusis, which later became the accepted orthodox term in this connection. And like Tertullian he insists that each nature keeps its own characteristics : "Some of the utterances of Jesus are those of the firstborn of all creation (i.e. the Word) . . . some were utterances of his perceptible human nature."8 Temptation was an experience of his human nature : "It was not God but man who was tempted." 9 As with Tertullian, therefore, we detect a tendency to speak as though Jesus had two separate fields of experience, almost as though the one human frame were possessed alternately by two personalities, one divine and the other human. Yet this was not Origen's intention. He himself remarks that the Gospel speaks of one and not two; 10 and there are passages in which he implies that the union was such that the human soul was completely overwhelmed by the divine, and that "the Word had in effect taken over the role of the . . . governing principle in Christ." 11 These two apparently contradictory tendencies in Origen's thought were to be taken further. In the fifth century the Nestorians distinguished the natures so sharply as to amount to a doctrine of two persons; whilst the followers of Eutyches could appeal to passages in Origen to support a doctrine of the dominance of the Word and the subordination of the manhood in the union. Both Nestorians and Eutychians were judged heretical. THE FOURTH CENTURY

Origen's doctrine of the pre-existence of human souls won no acceptance; nor, consequently, did his doctrine of the pre55

existing human soul of Jesus. In tact, during the latter part of the third century and in the fourth a number of theologians were reluctant to admit that the Word was united with a human soul at all. This was probably prompted by the fear that such a doctrine would imply that there were two persons somehow inhabiting one frame. Their suggestion was that, as in every man the flesh is indwelt by the rational soul, as the Platonists taught, in the case of the Incarnate Christ the flesh of Jesus was indwelt by the Word, which took the place and performed the functions of the soul. The unity of person was a union of the divine Word and human flesh—that is, the physical frame of Jesus. These theologians were orthodox in intention; they wished to secure both the true divinity and the real humanity of Jesus. Nevertheless they failed to see that if Jesus had no human rational soul, his manhood was incomplete. Such a doctrine was to be put forward in a rather different guise by two teachers in the fourth century, Arius and Apollinarius, both of whom were adjudged heretical. Arius

Arius, a priest of Alexandria, began to teach about A.D. 318. He was concerned to preserve the principle of monotheism, and believed that this could be done only by denying the essential divinity of the Son, or Word of God. The Son was a creature, brought into being by the Father to be his agent in creation. He was indeed the most perfect of creatures, but no more than a creature. Being created by God out of nothing, he had a beginning; Origen's doctrine of the eternal relationship of the Son to the Father was denied. A frequent Arian catchword was "There was when he was not". The Son did not in any sense share the nature of God, but was of a different substance from the Father. Arius was prepared to allow that he might be called divine in a limited sense, but in Arian teaching he is no more than a demi-god, higher than other creatures, but still a creature himself. Arius was chiefly concerned with the question of God's sovereignty. If the Son was essentially divine, uncreated and 56

consequently coeternal with the Father, it seemed to him that there must be two Gods and that the principle of monotheism was destroyed. Arius also taught that in the historical Jesus the Word assumed a human body but not a human soul. The place of the latter was taken by the Logos as the intelligent governing principle of the life of Jesus. But this aspect of his teaching received little attention at first. His orthodox opponents concentrated on the question of the relation of the Son or Logos to the Father, perceiving that if the Logos who was incarnate in Jesus was not truly God, the foundation of Christian faith was undermined. The Council of Nicea was summoned in 325 to consider the matter. It condemned Arius and drew up a Creed 12 to exclude what were felt to be his errors. The phrase "begotten not made" rejects the doctrine that the Son is a creature; "of one substance with the Father" asserts his identity in essential being or nature with the Father. "Of one substance" is one word in Greek, homoousion, and this word became the main contention in the protracted controversy which followed. Some Arians were prepared to admit that the Son is "of like substance" 13 with the Father; others preferred a more vague word meaning that the Son is like the Father; extreme Arians, not admitting this, asserted that the Son is unlike the Father. Largely because of the support of emperors and for political reasons, Arianism gained ascendancy for a long period. More than to any other, its defeat was due to the indefatigable labours of Athanasius. He endured false charges, persecution, and exile; he preached, he wrote, he travelled on behalf of the faith, and before his death in 373 he saw Arianism decline into insignificance. A few years later the second General Council at Constantinople re-affirmed the Nicene faith (381), and thereafter only a few small pockets of Arian resistance remained. Athanasius Athanasius became Bishop of Alexandria in A.D. 328. His opposition to Arianism sprang from his concern to protect the 57

doctrine of redemption. The Christian conviction from the beginning was that in Jesus Christ man had a saviour, that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself". But if the Word who was incarnate in Jesus were not divine, but a creature of an inferior nature to God, he could bring no salvation from God. And unless the Word had taken flesh which was truly human, the power of sin within human nature could not have been broken. The Christ of Arius could be no Mediator between God and man : "There would have been no profit to us men if either the Word had not been truly and by nature the Son of God, or the flesh which he assumed had not been real flesh."14 In his On the Incarnation of the Word of God, written before the rise of Arianism, Athanasius declares the same conviction : "What was needed to restore that grace and to recall man? Surely the Word of God who at the beginning had made the universe out of nothing. . . . He alone was able to recreate the universe and was alone worthy to suffer on behalf of all, and to be an ambassador for all men with the Father. . . He takes to himself a body, a body like our own . . . surrendered his body to death in the place of all men, and presented it to the Father." 15 Athanasius taught that the Word was the subject of all the experiences of the Incarnate. Thus "the properties of the flesh are said to be his, since he was in that flesh; hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, and the like, to which the flesh is liable : while the works belonging to the Word himself (raising the dead, restoring sight to the blind, curing the woman's haemorrhage) he himself did through his own body. The Word `bore the weakness' of the flesh as his own; for the flesh was his flesh : the flesh assisted the works of the godhead, for the godhead was in the flesh; the body was God's." 16 This quotation might suggest that Athanasius, like Tertullian and Origen, tended to think of the incarnate as possessing two separate fields of experience which came into play alternately." But this was not his intention, for elsewhere he writes : "These (i.e. the human acts, and the experiences appropriate to deity) are not events occurring disconnectedly, distinguished 58

according to their quality, so that one class may be ascribed to the body apart from the divinity, the other to the divinity apart from the body. They all occurred inseparably conjoined, and the Lord, who marvellously performed those acts by his grace, was one."" Nevertheless this tendency, discernible in even the most careful and, in intention, orthodox theologians, to speak as though Jesus were some kind of double personality, points to one of the most difficult christological problems. Apollinarius (c.310-c.390). The views of Athanasius about the Arian suggestion that the Incarnate Christ's humanity did not include a human soul, its place being taken by the Logos, are not clear." This question was brought to the point of controversy by Apollinarius, Athanasius' friend and supporter against the Arians, who became Bishop of Laodicea about 360. In all this period theological discussion was conducted chiefly by two schools. One drew its inspiration from the great theologians of Alexandria, Origen, for instance, and Athanasius; 20 the other was closely connected with Antioch. The Antiochene theologians stressed the distinction between the two natures of Christ. Any transformation of one into the other, or fusion of the two, imperilled in their view either the divinity or the humanity of the Incarnate, or both, and would mean that Christ could not be a Mediator and Saviour. The emphasis of the Alexandrian school on the other hand was upon the unity of Christ's person. They insisted that Scripture presents Jesus as a unified person. Although theologians like Origen and Athanasius sometimes distinguished, as we have mentioned, between the divine and the human experience and activity of Christ in a way which would have had the approval of the Antiochenes, the Alexandrian school was now coming to suspect that the language of two natures implied two persons. Apollinarius suspected that the Antiochene theologians in speaking, as they did, of "a man conjoined with God", and in making a distinction between the Son of God and the son of Mary, held a doctrine of the Incarnate as two persons. He 59

insisted that in the Incarnation flesh was joined in absolute unity with the Word, so that there was a single indivisible entity, which he speaks of as the "one nature" (phusis). No such single indivisible entity could result from the coming together of two entities each complete in itself. But for Apollinarius "flesh" was not an entity which was complete in itself a nature since it needs to be animated by nous; and in human nature he thought of, in accordance with the current Platonic psychology, as a combination of body, psuche (animal soul, the animating principle which distinguishes living things from inanimate), and mind (nous, the rational principle which distinguishes man from other animals). Apollinarius' interpretation of the Incarnation, therefore, was that the Word of God supplied and performed the functions in the Incarnate which in others were performed by the higher elements in human nature : "The Word was both the directive, intelligent principle in Jesus Christ, and also the vivifying principle of His flesh. . . . the Word was the sole life of the God-man, infusing vital energy and movement into Him even at the purely physical and biological levels".21 Apollinarius insisted on the one nature of the Incarnate Christ. The flesh is not in itself a nature since it needs to be animated by nous; and in the Incarnate Christ the Word is not to be distinguished as a separate nature, for the Word was in the flesh. There was one nature. Because of the closeness of the union of the Word with the flesh Apollinarius could describe that flesh as being glorified, as "divine flesh". Consequently he was accused of teaching that Christ's flesh was not like ours, but of a special origin. But he denied that this was his intention : the flesh is flesh and not God, but since Christ's flesh had never existed apart from the Word it could be properly called divine.22 Apollinarius' doctrine aroused vigorous opposition, and was condemned at the second General Council at Constantinople in 381. There were three closely connected reasons for its condemnation. First, it meant that the humanity of Christ was no more than the passive instrument of the vitalizing and governing Word. It is the human mind (nous) which possesses 60

freedom, and to which attaches any merit man may have. But it is precisely this element which Apollinarius said was lacking in the Incarnate. If he were right, the goodness of Christ's life could not be attributed to his humanity, and it could not be claimed that this life was man's perfect example. Secondly, Apollinarius' doctrine asserted the incompleteness of Christ's manhood. Lacking nous he did not possess what was most characteristic of man and could not properly be regarded as man at all. Thirdly, it was pointed out that the human nous or rational soul, being the seat of the will, is also the seat of man's sin. If man's mind was not assumed by the Word, then it remains unredeemed. In the words of Gregory of Nazianzus,"What is not assumed (i.e. by the Word) cannot be healed." Apollinarianism destroys the Christian doctrine of redemptionP THE FIFTH CENTURY

The reaction from Apollinarianism brought into prominence the theology of the Antiochene school. The issue between the Antiochene and the Alexandrian schools may be summarized in this way : the Alexandrians feared that the Antiochene insistence on the two natures implied a doctrine of two persons, held together somehow in one human body, whereas the Christ whom the Gospels present is a fully integrated person. The Antiochenes feared that the Alexandrian insistence on the unity of person implied a unity of nature, which could only mean that the divinity had in some way overwhelmed or changed the humanity, so that Christ could not be thought of as man. Nestorius The best known theologian of the Antiochene school is Nestorius, who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, for it was his presentation of the Antiochene two-nature christology which caused an outbreak of controversy which led to his condemnation as a heretic. As in the case of Apollinarius, modern theologians have been reassessing 61

