Course Code: BTT11

Subject: Person and Work of Jesus, the Christ

(Edited by Chandra & Binyamin)

Unit-I Re-Imagining Jesus from his Praxis of the Reign of God

Background: Jesus in his own context: The socio-economic, political and religious
realities of Palestine

Political: Although trade contacts between Greek lands and Palestine had existed for
centuries, in 332 BC a new period began. Alexander the Great extended his control over
Samaria and Judea previously under Persian governance. The Jew of the Palestine-Syria area
became part of that amalgam of Greek and Eastern civilization that we know as the
Hellenistic world.

323 – 175 BC: Dominance of Palestine by Competing Hellenistic Kings: After Alexander’s
death his empire was split up among his generals. Politically the high priests in Judea were
caught in between ambitious dynasties in Egypt and in Syria. For the first one hundred years
the Ptolemics generally dominated Judea. The situation changed when in a series of
campaigns (223 –200) the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus III humiliated the Ptolemies and
gained control of all Palestine. During this period of conflicting allegiances, the Jews felt
persecuted by the Ptolemies as attested by the legends in III Maccabees. At first Antiochus,
as the new Seleucid master, seemed less oppressive in financial demands. Yet after defeat by
the Romans (190) who imposed a huge war indemnity (compensation), the Syrian need for
money grew. Under Antiochus’ son Seleucus IV (187 –175), the Syrian general Heliodorus is
remembered as having plundered the treasury of the Jerusalem Temple.

175 – 63 BC – Antiochus Epiphanes, the Maccabean Revolt and the Hasmonean High
Priests: The predicament brought on by the Seleucids became extremely grave under the
unstable Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 – 164). Antiochus proceeded systematically to gain
unity among his subjects by having them all share the same Greek culture and religion. He
punished attempts at resistance by attacking Jerusalem (169 –167), slaughtering the
population, plundering the Temple, erecting a statue to Zeus on the Temple alter of burnt
offering and installing a permanent Syrian garrison in a fortress in the city. In 167, there
broke out a Jewish revolt led by Mattathias, a priest living in Northwest of Jerusalem. It was
continued over a period of thirty-five years successively by his sons Judah Maccabeus,
Jonathan and Simon. A number of the very pious (the Hasideans) joined the revolt hoping
that victory would put an end to the corruption of the Temple worship by the Seleucid kings.
Final freedom from Syrian attempts to dominate Palestine came only in the first part of the
reign of the high priest John Hyrcanus I (135/4 – 104), when Rome recognized Jewish
independence. His son Aristobulus (104 – 103) took the title of king. This combination of
high priesthood and kingship would be maintained by his successors for the next forty years,
with the political interests of the position often dominating the religious. Alexander Jannaeus
(103 – 76) succeeded him, who extended the boundaries of the kingdom. He was followed by

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his widow Salome Alexandra (76 – 69) and subsequently by two sons, Hyrcanus II and
Aristobulus II, whose squabbling for power opened the way for Roman intervention in the
person of Pompey, who entered Jerusalem and the Temple in 63 BC. For practical purposes
the Romans then became the rulers of the land, even if they worked through subservient high
priestly rulers and kinglets.

63 – 4 BC – Roman Dominance, Herod the Great, Augustus: The Romans favoured the weak
Hyrcanus II over Aristobulus II as high priest, but Antipater II emerged as a major force in
Palestine, first as an advisor to Hyrcanus and then with Julius Caesar’s approval, as a
procurator or overseer in his own right. Antipater’s son Herod, shifted his allegiances during
the Roman civil was, following the assassination of Caesar (44 BC). By 37 BC, Herod
became undisputed king of Judea.

After Herod’s death (4 BC), the kingdom was divided between his three sons. In the two
areas, Archelaus became ethnarch (governor of an ethnic community) of Judea, Samaria and
Idumea, while Herod Antipas became tetrarch (prince of a small area) of Galilee and part of
the Transjordan. The rule of Archelaus was autocratic and aroused the hatred of his subjects
to the extent that they sent delegation to Rome to ask for his removal. Augustus responded in
6 AD by making Archelaus’s territory the imperial province of Judea. The first period of
direct roman governance in Judea by prefects ended in AD 39/40. In 37 AD Herod Agrippa I,
succeeded the territories of Philip and Herod Antipas. Accordingly he was made king over all
Palestine (41 – 44 AD). After Agrippa’s death another period of Roman rule began; but the
procurators of the period 44 – 66 were of low caliber, vicious and dishonest. Theirs was a
misrule that gave rise to Zealots and a major Jewish revolt against the Romans. Major Roman
forces and the best generals were involved in suppressing the Jewish Revolt (66 – 70).
(Raymond E Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 53).

Social and economic Realities: The economic circumstances in which the Jews in the
homeland lived were generally quite modest. Only the small groups of the upper stratum in
Jerusalem and the major landowners in Galilee were well to do. Since large parts of the
Galilean hill country were originally royal lands, even in the Hellenistic period many farms
belonged to non-Jews who lived in other countries and managed their property through
administrators. The Jewish population of the country earned their living by farming,
handicraft and small businesses. The land was cultivated primarily in the plains in the
northern part of the country, and to a smaller extent in the vicinity (neighborhood) of
Jerusalem also. At that time a large part of Judea was desert, so that the road from Jerusalem
to Jericho descended through dry, uninhabited territory. The barren country of Judea allowed
only livestock and pasture farming: fishing was the industry around the Sea of Genessaret,
and in the Jordan valley vineyards and fig groves flourished. The peasant population could
secure not significantly better for the artisans who worked as weavers, tailors, smiths, scribes
or potters. Many occupations were despised, such as that of the tanner, because they
constantly had to make themselves unclean or that of the tax collector, because he was in the
service of Gentile masters and dealt fraudulently. There was unemployment so that anyone
who lost his position was necessarily fearful of his future. Poverty and mendicancy (hardship)
were widespread. Since in Jerusalem there were markets for the various goods, which were

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brought into the capital city, Jerusalem attained a certain degree of prosperity. The roads,
which traversed the countryside, were sometimes made dangerous by robbers who attacked
and plundered the tradesmen. The heartbroken circumstances in which many peasants,
artisans and tradesmen found themselves prompted many Jews to leave their homeland and to
seek their fortune abroad. (Eduard Lohse, The New Testament Environment, Nashville:
Abingdon press, 1984, 146).

One must also raise cautions about over-dramatizing the economic divisions. No one doubts
that the wealthy, especially the absentee landlords in Jerusalem engaged in conspicuous
consumption well beyond anything that the temple functionaries, petty traders, merchants,
laborers and the like could ever imagine. But in the life of hundreds of Galilean villages the
divisions are between rich and poor peasants.

Taxes were charge on the produce of the land, property, sale of animals and all transport of
goods across boundaries. In addition Jewish males paid a half-shekel for support of the
Jerusalem temple. Taxes on the produce of the soil were supplemented by a head tax. This tax
applied to all who were subject to the Romans directly. (Pheme Perkins, New Testament
Introduction, Mumbai: St. Pauls, 1997,46).

Slavery has existed for several centuries. Ancient sources of slaves were pirate raids and the
frequent wars that preceded the inauguration of the Roman Empire, since prisoners and
sometimes the entire populations of a conquered town were sold into slavery. The status of
slaves varies. Those who rowed in galleys or worked in the quarries had a brutal existence
and at times slaves became restless socially and politically. Yet slaves had legal rights, and
under the Empire abusing or killing slaves constituted a punishable crime.

The pattern of Greek schooling, well established throughout the Roman Empire, consisted of
an elementary school for teaching, writing, music and athletics, then tutoring in grammar,
particularly poetry and finally an upper level education in rhetoric and philosophy. As regards
influence on Jesus, there is little evidence that Greek schools were widespread in Palestine in
NT times. (Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, Bangalore: TPI,
2000, 63).

The Jewish family lived in a small house, which usually consisted of a single windowless
room. As head of the patriarchially ordered family, the father not only had to care for the
physical well-being of all the family’s members, but also had to instructs sons in the Law.
The children were required to show respect to him and to their mother. The position of the
woman was not equal to that of the man. To marry was regarded in Judaism as a divine
commandment. (Gen. 1:28). Women were regarded as inferior to men. They could not appear
in public as a witness before a court or take an active part in the cultus. In the temple area
they were permitted to go only as far as the court of women and were allowed to share in the
synagogue worship only by listening not by actively participating. Women were required to
observe the prohibitions of the Law, but they were not required to keep all of the
commandments nor to study the law. (Eduard Lohse, The New Testament Environment, 146 ).

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Religious realities: The Jewish historian Josephus describes for his Hellenistic readers the
groups and communities which are present in Judaism at the beginning of the first century A.
D., following the example of the Greek philosophical schools: Among the Jews there are
three kinds of philosophical school, one is formed by the Pharisees, a second by the
Sadducees and the third which lives in accordance with particularly strict rules, by the so-
called Essences. (Eduard Lohse, The New Testaments Environment, 74).

The Sadducees were anything but a philosophical school whose views would be comparable
to those of the Epicureans. (It teaches that there is nothing better for a person to do than to
enjoy his life. Epicurus did not deny the existence of gods but he did not expect gods to be
concerned with the lives of the people, hence neither do people need to concern themselves
with the gods). The roots of the Sadducees were probably in the Zadokite Temple priesthood
and its admirers. (I Kings 2:35). They held strictly to the literal wording of the Law and
refused to admit to equal rank with the written letters. It was in keeping with their sober
thought that they did not believe in angels and demons (Acts. 23:8). They did not share in the
expectation that at the last day the dead would be raised from the grave. They were strictly
concerned that the Sabbath be maintained with painstaking. With the death of the Sadducees
in the destruction of the city and the temple in AD 70, the reconstruction of the Jewish
communities fell solely to the Pharisees.

The Pharisees must be a derivation from the Hebrew peruschim ‘the separated one.’ It is
possible that outsiders first applied this designation to them because they held themselves
aloof from their environment in order to avoid contact with any impurity.

The beginnings of the Pharisaic movement date to Maccabean times, when it was necessary
to defend the Jewish faith against the infiltration of Hellenistic influence. They combined to
form distinct societies in which they could follow the commandments of the Law exactly. It
became the particular obligation of all members of the Pharisaic society to observe with the
greatest care the prescriptions of cultic purity and the commandments concerning the tithe.
Until the destruction of Jerusalem the Pharisees enjoyed a weighty influence in the
Sanhedrin.

Some place the origins of the Essenes ca 200 BC in the atmosphere of Jewish apocalyptic
expectations. They were an independent Jewish movement, who preferred to live in
seclusion. Their name is probably derived from the Aramaic ‘chasajja’ the pious ones, a
name which perhaps was first given to them by outsiders. Presumably the Essenes is also a
reference to the origin of the movement, for the law-observing Jews who supported the
Maccabean revolt. According to the accounts of Philo and Josephus they numbered 4000.
They live chiefly in villages in Palestine, some of them also in cities, and formed themselves
into a community, in order to separate themselves from all uncleanness.

Synagogue: The structure of the Sabbath services in the synagogue appears to have been
simple. The NT examples suggest that any adult male could be called upon to read and
explain the law, though it may have been normal to pick our person who were known for
their knowledge of the law.

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The religious centre of Judaism remained the temple. The synagogues were places to meet,
pray and study the law. They were not sacred places like the temple which was the place in
which God dwelt. Jews living outside Judea would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. So Jews
adopted the practice of praying at the times when sacrifices would have been offered to God
in the temple.

Our earliest example of a synagogue building comes from the beginning of the third century
BC. The NT remains our only evidence that there were already synagogues there in Jesus’
day. They were probably much simpler than these later synagogues, which had been built
along the lines of a temple with a special ark for the Torah scrolls and more elaborated
decoration.

Great Festivals: Pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem were linked with the agricultural
season. Galilean villagers probably thought that God’s faithfulness was tied to their harvest as
well as to the events of salvation that were remembered at each feast. There were various
festivals observed – Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, New Year, and Hanukkah. (Pheme
Perkins, New Testament Introduction, 65 ).

Worship at the local synagogue, daily prayers, Sabbath meals, the great pilgrimage feasts and
other holidays of the Jewish calendar reminded people of their special relationship to God.
They did not worship the gods and goddesses of their pagan neighbours. Although it
sometimes seemed that God had left the people at the mercy of the great powers, the Jewish
people continued to look forward to the day when God would send them salvation.

Of course they had many visions of what salvation would be like. Some thought that a new
king like David would make Israel a great nation. Others imagined that the basis for a new
life would be the complete renewal of the temple and its priesthood. Still other thought that
evil had such a grip on the nations and on human institutions that they would all have to be
judged and condemned. Salvation would be a heavenly, angellike existence for those who
had remained faithful to God. Some people felt that they should show their devotion to God
by joining a sect, which had a stricter interpretation of the law tha that followed by most
people. The gospels show us that many of those who followed Jesus came not from such
pious sects but from the ordinary people who had been farmers or fishermen or collectors of
taxes and the like. (Pheme Perkins, New Testament Introduction, 70).

Reign of God

Sobrino observes that hermeneutics is very important for Christological articulation. It deals
with the biblical texts in which Jesus is presented. For his Christology, the reign of God
constitutes the historical praxis. According to him the notion of the reign of God brightens the
anthropological and historical presuppositions of theology. Therefore, it becomes a
hermeneutic principle because it expresses human being’s utopian longing for liberation from
every kind of oppressions. At the same time for his, Christology begins to operate in relation
to the reign of God. He says
Not only must we try to understand Jesus in terms of the reign of God, we must also try to
understand the reign of God in terms of Jesus. Without the reign of God, Jesus would be

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 little more than an abstract object of study, without Jesus, however, the reign of God
would be only a partial reality.

Sobrino sees the importance of the reign of God from three perspective:
(1) It is the authentic words of Jesus
(2) It is all embracing
(3) It has a systematic role, giving christology a basis on which Jesus’ person and
work can be organized and graded in a better way.
Sobrino prefers the reign of God as the hermeneutical principle because it was the method of
the gospels, and also because it provides a better approach to Jesus to understand his external
activities in relation to the reign of God and moving from there to his inner relationship with
God rather than by working the other way round.

Sobrino comprehends Jesus’ understanding of the reign of God in three levels: First the reign
of God is understood as being at hand. Jesus’ teaching, parables and miracles demonstrate the
passing away of the old times and the breaking of salvation. Second, Jesus understands the
reign of God as grace. This grace is not opposed to human action. Jesus, proclaiming the free
gift of the reign of God carries it out concretely through his actions. He actively serves the
reign of God. This applies to the hearers of Jesus. The reign of God demands a conversion,
which is the task of the listener. Third, for Jesus the reign of God is good news. The message
of the reign of God is not God’s judgment but God’s grace. Hence, it is the good news.
Sobrino says, “Jesus is good news, but with logical priority, the good news is what Jesus
brings; the reign of God... There is no way of separating the reign of God
Jesus proclaims and the good news Jesus himself beings. The good news of the reign of God
means the reign of God as good news.” Thus the reign of God as good news makes it hearers
rejoice.

The Reign of God and the Poor: Sobrino asserts that the reign of God as good news is
essentially relational. Though Jesus’ mission has a universal dimension he had specific
addressed to the poor. It is essentially partial. Sobrino calls this partiality a ‘preferential
option’ and sees it essential. For him, as the reign of God is for the poor it has to be the reign
of life. Jesus saw poverty as contrary to God’s original plan, as terminating it. Poverty
violates and annihilates God’s creation. According to Sobrino, Jesus’ purpose to defend
basic life is evident in his use of the written law, his criticism of oral interpretation of the law
and in giving central importance to the basic symbol of life: food and bread.

The Reign of God and Jesus’ praxis: For Sobrino, Jesus is both proclaimer and initiator of the
reign of God. Jesus’ activities and practices are the symbols for the emerging reign of God.
Sobrino considers five activities of Jesus in relation to the reign of God.
(1) Miracles: According to Sobrino miracles are the real activities of the historical Jesus.
They are the signs of the presence of the reign, and signs against oppression. They are not
only beneficent signs, but also liberating signs. He interprets miracles as the symbols of
holistic concrete salvation for the poor. The miracles also demonstrate Jesus’ pity namely his
reaction to the sorrows of the poor and the weak.
(2) The casting our devils demonstrates the triumph over the anti-reign of God in the
coming of the reign. Jesus’ practice of the casting of devils is the answer to the questions of
the possibility of overcoming evil. It is a sign of the defeat of the anti-reign of God. The
casting out of devils indicates that the coming of the reign of god is anything but peaceful and
ingenuous.

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 (3) Welcoming of sinners. Sobrino observes that Jesus’ actions and teaching demonstrate
a basic attitude of welcome with agape. The welcome shows the coming of the reign of God
as grace and not judgment. However, it calls for conversion, which has different levels. The
oppressors should show the radical change of conduct. The poor/sinners must accept God in
hope as true love. This means that the power of sin is crushed through welcome and
forgiveness.
(4) The parables of the reign of God. For Sobrino the parables clarify the important
elements of the reign of God. The parables emphasizes that the reign of God is partial and
causes scandal. Through parables Jesus defends the poor and justifies his own actions of
partiality on their behalf. Through the critical features of the parables Jesus unmasks the
hypocrisy of his adversaries. The parables also generate hope and joy. It brings hope because
the coming of the reign of God is certain. It produces joy because the reign of God is good
news.
(5) Celebration of the reign of God. Sobrino observes that as the reign of God is good
news, it has to be celebrated with joy. Besides proclaiming the reign of God Jesus celebrates
it. The meals of Jesus indicate this. They are the signs of the coming reign of God and of the
realization of its principles: liberation, peace and communion. The meals are not only
beneficent signs but also liberative, because those who are for centuries kept out and
prevented from eating together cannot eat together. The celebration of the reign of God is the
great sign for the actual arrival of the reign of God. This has its significance in the midst of
the sufferings of the people. (Hubert Manohar Watson, Towards a Relevant Christology in
India Today, pp. 206 -213)

Unit-II Title and metaphors of Jesus

1. Synoptic Representation of Jesus:
Jesus the messiah:

Messiah: Oscar Cullmann has said, “One might consider it really ironical that the title
‘messiah’ should have been deliberately, permanently connected with the name Jesus.”

We are dealing with the title which had its origin above all in the Jewish hope for the
future. It is first and foremost an eschatological concept.

The Hebrew Messiah = mashiach means ‘anointed one’ this seem it designates in particular
the King of Israel.

a) Messiah in Judaism: - Jew’s excepted a Savior with certain nationalistic and Jewish
characteristic. The main Parts of the Jewish conception of the Messiah are-

1) The messiah fulfills his task in purely earthly settings.

2) According to one view, while we find in Psalms of Solomon, he introduces the end time,
according to and earlier conception, he introduce an interim period

3) Wealth it is of peaceful or war like character, the worth of the Jewish Messiah is that of a
political king of Israel. He the national king of Jews

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4) The Jewish Messiah is of royal lineage. A descendent of David. For this reason he also
bears the title son of David.

b) Messiah in the Gospel: - The Gospel that Jesus showed extreme reserved and hesitation
toward the tithe Messiah.

1) It is always about who speak of him as the Christ.

2) He actually unidered the specific ideas connected with the title as satanic temptations
(Mtt.16:23)

3) In decisive passages he substituted “son of man” for Messiah and even set the one in
opposition to the death (Lk. 22: 67)

4) He deliberately set the ideas relative to the ebed Yahweh over against the Jews political
conceptions of the Messiah.

However there is one aspect of the Jewish conception of Messiah that Jews could
probably reconcile with this consciousness of his calling. The title Messiah in Jewish thinking
represents the fulfillment of the role of mediation which the whole of God’s chosen people
should have realized. It is clear that Jesus now humanly as caring out this role of Israel which
it had neglected.

The original Palestinian Church did not share Jesus’ hesitation toward the title Messiah. On
the contrary, it elevated the expression ‘Jesus is the Messiah (Christ) is a contenian. This was
probably because the disciples were able to make their faith in Jesus understandable to the
Jews of their time only by using this title. Also the early Church felt justified in proclaiming
Jesus as the Christ. Thus the early Christians unphasized that Jesus appeared on earth as the
Son of David that the excusive Kingship over his Church and that he will appear as Messiah
at the end.

Literally, the word derived from Greek and Hebrew, mean ‘one who has been anointed.’
Various people might be anointed in ancient Israel – the king, the priests and some of the
prophets.

The idea of coming messiah, as part of the eschatological expectation of Israel, was
associated chiefly with kingship. It was believed that God had promised to David that his
descendants would continue to occupy the throne of Israel, and even when prophets had lost
respect for contemporary rulers of the house of David, they looked for a future ruler who
would restore the Davidic kingdom.

The question of this messianic expectation is enormously complicated. Von Rad believes that
as time went on, the link with the house of David was weakened and that the messiah might
make an entirely new beginning. Eichrod suggests that in spite of the nationalistic language,
what was to be restored was God’s own kingship over Israel. There is no denying,
however, the strongly nationalist and political associations of the messianic hope.

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The messianic idea could not easily applied to Jesus, though it is also seen to be a possibility
that it could be so modified or so combined with other ideas that it could be made to fit. On
Bultmann’ view, the belief that Jesus is the messiah arises with the resurrection, and since it
was traditionally Peter who rallied the disciples after the crucifixion, it is natural to see him
as the first to confess Jesus as the Christ. In Mark’s gospel Jesus does not answer Peter’s
confession. He neither accepts nor denies the description of himself as the Christ. When he is
asked directly by the high priest ‘Are the Christ?’, then according to Mark he replies “I am”
(Mk 14:62) but Matthew and Luke have altered this reply to the ambiguous, ‘You say so”.
So Jesus shows a certain reluctance to accept the title of Christ. This was explained by saying
that he did not want people to misunderstand him as a political leader. Bultmann and Wrede
were right in their view that Jesus did not think of himself as messiah at all.

Another difficulty is the fact that the messiah was visualized as a victor not a
sufferer. When the disciples did come to the point where they recognized Jesus as the Christ,
they had to find justification in the tradition for a suffering messiah. They did this by pushing
the political connotations of messiah hood into the background and introducing into the
control of the idea characteristics originally associated with other images such as the
‘suffering servant’ of deutero-Isaiah. But as Cullmann points out, this was going against the
‘mainstream of contemporary messianism’ in which ‘one can at best find faint traces of a
suffering messiah.’

It is probable that Jesus did not think of himself as messiah or accept the title in his lifetime,
but that it came to be used by his followers after the resurrection, and then took on new
meanings and discarded some of the old meanings. However, the traditional concept of
messiah does not take us very far in our search for an answer to the question, ‘Who was/is
Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ? Although the messiah, as God’s anointed would
certainly be a highly exalted being, he was also understood as fully human , and the original
use of the title did not imply the king of relation of Jesus to the Father which developed in
later belief.

Lord:
The title ‘Lord’ is not so much a descriptive term as one that expresses rank or worth. To
acknowledge Jesus as Lord appears to have been one of the earliest Christian confessions of
faith. To say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ is certainly to say something about his, but equally it is to
express one’s own allegiance and devotion. It is to recognize Christ as an exalted being.
Very early in Christian history the title ‘Lord’ must have been used of Jesus in a way which
put him into a relation of near-identity with the one true God of Israel. However, Bultmann
traces the Kyrios title to Hellenistic sources, in which it was used for the deities of the
mystery cults. The question of origins may not be very important, for Bultmann concedes
‘that the figure of Jesus as Kyrios increased in content and weight.’
As Graham Stanton has expressed it, ‘the Kyrios christology expressed the authority of the
Lord over the individual and the Christian community, and is often related to ethical
statements.’ But the decision to accept Jesus as Lord is not just an arbitrary one, it is made
deliberately and intelligently, one may then ask about the grounds on which it has been taken.

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The Lord: Kyrios
The designation Kyrios for Jesus developed into a christological title especially in the
environment of Hellenism. It is proper that we investigate its secular and religious
significance in this area outside Christianity.
The Kyrios Title in Oriental Hellenistic – Religions and in Emperor Worship
In the Hellenistic world Kyrios was used not only in connection with certain religious
conceptions, but also in the general sense of ‘master’ or ‘owner.’ It could designate deity with
respect to its absolute power or superiority. It could also become a name, which emphasized
divinity in a unique way. The word in this sense occurs very frequently in the oriental-
Hellenistic religions of the Roman Empire. Hellenism speaks Kyrios to refer to some revered
divinity.
The same is true also of the Roman emperor, the Kyrios who demanded special recognition
of his ‘lordship’. He was called Kyrios primarily in a political-legal sense and the title does
not refer primarily to his divinity. In fact, long before Roman times oriental rulers were
venerated as gods. The Roman emperors inherited divine dignity from them. They were
worshipped because they were believed to be of divine origin and nature. Therefore, the
emperor was called Kyrios as a sign of his political power on the one hand, and on the other
hand was revered as divine the title Kyrios must automatically take on a religious
significance especially where this name was a common designation for heathen gods.
The Kyrios in Judaism
The Greek word Kyrios is Adon in Hebrew and Mar in Aramaic. We now have to ask
whether like their Greek equivalent, the Hebrew and Aramaic words were used in the NT
period in the absolute sense of ‘the Lord’ as well as in the general sense of ‘master’ or
‘owner’. This is the decisive question for our problem.
It is important to note that the Jews did not speak the name of God, JHVH. After a certain
time they replaced it with Adonai in their services of worship. Although the use of Adonai in
this absolute sense did not become part of everyday speech and so not a common designation
for God either. It was understood and respected primarily as a sacral word. This use is more
common in the Greek apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings. Therefore, Adonai-Kyrios
was a liturgical designation for God both in Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism of the NT
period.
What of the Aramaic equivalent Mar? It is especially interesting to us here, first because
Jesus himself as well as his first disciples spoke Aramaic, and secondly, because the NT has
preserved the Aramaic liturgical prayer Maranatha of the early church. Mar does not occur
as a divine title in this absolute sense. In everyday language Mari was a respectful form of
polite address similar to ‘Rabbi.’ Mari expresses even greater respect than “Rabbi’. It is used
to refer to king and emperor, but also to highly respected teachers. But even this use is still
far removed from the absolute sense.
The development of the Hellenistic concept Kyrios and of the Hebraic concept Adon suggests
philologically an analogous (similar) development from the naïve use of the Aramaic Mar to
the Christian theological significance of the Greek Kyrios with the presupposition. This
theological development to a cultic and individual experience and worship of the present
exalted Lord had taken place already among the Aramaic speaking Palestinian followers of
Jesus.
Kyrios Jesus and Early Christianity
It is certain that the Kyrios title applied to Jesus received its full meaning only after his death
and exaltation. It is characteristic of the expression Kyrios Jesus that it refers to his post-
Easter, present work fulfilled in the state of exaltation. The title thus naturally developed with
the salvation event itself.