Nestonus' doctrine in the light of the discovery in 1895 of an apology which Nestorius wrote shortly before he died. Some are prepared to say that he was "essentially orthodox but the victim of ecclesiastical politics".24 There may be truth in this, for his chief opponent, Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, was a thoroughly unscrupulous controversialist. One thing, however, is certain, that in the first half of the fifth century there was a christological teaching known as Nestorianism, which was pronounced heretical, and Nestorius was widely understood to hold it. It is certain also that the dispute arose from pronouncements of Nestorius against the use, especially by the Alexandrian school, of the title "Bearer of God" (Theotokos) of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They justified its use on the ground of the unity of Christ's person. Because human nature and divine nature are united in the one person of Christ, it is permissible to attribute the properties or characteristics of one nature to the Incarnate even when he is spoken of in terms of the other nature? Thus, for example, in the second century Ignatius of Antioch had spoken of "the suffering of my God". To suffer is a human experience, but in view of the union of divine and human in Jesus Christ, it may be said that God suffers. Contrariwise it can be said that the carpenter of Nazareth forgives sins. To forgive sin is a divine prerogative, but because of the union of divine and human in Jesus Christ, it may be said that he forgives sin even though he be spoken of in terms of human nature as the carpenter of Nazareth. By the same principle, to be born is a human experience, yet when speaking of Jesus Christ it may be said that God is born. Thus was justified the title "Bearer of God" of the Virgin Mary. Nestorius attacked the use of the title, saying that if it were used at all it should be balanced by "Bearer of the man" (anthr5potokos). Alexandrian theologians, led by Cyril of Alexandria, at once sprang to the defence of the Theotokos. They suspected that the denial of the title to Mary meant a doctrine of two sons. For if Mary bore a man, then the Word of God must have become associated with the man Jesus at 62

some stage later than his conception and birth. There was thus a doctrine of two sons, Jesus and the Son of God, becoming associated by some kind of mutual arrangement. This seemed to be a revival of the Adoptionist doctrine of earlier times. Although Nestorius denied that this was the implication, he continued to be interpreted in this way. It is possible that a failure to agree on terminology was the root of the trouble. The Greek word prosopon, which was coming to be used as a non-technical word for "person" in Greek christology, appears to have been used by Nestorius in a different sense. He spoke of the divine and human natures each having a prosopon. Understandably, the Alexandrians took this to be a doctrine of two persons. Nestorius explained that he was using the word in the sense of "objective reality", and did not mean that there were two distinct persons. The use of terms in differing senses was to cause still further misunderstanding in the ensuing twenty years. Cyril of Alexandria Being of the Alexandrian school, Cyril, who had become Patriarch of Alexandria in 412, approached christology with a conviction of the divinity of Christ, and an abhorrence of anything which suggested Adoptionism. In the Incarnation the nature of the Word remained unchanged in the fullness of his deity, but became incarnate, enfleshed, taking human nature in its completeness, body and rational soul (Apollinarianism was, therefore, rejected). This union was complete. Christ was one, "one out of two" as Cyril repeatedly put it. At this point something must be said about a technical word which now came into use in the doctrine of Christ's person. This is the word hupostasis (plural, hupostaseis), which had for some time been accepted as the technical word in Greek theology for the three Persons of the Godhead. The word had often been used as a synonym for another Greek word, ousia, "being", in the sense of the underlying essential reality of a thing, its substance or nature (cf. the Latin substantia, p. 53). But in the course of the Trinitarian controversy hupostasis 63

had come to mean an individualizing of an ousia, a concrete entity which is a particular objective presentation of an ousia. For example, according to this terminology it might be said that there is an ousia of glass—all the essential qualities which make glass what it is. The piece of glass which covers my watch is an hupostasis of this ousia, a particular objective instance of it. Thus, any given man, for example John Smith, is an hupostasis of the ousia "humanity". In the Godhead, Father, Son or Word, the Spirit are hupostaseis of the divine ousia. Cyril's suggestion was that the humanity of Christ found its hupostasis in the hupostasis of the Word. In Jesus of Nazareth humanity was given objective reality in the hupostasis of the Word : "Deity and Manhood, by their inexpressible and inexplicable concurrence into unity, have produced for us the one Lord and Son Jesus Christ".26 This is what Cyril calls "the hypostatic union". But Cyril also speaks of a "union of natures", and the word he uses for "nature" is phusis. Phu*, was the word used by the Antiochene school of the two natures, the humanity and divinity of Christ. But Cyril frequently speaks of the Incarnate as being one phusis: "One nature (phusis), and that incarnate, of the divine Word"; 27 "After the union one nature (phusis) is understood, namely the enfleshed nature of the Word".28 To speak of a union of two natures in the Incarnate Christ was acceptable to moderate Antiochenes. But to say that the Incarnate Christ is one nature aroused their suspicion that Cyril was reviving Apollinarianism and was presenting the person of Christ as a single hybrid or mixed nature. But it is clear that he was here using phusis as an equivalent of hupostasis. His intention was to assert, as J. N. D. Kelly explains," that "the Lord's humanity became a 'nature' or `hypostasis', that is, a concrete existent reality (this was the sense in which 'nature' was here used) in the nature or hypostasis of the Word. It never existed on its own . . . as the Antiochene position seemed to suggest, still less could be described at any stage of its existence as 'the man', but from the moment of its conception in Mary's womb it belonged to 64

the Word, Who made it His very own. The body was the body of the Word, not of some man, and in the union the two constituted a single concrete being." Cyril is often at pains to make it clear that he believed in no mixture of divinity and humanity : "We do not mean that the difference of the natures is annihilated by reason of this union"; 30 each nature retains its "natural quality" 31 The difference, then, between Cyril's doctrine and that of moderate Antiochenes was not great. It was magnified, not for the first or last time in the history of controversy, by the heat engendered on both sides, and by a failure to agree on the meaning of terms. The word phusis was being used in different senses. For Cyril it was practically the equivalent of hupostasis, whilst for the Antiochenes it meant "nature". What the Antiochenes called phusis, or nature, Cyril preferred to speak of as "natural quality" or "natural property". Cyril, with the support of the Emperor Theodosius II, secured the condemnation of Nestorius at the Third General Council of Ephesus in 431. But before any solution of the christological controversy was secured with any unanimity the doctrinal pendulum had yet to swing to the opposite extreme from Nestorianism. The phrase "one nature" (mia phusis) had become something of a battle-cry of Cyril's supporters, and some of them were teaching a doctrine which implied that the humanity of Jesus was absorbed by his divinity. To Antiochenes this seemed a revival of the early docetic doctrine that Christ's humanity was merely a divine pretence. Eutyches This issue came into prominence through Eutyches, a monk of Constantinople (c.378-454). As with Nestorius, it is not easy to determine what Eutyches himself held. Circumstances made him the spokesman of the Alexandrian school, and he stubbornly held to the "one nature" formula, but gives the impression that he did not understand its implications. In 448 he was brought before a synod presided over by Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, a kindly man who gave him every 65

opportunity to show his orthodoxy. A summary account of the proceedings has survived.32 Eutyches was asked whether he believed that the Incarnate Christ was "consubstantial with us". At first he appeared ready to admit this in deference to Flavian : "Hitherto I have altogether avoided the phrase 'consubstantial after the flesh'. But I will use it now, since your Holiness demands it." But even this reluctant admission he eventually withdrew. It is this, as much as anything, that led to the suspicion that he was dangerously close to the idea that Christ's manhood was docetic. To the question "Do you or do you not admit that our Lord . . . [is] of two natures after the incarnation?" he replied : "I admit that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union one nature. . . . I follow the doctrine of the blessed Cyril and the holy fathers and the holy Athanasius. They speak of two natures before the union, but after the union and incarnation they speak of one nature not two." Clearly he was using the word "nature" (phusis ' ) as Cyril had used it, as meaning objective entity, and the equivalent of hupostasis. To assert two natures in the Incarnate Christ, therefore, seemed to him to be a doctrine of two persons, the Nestorianism which he so much feared. Eutyches was excommunicated and deposed. But he had many supporters, especially Dioscurus who succeeded Cyril as Patriarch of Alexandria in 444. Dioscurus, a thoroughly disreputable and dishonest man, using political pressure persuaded Theodosius II to call a Council, which met at Ephesus in 449. With imperial soldiers standing threateningly by, the "two natures doctrine" was condemned, Flavian deposed, and Eutyches reinstated. Disorders occurred during the council, and it is said that Flavian received injuries from which he died a few days later. Leo, Bishop of Rome, said of this council that "it was no court of justice, but a gang of robbers (latrocinium)", and as the Latrocinium this Council is usually known. During the seventy-five years of christological discussion from Apollinarius to Eutyches we have marked a double swing of the doctrinal pendulum : from a doctrine which was held 66

to deny the complete manhood of Jesus (Apollinarius) to one which was taken by its opponents to deny his essential divinity (Nestorius), and back to a position which again seemed to imply that the Incarnate Christ was not man as we are (Eutyches). The pendulum was now to come to rest in a definition which was accepted by the greater part of Christendom, even though some Nestorian and Monophysite (the word means One-Nature-ite) groups separated from the Catholic and Orthodox Church, and continue to exist to-day." This was the definition approved by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Leo I of Rome Before the Latrocinium both Flavian and Eutyches had written to Pope Leo I asking for his judgement on the matter in dispute. He replied in a letter known as the Tome of Leo.34 It was a strong condemnation of the one nature doctrine of Eutyches. Dioscurus prevented its being read before the Latrocinium, but it gained wide circulation and considerable acceptance. The Emperor Theodosius II died accidentally in 450, and his successor Marcian in the interests of Church unity summoned a general council. It met at Chalcedon in 451. Leo's Tome was one of the documents approved by the Council as statements of orthodox teaching. "It is a fine specimen", says Professor E. R. Hardy, "of the straightforwardness and clarity of the Latin mind—as also of the Western approach to the mysteries of Christianity from the facts of faith rather than the speculations of philosophy". The foundation of Leo's christolog-y is his conviction that God in Christ offers mankind salvation. If human nature was to be redeemed, God must take it to himself : "Therefore in the entire and perfect nature of very (i.e. true) Man was born very God, whole in what was his, whole in what was ours" and "each of the natures retains its proper character without defect" (c.3). Leo, therefore, rejects Eutyches' doctrine of "one nature after the union". This seemed to him to amount to a denial of 67

Christ's human nature : "He has not acknowledged our nature to exist in the only-begotten Son of God", and "to deny his true flesh is also to deny his bodily sufferings" (c.5), and so to imperil the Christian doctrine of redemption through those sufferings. Leo insists on the completeness of Christ's manhood. "The flesh does not abandon the nature of our kind" (c.4). Leo equally rejects Nestorianism in his insistence on the oneness of Christ : "He is one and the same, truly Son of God, and truly Son of Man" (c.4); "In the Lord Jesus Christ there is one Person of God and man" (ibid.). "Accordingly on account of this unity which is to be understood as existing in both the natures, we read, on the one hand, that 'the Son of Man came down from heaven' (John 3. 13) . . . and, on the other hand, the Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried" (c.5). In other words, the complete unity of manhood and divinity in the one Person means that we may rightly use a divine title when we speak of his human experiences, and may use a human description of him when we speak of his divine activity.36 Yet Leo is clear that the difference of natures remains, and must be recognized. In c.4 he refers to the Gospel account of the life of Jesus, and sees there indications of this difference. To be born of the flesh belongs to his human nature; to be born of a virgin is a sign of his divine nature. So, to be tempted, to be weary, to thirst, to weep, to hang on a cross belong to the human nature; whilst to be ministered to by angels, to feed a multitude with five loaves, to still a storm, to recall Lazarus from the dead are signs of the divine nature. Expounding Phil. 2. 7, he says that "the same who, remaining in the form of God, made man, was made Man in the form of a servant. For each of the natures retains its proper character without defect" (c.3). "Each 'form' does the acts which belong to it, in communion with the other; the Word, that is, performing what belongs to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what belongs to the flesh. The one of these shines out in miracles; the other succumbs to injuries" (c.4). Is this to present the Incarnate Christ as now acting in one 68

nature and now in another? Have we here something analogous to Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Is Leo's doctrine in fact nothing but a more reticent Nestorianisma doctrine of two persons somehow inhabiting the same frame? At the Council of Chalcedon some Alexandrians suspected this, and were only silenced when it was shown that their revered Cyril himself had used similar language about the difference of the natures which were brought together into unity.37 Leo's intention was most certainly not to suggest any kind of split personality. In a later Teter 38 he explains that Jesus Christ is one Person who acts and speaks as one Person, but whose divine and human properties, since they remain in him without mixture, can be discerned in their difference. Leo seems to mean that there are sayings and actions of Jesus of which we can say, "He says and does this because he is God made man"; and there are sayings and actions of which we can say, "He says and does this because he is God made man". But always it is one and the same person. THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON

The decisions of Chalcedon, the Fourth General Council of the Church may now be quickly described. It declared that Flavian had been unjustly condemned at the Latrocinium. It approved of certain of Cyril's writings,39 and of Leo's Tome as statements of orthodox doctrine. It reaffirmed the creeds of the Councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381), and decided against drawing up any new creed. But to exclude the recent errors of the Nestorians and Eutychians it drew up a definition of the faith concerning Christ's person. One paragraph must be quoted in full : Therefore, following the holy Fathers,we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same 69

time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer (Theotokos); one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence (hupostasis), not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.40 This statement now needs little exegesis. The controversies of the preceding century and a half had contributed to it. Nestorianism is rejected by the insistence on the unity of Christ's person : "one and the same Son", "one and the same Christ", "not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son". The unity of Christ's person on which the Alexandrian school insisted is thus guarded. But Cyril's ambiguous and unfortunate use of the term "one nature" is avoided. Equally plainly the Definition asserts what the Antiochene school contended for : Christ is to be "recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation". These last phrases are four adverbs in Greek, the first two excluding errors implied in Eutychianism, and the latter two excluding Nestorian interpretation of the two-nature doctrine. The Chalcedonian Definition is, then, that the Incarnate is one hupostasu in two natures. It won wide acceptance, but the more extreme Alexandrians rejected it and in the decades which followed founded the separate Monophysite (i.e. continuing Eutychian) Churches of the Near East. 70

To this survey of the history of the doctrine of Christ's person leading up to Chalcedon two notes must be added. They amount to a crossing of the t's and dotting the i's of the Definition. Leontius of Byzantium Chalcedon had declared that in Christ there are two natures (phuseis), human and divine, but one hupostasis, or persona, to use the Latin word of the western theologians. The eternal Word or Son of God possesses the phusis or nature of deity, being the Second Person (hupostasis, persona) of the Godhead. In the incarnation he united to himself human phusis (nature). He did not unite to himself a human hupostasis or person. This would have entailed two hupostaseis (persons) in the Incarnate, a supposition which the Church had rejected in condemning Nestorianism. It would seem to follow that the human nature of Christ must be regarded as lacking hupostasis (anhupostatos), and the implication of this is that Christ's human nature is an abstraction without any concrete reality, or that it is "impersonal". In neither case is it easy to understand what is being implied. What is a nature which has no concrete reality? What is human nature which is impersonal? Is a phusis which has no hupostasis anything at all? A suggestion put forward by Leontius of Byzantium (490544) was intended to meet these difficulties. Leontius was so far influenced by Aristotelianism as to hold that, except as an idea in the mind, there cannot be a phusis without an hupostasis. In Christ the human phusis finds its hupostasis in the Logos or Word of God. The Logos is the personalizing principle of the human nature which was assumed; and the human nature is not, therefore, to be thought of as lacking hupostasis, but as finding its hupostasis in the Word (not anhupostatos, but enhupostatos). This doctrine, known as the doctrine of Enhypostasia asserts that the Divine Word, possessing in himself the perfection of personality, brought to the human nature he assumed all that was essential to a truly human personality. The human nature of the Incarnate was perfect 71 6

because its personalizing principle was the Word who, as the rational principle of the universe, possesses the perfection of all personality. The Doctrine of the Two Wills of Christ The second note concerns the controversy which arose in the seventh century about the will of Christ. The Emperor Heraclius, supported by Pope Honorius I, sought to end the Monophysite schism by means of a formula, published in 638, which, it was hoped, both Orthodox and Monophysite would accept. It asserted two natures, but only one divine-human operation or will in the Incarnate Christ. This was opposed by the Orthodox, and in 681 a Council at Constantinople, the Sixth General Council, condemned the doctrine of the one will of Christ (monothelitism), and asserted in Christ "two natural wills . . . and two natural operations, without division, without change, without separation, without confusion (the four Greek adverbs used in the Chalcedonian Definition of the relation between the natures) . . . two natural wills, not contrary . . . but his human will following his divine and omnipotent will, not resisting it nor striving against it, but rather subject to it" 41 John of Damascus (675-749), expounding this, says that the human will "willed of its own free will those things which the divine will willed it to will". The intention was not to present Christ as one who willed and acted now in his divine nature and now in his human nature. For the Fathers of this Council, as for those of Chalcedon, there was in Christ one agent, and one experiencing subject, the Son of God made man, to whom belong all the actions and experiences all the time. His was a single personal life. But if the New Testament and Nicene faith were to be guarded, it must nevertheless be said both that in him the divine will governs all things, and that the human will has its full freedom. With these two footnotes to Chalcedon we have come to the end of our account of the controversies which led to the formulation of the orthodox doctrine of Christ's person. If the dimensions of this book allowed, it would be natural to 72

continue tracing the historical development : to speak of the systematizing work of St John of Damascus in the East, and of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) in the West; of the great sixteenth-century Reformers who acknowledged the traditional doctrine whilst disliking its philosophical terminology; of the nineteenth-century theologians Schleiermacher and Ritschl, in whose christology, although in different ways, it is possible to detect an implicit repudiation of a doctrine of incarnation in favour of a christology in which the divinity of Christ consists in the perfection of his humanity. The nineteenth century also saw the rise of the so-called kenotic christology. This attempted to solve some of the difficulties raised by the Chalcedonian Definition by suggesting that the Word in becoming incarnate laid aside or emptied himself of certain divine attributes. Phil. 2. 7, "He emptied himself' (ekenasen) provided its scriptural basis. This would lead to a discussion of twentieth-century attempts to restate the orthodox doctrine in the light of modern theories of personality. But, although we shall have occasion to refer to some of these writings, we must now come to our own day, and consider the difficulties which many modern Christians perceive in the traditional christology.

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7 THE CHALCEDONIAN DEFINITION : MODERN CRITICISMS AND RESTATEMENTS In this chapter we shall first state four objections which are frequently made to the Chalcedonian Definition. We shall then study several recent attempts to restate the doctrine of Christ's person on the part of some English theologians. 1. It is negative The Chalcedonian Definition of Christ's person purports to protect the New Testament teaching, and the conviction of the Christian Church, that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, and that he is truly God and truly man. The Definition was constructed to exclude what were believed to be errors which made it impossible to hold that God had in fact acted in Christ for man's total salvation. Here arises the first, and perhaps the least serious, of the criticisms. It is that it is negative, and therefore of little use to those who seek positive help in understanding the person of Jesus. "Properly speaking", says Bishop J. A. T. Robinson, "it is not a solution but a statement of the problem." 1 This has long been recognized. As long ago as 1891 Bishop Charles Gore wrote of the dogmatic decrees of the Councils that they were "only limits, negatives which block false lines of development, noticeboards which warn us off false approaches, guiding us down the true road to the figure in the Gospels"? This, however, is hardly a criticism. A negative function may well be useful, and lead to a positive value. Chalcedon certainly on the negative side rules out Nestorianism and Eutychianism, marking them as 74

"false approaches" to an understanding of Christ. It can be criticized for this only by those who want to reintroduce these teachings. No theologian to-day may want to introduce Butychianism.3 But there is reason to suppose that some would like to revive an Adoptionism not unlike that which was implied in Nestorianism. 2. It is expressed in out-dated philosophical language It is a more serious criticism that the orthodox definition uses the concepts and terminology of Greek philosophy which are no longer accepted. It is pointed out that it was a philosophy which used static terms : it sought to understand an object by means of definition, putting it into its proper class and differentiating it from other instances of the same class by noting its particular "accidental" qualities. Such definition was often assumed to provide the fullest possible knowledge. This was the "science" of the ancient world. But when Christian thinkers sought for terms in which to express their faith they could hardly do otherwise than employ those used by the serious thinkers of their day. "If people thought at all, they could only think in that kind of medium." 4 Thus we find them using such terms as "essence" or "substance" and "accident", "nature" and hupostasis, genus, species and differentia. These terms are not used in contemporary science and philosophy. Nobody imagines that we can understand an object by placing it in its proper genus and noting its differences from other members of that genus, or by a consideration of some aspect of the object called its "substance" or "nature". Such concepts seem mere abstractions to the modern mind. Speaking broadly, modern philosophy views reality dynamically, and not statically; and modem science studies an object in its functions. From the point of view of modern science it could with justice be said that the categories of thought used by the Fathers of the first five centuries are bankrupt : they produce nothing in the way of positive knowledge. William Temple in his contribution to Foundations in 1912 spoke of the Chalcedonian Definition as "a confession 75

of the bankruptcy of Greek Patristic theology". Later he modified this sweeping condemnation, but still maintained that the formula marks "the definite failure of all attempts to explain the Incarnation in terms of Essence, Substance, Nature, and the like".5 As Paul Tillich says, the conceptual tools used by the Chalcedonian Fathers were inadequate .6 Yet he can say that the formula of Chalcedon "was true to the genuine meaning of the Christian message" and that "it saved Christianity from a complete elimination of the picture of Jesus as the Christ"? If the philosophical concepts and terminology of the Chalcedonian formula are out of accord with modern modes of thought, they are equally strange to ancient Hebraic modes. In his contribution to Soundings, Canon H. W. Montefiore writes : "The biblical revelation is not expressed in philosophical terms, because the Jews did not think philosophically. They were concerned not with ontological definition but with dynamic function and with personal relationship." 8 The Old Testament attempts no philosophical discussion of the nature of God. It is concerned with what God has done and will do. The New Testament also is primarily concerned "with what Christ did for men, and with the difference that this makes to our relations with God and with one another".9 Montefiore quotes two other theologians, Gregory Dix and Oscar Cullmann, who insist that biblical christology is a christology of function rather than of status, although they admit that when the Gospel was preached to Greeks, the question of Christ's status and nature was inevitably raised "because that was the only way in which Greeks could think" . It is, therefore, a frequent criticism of Chalcedon that it used concepts which were alien alike from the biblical witness to Christ and from the modern way of thinking. Yet there is a readiness to admit that it could not have been otherwise. Even so independent a thinker as Tillich can say that the Definition preserved the essential meaning of "the event of Jesus as the Christ". The implication of this, it seems to many, is that we should seek a fresh formula which will express 76

the truth of Christ's person in concepts at once more modern and more biblical. It is suggested that we need dynamic concepts which will lead to knowledge of his person through an understanding of his activity, rather than static concepts which attempt to "place" him by defining his nature. 3. It is dualistic But some modern theologians are not prepared to give even so much approval to the Chalcedonian Definition. They have attacked it as implying, through its insistence on the two natures, a duality of persons little different from the Nestorianism it purports to exclude. Harnack, quoting the Tome of Leo, says, "The proposition . . . 'each nature in communion with the other does what is proper to it' actually makes two subjects out of one." 10 H. R. Mackintosh speaks of Chakedon's "blank unrelieved insistence upon the eternal parallelism of two natures", and says that such "a twofold personality is not merely something that we fail to understand; it is something we see quite well to be impossible. In fact a being in whom now the God acts, now the man, is equally repellent to faith and theory." 11 But such criticisms are not altogether fair to the Chalcedonian Fathers. They certainly affirmed that Jesus Christ is Son of God and Lord "recognized in two natures", and this was later elaborated as implying "two wills and two activities". But, in spite of some unwary sentences, they did not mean that Jesus willed and acted alternately in his divine nature and in his human nature. For them (and the Definition by its repetition of the phrase "one and the same" insists on it), there is one agent, the Son of God incarnate, and all the thoughts, words, and actions are the thoughts, words, and actions of that one agent. The charge of dualism is partly to be explained by the fact that several of the key words of the Definition are employed differently to-day. This is especially true of "Person", as translating the Greek hupostasis, and "Nature" as translating phusis. "Person" (hupostasis) in the Chalcedonian sense did not connote consciousness, will, capability, energy, or function, all 77

of which were thought of as belonging to the nature of a thing. It meant rather a unique individualization which makes a "nature" concrete in a particular instance. It was a cold and somewhat colourless word which could be used of inanimate things as well as of living beings. The modern sense of the word "person" may be said to go back to Descartes' cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. A person is a centre of consciousness. This, however, has been felt to be an inadequate definition, pointing solely to the passive side of personality as a receiving centre of mental impressions. Some idealist philosophers have urged that personality is more truly defined in terms of will. Perhaps a putting together of the two points provides a modern definition of personality which would be generally accepted : personality consists in consciousness and will. A person is constituted when an entity establishes a relationship with the external world passively in consciousness, and actively in volition. But in the thought of fifth-century philosopher-theologians consciousness and will were allotted not to the person (hupostasis), but to the "nature". To one who holds a modern idealistic view of personality the Chalcedonian doctrine appears, therefore, to be a doctrine of two persons. He will want to say to the Chalcedonian Fathers "What you call a nature I call a person. Your doctrine of Christ's two natures is really a doctrine of two persons, two streams of consciousness, and two wills, which simply does not make sense to me. And your 'hupostasis', which your Latin brothers translated persona, and which in our translations we render 'person', is a needless complication, an abstraction without content." We can, perhaps, begin to understand why it seems to some that Chalcedon is "a confession of the bankruptcy of Greek Patristic theology". The Greek theologians had come to an impasse. Their insistence on the true divinity and full manhood of Christ as well as the unity of his person testifies to their loyalty to the New Testament picture of Jesus, but the concepts they used and the terms in which they expressed themselves had brought them to the point at which questions 78

were raised to which no intellectually satisfying answer was forthcoming, nor perhaps could be forthcoming. 4. It raises unanswerable questions One instance of the kind of question which Chalcedon raises is mentioned by Professor Donald Baillie in his God was in Ghrist.12 He is discussing modern attempt to restate the doctrine of "two natures, one hupostasis, and that the hupostasis of the Word". One such attempt 13 is the suggestion that in the Incarnation the divine Logos who is the subject of divine experience enters into human experience, and thus becomes also the subject of human experience. The difficulty Baillie sees is that if "the only 'subject' of the experience was God the Son, there seems to be no room left for what we surely find in the Gospel story : Jesus as a man having experience of God in faith and prayer, where God is not the 'subject' but the object". In other words, what was happening when Jesus was praying? Was he praying to himself? The Chalcedonian doctrine that it is the divine Logos who is the experiencing subject in the Incarnation raises other difficult questions, some of which occur to the simplest people. If Jesus was God must he not have known that he would not give in to temptation? Was not temptation much easier, then, for him to resist than for us? He must also have known that he would triumph over death. Were not his sufferings, therefore, more endurable for him than ours for us? There is an even more subtle question in connection with the consciousness of Jesus. If he was the eternal Word of God must he not have known it? We cannot without verging on the nonsensical think of one who is God without knowing that he is God. Now, since there is clearly personal continuity between the Babe of Bethlehem and the adult Jesus, are we to say that in his mother's arms he knew that he was the eternal Word? If he did not, could we think of him as in fact being the Word? If he did, can we think of his manhood as being like ours in all essentials? 79