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The Kyrios designation appears directly in Mk. 11:35 ff. and in Mt. 7: 21. None of these
passages indicates the absolute use of Kyrios as we find it applied to Jesus in early
Christianity. On the other hand, we so see in these examples that the word can be given
different meanings according to the context in which it is used.
Mk. 11:3 uses the article with Kyrios and since it is the only passage in the whole book in
which the title so appears, we could say that Jesus himself used the expression. But even so
we cannot conclude that on this occasion Jesus designated himself the divine Kyrios. In the
first place, the original Aramaic here may have been ‘our Lord’ or ‘his Lord’ and in the
second place Mar may have been used here simply as an expression of the disciple-rabbi
relationship.
The same is true of Mt. 7:21. The genuineness of this saying as such cannot be questioned.
We have seen that the doubled ‘Lord, Lord’ corresponds to the Semitic form of polite
address. Like the previous passage, this also probably refers to the address of the disciple to a
respected master.
The use of Kyrios in terms of the disciple-rabbi relationship is still far removed from the later
absolute use. Nevertheless, the earlier use suggests the possibility of the same development to
the absolute use as in the case of the Hellenistic Kyrios and the Hebraic Adon. When the
Rabbi Jesus becomes the object of cultic veneration, the Teacher and Lord who speaks and
acts with absolute authority becomes the one Lord.
The confession Kyrios Jesus is one of the most ancient we possess. This brief formula
expresses the whole faith of the early church with the single word Kyrios. This designation
points primarily only to the present work of Christ, but from this point of view one can
visualize the whole work of Christ, both in the past and in the future. The lordship bestowed
upon the Kyrios Jesus, who is now equal with God manifests itself especially in the fact that
also all the invisible powers of creation are subjected to him, so that now ‘every knee should
bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess: Jesus Christ is
Lord.’ This idea is the foundation of every NT passage, which actually identifies Jesus with
God.
The Kyrios title has the immense significance for the NT faith, It also takes the central place
in the theological thought of the first Christians. It is not a title, which like ‘Son of Man’ goes
back to Jesus himself. It is rather an explanation of the person and work of Jesus, which
already presupposes the conviction of his resurrection.
The title rests upon faith in two essential elements of Heilsgeschichte: (I) Jesus is risen (2)
that fact that the decisive event of the resurrection has already happened but that the
eschatological fulfillment has not yet happened does not mean that the Heilsgeschichte has
been interrupted. In other word, there is no chasm between the resurrection and the Parousia
of Christ.
Kyrios Christos and the Deity of Jesus
One important aspect of the Kyrios concept deals with the titles referring to the pre-existence
of Jesus. The NT letters quite commonly apply OT passages to Jesus. The Septuagint
translates the name of God with Kyrios. The Greek concordance indicates that in the NT the
OT Kyrios passages can automatically refer to Jesus. This is the case, for instance with Is.
45:23, which quoted in Phil. 2:10 ff.
The most striking example is the quotation of Ps. 102:25 ff. in Heb. 1:10. The OT text
obviously speaks of God the Father, the Creator. But as a result of the transfer of the name
Kyrios to Jesus, the writer of Hebrews does not hesitate to address him with the words of the
psalm, and thus, to designate him the Creator of heaven and earth. Heb. 1:8 says expressly
that the passage refers to the Son.
According to the early Christian faith, this Kyrios is of course also pre-existent. The early
Christian faith in the pre-existence of Jesus should be understood in the light of the present

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 lordship of the Kyrios Christ. That is, it should be understood from the point of view of
history of salvation, of the work of Christ. It is the great significance of the Kyrios concept
that it made possible for the first time what we call the Christology of the NT. It furnished the
foundation for fixing the relationship between the various christological explanations in
Heilsgeschichte.

Son of God:
The title ‘Son of God’ is of inescapable importance for our study. And the questions to be
asked are: did the Son of God language when used of Jesus always have this connotation of
denoting deity, of signifying pre-existent divinity? If so, why was it applied by the earliest
Christians to Jesus? What was it about Jesus that caused the first disciples to call him Son of
God? If not, how soon did the Son of God confession come to bear this significance and
why? What did the phrase Son of God mean at the time it was first used of Jesus? How broad
or how precise was the idea of divine sonship in the first half of the first century C.E? We
will look at the range of meanings embraced by Son of God and then note briefly the ranges
of application of the words ‘divine’ and ‘god.’
Son of God in the Ancient World:
1. Some of the legendary heroes of Greek myth were called sons of God in particular,
Dionysus and Heracles were sons of Zeus by mortal mothers.
Oriental rulers, especially Egyptian, were called sons of God. In particular the Ptolemies in
Egypt laid claim to the title ‘son of Helios’ from the 4th century BCE onwards, and at the time
of Jesus ‘son of god’ was already widely used in reference to Augustus.
Famous philosophers also, like Pythagoras and Plato, were sometimes spoken of as having
been begotten by a god.
And in stoic philosophy Zeus, the Supreme Being, was thought of as father of all people
(since all shared in divine reason)
Son of God in Judaism:
Angels or heavenly beings – the sons of God being members of the heavenly council under
Yahweh the supreme God (Gen.6: 2, 4; Deut. 32:8, Job.1:6-12; Ps. 29:1; Dan. 3:25).
Regularly of Israel or Israelites –‘Israel is my first-born son’ (Exo. 4:22; Jer. 31:9; Hos.
11:1).
The king, so called only a handful of times in the OT (II Sam 7:14; Ps. 2:7; 89:26 f.).
Son of God in Inter-testamental Judaism:
In I Enoch angels are called ‘sons of heaven’ and ‘sons of the God of heaven’ (13:8; 106:5;
69: 4 –5).
Philo in his unique blend of Stoic and Jewish thought calls God ‘the supreme Father of gods
and human, and frequently speaks of God as Father in relation to creation, not hesitating to
call both the cosmos God’s Son and the Logos ‘God’s first born.’
Not only is Israel as a whole called ‘Son of God’ (Wisdom 9:7; 18:13), but individual
Israelites, specifically the righteous person (Wisdom 2:13, 16; Sir 4:10).
The degree of similarity between the use of ‘son of God’ within Jewish writings and its use in
the wider Hellenistic world is noticeable. In particular, it was obviously a widespread belief
or convention that the king was a Son of God either as descended from God or as
representing God to his people. So too both inside and outside Judaism human beings could
be called sons of God either as somehow sharing the divine mind or as being specially
favoured by God or pleasing to God. James Dunn concludes that the language of divine
sonship and divinity was in widespread and varied use in the ancient world and would have
been familiar to the contemporaries of Jesus. (James Dunn, Christology in the Making, 17).
Jesus the son of god:

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The origin of the ‘Son of God’ concept has in ancient religion, in which above all keep were thought to
the begotten of gods. This belief was especially common in Egypt. The rulers or Pharaohs, were all
considered to be the sons of the sun god religion, the same belief may be less clearly found in Babylonia
and Assyria

In the Old Testament we find this expression used in there worship ‘the whole people of Israel is called
‘Son of God’ Kings bear the title; persons with the special communion from God, such as angels and
perhaps also the Messiah, are so called.

The Old Testament and Jewish concept of the Son of God is eventually directinged not by the gift of a
particular power, nor by a substantial relationship with God by virtue of divine conception; but by the
idea of election to participation in divine work through the execution of the particular commission and by
the idea of strict obedience to the God who elects.

{ Coming to the Synoptic gospels, here we see that the most important prayers of passages of the
Synoptic gospel in which Jesus appears as the Son of God show him precisely not as a miracle worker
and savior the many others, but as one radically and uniquely distinguished from all other people. He
knows that he is sent to all other people to fulfill his task in complete unity with the Father. Thus
distinction, this isolation, means to Jesus not primarily miraculous power, but the absolute obedience of a
Son in the execution of a divine communion. Further, Jesus is the Son of God not as a miracle worker
(title other Son of God………………….) but in the obedient fulfillment of his task precisely his task of
suffering} both in Peter’s confession (Matt.16:16) and in the centurion’s confession as the cross (Mk.
15:39) the son of God title is connected with suffering.

Earlier we saw that Jesus consciously avoided, if not actually rejected the title ‘Messiah’ for humanly.
He did not avoid the title ‘Son of God’ but he used it so seldom that we can hardly counte it a typical self
– designation title ‘Son of Man!. And yet the conviction that in a unique way he was God’s Son must be
lay to the very heart of what we call the self-consciousness of Jesus.

The title Son of God experiences Jesus constant experience of complete unity of will with the Father the
full awareness perception of revelation, which makes itself known to him as a unique recognition of
himself by the Father. This is more than simply the prophetic consciousness of a man who knows himself
to be God’s instrument; more than the ‘compulsion’ which the Apostle Paul feels when he cries, “woe to
me if I don’t preach the Gospel’ (I Cor 9:16). God acts not only through him, but with him. Thus he can
presume to figure Jesus – an act promptly writer preted as blasphemy by the scribes, who were at least
correct in seeing that this meant a conscious identification with God; ‘who can forgive sins but God
alone?” (Mark 2:7). Jesus does not carry out God’s plan as does the prophet or apostle, but is so doing he
experiences uneven with the Father.

There is close relationship between ‘Son of God’ and ‘Servant of God’. This became all the more
significant when we note that during Jesus’ life his baptism is the beginning point for the two-fold
consciousness that he must fulfill the ebed Yahweh (servant of Yahweh)role and that he stands in a
unique son- Father relationship with God. The voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism emphasizes both
ideas’ you are my only Son; you must fulfill the role of ebed Yahweh.

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[However, Jesus’ experience of oneness with the Father is Jesus’ secret, and he special humanly as the
Son very infrequently and then usually in such a way that he does not openly proclaim but only suggests
the secret hidden from human understanding.]

Coming to the faith of early Christianity we see that the statement “Jesus is the Son of God” is one of the
most ancient creedal statements of the early church.

Jesus Sense of Sonship:

Did Jesus speak or think of himself as God’s Son? Can we even hope to answer this
question? And if the answer both times is Yes, what significance would it have? – son of God
in what sense? As a heavenly being who had taken earthly form? As the Davidic Messiah? As
a righteous man? As a charismatic teacher or healer? Or what?
The whole issue of Jesus’ self-consciousness and its significance is one, which has remained
at the forefront of NT christological study more or less throughout the past two centuries.
Will the evidence of the synoptic Gospels allow us to draw any firm conclusions about Jesus’
consciousness of sonship, about Jesus’ understanding of his relationship with God?
First, as Jeremiah has shown, abba (father) was a characteristic feature of Jesus’ prayers. This
mannerism is attested in all five strata of the Gospel tradition, it is a consistent feature of his
recorded prayers and of his teaching on prayer. It is referred back to the Spirit of the Son, the
Spirit who gives believers a share in his sonship. Dunn concludes that it was a characteristic
of Jesus’ approach to God in prayer that he addressed God as abba and that the earliest
Christians retained an awareness of this fact in their own use of abba.
Jesus’ habit of addressing God as abba distinguished Jesus in some degree from his
contemporaries.
There are various sayings and speech mannerisms, which can be, traced back to Jesus with
confidence and which uncover for us something of his self-consciousness.
In particular, our evidence is such that we are able to say that Jesus understood and expressed
his relationship to God in terms of sonship. We may say further that his consciousness was of
an intimacy of sonship which as embodied in his regular and characteristic address in prayer
Abba, still lacks any real parallel among his contemporaries. To that extent Jesus’ sense of
sonship was something distinctive.
There is sufficiently good testimony that Jesus taught his disciples to regard themselves as
God’s sons in the same intimate way, but also that he regarded their sonship as somehow
dependent on his own, that he thought of their sonship as somehow derivative from his.
Added to this is the probability that he saw his sonship in part at least as an eschatological
commissioning, God’s final attempt to recall the vineyard Israel to its rightful ownership,
God’s viceroy in disposing membership of his kingdom. In which case we can speak of
Jesus’ consciousness or conviction that his sonship was something unique.
Jesus was much more than he ever knew himself to be during his earthly life. But if we are to
submit our speculations to the text and build our theology only with the bricks provided by
careful exegesis we cannot say with any confidence that Jesus knew himself to be divine the
pre-existent Son of God. (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: An Inquiry into the
Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 32).

There has been a considerable development over that period in early Christian belief in and
understanding of Jesus as the Son of God. With Jesus we found it was possible to speak of his
sonship. We also found that there was no real evidence in the earliest Jesus-tradition of what
could fairly be called a consciousness of divinity, a consciousness of a sonship rooted in the
pre-existent relationship with God. It is a very striking fact that when we set out the NT
traditions and documents on the best chronological scale available to us a clear development

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in first-century christology can be traced where in the beginning the dominant conception
was of an eschatological sonship, already enjoyed by Jesus during his ministry but greatly
enhanced by his resurrection, at the end of the first century a clear conception of pre-existent
divine sonship has emerged, to become the dominant emphasis insubsequent centuries.