Such questions are difficult to answer. One attempt to answer some of them was the kenotic (from the Greek keno, to empty) theory of comparatively recent years. Bishop Charles Gore, who taught a cautious kenotic doctrine, put it thus : "The Incarnation is the supreme act of self-sacrificing sympathy, by which one whose nature is divine was enabled to enter into human experience. He emptied himself of divine prerogatives so far as was involved in really becoming man, and growing, feeling, thinking and suffering as a man." 14 As Gore realized, a kenotic doctrine also raises problems, and Kenoticism has evoked heavy criticism." Bishop Frank Weston in The One Christ 16 is critical of kenotic theories," but his own restatement is not dissimilar : The Logos in assuming manhood is the subject or "ego" of all the experiences of the Incarnate, but he recognizes a "law of self-restraint"." He voluntarily restricts his divine consciousness and powers to the measure of the manhood at each stage of its growth." These restatements of orthodox doctrine, though they take cognizance of modern theories of personality, still abound in difficulties. We have new terms, for example "ego" for hupostasis, "consciousness" for phusis, but the old questions remain." FOUR RECENT CHRISTOLOGIES

We now consider some recent attempts by English speaking theologians to profit by these criticisms in stating their doctrine of Christ's person. Regretting that space cannot be given to discuss the work of theologians like Weston and Temple, already referred to, we shall limit ourselves to four theologians who have written since 1948. D. M. Baillie Professor Donald Baillie, as mentioned above, pointed out some of the difficulties implicit in the orthodox doctrine 21 Is his own solution more successful? His suggestion is that, 80

though we may not fully explain, we may come to a better understanding of the paradox of him who is completely divine and completely human, by relating it to the paradoxes which at point after point confront man's faith in God. As instances of such paradoxes he mentions the doctrine of creation out of nothing, and the doctrine of providence which accepts the ideas both of natural law and of God's direction. He then speaks of another paradox which "lies at the very heart of the Christian life. . . . It is what we may call the paradox of grace. Its essence lies in the conviction which a Christian man possesses, that every good thing in him, every good thing he does, is somehow not wrought by himself but by God. This is a highly paradoxical conviction, for in ascribing all to God it does not abrogate human personality nor disclaim personal responsibility." 22 It is expressed in St Paul's words, "By the grace of God I am what I am. . . . I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me." 23 Baillie takes this paradox of grace as a key to the understanding of the Incarnation. The Gospel passages in which Jesus makes the highest claims "sound rather like disclaimers. . . . The God-Man is the only man who claims nothing for Himself, but all for God".24 Yet in the life of Jesus all depended on the daily human choices. But, having said that, "we must inevitably turn round and say something apparently opposite, remembering that in the last analysis such human choice is . . . wholly dependent on the divine prevenience. We must say that in the perfect life of Him who was `always doing the things that are pleasing to God',2$ this prevenience was nothing short of Incarnation, and He lived as He did because He was God incarnate." 26 He concludes that, in the light of the paradox of grace, the Incarnation presents us with a paradox which cannot be rationalized, but "can in some small measure be understood". Many have found Baillie's suggestion illuminating, and so it is. But is it to say more than that Jesus was the supremely inspired man? On Baillie's view Jesus is the perfect instance of the paradox of grace, the one who is supremely conscious that 81

all that he achieves is of God. Is his divinity, then, simply that his God-consciousness, to use Schleiermacher's phrase, is complete, whereas in the rest of us it is imperfect? Is there only a difference of degree between Jesus and others who in lesser measure are aware that the good they do is of God? Is Jesus' significance that he, more than any other, recognized and relied upon the divine prevenience which is upon all men? Baillie regards an Adoptionist christology as an error," and he foresees the kind of criticism which is here made.28 He claims to be interpreting the doctrine of the Incarnation. Nevertheless he offers little help in understanding what Incarnation is. The tenor of the whole New Testament, and the traditional belief of the Christian Church, is that Jesus is divine in a sense in which no other can be. Illuminating as Baillie is on the human side of the christological paradox he does not help us greatly on the other. But then, can we expect from any theologian a clear expose of the methods God uses in a unique activity? Baillie himself says that "there is a sense in which the mysterium Christi must always remain a mystery".29 Perhaps, at bottom, the modern criticism of Chalcedon is that it attempts the impossible ! J. A. T. Robinson Bishop Robinson's Honest to God includes a criticism of orthodox christology. He is concerned to make intelligible to modern man the doctrine of the Incarnation and the divinity of Christ, which "is on any count central to the entire Christian message"." But he contends that the supra-naturalist way of thinking and speaking about God is unacceptable to intelligent modern man. He means by this the idea of God as "the highest Being—out there, above and beyond this world, existing in his own right alongside and over against his creation" 31 It is the conception of God as "a being", one of a series of beings, albeit the greatest and most perfect being and the creator of all other beings, a God who is posited as the explanation of all that is, but whose existence appears to modem man superfluous proportionately as he discovers that 82

"the world may be explained just as adequately without positing such a being".32 It is not that Robinson is denying the transcendence of God, and asserting that he must be conceived as existing wholly within the sphere of the natura1.33 It would, perhaps, have been wiser if he had avoided the term "supranaturalistic" as a label for the idea of God which he rightly castigates. It invited the misunderstanding that he was in some way identifying God with nature. This is not so; rather he is calling for a restating of the idea of transcendence in terms which do not seem merely nonsensical, and without neglecting the idea of immanence which is the other pole of the paradox which meets all who try to come to grips with ultimate reality or God. Bishop Robinson believes that the supra-naturalistic scheme of traditional christology has conveyed to the popular mind a dominantly docetic conception of Christ. He "only appeared to be a man or looked a man : 'underneath' he was God"; 34 or, as he puts it in words which he recognizes to be a parody, it "leaves the impression that God took a space-trip and arrived on this planet in the form of a man. Jesus was not really one of us; but through the miracle of the Virgin Birth he contrived to be born so as to appear one of us. Really he came from outside."35 He does not repudiate the Definition of Chalcedon. It is not, however, a solution, but a statement of the problem of Christ's person : and "as a correct statement, as a 'signpost against all heresies', it had—and has—an irreplaceable value".36 This value is that it insists on the unity of Christ's person, and at the same time refuses to admit any confusion of divine and human natures in him. His criticism of Chalcedon is one that we have met before, that its "conceptual tools" were inadequate. The use of the categories "divine nature" and "human nature" inevitably meant that in popular thought one or other "nature" predominated. The ordinary man interprets the Church's teaching to mean that Jesus was "really God Almighty walking about on earth, dressed up like a man".37 Bishop Robinson believes that Paul Tillich and Dietrich 83

Bonhoeffer offer a starting-point for a reinterpretation of christology. Tillich declares that the Christian claim is that Jesus is the final revelation of God. This claim the Chalcedonian Definition sought to protect. What is it that supports this claim? It is, in Bishop Robinson's words, the "paradox running through all the Gospels that Jesus makes no claims for himself in his own right and at the same time makes the most tremendous claims about what God is doing through him and uniquely through him".38 "Jesus never claims to be God, personally : yet he always claims to bring God, completely." In Jesus "there is nothing of self to be seen, but solely the ultimate, unconditional love of God. It is as he emptied himself utterly of himself that he becomes the carrier of 'the name which is above every other name', the revealer of the Father's glory—for that name and that glory is simply Love . . . For it is in making himself nothing, in his utter self-surrender to others in love, that he discloses and lays bare the ground of man's being as Love." 39 The passage in Tillich to which Robinson appeals speaks of the medium of final revelation as one "which overcomes its own finite conditions by sacrificing them, and itself with them. He who is the bearer of the final revelation must surrender his finitude—not only his life but also his finite power and knowledge and perfection. In doing so, he affirms that he is the bearer of final revelation (the Son of God' in classical terms). He becomes completely transparent to the mystery he reveals. But in order to be able to surrender himself completely, he must possess himself completely. And only he can possess—and therefore surrender—himself completely who is united with the ground of his being and meaning without separation and disruption. In the picture of Jesus as the Christ we have the picture of a man who possesses these qualities, a man who, therefore, can be called the medium of final revelation." 40 On this passage from Tillich the following comments seem called for. It appears substantially to be saying what orthodox Christianity has said. That Jesus is the medium and bearer of final revelation, that he surrendered himself completely, that 84

he could do so only because he is united with "the ground of his being and meaning" (i.e. God),41 are propositions with which any Chalcedonian Father would have agreed. There is here both insistence on full manhood—the finitude which he surrenders—and on union with God "without separation and disruption" (a literal translation of two of the four Chalcedonian adverbs !).42 A new terminology is, of course, employed, and one which may be helpful at the present time. But who is to judge whether it is "better" than the Chalcedonian terminology? One wonders what might be said on this point by men as far removed in time from Tillich as the publication of his Systematic Theology is from Chalcedon. Robinson finds in Bonhoeffer also the suggestion that Jesus' freedom from self is the starting-point for a modern christology. He quotes from Bonhoeffer's "Outline for a Book" : Jesus is "one whose only concern is for others. This concern of Jesus for others the experience of transcendence. This freedom from self, maintained to the point of death, the sole ground of his omnipotence, omniscience and ubiquity. . . . God in human form, not, as in other religions, in animal form . . . nor yet in abstract form . . . nor yet in the Greek divine-human of autonomous man, but man existing for others, and hence the Crucified. A life based on the transcendent." 43 In expounding this Robinson says that Jesus' life for others is trancendence. In encountering one who loved to the uttermost, we encounter God, the ultimate depth of our being. "Because Christ was utterly and completely 'the man for others', because he was love, he was 'one with the Father', because 'God is love'."44 Moreover, because of this he was "most entirely man. . . . He was indeed one of us." 45 The passage makes clear that Robinson accepts what the Chalcedonian Definition attempted to guard, the full manhood and the divinity of the one person of Christ. His is a theology of incarnation, and not of adoption : "He is indeed not 'of this world' but 'of love'. The source and spring of his whole being is God. . . . In the man Christ Jesus stands revealed, exposed at the surface level of 'flesh', the depth and ground of all our 85

being as Love. The life of God, the ultimate Word of Love in which all things cohere, is bodied forth completely, unconditionally and without reserve in the life of a man—the man for others and the man for God." 46 Here is a strong incarnationist doctrine, which pays attention both to the Antiochene and the Alexandrian emphases, and is stated in the dynamic, personal, and functional terms suggested by Tillich and Bonhoeffer instead of the metaphysical categories of the Greek Fathers. But, like other restatements, it too raises questions. One question is whether Robinson's, and Bonhoeffer's, definition of transcendence is adequate : "This concern of Jesus for others [is] the experience of transcendence"; "This 'life for others, through participation in the Being of God' is transcendence". How can they be so sure? Does transcendence mean no more than life for others? When we have said with Tillich and Robinson, and truly said, that God is "the depth and ground of all our being as Love", have we exhausted the possible meaning of transcendence? It has seemed to some critics that what Robinson speaks of as transcendence is very like what older theologians spoke of as immanence. To be sure, if there is a revelation of God to man, it must be a revelation of God in his immanence, dealing with man in the world. But the experience of revelation carries with it the implication that the Revealer is greater than that in which he reveals himself; it implies transcendence. If there be a God, and the experience of revelation has convinced the Christian of this, he must, beyond our imagining, be the depth and ground not only of all our being, but of all being. He is not to be confined to the "in here"; he is concerned with the "up there" and the "out there", even though we should indeed be childish to think of him as a being who exists "up there" or "out there". If one is to think of God at all, the concept of transcendence is necessary, though its content is beyond our present grasp. But the idea of God would be the subject of another book. Here we only record the impression that Bishop Robinson's treatment of transcendence allows the word "God" to mean no more than man is capable of 86

experiencing; that therefore he restricts the action of God in Christ to a revelation of what is already potential in man; and that consequently his doctrine of incarnation blurs the distinction between God and man in such a way as to raise the question whether he believes God to have any existence apart from the existence of man. W. R. Matthews A few months before the publication of Honest to God there appeared a volume of essays called Soundings. One essay is by Canon H. W. Monteflore, entitled "Towards a Christology for Today". In it he refers to a small book by Dr W. R. Matthews, The Problem of Christ in the Twentieth Century, published in 1950, as deserving more attention than it has received. Concurring in this judgement, I propose to summarize its main argument. In Chapter III ("Towards a Modern Christology") there is a discussion of the influence of the thought of the last hundred years, especially in the field of psychology, upon our ideas of personality. Dr Matthews contends that theologians must not ignore the hypothesis of "the unconscious", the concept of "the libido", the results of psychical research, telepathy, extra-sensory perception, and the phenomena of inspiration and genius. In his brief but wide-ranging discussion he hints at ways in which the new knowledge may be found to illuminate the old questions. But he does not believe that psychology can give the final answer to the fundamental questions of the Incarnation : "No doctrine of the Incarnation is possible which does not, implicitly or explicitly, make use of philosophical presuppositions."47 In Chapter IV Dr Matthews notes the tendency of modern thought, under the influence of science and the new interest in history, to develop dynamic concepts. Yet there are permanent, or relatively permanent, elements in experience, and these must be accounted for. If it were true that all is flux, who or what could know it? Recent scientific philosophy has recognized both elements of flow and permanence by the use of the 87 7

idea of "moving pattern". Things are conceived of not as substances, but as moving patterns of events : "The table at which I am writing is a relatively stable and slow moving pattern, while the cloud which I can see from my window is a relatively unstable and fast changing pattern." 48 "Now the events which constitute tables and clouds, so far as we can observe, have no inner or subjective aspect (i.e. the table or cloud is not even aware of the events). But the events which constitute a person have, and may be called 'behaviourevents'. They include a high proportion of acts of conscious will. Persons, then, may be regarded as moving patterns of behaviour-events, events which have an inner aspect, desires, motives, choices. The more co-ordinated a person is, the more we can be certain that he will not depart from the pattern which has been established. Nevertheless he may often act surprisingly, for the pattern is moving and is no mere repetition of what has gone before; there is development in det2 i1.49 Dr Matthews now proposes to apply this concept to the Incarnation. He suggests that we can regard the will of God as a moving pattern. He realizes that the idea of the will of God is difficult, but the Christian cannot discard it. Admittedly our use of the phrase is anthropomorphic, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that "there is in the divine Experience some element or phase of which our experience of will is a faint but true echo". Though we must try to think of the will of the eternal God as an eternal fact, one timeless act, the exigencies of our human standpoint demand that we think of it also as "translated into the sphere of time. From the standpoint of time, we must think of the will of God as a perfectly coherent moving pattern of acts of will, and a pattern which is not yet completed."5° Now a pattern may be exhibited both on an immense and on a microscopic scale. The patterns of events which used to be called "laws of nature" may be discerned both in the solar system and in the smallest objects. Therefore there is no contradiction in "holding that the moving pattern of the will 88

of God could be also the moving pattern of the behaviourevents which constitute the temporal and historical aspects of a human life. . . . A personal life of which it could be said that it is of the same pattern as the temporal will of God would be the supreme revelation of God; it would be God 'manifest in the flesh'. . . . The pattern of the Father's will, on this hypothesis, is the essential reality of the temporal personality of the Son . . . and the pattern, like the temporal will of God, is a moving pattern—the work is not yet completed." 51 Dr Matthews puts this forward tentatively, admitting that, while it avoids some of the difficulties of the traditional formulations, it raises others. One in particular he mentions. The "pattern" of a personal life consists not only in acts of conscious will, but also in activity below the level of consciousness. Can it be said, he asks, that the temporal will of God has within it anything to correspond to the unconscious and semiconscious desires and emotions? "Probably not", he says; and if not, can we say that a personal human life, that of Jesus, exhibits the pattern of God's will?52 The difficulty, however, does not appear insuperable. Dr Matthews points to a solution earlier in his book when, taking a hint from Schleiermacher, he suggests that in the development of the human experience of Jesus "the instinctive material, the impulses which well up from the unconscious, are perfectly controlled, harmonized and directed in accordance with the demands of each stage." 53 Cannot we understand the temporal dealings of the wise and loving will of God with the situation of a world which resists his creative purpose as analogous with this? The analogy is the closer if, with Jung, it be held that the human "unconscious", and therefore that of Jesus, bears traces of humanity's agelong resistance. Finally, Dr Matthews asks why, if his suggestion be accepted, in the case of Jesus alone that pattern was perfect. The orthodox doctrine of Christ's person had guarded the uniqueness of Jesus' life by the doctrine that the experiencing subject in that life was the divine Son : God was in Christ, so that the manhood is fashioned into a thing of perfection. Can the 89

theory of moving patterns be integrated with such a doctrine of incarnation? He wonders whether the concept of "substance",54 obsolete as it is in modern physics, may not have been dismissed too hastily in reference to persons. Consciousness of self leads inevitably to a conviction of the reality of the "I", the personal centre, the subject, the "substance", that which underlies, endures, receives, and responds to the flux of events, ideas, and impressions, and which cannot simply be identified with the flux. Constructive philosophers have invariably held, in one way or another, that the human self is more than a stream of successive experiences. The mystics, also, of every tradition, in speaking of their inmost experiences all assert that there is "a divine or supra-temporal centre of the self' at which man is in touch with God. Eastern mysticism tends to identify this centre directly with the divine. This implies a pantheistic doctrine in accordance with which we should have to say that every human being is an expression, even an incarnation, of the divine, and that among the myriad incarnations of all other persons Jesus Christ was merely the most outstanding. If, however, the supra-temporal centre of the finite self is not to be identified with God, but is one of many created subjects, dependent upon God for existence, then the person of Jesus could be interpreted as "the taking of a created subject by the divine Logos and the intimate union with it so that the human subject, while never ceasing to be human and created, was so intimately joined with the divine that they formed, in the sphere of history, one person",55 a person whose life and work is, within that sphere, of an identical pattern with the will and activity of God. If it be asked how this union of divine and human subjects could manifest itself in Jesus of Nazareth, the key to the answer, Dr Matthews thinks, is in the phenomenon of inspiration. Inspiration is experienced, whether by poet, musician, artist, or prophet "either as a sudden enlargement of the self or as the flowing in of some influence from beyond it".56 It is experienced by them intermittently, but in Jesus it was continuous and complete : "Jesus is the one completely inspired person 90

and, because he is completely inspired, he is the temporal manifestation in a human life of the Eternal Word." 57 This does not mean that he is not fully man. Limited inspiration does not abolish the human being, but rather enlarges human capacities. That the inspiration of Jesus was without measure does not rob him of his humanity; rather it makes him most fully man, "the human person after God's image".58 He is both truly divine and truly human. The choice of inspiration as the key to understanding the manner of Christ's divinity has brought on Dr Matthews the criticism that his doctrine is a modern form of psilanthropism,59 in that it implies that Jesus is different only in degree from any inspired man; and, therefore, that his divinity consists in the possession, in a complete and perfect way, of something which can be possessed by any man. But of this he is to be acquitted. Dr Matthews does not regard inspiration as an element in human nature which "any man" can possess. It is a "flowing in" from outside, something which man is capable of receiving, but always a gift of God. Secondly, there is his expressed concern to show that his suggestions can be integrated with "the belief that the Incarnation is a gracious act of God and that the Son 'came down from heaven'—from the eternal into time". 6° Yet it is possible to doubt whether Dr Matthews' moving pattern theory may be more helpful in the long run for understanding and commending the Christian faith in Jesus. Professor E. L. Mascall has pointed out 61 that dynamic concepts are not employed in the linguistic philosophy of the third quarter of the twentieth century. The concept of the moving pattern of Jesus' life as the temporal expression of the moving pattern of the will of God is no more likely than the Chalcedonian Definition to commend Christian belief to a linguistic philosopher. Dr Matthews himself suggests that the concepts of substance and of the self as centre of consciousness are not to be discarded too lightly. They are necessary impedimenta of common-sense thinking, are not entirely jettisoned by all who would claim to be philosophers in our day, and 91

receive some confirmation in psychical research and mystical experience. The Chalcedonian categories may well prove to be of more enduring value than any substitute yet suggested. H. W. Monte fiore Earlier in this chapter Bishop Robinson's treatment of transcendence was challenged as too readily assuming that we can give adequate content to such a term. Yet in some measure every theologian who tries to give content to words like "God", "divine", "transcendent", is open to the same criticism. "How do you know that God, the divine, the transcendent, mean what you say they mean ?" is not easy to answer. Can any of us be certain that we know the nature of God enough to give our theological statements meaning? Canon Hugh Montefiore, in his contribution to Soundings, points out that the Chalcedonian Definition also is open to this kind of questioning. It "assumes that we know enough about manhood and godhead to assert that both can be united in their perfection in one person".62 Though we can, of course, offer some description of what it is to be human, we do not even fully know the nature of man. The sciences daily increase our knowledge of man's nature, but yet the human self remains strangely indefinable. Early in the twentieth century there were several attempts to work out a christology in the light of "modern" knowledge of personality. They were overoptimistic. We must agree with Montefiore's important note, in which he says "until the human sciences can give a clearer concept of personality, it is unlikely that any Christological theory that is based on the nature of personality will prove satisfactory".63 But we must add that, even if one day we gain a "final" picture of human nature, it may not provide us with a full understanding of Christ's person. Nevertheless, it is right that theologians should continue to look for any light which modern theories of personality may throw on the question, and we should be grateful to those who do so in each generation. But if it cannot be assumed that we know what human 92

nature essentially is, still less can the assumption be made about divine nature. "The nature of God is beyond our human comprehension. How can we know him who is the ground of our life as well as transcendent to our existence?" " Montefiore claims that we can have some knowledge of God derived from experience of his activity. But such knowledge is "obscure and confused".65 The Christian conviction is that the nature of God is shown to us, as completely as it can be shown to man, in this life, in Jesus Christ. But here we become involved in circularity of argument. Jesus Christ we say, with the Athanasian Creed, is "perfect in Godhead". And if it be asked, What is godhead? we answer that it has been revealed in Jesus Christ. This is no more helpful to an unbelieving inquirer than it would be to a man devoid of the sense of smell to say, "This rose has a perfect fragrance", and then in answer to the question about the meaning of fragrance to say, "This rose". To make the assertion about the rose is a declaration of conviction. To make the Chalcedonian assertion about Jesus is also a declaration of conviction. As a definition which will convey a like conviction to others, as by a self-evident juxtaposition of axioms, it fails. But this was never its purpose. It arose out of controversy amongst believers, and was drawn up for Christians as a protection against false emphases and a consequent denial of some part of the Church's experience of Jesus Christ. It was not intended, nor was it used, as an aid to apologetics or evangelism. The Church in the fifth century had, as the Church to-day has, other means of engendering conviction. Neither for the Chalcedonian Fathers was it possible, nor is it for us, to translate convictions into self-evident propositions. Nevertheless, Montefiore is convinced that Christian theology must continue to search for a way of making its convictions meaningful to contemporary man. He believes that we shall do better to state our christology in terms of "dynamic function and . . . personal relationship" 66 The New Testament's "primary concern is with what Christ did for men, and with the difference that this makes to our relations with God 93