The following conclusion can be made We should not underestimate the differences between
these various understandings of Jesus’ divine sonship. Careful exegesis requires that we give
due weight to divergences in earliest Christian thought as well as the convergences. The one
real attempt within the NT to hold together the christology of eschatological sonship and the
christology of pre-existent sonship does not wholly come off and leaves the two strands only
loosely interwoven. There is no attempt to harmonize the ideas of virginal conception and
incarnation within the NT itself. The fact is that these are different and cannot be wholly
harmonized without losing something from each. The NT contains a diversity of christologies
of Jesus’ divine sonship and to merge them into one common theme is to run the risk of
destroying the distinctive emphases of each.
Whatever the point is salvation-history to which the first century Christians related the
manifestation of beginning or enhancement of Christ’ relation with God, it is the title Son of
God which regularly and repeatedly bears the primary weight of the claim made. Whether the
thought focuses on Jesus’ resurrection and parousia or on his birth, it is the language of
divine sonship which appears again and again, sometimes without rival. The belief in Jesus as
God’s Son had the power to absorb and express all these different emphases, showing that
ultimately they are not incompatible even if in the original contexts not wholly
complementary.
The understanding of Jesus as Son of God apparently did not provide the starting point for a
christology of pre-existence or incarnation. Any implication to the contrary, which may be
overheard in earlier formulations, is audible only because it is perceived as an echo of clearer
affirmations elsewhere. In short, the origins of the doctrine of the incarnation do not seem to
lie in the assertion of Christ as Son of God. (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making,
60).

The Human One

According to Kappen, the traditional interpretation too one-sidedly emphasized the divinity
of Jesus to the neglect of his humanity. His contemporaries saw him from below as a person
among human, as a carpenter from Nazareth. Kappen says that it was in observing this
ordinary human behaviour that they had a glimpse into the divine dimension in him. It is their
way of approach to him which is normative for us in interpreting him. It is be recognizing
him as a person, as a member of human family, rooted in our soil and inserted into the flow
of history. According to Kappen the historical Jesus opposed every attempt to separate him
from the family of human being.

Kappen confronts the question what does it mean to be human. Kappen says that human
being is only in the measure in which one transcends oneself, and so transcends in this sense
belongs to the essence of human. It is the Christian belief that one’s self-transcendence has
God as its absolute term. The measure in which one responds to God is the measure in which
one becomes human. The measure of this response is one’s sensibility to whatever is true,
beautiful and wholesome in one’s environment. According to Kappen the aesthetic is a
privileged point where the human merges into the divine, where the wholeness of human
reflects the wholeness of God. Therefore, to greater is his sensibility to beauty and
wholeness, the more intense is his revulsion to all the dehumanizes human: hatred,

15
oppression, injustice, aggression, social fragmentation, etc. When one subverts the situation
and seeks to transform it, one is affirming life.

Kappen says, “If ever there was a person taken hold by the divine and empowered to
transform things animate and inanimate that was Jesus. In his presence the chaotic reverted to
from, death ebbed away to make room for the influx of life. At his command, the tempest
subsided, the raging sea resumed its calm, withered bodies turned whole, the leper was
cleansed, the blind regained sight, the mute spoke and the deaf heard. His glanced pierced the
inmost recesses of the human spirit diffusing light and love. Power went out of him to heal
not only individuals but also sick society and decaying religion.”

Jesus was so taken hold of by the power of God that he could work many miracles. That does
not mean that it was an exclusive privilege given to him. Rather in Jesus the capacity of
human being reached its fullness in its response to the ultimate. In this resolute and
unconditional response to God that expresses itself in Jesus’ sensibility to all that is beautiful,
true and good, he could not but stand against everything that prevents the full flowering of
the human being and thus hinders the wholeness of human being and the revelation of the
wholeness of God.

It is clear from the NT testimony that there are two types of attempts to ostracize Jesus from
the family of humans: either to consider him as not a normal human being or to separate him
by considering hum above the human beings. Even his relatives considered him to be
mentally deranged (Mk. 3:21). His adversaries accused him of being a ‘glutton’ or ‘wine-
bibber’ and a ‘friend of publicans and sinners’ (Mt.11:19). According to Kappen, Jesus is
resisting the demonic efforts to remove his to the world of the gods where he can be
manipulated at will. Kappen says, “The true divinity of Jesus is revealed precisely in this
refusal to be segregated from the family of humans, to be anything other than fully human.”

According to Kappen it is the tendency of every society to separate persons with

extraordinary qualities from ordinary mortals by assigning them a mythical self over and
above the existential self. But in fact it is the existential self which struggles with the tension
between meaning and meaninglessness, hope and despair, sin and repentance, etc. It is by
virtue of this existential self or deeper self that one is united to the human family. But when
the community assigns a person a mythical-self, in the course of time it submerges the
existential self. Kappen says that this happened in the discourses about Jesus in the gospels
and epistles. By presenting largely a mythicized picture of Jesus stands before us as an alien,
as though his humanity were not real. This mythical image of Jesus is not all untruth, but it
distorts the reality by removing it from the world of the real and is conditioned by the
particular needs of the people at a given point in history. Therefore, to arrive at the existential
self of Jesus which stands in plasmic continuity with human community, one needs to
radically criticized the mythical and theological understanding of Jesus. It is in the existential
self of Jesus that we encounter the divine. (Jacob Parappally, Emerging Trends in Indian
Christology, pp.192 – 196)
II.2. New Testament Metaphors on Jesus and the Christological
interpretations

Logos: The use of the Greek expression ‘Logos’ has perhaps encouraged the belief that this
term came in from Greek philosophy. The use of the concept of Logos can be explained also
in terms of the Jewish heritage. In NT times Philo of Alexandria had been combining

16
Hebrew and Greek ideas and his work may have been known to the author of the Fourth
Gospel.

The word or Logos is a kind of hypostasis or distinct entity within the being of the Godhead
might indicate a development beyond the Hebrew understanding of the Word of God.
Although in the OT God ‘sends’ his Word and the Word comes to the prophets, the Word is
hardly a distinct entity.

Here lies the beauty and aptness of this particular expression. It hovers between metaphors
and metaphysics. If we think of the Word as personified in Jesus Christ,
then it acquires distinctness from God, yet as God’s Word, it is like any Word, an utterance of
the speaker, something that proceeds from the being of the speaker and reveals that being,
something which is an extension of the speaker. This is the complex relationship that finds
remarkable expression in the opening verse of the prologue to John’s gospel.

‘The Word was with God’ recognizes distinctness; ‘the Word was God’ recognizes identity.
The Word cannot be identical with God for it has gone forth or been uttered as a distinct
entity, yet because it proceeds from God and reveals God, it is still ‘one in being’ with God,
an extension of God.

Furthermore, the Word was ‘in the beginning’ so God has never been without his Word.
These remarks also show us the resemblances between the metaphor of the Word and the
metaphor of the Son of God, and in fact as soon as we get beyond the prologue, we find that
John ceases to talk about the Word, and now talk about the Son. Yet the transition is so
smooth that we are scarcely aware of it, and this shows how close in meaning the two
expressions are. One could say that the expression ‘Son’ has the advantage of being personal;
on the other hand, ‘Word’ is more universal and breaks out of the specifically Jewish
associations of ‘Son of God’ which might also acquire the unwanted pagan associations that
were common in the Hellenistic world.

So we may say that when Christians began to speak of Jesus as the Word, they were not only
renewing the OT’s understanding of a God who comes out from himself and communicates
himself, they were also employing a term that had great possibilities form communication
beyond the Jewish community, and that is still useful in our own day in relating Christian
faith to other faiths. (John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, pp.43 -44).

Logos in Greek Philosophy.

The idea of the Logos in Greek thought harks back at least to the 6 th-century-B.C
philosophy Heracleitus, who discerned in the cosmic process a logos analogous to the
reasoning power in man. Later, the stoics, philosophers who followed the teachings of the
thinker Zeno of Citium (4th-3rd century-B.C), defined the logos as an active rational and
spiritual principle that permeated all reality. They called the logos providence, nature, god,
and the soul, of the Universe, which is comprised of many seminal logoi that are contained in
the Universal logos.

For Plato, logos was associated with discourse or rational explanation, logos was the inward
dialogue of the mind as it flowed from the mind through the lips. Rational discourse (logos)
could not lead to real knowledge in the area of the sense perceptible, but at the same time it is

17
the higher level of beings, that is at the level of the essence (ousia) or idea of things, and
could lead to real knowledge.

According to Aristotle, logos refer to rational speech and rationality, what distinguished
human beings from lower animals in speech, as well as reason. He also often introduced the
concept of reason into ethical contexts. To live ethically, one must according to reason or
right reason (orthos logos).

For the Stoics, Logos, God, and nature were in reality one. Logos was the rational element
that pervades the controls the entire universe. Logos was the active element (to poioun) of
reality where matter without quality was the passive element (to paschen).

Philo of Alexandria, a 1st-century-A.D Jewish philosopher, taught that the logos was the
intermediary between God and the cosmos being both the agent of creation and the agent
through which the human mind can apprehend and comprehend God. According to Philo and
the middle Platonists, Philosophers who interpreted in religious terms the teachings of the
14th-century-B.C Greek master philosophers Plato, the logos was both immanent in the world
and at the same time the transcendent divine mind. Philo speaks generally of “the divine
logos” or ”The Logos of God” rather than of “the Logos” absolutely.
For Philo, there were two worlds, an ideal world of ideas of which God and immortality are a
part and a phenomenal world, which is a physical copy of the ideal. At times in Philo, logos
stand for the word by which God created the world. At other times it refers to the mediator
between the ideal and the phenomenal.
The three functions of logos in Philonic concept are:
1) Cosmological: The logos was the image of God, The highest of all beings
who were intellectually perceived, the one closest to God, the only truly
existent.
2) Anthropological: The logos was the paradigm according to which human
beings were made, not the human being as a whole but the human mind
3) Anagogical: The logos was meant to guide the human soul to the realm of
the divine.

Logos in Jewish Background.

In the Old Testament “the word of the Lord” is another way of saying “God speaks” and
means any communication of God to man, especially through the prophet. 9 The Jewish
Targums explained the activities of God on earth to God’s memra-God’s word,10 that was
thought to be John’s use of logos as the explanation of God’s relationship to creation. In
another sense, the logos in John 1 could be a reference to Wisdom (hokmah) in Proverbs
8:22-31 etc. Another logos which is found in John is supposed to have a background in the
Torah which is called the word of God (ho logos sou).

The Heb. translation of ‘logos tou theou’ (the word of God) is dabar YHWH. Dabar can
mean word, thing, matter, speech, cause, promise, or plan. The word of the Lord in many
contexts becomes a dynamic concept in that it accomplishes God’s work. In some contexts
the word of the Lord is even personified. This personification became even more pronounced
in wisdom, John 1:1,14 picks up this theological motif of the dabar YHWH which
accomplishes God’s work and then uses it to explain the incarnation and to describe who
Jesus is, the one sent from God to do God’s will.

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 Logos in early Christian church.

In post-New Testament writings the Logos-concept of John’s Prologue was important in the
early formulation of the relation of Christ to the Godhead. Christ was understood to have
been ‘immanent’ reason (logos endiesthetos) of the Father, who came forth before creation,
being generated then, although already existent in the Father, and became man in the
incarnation.12
“In the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, Jesus Christ is identified as “the
Word” (logos) incarnated or made flesh. This identification of Jesus with the logos is based
on Old Testament concepts of revelation, such as occur in the frequently used phrase “the
word of the Lord”- which connoted ideas of God’s activity and power-and the Jewish view
that wisdom is the divine agent that draws man to God and is identified with the word of
God, as well as on Greek philosophical concepts. The author of the Gospel according to John
used this philosophical expression, which easily would be recognizable to readers in the
Hellenistic world, to emphasize the redemptive character of the person of Christ, whom the
author describes as “the way, and the truth, and the life”. Just as the Jews had view the Torah
as pre-existent with God, so also the author of John view Jesus, but Jesus came to be regarded
as the personified source of life and illumination of men. The evangelist interprets the logos
as inseparable from the person of Jesus and does not simply imply that the logos is the
revelation that Jesus proclaims.
The identification of Jesus with the Logos, which is implicitly stated in various places in the
New Testament but very specifically in the fourth Gospel, was further developed in the early
church but more on the basis of the Greek philosophical ideas than the Old Testament motifs.
This development was dictated by attempts made by early Christian theologians and
apologists to express the Christian faith in terms that would be intelligible to the Hellenistic
world and to impress their hearers with the view that Christianity was superior to, or heir to,
all that was best in pagan philosophy.

Thus, in their apologies and polemical works, the early Christian Father stated that Christ as
the pre-existent ‘logos’;
1) Reveals the Father to men and is the subject of the Old
Testament manifestation of God.
2) is the divine reason in which the whole human race shares,
so that the 6th-century-B.C philosophers and others who
lived with reason were Christian before Christ and
3) is the divine will and word by which the world were framed.

Logos in Hinduism
Avatar: One of the categories that seem to be distinctive of Christian and Hindu thought is of
an incarnation Avatar. In the popular notion of avatar it is impossible for the Hindu to
imagine that the divine had became human and suffered pain and death on a Cross. The
avatar or the divine descent is a powerful notion in the Hindu tradition. In the power that the
divine descent has been known as the incarnation. The common feature of both avatar and
incarnation is the images of the divine descent. The term Avatara means to appear, to become
embodied to incarnate etc., and etymologically it would mean to cross over, to come down or
to descend.