and with one another". He sees Tillich as pointing the way to a modern christology with his suggestion that "we replace the inadequate concept 'divine nature' by the concepts 'eternal God-man unity' or 'eternal God-Manhood'. Such concepts replace a static essence by a dynamic relation." 67 But it is Dr Matthews' application to the life of Jesus of the idea of a moving pattern of activity identical with the pattern of the temporal will of God which most attracts him. Here is a dynamic rather than a static concept, more suited to the biblical way of representing God as he who acts. Montefiore says that God's activity is always loving; and he is, therefore, prepared to say, though with some hesitancy, that the inmost nature of God is love." The same pattern of activity is seen in Jesus, in whom "God reveals himself . . . always and only as loving activity manifested to man in personal being".69 With a delicate and sure touch Montefiore traces the pattern of self-effacing love from the hidden years at Nazareth, through the years of Jesus' ministry, to his death on the Cross. It is the same pattern as in God's work of creation, and in his activity towards Israel; it is the same pattern which is manifested in the life and work of the community of believers, the Church, albeit imperfectly, but the more completely as it is identified with the work of Jesus. The pattern is renewed for the Church, the Body of Christ, in the Eucharist as it identifies itself with Christ. Montefiore's emphasis on self-effacing love as the significant pattern of Jesus' life is strikingly like Robinson's concept, following Bonhoeffer, of "the man for others". They both assert that this utter, selfless love even to the death of self is the fullest revelation of God. "Because Christ was utterly and completely 'the man for others', because he was love, he was 'one with the Father', because 'God is love", says Robinson.70 "The activity of the man Jesus fully and perfectly manifested the divine activity in a human person. . . . the activity of Jesus was the activity of God . . . the love of Jesus was the love of God", writes Montefiore." They are both saying that it is through the work of Jesus, his activity of love, 94

that we must come to an understanding of his person : that we must understand the Incarnation through atonement. Indeed, Robinson says that "there is no final difference between the person of Christ and the work of Christ, the incarnation and the at-one-ment"; 72 and Montefiore quotes P. T. Forsyth with approval : "The canon for the Incarnation . . . is soteriological. It is the work of Christ that gives us the key to the nature of Christ." 73 This suggestion must be taken seriously. Nevertheless, a man's function inevitably raises the question of his status. Clearly the first disciples were moved by what Jesus did to assert their belief in what he was. It is out of their conviction that a redemptive work of God had been achieved by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus that the New Testament writers speak of him as one who "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature" (Heb. 1. 3) and is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1. 15). It was because of his conviction that salvation for man had become a reality through the work of Jesus that Athanasius maintained against all forms of Arianism that he was the Son of God, of one substance with the Father, who was made flesh and became man. If we hear of one who does outstanding things, the inevitable question is "Who is this?". The actions of Jesus prompted it : "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him ?" (Mark 4. 41); "By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?" (Mark 11. 28)—that is, "Who are you?" It is impossible to be content simply with a christology of function. It is perhaps true that "a Christology which is expressed in terms of functional and personal relationship rather than in ontological categories means a return to the biblical perspective",74 but the New Testament itself begins to raise the ontological question : "Who is this?" Summary The theologians we have discussed in this chapter all criticize the Chalcedonian Definition as an attempt to answer 95

the ontological question in static terms. The words "substance" (ousia), and "nature" (phusis) are contrasted with the dynamic concepts of modern thought. But the contrast is not absolute. G. L. Prestige, who in his magisterial God in Patristic Thought examines these terms, remarks that phusis, for instance, "is an empirical rather than a philosophical term", and that there are many instances in which "one physic" signifies "one object possessing a certain character or displaying a certain function".75 However this may be, it is to be admitted that the concepts and terms used in the discussion about Christ's person in the fourth and fifth centuries are either not understood or not accepted now. The Christian theologian must, therefore, continue to try to express the conviction which the Chalcedonian Definition enshrined in terms which are understood and accepted. More important is the question about that conviction. Is it valid? Is it a conviction about something which is true? Can it be proved? In the final chapter we shall address ourselves to these questions. But by way of transition, let us take up one problem with which Canon Montefiore has faced us.76 The traditional formula declares that Jesus is perfect in godhead and perfect in manhood, but, he points out, offers no definition of what godhead or manhood is. We seem, therefore, likely to be involved in a circular argument whenever an inquirer presses us with questions. Jesus possesses the fullness of divinity, we say. But we may be asked, "What is fullness of divinity ?" We answer that it is revealed in Jesus. We say that Jesus is perfect man, and to the question "What do you mean by perfect manhood?" we answer "It is seen in Jesus". It is indeed a circular argument. But matters of deep conviction always tend to give rise to circular argument, for they elude statement in any way which will satisfy mere logic. The estimate of the person of Jesus which the Chalcedonian Definition attempted to state arose, and arises, out of the conviction of men and women from the first disciples until now that in Jesus we encounter the highest. With 96

Bishop Robinson, I am convinced that the "love to the uttermost", and with Canon Montefiore that the "self-effacing love" of Jesus reveals "the depth and ground of all our being" (Robinson) and "the pattern of divine activity" (Montefiore). This is my conviction, my faith. I cannot "prove" it. I know it, but I cannot state it in a way which will satisfy the sceptic. But this inability should not cause us dismay. We know that the most important thing is that we should live by our conviction, letting the same pattern of love manifest itself in our lives. This, as many an example in Christian history shows, is more powerful to produce "conversions" than arguments and exact formulas. But having said that, we must also say that the Christian ought to be able, when approached by an inquirer, to say why he holds to his conviction. About this the final chapter will make some suggestions.

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8 THE APPEAL TO RECORD, EXPERIENCE, AND REASON What can Christians say in support of their conviction that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God? Christians for the most part are aware that they are affirming something which defies precise definition. We would agree that the scholastic attempts to define the relation of the divine and human in the person of Jesus were doomed to failure. We would say the same of modern attempts to explain the person of Jesus in modern psychological or philosophical terms. For if Christian affirmations are true, Jesus is unique; and it is difficult, even impossible, to categorize, define, or explain the unique. We know, too, that what we are affirming is a miracle. By this misunderstood word I mean an event which cannot be exhaustively explained by the methods which science applies to the phenomenal world. It cannot be so explained because its direct cause is grounded in the creative power of God which brought the phenomenal world into being. We are affirming a miracle of the same order of significance as the coming into being of the phenomenal universe itself. It is the assertion that God who is the creator, who gives to all things their being out of his abundant Being, their rationality out of his Wisdom, their loveliness out of his Love, again puts forth creative, or rather re-creative, power. It is the affirmation that in Jesus, one who is in complete unity with the Being, Wisdom, and Love which creates, lived and died as man to bring to men God's own word about himself, and his power to re-create. 98

To what can Christians appeal to substantiate so astounding an affirmation? They appeal to three things : the records, experience, and reason. Let us say at once that none of these courts of appeal will give an answer such as will compel acquiescence. There is an inveterate human tendency to seek an authority which cannot be gainsaid, relieving us of all further doubt, but the Christian, who believes that the nature of God is love, and knows that love never compels, does not really expect to find an authority which will enable him to persuade an unbeliever with the cogency of a Euclidean theorem. The Appeal to the Records We appeal to the records, to the New Testament. Since it has been admitted by all but the obscurantist that the canons of criticism which apply to all literature must be allowed to apply to the New Testament, it is no longer possible for most of us to regard the Gospels as a kind of photographic record of what Jesus did and said. They give us primarily an account of Jesus as the early Church saw him. It by no means follows that the Gospels are fabrications, or that their historical reliability is minimal; but they are interpretative. The New Testament books are the writings of men caught up in the beginnings of a new and powerful historical movement. They were experiencing a new quality of life. Its characteristic mark was fellowship of a hitherto unknown depth, for it was a life directed to God in a hitherto unknown closeness of worship and devotion, and at the same time directed outwards to all humanity in a hitherto unknown intensity of self-giving love. They acknowledged the motive spring of this new experience to be the work of Jesus, the work of God in Jesus, what Bultmann calls "the Christ-event". What they say in these writings is, "This is Jesus as we know him; this is our estimate of him; this is his significance; this is the impact he makes upon us." That estimate is that he is the Christ and Son of God, sent forth by God in the fullness of time (Gal. 4. 4); the eternal Word of God who became flesh (John 1. 14); one who 99

was rich yet for our sakes became poor (2 Cor. 8. 9); one who was in the form of God who yet humbled himself and took the form of a servant (Phil. 2. 5ff); one whose name is to be placed with that of God the Father in ascriptions of praise. Though we give full weight to the consideration that the Gospels are coloured by the light of the conviction of the early Church, the accounts do not lack indication that Jesus believed himself to have a unique relationship with the Heavenly Father. This was our theme in chapters three to five. Jesus' use of the title "Son of Man" especially implies a claim to such a unique relationship. The question was, and is, whether the claim can be admitted. The whole of the New Testament witnesses to the answer given by those who knew him best, and by those who were taught by them. What it came to in the end was the bold assertion which/ the Fourth Gospel puts into the mouth of the disciple Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John 20. 28). The Appeal to Experience I have anticipated the appeal to the second court, that of experience. This was inevitable, for the New Testament writings are themselves evidence of the original experience of men and women who, meeting Jesus either in the flesh or in the preaching of his message, knew that they were confronted by the divine. The appeal to experience is weakened as an argument in that experience is inward. It is always open to the objector to say "You may have this experience, but I do not. What evidence can you offer for its validity? But the inward experience of the early Christians had outward marks such as could be seen by an observer. One was the fellowship which had come into being. Something new was taking place. Here were Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and those whom the Greeks were pleased to call Barbarians, men and women, slaves and free men, finding it possible to work and eat and pray together. Never before had barriers been so completely broken down, barriers of race and culture, between sexes and social classes. 100

There was also the striking courage of the first Christians. They were prepared to go out into the streets of the city and preach Jesus as Lord and Saviour in the face of ridicule, violence, and death. Men have to be deeply convinced to undergo what the early Christians endured : and that they did endure grievous things both Christian and non-Christian writings testify. The Acts of the Apostles records that the Jewish Council, surprised at the courageous bearing of two of the apostles who had been arrested, "recognized that they had been with Jesus" (Acts 4. 13). This may merely be a comment of the author of Acts; but it may echo some remark of a member of the Council intended to suggest that acquaintances of Jesus, the executed impostor, must be taken seriously. But the observation penetrates to the truth of the matter. The boldness of Peter and John, their new-found eloquence, their sense of solidarity with the other disciples and with their converts, were indeed because they had "been with Jesus". Since that day there have been thousands, generation by generation, who have likewise found that their conviction that Jesus is the divine Son of God who came for man's help and salvation has brought the same kind of integrated life, an inner peace, an outward boldness, new freedom and joy in fellowship, a new sense of God's presence; in a word, a new quality of life. They have found that their faith in Jesus Christ has given them hope and a sense of purpose in the face of frustrations and failures, that it "makes sense" of things. This appeal to experience does not in itself constitute an argument for the divinity of Christ which cannot be gainsaid. For there are instances of individuals and of groups of people who have shown great courage, found serenity in life, and a sense of purpose without faith in Christ. This is not to be denied. The Christian gladly acknowledges it as a sign of God's universal love; he does not pretend that he alone is the recipient of God's mercies. But this does not at all affect the claim that a sincere faith in Jesus has with consistency through the centuries Ied to the new quality of life which has been mentioned. 101

There is also, as we hinted above, the opaqueness of experience. The appeal to experience can always be met with the rejoinder, "I do not have this experience, and can make no sense of it". This is true of religious experience as it is of aesthetic experience. It can engender conviction only in those who are able to enter into it. Christian preaching therefore presents an appeal to make the leap of faith. In the sphere of aesthetics one has to put oneself to school with a new idiom, in music, for example, or in painting; comprehension and appreciation often dawn in undergoing the experience. Similarly those who are prepared to make an initial leap of faith and enter into Christian experience find that conviction grows. But the appeal to experience is also weakened because there are so many who profess belief in Jesus as divine Lord whose outward lives do not encourage an observer to give a second thought to the possible truth of their profession. It is the problem of the insincere Christian. It is a reproach to the Christian Church that in nearly two thousand years it has not achieved more of the things which were begun by Christ and his first disciples, and that it has often failed lamentably. This must be recognized with candour and with penitence. But Christian achievements in many spheres must not be minimized. Christian history has in every generation produced shining examples of personal sanctity, of self-sacrificing heroism, of painstaking love for the sick, the underprivileged, and the dying; and these things must be allowed to bear witness for the power of the Name in which they have been done. The Appeal to Reason In saying that it was part of Christian experience that faith in Jesus Christ "makes sense" of things, the transition to the third court of appeal, that of reason, was anticipated. Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109), the "Father of the Schoolmen", held it possible by a process of deductive reasoning, starting from the existence of God, to prove the necessity of the 102

Incarnation. His Cur Deus Homo? made an impressive attempt to do so, But we cannot use his method to-day, and it is not in this sense that we appeal to reason. Rather we want to say that the event of Jesus Christ, seen as a revelation from God, provides an illuminating insight into the meaning of life. In the conviction that in Jesus God is revealing himself many things which were dark and doubtful become clear. Life begins to take on a depth of meaning unguessed before. The ground of the universe has been revealed, not as impersonal energy driving on from one great catastrophic event to another, between two of which the appearance of life and consciousness on this planet is an inexplicable sport of nature thrown up in the process; but as one who has with intelligent purpose brought all things into being, who has a particular concern for that part of his creation which is mankind, with whom he maintains a relationship which, for want of any more adequate word, we call personal. It has been revealed that within the being of the Creator himself there subsists the pattern of what he would have men to become, the eternal object of a Father's love who eternally and completely responds to that love, the eternal expression of God's wisdom and truth, the Word or Logos of God. There has been revealed to us (for he who became flesh in Jesus was the Logos of God) the depth of God's concern for man, which, in human terms, is a love that gives to the uttermost, even to the point of an ignominious death. Therein is also revealed (for it was manhood that the Logos took) that such a love is meant to be the essence of man's life; a love which extends to all humanity without respect of person, race, or class; which extends, too, to all nature, seeking in a truly scientific spirit to understand and appreciate the significance of each facet, to co-operate with it and to use it well. Man's present probings of space begin to suggest that he may be called to an adventurous work of self-sacrifice and service in an ever-widening area. Because the Christian believes that the nature and purpose of creative power is revealed in the love of Jesus Christ, he can no longer see man as simply an intricate bundle of 103 8

chemical constituents which happens to have appeared on one tiny planet in a stupendously large universe; no longer a piece of driftwood, however unique, on an ocean of meaninglessness. But he sees man as created and endowed by God, again being offered God's creative power for cleansing and refashioning what has become marred in his endowment, and called to cooperate with him who is the creative ground of all things in a universal purpose far exceeding our present grasp, but which time to come will surely make plainer. This is what we mean by saying that the Incarnation "makes sense of things". This is the appeal to reason. Such a claim is, we well realize, open to the charge of wishful thinking. But not all wishful thinking is groundless. This piece of wishful thinking the Christian holds to be an act of faith; not of blind faith, but faith grounded on an act, a revelation, of God. Jesus followed up the question which we discussed in our first chapter with the further question, "Who do you say that I am?" The Christian out of his knowledge of the records, out of his experience, and out of his conviction that Jesus Christ gives meaning to life will answer in the words of the beginning of St John's Gospel : "In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. . . . and the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father."

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NOTES CHAPTER 1 1. The Revised Standard Version is used in all quotations from the Bible. 2. Mark 8. 29; cf. Matt. 16. 15, Luke 9. 20. 3. See pp. 11 ff below. 4. In every age men have sworn by their divinities. The use of "Jesus" and "Christ" in oaths is an unlovely, and for the most part unconscious, recognition of the Christian estimate of Jesus. 5. Occasionally, but often enough perhaps to make this note worth while, one hears the assertion that Jesus was not an historical person, but a literary creation. This theory was propounded by a German historian, Bruno Bauer (1809-82). For an account of it, see Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Black, 3rd ed., 1954), pp. 137ff. It was taken up by a few English scholars, of whom the best known is J. M. Robertson whose Christianity and Mythology (1900) is still reprinted in "The Thinker's Library". No serious historian to-day would subscribe to a theory that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in Galilee and Judea in the first two or three decades of our era. 6. E.g. Jesus' alleged disregard for, and discourtesy to, his mother in Luke 2. 49; the harshness of his denunciations of the Scribes and Pharisees, Matt. 23; and his alleged willingness to consign the faithless to a horrible and everlasting punishment. 7. The Apostles' Creed in approximately its present form was in use in the Church of the West in the fourth century, and there is some evidence for its use as early as the second century. 8. The so-called Nicene Creed was acknowledged by the General Council of Chalcedon in 451. It is probably the creed accepted by the Council of Constantinople in 381. It is an amplification of the creed drawn up to combat the Arian heresy by the Council of Nicea in 325. The designation "Nicene Creed", therefore, refers to its ancestry rather than its provenance. 9. 2 Cor. 5. 19.

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CHAPTER 2 1. Published by Faber and Faber; undated, but about 1930. 2. Pliny, Epistles X (ad Traianum). xcvi. 3. Acts 15. 1; cf. also Gal. 2. 4. 4. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies I. 26. 2. Cerinthus was a Gnostic heretic. He is referred to by several early Christian writers. 5. Ibid. I 26. 1; translation from J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius (S.P.C.K., 1957), p. 96. 6. This type of christology is also called Adoptionism. 7. "Docetism" is derived from the Greek dokein, to seem, and is descriptive of the thesis that Jesus only seemed to be man. 8. For a brief account of the Gnostics see J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (Black, Harper, 1958), pp. 22-8. 9. Ignatius, To the Trallians IX. Translation from J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, ed. J. R. Harmer, 1891. 10. To the Ephesians VII. 11. To the Romans VI. 12. Clement of Rome, To the Corinthians XVI; Lightfoot's translation. 13. Justin Martyr, Apol. I. 23. Translation from H. Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers (Oxford, 1956), p. 83. 14. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies IV. 20. 4. Translation from H. Bettenson, op. cit., p. 105. 15. F. C. Grant, The Gospels: their Origin and their Growth (Harper, 1957, Faber, 1959), p. 16. 16. Ibid., p. 18. 17. E.g. Mark 1. 28, 33, 45; 2. 1, 13, 15, etc.; Matt. 4. 24-5; 5. 1; 8. 1, etc.; Luke 4. 42; 5. 1; 6. 17, etc. 18. There is no evidence whatever for the assumption, often made in Palm Sunday sermons, that the people who were suborned to clamour before Pilate for the death of Jesus (Mark 15. 11) were the same as those who had shouted Hosanna a few days before. Jerusalem was a populous city, and in that week there would have been a great influx of pilgrims. 19. Alan Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament (S.C.M., Westminster Press, 1958), p. 151. 20. So Rudolf Bultmann : "The scene of Peter's Confession . . . is an Easter-story projected backward into Jesus' lifetime", Theology of the New Testament (S.C.M., Scribner's, 1952-5) vol. I, p. 26. 106

21. B. H. Branscomb, The Gospel of Mark (The Moffatt New Testament Commentary), (Hodder and Stoughton, 1937), p. 153. 22. Translation of G. B. Gray in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles, vol. II, 1913; quoted at length by 0. Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (S.C.M., Westminster Press, 1959), p. 115. 23. C.K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St John (S.P.C.K., 1955), P. 5. 24. Branscomb, op. cit., p. 150.

CHAPTER 3 1. Branscomb, op. cit., p. 150. 2. Ibid., p. 152. 3. Rudolf Bultmann, op. cit., vol. I, chapter 1, section 4, pp. 26-32, from which the quotations in the remainder of this chapter are taken unless otherwise stated. 4. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 125. 5. Bultmann, op. cit., p. 50; cf. They understood Jesus as the one whom God by the resurrection has made Messiah", ibid., pp. 43-4. 6. Ibid., p. 45. 7. 1 Cor. 11. 23; 15. 3; Gal. 1. 11, 12. 8. Heb. 12. 2.

CHAPTER 4 1. For example, T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus, considers that Jesus' use of the title was suggested by Daniel 7. 13 ff. A. Richardson, op. cit., thinks it was suggested by its frequent use in Ezekiel. More radical scholars, R. Bultmann for example, deny that Jesus spoke of himself as Son of Man at all. They also differ on the question to what extent the Son of Man idea in the New Testament was influenced by non-Jewish (Persian and Gnostic) concepts of a heavenly or archetypal Man. 2. The same is true of all but one of its occurrences in the Fourth Gospel. In John 12. 34 Jesus' questioners use the phrase, but they are asking him about its meaning. 3. For these details see A. Richardson, op. cit., p. 128, and 0. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 182. 107

4. Cf. 0. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 137: "Along with the concept ebed Yahweh (Servant of the Lord), the San of Man is the most important concept we have to investigate." 5. Richardson, op. cit., p. 129. It is, however, probable that in Matt. 12. 31, 32 the Evangelist has fallen into some confusion. On this see Cullmann, op. cit., p. 153. 6. Richardson, op. cit., p. 145. 7. There are also Luke 12. 10 = Matt. 12. 32, and Luke 17. 26 = Matt. 24. 37. Luke 17. 30 is probably Q, but it has no parallel in Matthew. Luke 12. 8f = Matt. 10. 32f may have been in Q, although there is a parallel in Mark 8. 38. 8, For example, the Trade Union Movement in its basic intention; the creation of the Welfare State, the United Nations and its ancillary organizations are examples. 9. E. Best, One Body in Christ (S.P.C.K., 1955), p. 184. 10. C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures (Nisbet, 1952), p. 119; quoted by Richardson, op. cit., p. 139, in an illuminating section on "The Corporate Son of Man". 11. C. H. Dodd, The interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1953), p. 248. 12. Mark 8. 31; 9. 9, 12, 31; 10. 33, 45; 14. 21 (twice), 41. 13. Luke 17. 25; 19. 10; 22. 48; 24. 7. 14. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 160. 15. E.g. by M. D. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (S.P.C.K., 1959). 16. Cul!mann, op. cit., p. 161. 17. See above, pp. 22ff. 18. See above, pp. 28f. 19. William of Occam (c. 1300-49), Nominalist philosopher: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." 20. Vincent Taylor, The Names of Jesus (Macmillan, St Martin's Press, 1954), pp. 30ff. 21. Ibid., p. 34. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. CHAPTER 5 1. Quoting Ps. 2. 7 in reference to Jesus, as in Acts 13. 33; Heb. 1. 5 and 5. 5. 2. See Vincent Taylor, op. cit., p. 57. 108

3. Ibid., p. 56. 4. Bultmann, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 50, 128-133. 5. N. P. Williams, "The Origin of the Sacraments" in Essays Catholic and Critical, ed. E. G. Selwyn (S.P.C.K., 1926). Though written several decades ago the essay well repays study. It deals primarily with the contention that Paul imported into Christianity a sacramental doctrine and practice which was native to the Greek Mystery religions. But it also refutes the argument of W. Bousset in Kyrios Christos (1921) that Paul substituted for the primitive belief in Jesus a doctrine of his person modelled after the gods of the Mystery religions. 6. Cf. Ps. 89. 26, 27. 7. Cf. also Ps. 82. 6; Isa. 1. 2; 30. 1; 45. 11; 63. 16; Jer. 3. 22; 31. 20; Mal. 1. 6 in which the people are spoken of as God's sons. 8. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 278. 9. See p. 33 above. 10. The Fourth Gospel draws this out further in the discourses of chapters 14 to 17, and in the resurrection saying, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father" (20. 17). 11. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 286; but Cullmann himself does not think this a sufficient reason for doubting its authenticity. 12. John 3. 35; 5. 20; 10. 15; 14. 9 are, for example, cited as parallels. 13. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 287. 14. On this point consult the short article "Know, Knowledge" in A Theological Word Book of the Bible, ed. Alan Richardson (S.C.M., 1950). 15. V. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 64-5. CHAPTER 6 1. The first of these three questions was the one which least exercised the ancient Fathers. The influence of Platonism was strong in the Hellenistic world. Platonism depreciated the material, and consequently the body, as being less than real, and even as inherently evil. It was therefore difficult for many to conceive of a divine person coming into the intimate personal relationship with "flesh" which a doctrine of incarnation demands. Hence the prevalence on the fringe of Christian circles of docetic ideas. It was comparatively easy for many to believe that a divine person should appear to be a man, or pretend to be a man, but not that the bodily functions, human experiences, and particularly the sufferings could be experienced by the divine person. The "flesh" would be thought of as phantasmal. 109