Indian Christian theologians interpreted the incarnation of Christ as the avatar. The Christian
understanding of the incarnation is based upon the belief that God took upon human nature

19
and the Jesus Christ is both human and divine. However, in the Hindu religion it is believed
that the divine descent had occurred not once, but many times. 14 Hindus are often prepared to
admit Jesus as one avatara among others, but this is incompatible with the Christian belief in
the uniqueness, the ‘once–for-all-ness’ of Christ’s incarnation. 15 In one condition Hinduism is
not much interested in the historicity of an avatara, which is unsuitable to the Christians faith,
which concern Jesus actual lived in the flesh as a vital matter. There is also the difficult
question of the purpose of the avatara, which the ‘Gita’ describes as the protection of the
good and the destruction of the wicked. Jesus’ coming is the purpose to bring life, not to
destruction (John 3:16).
Despite these numerous difficulties, Avatara is a conception, which can be decidedly useful
in Indian Christology. Though there is much decisive dissimilarity, although the doctrine of
avatara has many similarities to the Christian doctrine of incarnation. In both of the doctrine,
“the freedom and initiative of ‘coming over from above’ is absolutely God’s own. Both
traditions maintain the transcendence of God even when he is on earth. Both these doctrines
maintain that the coming over of God from above is a gratuitous self- communication of God
through which he offers salvation to man”.
“The idea of the descendent of God to the earth appears unambiguously for the first time in
the ‘Bhagavad-Gita’, composed around 100B.C…when righteousness declines and injustice
increases, God comes into being, for the protection of the good, and the destruction of the
evil in age after age to establish the kingdom of righteousness”.
“In the Hindu religion there are two kinds of Avatars; general and special. General avatar is
the Hindu doctrine of god in man, in which the human soul unites with the divine soul. The
doctrine of special incarnation is that in which god becomes man”. So, according to
Hinduism, “all human beings participate in the general incarnation”. Which is akin to
Christian believe in general revelation of God, through nature and to individual. Those who
participate in the special incarnation are the God-man. In Christianity, the God-man is Jesus
Christ. Diana L.Eck contends that the faith in the incarnation of Christ depends on two
remarkable affirmations: Jesus Christ reveals to us the face of God, which is love, and
through his life, he makes clear the meaning of what is it to be a human.
For Chakkarai, the Christ experiences centres on the spirit through whom we know Christ. In
fact, the Holy Spirit is the Christ. He understands avatar as a progress from historic to the
Spiritual, from external to the eternal, from time to eternity. This process happens in the
Spirit. Jesus Christ is the avatar of God; the Holy Spirit in human experiences is the
incarnation of Jesus of Christ. Thus in Chakkarai, the historical Jesus is subsumed by the
Spiritual Christ. Jesus is the only full revelation of God. “God is the unmanifested and Jesus
is the manifested”.
Jesus as an avatar, supposes the historical presence of the divine Being, which is visible,
which its saving love and liberative power at a critical moment in the ongoing struggle
between the forces of justice and the injustice, liberation and oppression”.
Chakkarai prefers to interpret the avatara as dynamic rather than static. “The avatara did not
cease with the cross nor even with the ascension, but God in Christ still continues to be man,
living and working in the lives of believers”. Thus the metaphysics of God is not the key to
the incarnation, as in Hindu though, but the life of Jesus is the explanation of the working of
the mind of God and God’s adaptation to the need of man.

The use of avatara for logos in Christian theology would seem to be quite possible
christologically; Christ is the purna avatara; he comes to bring fullness of life, not
destruction; he is fully God and fully man. Perhaps one of the most helpful aspects of the
avatara conception is that it takes Christology away from the categories of substance and

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person (huposta sis)- out of the realm of being into the realm of action; for Jesus came to
seek, to save, to suffer, to die, to rise again and to indwell his bhaktas. The concept of
avatara may be used to describe the person of Christ- provided it is not the only concept that
is used, and provided it is used with full Christian content.

Jesus is the true avatar, the one who descends to the place where we are, into the turmoil and
dirt of human existence. He is fully human and fully God, and his divinity is seen in
identifying with the oppressed in their historical existence.

Cit:

According to Keshab Chandra Sen, “The logos, then, who in eternity lay as it were asleep in
God, is the word of creation, Cit (intelligence, wisdom), ever at work in the development of
the created world, and in the fullness of time being born as man in Jesus of Nazareth”. Here
cit or intelligence is taken as the equivalent of the Logos, whose meaning recalls the creative
word of Genesis, the prophetic word of the great prophets, the Sophia or wisdom of the
wisdom books, as well as the stoic Logos.

Sen describes the Christian doctrine of Trinity in terms of Saccidand, God the Father, the
creator, is the sat; the Son, the Logos is the Cit; and the Holy Spirit the sanctifier, is the
Ananda. The Cit which is the eternal took flesh and became man. So, Christ the Logos is the
beginning and the end of creation and perfection.

B.Upadhyaya had agreed with the interpretation of Logos as Cit, to show the Cit is the
Supreme Lord. This Cit of the Saccidananda Brahman is none other than the incarnate Logos
Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

“Incarnation, thus, reveals the depth of God’s love for all human beings. It discloses God’s
earnestness to communicate himself in love to all human in Jesus Christ. The climax of God’s
love for human beings is revealed on the cross”. On the cross, God identifies with the poor
and the oppressed experience the transcendent God within history.

The incarnation is understood by the Dalits as when the word becomes flesh and a concrete
historical existence. The solidarity of Jesus with the poor and the outcastes, finds it’s meaning
in the Christological symbol of incarnation. Jesus was not an abstract word of God, but God’s
word was made flesh and stepped into history.

New Adam:
Both Adam and Jesus Christ are human beings. Probably Paul thought of both of them as
historical figures. Both of them are set forth by Paul as a representative figures, but they
perform their representative roles in different ways.

Adam, as Kierkegaard saw, is ‘every human being’ or the ‘average human’, in the sense that
every human being repeats Adam’s experience of temptation and fall into sin. We could say
that Adam is a mythical figure construct representing a universal human experience. Adam is
a hypothetical figure postulated to account for the universality of sin, the human race. Jesus

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 Christ on the other hand is a historical figure. He is not ‘every human being’, not the average
human who is also the fallen human, but rather the exceptional one who is also the true man,
the fulfillment of the humanity which God indented in his work of creation. Jesus represents
humanity by having fulfilled the form of the human, a form in which the form or image of
God in which human beings have been created shines clearly forth and the humanity is
transfigures.

Paul says, “The first person Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving
spirit”. The first person was from the earth, a person of dust, and the second one is from
heaven. The contrast here is between Adam, the person who sank into sin and death, and
Jesus the one from heaven, who has risen above death. The teaching here is that Adam
remains on the level of the earthly. The second or last Adam is transfigured into the true
humanity which reflects the glory of God. Paul puts Adam at the beginning and
acknowledges him as a ‘living being’ though a person of dust. Only after the physical do we
come to the spiritual, to the ‘last Adam’, the transfigured one whom Paul describes as a ‘life
giving spirit.’ Here Paul’s basic christology contrasts the first Adam (the one who failed)
with the last Adam, the man Christ Jesus who fulfilled God’s intention for humanity.

Paul’s christology is not revolutionary but restates the christology already current among the
earliest Christians. He also shared a primitive christology. He teaches a christology ‘from
below’, this has considerable significance. In a secular age like ours when teaching that
begins from God or heaven or logos falls on deaf ears, Paul’s christology and in particular his
use of the imagery of the two Adams, acquires a new relevance. (John Macquarrie, Jesus
Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 59 – 65).
The new Adam of new creation etc. Adam is key figure in Paul’s attempt to express his understanding
both of Christ and of man (and women). Paul neither understands of the human being as he/she nor is in
heavenly influenced by the narratives about Adam in Gen 1-3 and especially the account of Adam’s fall
in Gen.3. The human being fallen Adam. Salvation is the reversal of Adam’s fall; it is the fashioning or
reshaping of the believer into the image of God. As Adam stands for fallen human beings, so Christ
stands for the human being risen from the dead. Adam denotes life that leads to death, Christ denotes life
from the dead (I Cor. 15:21f) so more clearly later on in the same chapter, I Cor 15:45 Christ the last
Adam, is the risen Christ.

Paul here makes a careful contrast between Adam and Christ. He takes the text from Gen2:7 ‘the man
became a living soul’ and adds two words to highliten the anti thesis – ‘the first man Adam became a
living being’ (I Cor 15:45). That is to say, Adam represents all human beings, every human with the
breath of life in him or her. Where as ‘the last Adam became life- giving spirit – that is at his resurrection
and exaltation when he came the ‘source’ of the Holy Spirit to all who believe. The contrast is between
old creation and new, between two levels of life – the life of this earth and this world, the human being
the living soul, and the life of the world to came, the life beyond death. The contrast in between the two
men who represent there two creations –“the man of dust” who returns to the dust from which he was
made, whose image all men and women fear, and the “man of heaven”, that is, not Christ thought of as
pre-existent, but the man Christ into where image believers will he transformed when he returns from
heaven 15:47-49.

Another significant passage is Romans 5:12-19 with its reported and forceful contrast between Adam
and Christ. Adam and Christ are although (V 14) in that in both case the action of one man had fateful
consequences for those who followed. Both also died, but here the similarity ends. For where Adam’s
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death was the consequence of his trespass, his disobedience, Christ’s death was his act of righteousness,
his act of obedience. The implication is that Christ willingly accepted the consequences of Adam’s sin,
that Christ’s death was a freely chosen embracing of Adam’s death. By, freely following act the
consequences of Adam’s disobedience (i.e. death) Jesus burst through [the ul-de-sac of] death into life.

Adam’s disobedience ……………death

Christ’s obedience to death…………..life

Idea is Jesus sharing the fallen-ness of sinful man, of Adam, so that his death might became a means to
creating a new man, a new humanity. In other words, before he became last Adam Jesus shared wholly
the lost of the first Adam.

High Priest after the order of Melchizedek

The author of Hebrew speak seeks to reconcile the two sides of his account of Jesus though the concept
of priesthood. Jesus is the great High Priest, and the work of a priest is to reconcile the human race to
God. But in order to do that, he must be authorized by God. There Jesus is called the Son, and we have
noted that in Jewish society, to be a son was at the same time to be the agent of the father. The prophets
of old had also been agents of God, but Jesus, as the Son, is superior to the prophets.

The author of Hebrews present Jesus as –

(i) Sent by God, originating in God and the agent of God, and as such already
present in the mind or purpose of God before his appearing in world history
(ii) A wholly human being who is in solidarity with all men and women
However, it has been suggested that in the two opening chapters of Hebrews the author is
attacking an ‘angel’ christology’ that is to say, an interpretation of the person of Christ as an
angelic being. The author points out that if Jesus Christ is to effect reconciliation as high
priest, then he must have been fully and totally a human being, for only one who completely
shared the human condition could be relevant to that condition and be a representative – a
pioneering representative of his fellow human beings. The earthly, human, historical
experience is essential to the Son in his priestly work. But a priest is not complete simply by
sharing in human lot. His office is to bring something from God into that human condition, to
bring grace, and hope and empowerment.
The controlling image of Jesus for the Hebrews is that of the High Priest. More specifically ,
it is the legendary figure of Melchizedek to whom the writer turns. According to Genesis,
Abraham, on returning victoriously from a battle, was met by Melchizedek, described as king
of Salem and priest of God most high (El Elyon). The writer of Hebrews elaborates on the
figure of Melchizedek, partly by inference from the passage in Genesis, partly, it must be
said, from pious imagination. King of Salem is allegorically interpreted ‘king of peace’, while
Melchizedek is rendered ‘king of righteousness (sedeq)’, and both titles are applied to Jesus.
It is argues further that Melchizedek must have been superior to Abraham, for he blessed
Abraham, and it is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. Furthermore,
Abraham paid him tithes. From the absence of any details about Melchizedek in the Genesis
account, Hebrews claims that he is without father or mother or genecology, and has neither
beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest
forever (7:3).

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The characterization of Melchizedek is then used to establish the superiority of Christ’s
priesthood over the levitical priesthood of Israel. That levitical priesthood was tied to
members of the tribe of Levi, that is to way, it was passed on through physical descent.
Melchizedek does not have this physical link, he is without father or mother, and this is
taken to mean that his priesthood derives directly from God. The priesthood of Jesus was like
that of Melchizedek, for did not God say to the messiah to be in Psalm 110, ‘Thou art a priest
for ever, after the order of Melchizedek?’

Christ’ priestly office was indeed bestowed by God and had nothing to do with birth or
ancestry, just as Matthew in his gospel indicates that descent from David is not important in
spite of the genealogy at the beginning of the gospel. This is how the author of Hebrews
describes the unique priesthood of Jesus Christ – in its exercise, from the levitical priesthood,
and in what respects it is superior. (John Macquarie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 127
– 131).
Jesus is the high priest
Jesus’ portion regarding the temple does indeed see at first is exclude the possibility of
his ascribing to him a high priestly function. Even if the cleansing of the temple means only
the pursing and not the rejection of it there are still sayings of Jesus which clearly call in
question the temple cult itself-such as that in Matt. 12:6 (for example). A genuine saying of
Jesus about the disappearance of the temple (V) probably his behind the words which,
according to the Synoptic were a ‘falls witness’ about his trial (Mk. 14:57ff) but in the
Gospel of John are reputed in a different form, as words actually spoken by Jesus. (John
11:47) comparing that fact.

But Just became Jesus has a critical attitude toward the priesthood does not mean that he
could not have included the idea of the High priest in his conception of his task. It is very
conceivable that Jesus on occasion applied to himself the idea of an ideal. High priest ‘after
the order of the Melchizadek’, if not the title itself.

The Epistle to the Hebrews mainly apples this title (Apxiepevs) is Jesus. The 7 th chapter is
the centre of this epistle. Using scriptural proof (Gen 14 & Ps 110) the writer really to show
that Jesus fulfils absolutely the high priestly function of the Jesus. According to the writer the
priesthood of the Old Covenant is not the ‘last word’ but must be replaced by a final
priesthood of the New Covenant. He has seen this new priesthood as realized in Jesus Christ,
who is the Priest in an absolute and final scene, the fulfillment of all priesthood. The writer
finds this absolute we could say ‘fulfilled’ priesthood of Jesus already foreshadowed in the
puzzling figure of Melchizedek in Gen.14. The writer then seeks to show the superiority of
this Melchizedek, who points to Jesus, and the Lents, the priest of the ‘old covenant’. This is
became the Levites have descended from Abraham but Abraham received a blessing from
Melchizedek.

Further the concept of High Priest is also connected to that of ebed Yahweh {the servants of
God} and especially to the suffering Servant of God.

In the exercise of his office the high priest offers up scarifies: that is his function. But Jesus
himself is the sacrifice: he is at the same time sacrificer and sacrificed. It is precisely in

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offering himself and taking the greatest humiliation upon himself that Jesus exercise the
most divine function conceivable in Israel, that of the high priestly Mediator.

We also see a further point that because Jesus himself is ‘perfect’, Jesus as the High Priest
brings humanity to its ‘perfection’. ( Interestingly the another of Hebrews, as perhaps so other
early Christian theologian, had the courage to speak of the man Jesus in shockingly human
terms – although at the same time he emphasized perhaps more strongly than any other, the
deity of the son). This is seen in the emphasis that is placed on the ability of Jesus to the
tempted (Alongside the reality of this temptation is the assertion that Jesus remained sinless.).
Jesus learned obedience, he was fearful Heb. 5:7

So Hebrew is not so much interested in Jesus becoming man as in his being man. That is
what really characterizes the high priestly office. The question tou Deus Houso (Anselm’s
question) is answered have slowly on the basis of the idea of the High priest. He must be able
to suffer with men in order to suffer for them.
1) (Matt. 26:69- means you, have said so).

2) He actually unidered the specific ideas connected with the title as satanic temptations.
(tells Peter got behind me Satan) Matt 16:23.

3) In decisive passages he substituted “Son of ram” for ‘Messiah’, and even set the one in
opposition to the death (Luke 22:67ff Son of man as in David is even more radical.).

4) He deliberately set the ideas relative to the ebed Yahweh over against the Jews’ political
conceptions of the Messiah.

Kenotic Christology
By ‘kenotic’ christology, we mean a doctrine of the person of Christ which sought to
understand him in terms of a kenosis or self-emptying of the Logos, whereby it was able to
manifest itself in the finite life of a human being. Kenocism was a kind of mediating
theology, incorporating the traditional incarnational understanding of Christ, but modifying it
in such a way as to safeguard against those docetic tendencies which seem to have dogged the
classical christology through the centuries.

The most persuasive statement of the kenotic view came from Gottfried Thomasius (1802 -
1873) (Phil. 2: 4-8 & II Cor. 8:9)

Thomasius holds that human being has a capacity for receiving God and of being penetrated
by God, and he claims that some such affinity is a necessary presupposition for a doctrine of
incarnation. He also stood by the teaching of Lutheran christology which maintained that
although the Logos infinitely surpasses in knowledge, life and action the bounds of a merely
human existence, yet in the mystery of the incarnation, the Logos was wholly present in
Christ and nothing of the Logos remained outside of him. He believed that if one admitted an
existence of the Logos outside of Christ, then one would get into the difficulties of a dual
personality. The problem is that – how can the in finite Logos be reduced or compressed
into the compass of the human Jesus? How can the infinite be revealed in the finite? If we are
to think of the infinite making itself known in and through the finite, whether in an

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incarnation or in some other way, there must be some dimming down, some filtering, some
reduction of scale, or some kenosis.
Thomasius had two answers of his own to this christological question. For him it is of the
very essence of love to accept every limitation ...what seems to be the alienation or
finitization of deity is the deepest point which, in its significance, far outweighs the most
inclusive manifestation of omnipotence. Secondly, Thomasius made a distinction between
the immanent and the relative attributes of God. The immanent attributes are absolute power,
truth, holiness and love. The relative attributes are omnipotence, omniscience and
omnipresence, and they belong, as the name implies, to God’s relations with the world. In the
incarnation, it is claimed the Logos divested himself of these relative attributes and now
related to the world as a human being. But he retained and in his incarnate existence fully
manifested those immanent attributes that belong to the very essence of deity. He claimed
that this is true even of power. The incarnate Lord was no omnipotent person, no miracle
worker. He exercised no other lordship at all than the ethical one of truth and love... his
whole exercise of power was absorbed in his world-redeeming activity.
Another point is that Thomasius makes a distinction between the ‘emptying’ by which the
divine, pre-existent Logos sets aside his relative attributes to assume the finite human
condition, and the ‘humbling’ which the incarnate Christ undergoes in his acceptance of the
way of the cross. In his language, there is an emptying of the Logos asarkos (the Word before
incarnation) and a humbling of the Logos ensarkos (the Word in the incarnate state). But
these two moments are closely connected. The humiliation of Jesus in his death is the earthly
historical counterpart or image of the divine self-limitation or self-emptying of the Logos.
The humiliation of the human Jesus is no disguise but is continuous with the self-abnegation
of God himself. All this presupposes a two-stage kenonis, a self-emptying by the pre-existent
Logos and then a further humbling even to the death of the cross in the human life in which
that Logos is believed to have become incarnate.

Evaluation:

James Dunn was not in favour of interpreting these passages in the context of Pauline
christology. He showed that the Christ hymn of Philippians fits very well into the t wo
Adams christology of Paul , and that it is not necessary to invoke a doctrine of the pre-
existence of Christ to provide an interpretation. The oxford scholar William P Sanday, while
recognizing that kenoticism had several merits and offered a mediating position among the
conflicts of 19th century theology, objected that it had made too much of a relatively small
section of biblical material and ignored the main thrusts of NT teaching about the person of
Christ. Other critics complained that Thomasius seemed to be laying claim to a detailed
inside knowledge of the pre-existent Word, event o the point of being able to classify its
attributes. If one could know so much of the Logos prior to the incarnation, what was the
point of the incarnation or what fresh revelation could it bring?
The idea of kenosis is an important one in Christian thought, but the kenotic christologies
turned out to be no more than an episode in modern thinking about the person of Jesus
Christ. Their authors were trying to do justice to the humanistic demands of 19 th century
thought. They wanted to cling also to the classical framework, the starting point of which is
the pre-existent Logos. They were too cautious in asserting the full humanity of Jesus Christ,
and failed to appreciate that christology.

Unit-III Christological debates during the Patristic Period

Irenaeus:

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He is often considered the first great Christian theologian after the NT. He developed his
teaching in controversy with heterodox points of view, and his principal writing is therefore
called Against the Heresies. He spent much of his time and energies battling against the
Gnostics. Unlike many of the theologians of his time, he was unequivocal in his recognition
and assertion of the humanity of Christ.
1. Underpinning Irenaeus’ christology is an anthropology. According to this
anthropology, the human being is not conceived as confined within rigid bounds but is
constituted by a possibility of becoming, by an openness which allows for
development and advance. So Irenaeus did not take the story of Genesis that the
human being was made in the image and likeness of God to mean that Adam and Eve
were perfect in the beginning. Rather they were like children who had to grow into
maturity. They come short of the perfect. The image of God, on this view, was given
as a potentiality into which the human creatures might grow (possibility of growth
and advance implies that equally there was the possibility that they might slip back
through sin). Irenaeus supposed that human beings as part of their existential
constitution had the potentiality for growing toward God (this was the image of God).
And that the goal or realization of this potentiality would be the glory of closeness to
God – this was the likeness. So human life is intended to be the progression from the
potency of the image to the realization of the likeness.
He said: “Now it was necessary that human being should be in the first instance created,
and having been created, should receive growth, and having received growth, should be
strengthened and having been strengthened, should abound, and having abounded, should
recover from the disease of sin, and having recovered, should be glorified and being
glorified should see their Lord”.
He did not hesitate to call this perfect state of humanity ‘deification’. Here he did not
mean that human being had become a god or a part of God, but that the divine image was
now fully manifested in the creature, whose life was lived in God and out of God (II Pet
1:4). Christians will become partakers of the divine nature. The christology of Irenaeus is
very close to Paul’s and make use of these anthropological ideas.
2. Recapitulation: It is one of Irenaeus fundamental doctrines. It has various meanings
in ancients writers. Literally it means “to place under a new head. He sees in it the
best way to express the work of Christ as head of a new humanity. Christ has become
the head of a new humanity just as sinful Adam is the head of old.
3. Redemption and Incarnation: Although God’s plan for the redemption of human
kind was operating from the beginning in the incarnation. Incarnation is the
continuation and fulfillment of the creation. The purpose of incarnation was to repair
the consequences of Adam’s disobedience. As he read the Gospel and the rule of
faith, it was the eternal world itself who became incarnate. His motif was
soteriological, only if the divine Word entered fully into human life, could the
redemption have been accomplished.
4. Logos: Irenaeus followed the general line of Apologists’ attempt to reconcile the
doctrine of creation and divine transcendence by means of a logos theology. The
revelatory function of the logos is linked with in creation and in salvation. At the
incarnation the logos became manifest fully.
Irenaeus is concerned to maintain the identity and unity of the person of Jesus Christ
with the eternal Son. The unity of the person is the Lord, who in turn is the actual
manifestation of God himself, and not an inferior mediator, who is fully human. He attacks
those w ho divide Jesus from the Logos or Jesus from Christ. He points out that the NT often
uses the name ‘Christ’ in contexts, which in fact, speak of his humanity, his humiliation,
suffering and death. This shows the fact that he is the Son of God and son of human. And the

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very name Christ has Trinitarian significance, since it speaks of one which anoints (God), one
who is anointed (Jesus) and anointing (the Spirit). In becoming human the Logos assumed
both flesh and human soul.
5. Christ’ Recapitulation: This is a new starting point but closely related with what
went before. Christ is the New Adam, and in him the history of the old Adam is
repeated, although in opposed direction. Irenaeus emphasized the parallelism between
Adam and Christ. Adam was formed from the virgin soil and Christ came to the world
through Mary, the virgin. The Fall took place through the disobedience of a woman
and the obedience of another woman was the occasion for restoration. Adam was
tempted in Paradise and Jesus in the desert. Through a tree did death enter into the
world and through the tree of the cross, life has been given unto us.
Another fundamental aspect of Christ’ recapitulation is his victory over Satan. Irenaeus
sees the whole history of salvation as the struggle between God and the Devil, which will
end in God’s final victory. In Adam we were made subjects of the Devil and therefore,
Christ’ recapitulation involves a victory over Satan, and our consequent liberation.

Clement of Alexandria
INTRODUCTION: The doctrines, Christologies of the Patristic Fathers have helped in the
understanding of Christ and his teachings. Their serious analysis and interpretations have
moulded the church towards the understanding of the Christian religion. These early church
Fathers have shared their understandings and knowledge on the teachings of Christ
especially, and a combat towards heresies. Christ has been understood in different ways by
different church Fathers. In this paper the understanding of Christ by Clement of Alexandria
will be elaborated and examined.

BIOGRAPHY: His full name, Titus Flavius Clemens was given by Eusebius and Photius in
the title of the Stromateis. According to Trevor A Hart, in his book The Dictionary of
Historical Theology he said that Clement of Alexandria lived between c. 150 – c.215. But in
most of the other sources the date of birth and death is totally unknown without any degree of
certainty. His birthplace also has two traditions, one at Athens and one at Alexandria. His
great knowledge in Greek mythology which was shown in his works could have arisen from
the practice of his family’s religion. He was the first major Christian writer at Alexandria. He
was born to a pagan family at Athens and remained to stay at Alexandria which was due to
his discovery of the teachings of Pantaenus, a Sicilian Christian. Pantaenus was known as the
Sicilian Bee and in him Clement “found rest”. Clement was searching for higher instructions
and attached himself to different masters viz: Greek of Ionia, to another Magna Graecia, the
third to Coele-Syria and the fourth to Pantaenus. The best known pupil of Clement was
Origen. During the persecution of Septimius Severus (202 or 203) he sought refuge with
Alexander, then bishop of Flaviada in Cappadocia, afterward of Jerusalem, from whom he
brought a letter to Antioch in 211. After this, he died sometime in the next five years without
returning to Alexandria in Egypt.