2. The most recent history of early Christian doctrine in English is J. N. D. Kelly's Early Christian Doctrines (Black, 1958). 3. See especially On Christ's Flesh, 10-13. 4. Tertullian himself, however, did conceive of the divine spirit "as a highly rarefied species of matter". See Kelly, op. cit., p. 114. 5. On Christ's Flesh, 18. 6. Against Praxeas, 27. Translation from H. Bettenson, op. cit., p. 171. 7. On First Principles I. 2. 4. 8. Against Celsus ii. 25. Bettenson, op. cit., p. 300. 9. Homilies on Luke XXIX. Bettenson, op. cit., p. 301. 10. Commentary on John, I. 28, 196. 11. Kelly, op. cit., p. 157. 12. This Creed was amplified at the Second General Council of Constantinople in 381. See note 8, p. 105. 13. The Greek word for "of like substance" is homoiousion. Between this and homoousion there is only one letter, and that the smallest in the Greek alphabet, a fact over which unbelievers have made great play. But in many words a single letter can make an enormous difference. 14. Athanasius, Against the Arians ii. 70. Bettenson, op. cit., p. 404. 15. On the Incarnation 7, 8. Bettenson op. cit., pp. 401-2. 16. Against the Arians iii. 31. Bettenson, op. cit., pp. 397-8. 17. See above, p. 54 and p. 55. 18. Letter to Serapion IV. 14. Bettenson, op. cit., 398-9. 19. The question is discussed by Kelly, op. cit., pp. 287-8. 20. Arius, too, belongs to the Alexandrian school, although, as we have seen, he was a deviationist. 21. Kelly, op. cit., p. 292. 22. For the reference see Kelly, op. cit., pp. 294-5. 23. In fairness to the memory of Apollinarius it should be said that some modern theologians, among them H. M. Relton, consider that his christology was a brilliant attempt to achieve a solution of the problems involved, and came very near to the position which, after further clarification of the technical terms used, was later pronounced orthodox at Chalcedon. It has to be remembered also that a great deal of our knowledge of Apollinarius' teaching comes to us through his opponents. 24. Kelly, op. cit., p. 312. 110

25. This is known as communicatio idiomatum, the doctrine of Interchange of Properties. Used in an orthodox way it is but a verbal device, and does not imply that the human nature has actually acquired divine properties or vice versa. But the Antiochenes suspected this, and the extravagant language of some Alexandrians gave cause for the suspicion. 26. Cyril of Alexandria, Epistle IV (the second to Nestorius). See H. Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (2nd ed.) (Oxford, 1963), p. 67. 27. Ibid., preface. Cyril repeats the phrase in other writings. 28. Ibid. 29. Kelly, op. cit., p. 320. 30. Cyril of Alexandria, Epistle IV. See Bettenson, Documents, p. 67. 31. Epistle XL. See Kelly, op. cit., p. 321. 32. See Bettenson, Documents, pp. 68-9. 33. The Assyrian Christians of to-day are Nestorian. Monophysite Churches are the Coptic and Abyssinian, the Syrian Jacobites and the Armenian, which "accept the fathers of the Church prior to Chalcedon, and in their official professions of faith and their liturgical documents even appear to confess the orthodox Christology but in Monophysite terms, though individual members have sometimes followed the heterodox teaching of Eutyches and his disciples" (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross (Oxford, 1957), p. 916 sub "Monophysitism"). 34. Epistle 28 in the collection of the letters of Leo I. 35. The Library of Christian Classics, vol. III, Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. E. R. Hardy (S.C.M., 1954), p. 359. William Bright's English translation of Lea's Tome is given in full. 36. An instance of the Interchange of Properties: see note 25 above. 37. For example, in his second letter to Nestorius. See above, p. 65. 38. Leo, Epistles 124. 39. Cyril's second letter to Nestorius, and his letter to John, Bishop of Antioch. 40. The Chalcedonian Definition is not lengthy. It may be studied in full in Bindley, Oecumenical Documents of the Faith (Methuen), 3rd ed., 1925, English translation pp. 292-8; or in abbreviated form in Christology of the Later Fathers. (see note 35 above). The paragraph in the text is from Bettenson, Documents, p. 73. 41. Quoted from Bettenson, Documents, pp. 128-9. 111

CHAPTER 7 1. J. A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (S.C.M., Westminster Press, 1963., p. 65. 2. Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (Scribners, 1891), p. 118 (1905 ed.). 3. See D. M. Baillie, God was in Christ (Faber, 1948), p. 20 (2nd ed.). "All serious theological thought has finished with the docetist, Eutychean, Monophysite errors which explained away the humanity of our Lord and thus the reality of the Incarnation. No more docetism l Eutyches, we may say, is dead." 4. G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (S.P.C.K., 1956), p. xvii. On this point pp. xiii-xviii repay study. 5. William Temple, Christus Veritas (Macmillan, 1924), p. 134. 6. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. II (Nisbet, University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 161. 7. Ibid., p. 163. 8. Soundings, ed. A. R. Vidler (Cambridge, 1962), chapter 7, "Towards a Christology for Today" by H. W. Montefiore, p. 157. 9. Ibid. 10. A. Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. IV (English translation), (Williams and Norgate, 1898), pp. 223-4. 11. H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Scribners, 1912), p. 296. 12. D. M. Baillie, op. cit., pp. 86-7. 13. By Leonard Hodgson, in Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, ed. A. E. J. Rawlinson (Longmans, 1928), p. 383. 14. Charles Gore, Belief in Christ (Murray, 1922), p. 226. 15. See D. M. Baillie, op. cit., pp. 94-8. But it appears to the present writer that Baillie's criticisms are directed at a kenoticism of the type of Thomasius, and miss the mark so far as Gore's version of it is concerned. For a sympathetic view of the kenotic theory, see Vincent Taylor, The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching (Macmillan, 1958), c. 19, "Christology and the Kenosis". 16. Frank Weston, The One Christ (Longmans, 1907). 17. Ibid., c.5. 18. Ibid., p. 151 (2nd ed., 1914). 19. Ibid., pp. 153, 179. 20. See, for example, J. S. Lawton, Conflict in Christology (S.P.C.K., 1947), pp. 271-80. 21. See above, p. 79. 112

22. D. M. Baillie, op. cit., p. 114. 23. 1 Cor. 15. 10. 24. D. M. Baillie, op. cit., p. 127. 25. John 8. 29. 26. D. M. Baillie, op. cit., p. 131. 27. Ibid., pp. 129-30. 28. Ibid., p. 131. 29. Ibid., p. 106. 30. J. A. T. Robinson, op. cit., p. 65. 31. Ibid., p. 30. 32. Ibid., p. 31. 33. He makes this very clear in The Honest to God Debate, (S.C.M., 1963), pp. 256ff. 34. Robinson, Honest to God, p. 65. 35. Ibid., p. 66. 36. Ibid., p. 65. 37. Ibid., p. 66. 38. Ibid., p. 73. 39. Ibid., pp. 74-5. 40. Paul Tillich, op. cit., vol. I, p. 148. 41. Ibid., p. 173: "The religious word for what is called the ground of being is God." 42. See p. 70 above. 43. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. E. Bethge (Collins, Fontana Books, 1959), p. 165. 44. J. A. T. Robinson, op. cit., p. 76. 45. Ibid., pp. 76-7. 46. Ibid., p. 77. 47. W. R. Matthews, The Problem of Christ in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1950), p. 60. 48. Ibid., pp. 65-6. 49. Ibid., pp. 67-8. 50. Ibid., p. 70. 51. Ibid., pp. 70-1. 52. Ibid., pp. 71-2.

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53. Ibid., p. 47. 54. N.B. the root meaning of "substance" : that which "stands beneath" or underlies the accidental and changing aspects of a thing. See p. 53 above. 55. Matthews, op. cit., p. 80. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid., p. 82. 58. Ibid., p. 83. 59. Sec c. 2, p. 9 above. 60. Matthews, op. cit., p. 73. 61. E. L. Mascall, Up and Down in Adria (Faith Press, 1963), pp. 66-7. 62. Soundings, p. 153. 63. Ibid., p. 155. 64. Ibid., p. 153. 65. Ibid., p. 154. 66. Ibid., p. 157. 67. Ibid., p. 162, quoting P. Tillich, op. cit., vol. II, p. 170. 68. Soundings, p. 165. 69. Ibid., p. 164. 70. J. A. T. Robinson, op. cit., p. 76. 71. Soundings, p. 171. 72. J. A. T. Robinson, op. cit., p. 77. 73. Soundings, p. 166, quoting P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1909), p. 346. 74. Soundings, p. 159. 75. G. L. Prestige, op. cit., p. 234. Cf. also p. 251. 76. See above, pp. 92f.

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INDEX

Daniel, Book of, 34ff, 43 Descartes, 78 Dioscurus, 66f Dix, Gregory, 76 Docetism, 10, 52ff, 65, 106 Dodd, C. H., 39, 108 Donne, John, 38

Adoptionism, 9, 54, 63, 75, 82, 85, 106 AnseIm, 102f Apollinarius, 56, 59ff, 63, 64, 67, 110 Apostles' Creed 5, 105 Arius, 56ff, 110 Athanasian Creed, 93 Athanasius, 57ff, 66, 95

Ebionites, 9, 52 Enoch, Similitudes of, 37 Ephesus, Council of (431), 65 Eutychianism, 55, 65ff, 74f, 112 Ezekiel, 34

Baillie, D. M., 79, 80ff, 112 Barratt, C. K., 17 Bauer, Bruno, 105 Best, E., 38 Bettenson, H., 106, 110, I 1 1 Bonhoeffer, D., 83ff, 94 Bousset, W., 46, 109 Branscomb, B. H., 14, 18, 19, 107 Bultmann, R., 20ff, 40f, 45f, 99, 106, 107

Flavian, 65f, 67, 69 Forsyth, P. T., 95 Gnostics, 10, 106 Gore, Charles, 74, 80 Grant, F. C., 11 Gregory of Nazianzus, 61 Hardy, E. R., 67 Harnack, A., 77 Heraclius, Emperor, 72 Hodgson, L., 112 Honorius I, 72 Hooker, M. D., 108

Cerinthus, 9, 106 Chalcedon, Council of (451), 5, 52, 67, 69f, 72 Chalcedonian Definition, 67, 69f, 74ff Clement of Rome, 10 Constantinople, Council of (381), 57, 60, 69, 105, 110; (681), 72 Cullmann, Oscar, 15, 25, 40, 46, 49, 76, 108, 109 Cyril of Alexandria, 62, 63ff

Ignatius of Antioch, 9f, 62 Irenaeus, 9, 10 John of Damascus, 72, 73 Jung, C. G., 89 Justin Martyr, 10

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Kelly, J. N. 0., 64, 106, 110 Kenoticism, 73, 80

Psalms of Solomon, 15 Psilanthropism, 9f, 91

Latrocinium, 66, 69 Lawton, J. S., 112 Leo I, 66, 67ff Leontius of Byzantium, 71

Relton, H. M., 110 Richardson, Alan, 14, 33, 34, 107, 109 Ritschl, A., 73 Robertson, J. M., 105 Robinson, J. A. T., 74, 82ff, 92, 94, 97

Mackintosh, H. R., 77 Manson, T. W., 107 Mascall, E. L., 94 Matthews, W. R., 87ff, 94 Mill, J. S., 7 Monophysitism, 67, 70, 72, 111 Monothelitism, 72 Montefiore, H. W., 76, 87, 92ff Nestorianism, 55, 61ff, 74f, 77, 111 Nicea, Council of (325), 57, 69, 105 Nicene Creed, 5, 105

Schliermacher, F., 73,82,89 Schweitzer, A., 105 Soundings, 76, 87, 92 Stoics, 50 Suetonius, 8 Tacitus, 8 Taylor, Vincent, 41ff, 45, 49f, 112 Temple, William, 75f, 80 Tertullian, 53f, 55, 58 Theodosius II, Emperor, 65ff Theodotus the Cobbler, 9 Thomas Aquinas, 73 Thomasius, 112 Tillich, Paul, 76, 83ff, 94

Occam, William of, 41, 108 Origen, 54ff, 58f Osborne, H., 7f Platonism, 50, 54, 56, 60, 109 Pliny the Younger, 8 Prestige, G. L., 96, 112

Weston, Frank, 80 Williams, N. P., 46, 109

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