LITERARY WORKS: The greatest literary works of Clement were The Address to the
Greeks (Protrepticus), The Tutor (Paedagogus) and The Miscellanies (Stromata). The first is
an exhortation to the heathen to embrace Christianity, based on the exposition of the
comparative character of heathenism and Christianity. The second offers a system of training

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for the new convert, with a view to the regulation of his conduct as a Christian. And lastly the
third is an introduction to Christian philosophy. The series of his literary works shows that
the first book is about the unconverted, the second book about the new life in Christ and the
third book appeals to the mature believers. Besides the trilogy an important work that is being
preserved is the treatise, “Who is the Rich man that shall be saved”. The work entitled “The
Outlines” is likewise believed to be the work of Clement. From his works we can see that he
was trying to interlink the Greek philosophy with the Christian teachings emphasising on
knowledge and faith.

CHRISTOLOGY OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Clement strongly opposes

Gnosticism, but apparently retains Docetic1 elements in his Christology by denying emotions
and certain corporeal functions in the man Jesus. But this Docetism was the theory of the
Gnostics in the 2nd century. Clement was not all accepting the doctrine of the Docetics but
was incorporating some of their reasons and understanding in explaining the Christology of
Jesus. Moreover, it was not only docetism which was prevalent, so also was the Christology
of Ebionitism. They held firm to the authentic manhood of Christ but it is the divinity that
they whittled away.

Clement of Alexandria always had a strong conviction that Christ has brought to men the
best and highest revelation of God. This revelation, Clement interprets by means of Logos
doctrine. The concept of Logos was central to his thought, but it is the cosmological rather
than the soteriological function of the Logos that interests him. The Eternal logos is revealed
God most high, who is seated far above all distinction, and from the Logos comes “all that
distinguishes the civilized man from the savage from the beasts. He is freely named Son, and
in that character separated by an absolute gulf from things created. The relationship of the
logos with the Father is difficult to say. Clement continue to say that the logos is being
viewed from the side of humanity or of God himself. This means that from below he appears
as the fullness of the Godhead acting independently and from the above He is the highest next
to the Almighty and a certain distant from the Father.

Clement makes an important difference between Logos as in God and the Logos-Son. The
Word came to this world being both at once God and human. He emphasized Logos to a great
extent on the other hand neglecting the superiority of the Holy Spirit. He also tried to identify
the independent nature of both the Father and the Son but does not differentiate it with Logos
as Logos was both God and the Son.

The Logos is the Revealer, first in the Creation, in which the Logos takes part, by whom
wisdom is stamped upon it, again in the light of reason imparted to humankind, then in
special disclosures of divine truth, and finally through the Incarnation of Christ. The light
derived from the Logos by the Gentiles may serve as the stepping stone to the height on

1
Docetism is the view that the body of Christ was not real but only seeming and so either the sufferings were
only apparent, or else the redeemer who could not suffer was separate from the man in whom he appeared. See,
Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright, New Dictionary of Theology (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1988),
201. Docetism clings to the Christ of popular belief, who is often a divine being walking the earth in disguise.
His humanity is not denied, but divinized in such a way as to remove him from real contact with our humanity.
See, Alan Richardson, A Dictionary of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press), 56.

29
which shines the full effulgence of the Gospel. The inclusion of gentile science displays the
ambiguity of Christ in the expression of Logos.

In other words, Christ is the Logos of God. In the words of Clement, “Christ was, indeed in
ancient times this Logos and (the cause) of our being…and of our well being; but now this
same Logos has appeared to men, the only One both God and man, the cause of all things
good to us, by whom, having being thoroughly instructed the right living, we are conducted
to eternal life”. To avoid Docetism, Clement seeks, although without success: “But in the
case of the Saviour (to suppose) that the body, as a body, demanded the aids necessary for
duration would be ridiculous. For he ate, not for the sake of the body sustained by Holy
power, but in order that those with him might not be induced to think otherwise concerning
him, just as, indeed, afterward some thought that he was manifested in seeming. But he was
entirely impassible, upon whom no emotional impulse, whether of joy or grief, could manage
to exert its power”. He also said that Christ surrendered his life to death for us, became a
ransom for us and overcame the devil. He extols the Logos as a teacher beyond compare, as
leader, lawgiver and as the way to immortality. He said that Christ, as God, forgives sins, and
his humanity serves the purposes of moral instructions. He also includes that the obstacle to
the salvation of human is in themselves

Incarnation of God:- He emphasized the Triune Nature of God. The Word stands nest to
God for all eternity. The Word is the source of all knowledge. The mediator between the one
and the many. It is this Word which became incarnate in Jesus. Incarnation is the apex of
god’s work. In the history of salvation, Incarnation stands at the Centre. Christ’s coming is
the sign of the father’s love for humanity. In him a new sun rises in the world, the sun of the
revelation of the Father which alone brings in the true light of the Knowledge of God. The
salvific work of Christ consists in that the logos enlightens and educates humanity to a divine
life.
He was also influenced by the Greek philosophical concept of the impassability of God and
so he invades that Christ was incapable of suffering. In this connection πάӨη is an important
term and refers to a feeling that is essential for the preservation of the body and also the
suffering of the soul.
Clement argued that in Jesus his body needs were perceived ad sustained by body passer. His
apatheia (non-feeling) was this complete.
But Cleimant’s mistakes should not obscure his achievement in linking the desire for
intellectual and spiritual progress to the church and to orthodox Christianity. It was in past
through the labors of clement and others like him that Egyptian Christianity had became
strongly orthodox by the 4th century.
However the way in which Claimant understands the event of the Incarnation was not the
understanding of Irenaeus and did have docetic tendencies.
According to Claimant, the word did assume humanity and there is no doubt that Christ was
human in his body as well as in his soul. Particularly this union of the divine and the human
is much that same of the fundamental characteristics of humanity are lost. [He said that it was
using to assume that Jesus all in order to stay alive. He also said that Jesus was entirely
impossible, inaccessible to any movement of feeling into pleasure or pain.]

30
Human has to obey the teachings of Christ and love others. The Eucharist, according to
Clement, bestows participation in immortality, in fellowship with Christ and the divine Spirit.
He also taught the resurrection of the body, where it is not only the resurrection of the literal
body of flesh that was raised, but the spiritual body and the possibility of a conversion after
death.
CONCLUSION: Clement was trying to reveal the superiority of the Son depicting it as God.
The Logos concept of Clement has been accepted in many of the Church’s doctrines. The
Father and the Son has their Godly nature but they are described independently. John 1:1, “In
the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God” had been
rightly interpreted by Clement on the divine nature of Christ. But, taking in the wider
perspective, in the Trinitarian concept, if Clement could also delineate the nature of the Holy
Spirit in his works as the Holy Spirit also has its divine nature, then it would have cemented
the Trinitarian concept. On a different view if we take the articulation of the Logos concept
solely on the divinity of the Father and the Son, it can be widely understood.
Moreover his emphasis on knowledge “gnosis” was very important in his context where the
high Greek philosophy was influencing the church. On the other hand he did not neglect faith
which was the central core of Christianity. This balanced incorporation of knowledge and
faith was one of the wonderful works of Clement in the understanding of Christ. But what we
can drain out is that the theology of Clement or the Christology of Clement was not reaching
all, especially to those who were in the periphery, the marginalized and lower class. This can
be seen in his interpretation of the Logos where the problem of the Godhead through Logos
was his emphasis. Moreover, his emphasis on knowledge shows that it indirectly rejects the
marginalized who cannot attain knowledge and all the high Greek philosophy. His theology
did not reveal the nature of Christ as the God for all.
Lastly Clement’s thought was loose and unsystematic. He was trying to see the relationship
between the Greek philosophy with that of Christian teachings which makes his works and
teachings comprehensive rather than precise.
Clement was emphasizing a lot on the mystical side or nature of Christ where the humanity of
Christ is often neglected. This can be very dangerous in the context of today which can
eventually lead to heretical teachings. In the church the spiritual side is often emphasised to a
larger extent than the reality, which can have a serious and negative impact on the society and
the church itself. The reason is that if the mysticism is elaborated without limits, then there is
no room for praxis, or in other words the spirituality of action. Therefore, the Christology of
Clement should be deconstruct in such a way that there is a symmetrical distinction between
the spiritual nature and the humanity of Christ.
ORIGEN :- (c 185-c 250 CE)
Origen was born around 185 AD of Christian parents in Alexandria. In 202 his father
Leonides was martyred. Origen wrote to him urging him to remain form and it is said that
Origen himself was only restrained from seeking martyrdom by his mother hiding this
clothes. He devoted himself totally to a life of ansterity and scholarship. According to
tradition, his dedication was so through that he look Matt19:12 [He made himself a eunuch]
literally by depriving himself of his sexual organs. [This later was a source of difficulties with
ecclesiastical authorities, especially with Bishop Demetrus of Alexandria, who thought that

31
the fact that he had emasculated himself excluded Origen from the possibility of receiving
priestly orders]
Origen had student under Clemant of Alexandria and at the age of 18 became a teacher of
the church. Catechetical school where those seeking baptism were instructed. In course of
time Origen fallout with Bishop Demetrivs and moved to Caesarea in Palestine where he
continued his work and was highly respected. In the Decian persecution (249-51) he was
impressments and severely tortured, in the hope that he would renounce his faith. But he
remains faithful and was eventually released. He died a few years later as a result of his
injuries.
Origin was a prolific write. Though the statement of Epiphanius that Origen write 6000
verses is an exaggeration, it shows the popular idea about Origen. In fact 800 of titles of
Origen have survived. His writings include prolific works (textual) comparisons (Hexaphila),
explanations, sermons, exegetical works, apologetic works (CONTRA CELSUM) Apologetic
work, Systematic works.
Origins Christology:
He started the co- equality and the co- eternity of the Son with the Father. He made the
[helpful] idea of the eternal generation of the Son by the Father. It would he inconceivable for
Origen to think of God without the Son for a Father without a son word he no father. So thus
they are both co – eternal.
Further Origen says that this Son of God is not only coeternal with the Gather, but it can
even he said of him that he is divine “according to the enence” (ουσϊάν) and not through
participation. He rejects that the Son is an emanation from God for that would imply that God
is corporeal or material in nature.
Origin also started the distinction between the Son and the father. In the light of middle or
neo-Platonism it is understandable that Origen understands the son as a middle intermediary
between the Transcendent, ineffable God and the world of multiply. The father is thought in
tears of an absolutely transcendent God and the Son in terms of a personal God of limited
transcendence. The Son is the unique of God’s name and God’s vace. That is why he can
relate to the world. But there is a danger in this contrast between an absolutely transcendent
God and a personal God of Limited transcendence. It is the danger to the divinity of the Son.
Throughout all of Origin’s Trinitarian theology, one can detect this tendency to make the Son
somewhat inferior or less divine than the Father. This emphasis may he understood against
the background of Origen’s fight against Moralistic Monarchianesion or Safelts anism, which
saw the Father son and Holy spirit son as three temporary manifestations of the same God
{Origen in order to clarify the distinction between the Father and the Son goes to the extent
of affirming that there are ‘two Gods’ although they are one in p….this unresolved tension in
Origen’s or was not kept by most of his disciples and they split into two groups. Returning
one standard have divinity of the Son and his equality with the Father while other would
attempt to distinguish between the Son and the Father by making the Son a subordinate being.
The later saw the Son as subordinate being.
At this stage it might be helpful to note Origen’s concept of Creation and Salvation. For him
there are two stages of creation. 1) The creation of the pure intellectual, Spiritual beings. This
corresponds to Genesis ch-1. When parents of them fall into sin, God created the visible
creation.

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 For Origen fall means missing their freedom by turning away their face from the image of
the God ie λοδοѕ. In accordance with degree of the fall they were created either as heavenly
beings, either real or earthly beings or demons. The divine purpose is to restore all including
the Devil to the state of original unity, ie the state of intellects fully devoted to the
contemplation of the word.[ all will be saved]. So hell and condemnation are not eternal
Origin interprets these as a purification that same beings have to undergo a sort of fever
whole purpose to destroy illness. It is in this light that we have to see Origen’s view of work
of Christ, according to him the purpose of the Incarnation was to destroy the power of the
Devil and to grant humanity the their illuminator (undoty) that they require in order to be
saved. Christ conquered of the Devil and the illuminator of humanity of humanity.
According to Aloys Grillmier S.J. for Origen Salvation is primarily the mystical union of
the soul with the hidden God and Christ
In origen’s Christology epinoiai (wisdom logos light of mean shgrlord physican ) mean
different titles or designations of Christ, hold a central place. For Origen, no title will ever be
able to express Christ’s full significance. In the title however were no more designations for
Origen. They are the objective perfections of Christ. Which display a hierarchy within
theuedves. This titles are also used for the Father they are not objectively manifold since he is
simple and transcendent. The epinoiai of Christ are partly absolute and partly relative (for us
‘as our sanctification, our righteousness, our redemption). Inspite of many epinoiai Christ is
One. The various designations and titles reveal the various benefits and virtues of Christ. It is
by ceans of the knowledge of the perfections of Christ, that humans theundves ascend to the
father. The humanity of Christ, title Holy Scripture is titles a colored glass through which the
Godhead is imported in accordance with the receptive capability of human beings. What is
important here is that Origen was conscious of taking into account the soul of Christ. He
advanced the argument, also seen in Tartullian that the whole human being would not have
been redeemed, had not Christ faleen upon humanity the whole man, not only a human body
but also a human intellect. Origen understood the Incarnation in terms of the unity of the
λογοѕ with an unfallen soul, ie, with a rational being of the first creation and then assuming
the human body (sarx) (double Incarnation) Jesus thus had = human body and human soul.
In Christ divinity and humanity are united in such a way that are can attribute to the first,
actions and conditions that properly correspond to the latter, and vice versa. This is the
doctrine of the communication idiocmation or ‘communication it is prayer to worship the
man Jesus, although worship belongs only to God. Father, one can call Mary as the mother of
God.
Conclusion:-
There is no doubt that Origen was the greatest theologian of the early school of Alexandria.
However he was highly influenced by Platonism wave by Scripture. The result of this point
of departure is means of doctrines that many Christians have found unacceptable, such as the
eternity of the world, the pre- existence and reincarnation of souls, the existence of future
worlds, the fu Salvation of the Devil.

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 ARIUS CHRISTOLOGY
INTRODUCTION

Arianism was a Christological view held by followers of Arius, a Christian priest who lived
and taught in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early 4th century. Controversy over Arianism
extended over the greater part of the fourth century and involved most church members, from
simple believers and monks as well as bishops and emperors. The conflict between Arianism
and Trinitarian beliefs was the first major doctrinal confrontation in the Church after the
legalization of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine I.

BIOGRAPHY OF ARIUS

Arius seems to have born in Libya in AD 256. He was thought to be a pupil of Lucien of
Antioch, a celebrated Christian teacher, and a martyr for the faith. It is believed that Arius
had derived his heresy from Lucien. During the Bishopric of Peter of Alexandria (300-311),
Arius was made a deacon in that city and began the stormy pastoral career which is known to
history. He was in rapid succession excommunicated for his association with the Melitians,
then restored by Achillas, Bishop of Alexandria, and given priestly orders and the church of
Baucalis. Sometimes between 318 and 323 Arius came into conflict with Bishop Alexander
over the nature of Christ. In a confusing series of Synods a treaty was attempted between the
adherents of Alexander and followers of Arius. In the month of March in 324, Alexander
convened a provincial synod which acknowledged the treaty but anathematized Arian. In
February, 325, Arius was then condemned at a synod in Antioch. The emperor Constantine
calls the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea on 20th May, 325 and subsequently
condemned Arius and his teachings. Around 332 or 333 Constantine opened direct contact
with Arius, and in 335 the two met at Nicomedia. There Arius presented a confession which
Constantine considered sufficiently orthodox to allow for the reconsideration of Arius’s case.
Therefore, following the dedication of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem the Synod
of Jerusalem declared for the re admittance of Arius to their communion. Arian passed away
in the year 336.

ARIAN CHRISTOLOGY

Arius was a thoroughgoing Greek rationalist. He inherited the almost universally held Logos
Christology of the East. Arius’s Christology was a mixture of adoptionism and logos
theology. The Arian concept of Christ is that the Son of God did not always exist, but was
created by—and is therefore distinct from—God the Father. Though created, the Son is the
only begotten, the first created, with his own intrinsic majesty, and high office. Arius taught
that God the Father and the Son did not exist together eternally. He taught that the pre-
incarnate Jesus was a divine being created by (and therefore inferior to) God the Father at
some point, before which the Son did not exist. In English-language works, it is sometimes
said that Arians believe that Jesus is or was a "creature", in the sense of "created being".
Arius and his followers appealed to Bible verses such as Jesus saying that the father is
"greater than I" (John 14:28), and "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work"
(Proverbs 8:22).

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 The Arians on one hand distinguished the being of the Son from the beings of the creatures.
They accorded to the Son the highest next place to God and held that he could not be grasped
or probed by the mind of any other creature. On the other hand, they sought to distinguish the
being of the created Son from the being of the ingenerate God, and although the Son’s mode
of beginning was acknowledged as inexpressible, the being of God is more inexpressible. The
distinctiveness of Arian’s teaching is that he connected ‘creature’ with the phrases ‘there was
when he was not’ and ‘from nothing’

The Arians introduced the novel notion of the Son as ‘changeable and alterable’, although in
practice the Son can be and is unchangeable. They took seriously the dynamic obedience or
‘growth’ of the Son (Luke 2:52), meaning that the Son, an ethical being advanced or made
progress towards God. As ‘a creature but not as other creatures’ the Son is legally responsible
to partake of the instability and weakness of all creatures. He is like other creatures in
essence, but unlike them in terms of function, merit and mode of beginning. His different
mode of beginning lay in his being directly created by God; his different function lay in the
fact that he was himself to be the creator of all else.

CONCLUSION:

The orthodox counterattack on Arianism pointed out that the Arian theology reduced Christ
to a demigod and in effect reintroduced polytheism into Christianity, since Christ was
worshipped among Arians as among the orthodox.

One strength of Arius’s position was that it appeared to safeguard a strict monotheism while
offering an interpretation of the language of the New Testament—notably, the word Son—
that conformed to general usage and meaning. The weakness of his view was that, precisely
because Jesus was capable of suffering as a human, it was difficult to understand how he
could be fully divine and thus affect the redemption of humankind.

What terrified some people and in the meantime attracted many others was the Arian
combination of Monotheism with overt Christocentrism. The Arians excluded a temporal
element from the Son’s beginning, insisting on its being ‘before all ages’ and ‘apart from
time’. Nevertheless, once ‘from nothing’ was introduced and contrasted with God’s eternity.
Looking at our present context, it is obvious that one of the most important things is to
formulate a fascinating and alluring Christology which is relevant and easy to grasp, and in
the meantime that do not threaten and contradict the church doctrine.

Athanasius.
INTRODUCTION
Outside the pages of the New Testament itself, Athanasius (c. 296 - 373), also
referred to as St. Athanasius the Great, St. Athanasius I of Alexandria, St Athanasius the
Confessor, is probably the man to whom we chiefly owe the preservation of the Christian
faith. He did more than anyone else to bring about the triumph of the orthodox Nicene faith

35
over Arianism, a struggle to which he devoted forty-five years and for which he was exiled
five times. He is considered to be a renowned Christian theologian, a Church Father, the
chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism, and a noted Egyptian leader of the fourth
century. Born in c. 296, and trained in Alexandria as a theologian, he moved up rapidly as
reader, deacon, and theological adviser to Bishop Alexander, accompanying him in 325 to the
Council of Nicea. Athanasius succeeded Alexander as bishop upon Alexander’s death in
328.

BACKGROUND ISSUE

Context: It was about 300 years after the death of Christ, and things were going pretty well
for the Christian church. In the West, persecution by Rome had ceased due to Constantine’s
Edict of Milan, which ended all religious persecution across the empire and restored the
wealth that had been stolen in previous years. Christianity was changed from a persecuted to
an officially favored religion.

As is human nature, now that they weren’t under direct threat Christians started
arguing with each other. The Bible had not been canonized yet, so there were many different
“flavors” of Christianity, not yet one catholic (Greek for “universal”) faith.

The Arian Controversy: It was a theologian named Arius started all the trouble. His
question appeared harmless at first glance, “How could Jesus Christ have been God in the
same way as God the Father”. Arius was actually very moderate for the time; he did not deny
the divinity of Christ, but considered him a “lesser god”. And he was able to use accepted
scriptures of the time to back himself up. Being a musician, he set this to song and the debate
spread across the land.

Arius’s Christology was a mixture of adoptionism and logos theology. His basic
notion was that the Son came into being through the will of the Father; the Son, therefore,
had a beginning. Although the Son was before all eternity, he was not eternal, and Father and
Son were not of the same essence. In Jesus, who suffered pain and wept, the logos became
human.

One strength of Arius’s position was that it appeared to safeguard a strict monotheism
while offering an interpretation of the language of the New Testament—notably, the word
Son—that conformed to general usage and meaning. The weakness of his view was that,

36
precisely because Jesus was capable of suffering as a human, it was difficult to understand
how he could be fully divine and thus affect the redemption of humankind.

In about 319, a direct conflict rose between Arius and Alexander of Alexandria. It
appears that Arius blamed Alexander for what he felt were misguided or heretical teachings
being taught by the bishop. Arius’ theological views appear to have been firmly rooted in
Alexandrian Christianity, and his Christological views were certainly not radical at all. He
embraced a subordinationist Christology (that God did not have a beginning, but the Logos
did), heavily influenced by Alexandrian thinkers like Origen, which was a common
Christological view in Alexandria at the time. Support for Arius from powerful bishops like
Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia, further illustrate how Arius'
subordinationist Christology was shared by other Christians in the Empire.

Arius was subsequently excommunicated by Alexander, and he would begin to obtain

the support of many bishops who agreed with his position. Athanasius may have
accompanied Alexander to the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the council which produced
the Nicene Creed and anathematized (curse) Arius and his followers. On 9 May 328,
Athanasius succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria.

Athanasius also strongly disagreed with Arius. Jesus Christ was fully and completely
God, and also fully and completely Man. He was equal with the Creator, as was the Holy
Spirit. Thus the concept of the “Trinity” was made concrete. Athanasius also believed that to
deny the full divinity of Christ was to earn eternal damnation.

A theological war broke out, with both sides supported at some points and banished at
others. Athanasius himself was banished at least 5 times, although not all banishments were
due to theology. This controversy went on for quite some time, and for some believers it
continues to this day.

Near the end of his life, Arius gained a chance to sway things his way, with
Constantine calling him back from exile and commanding Athanasius to reconcile Arius with
the Church. Athanasius refused to do this; and Arius gained entrance with the Emperor.
After he presented his Creed, Constantine declared his works orthodox and ordered
Alexander (Arius’ and Athanasius’ old bishop) to give Arius communion.

37
CHRISTOLOGY OF ATHANASIUS: Opposition to Arianism.

Athanasius, defending the perfect humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, refused the
wrong ideas that “the body born of Mary is coessential with the Godhead of the Word, or that
the Word has changed into flesh, bones, hair, and the whole body, and altered from its own
nature” He stated clearly “the body in which the Word was is not coessential with the
Godhead, but was truly born of Mary, while the Word Himself was not changed into bones
and flesh, but came in the flesh. For what John said: “The Word was made flesh”, has this
meaning, as we may see by a similar passage; for it is written in Paul : “Christ has become a
curse for us.” And just as He has not Himself become a curse, but He is said to have done so
because He took upon Him the curse on our behalf, so also He has become flesh not by being
changed into flesh, but because He assumed on our behalf living flesh, and has become man.”

Athanasius also was clear in his teaching about the living flesh assumed by the Word
of God that it meant a whole humanity, i.e. the body and the rational soul together.

He wrote: “But truly our salvation is not merely apparent, nor does it extend to the
body only, but the whole man, body and soul alike, has truly obtained salvation in the Word
Himself” Also he said, “For to say “The Word became flesh”, is equivalent to saying “the
Word has become man”; according to what is said in Joel: “I will pour forth of My
Spirit upon all flesh”; for the promise did not extend to the irrational animals, but to
men, on whose account the Lord is become Man”.

Athanasius also denied that the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ existed before the
incarnation of the Word from the Holy Virgin. He wrote, “They all will reasonably condemn
themselves who have thought that the flesh derived from Mary existed before her, and that
the Word, prior to her, had a human soul, and existed in it always even before His coming”. It
is very clear that St. Athanasius was never affected by the teaching of Origen about the pre-
existence of the souls.

Apollinarius

During the fourth and fifth centuries Christianity found itself in a bit of a crisis.
Although the worship of the community taught that Jesus Christ was both man and God,
worshipped and adored, and the source of salvation, the specifics of what this entailed was
not quite set forth in any detail leading the church into the Christological controversies which
caused havoc and dissension for a very long time. The question was simply what did it mean
that Jesus was a man, but he was also God. This is an antinomy which countless leaders of
38
the early church wrestled with, and finally reached a conclusion in a great part by
determining what this did not mean. This narrowing down of a definition, however, required
that many people had to put forth ideas which were rejected as heresy by the leaders of the
Church. Such writers who attempted to find an answer to this seeming paradox of Christ was
Apollinaris of Laodicea. Their respective responses show a great divergence in thought,
illustrating the great variances which the early Fathers sought after an answer to this difficult,
though crucial issue. It is the goal of this paper to briefly relate the Christology of this early
writer, and to discover what the determinations mean in the work of salvation.

Apollinaris of Laodicea

Apollinarius (died 390) was a bishop of Laodicea in Syria. Best known, however, as a
noted opponent of Arianism, Apollinarius' eagerness to emphasize the deity of Jesus and the
unity of his person led him so far as to deny the existence of a rational human soul (νους,
nous) in Christ's human nature, this being replaced in him by the logos, so that his body was a
glorified and spiritualized form of humanity. It was alleged that the Apollinarian approach
implied docetism, that if the Godhood without constraint swayed the manhood there was no
possibility of real human probation or of real advance in Christ's manhood.

This did not prevent its having a considerable following, which after Apollinarius's
death divided into two sects, the more conservative taking its name (Vitalians) from Vitalis,
the Apollinarist claimant to the see of Antioch, the other (Polemeans) adding the further
assertion that the two natures were so blended that even the body of Christ was a fit object of
adoration. The Apollinarian christology, along with Eutychianism, persisted in what was later
the radically anti-Nestorian monophysite school.

Apollinarius did make a lasting contribution to orthodox theology in declaring that

Christ was consubstantial (of one substance) with the Father as regarding his divinity and
consubstantial with us as regarding his humanity. This formula, which originated with
Apollinarius, later became official orthodox doctrine. Apollinaris was also one of the first to
claim that God suffered and died on the cross, a claim which received immediate
condemnation but later became acceptable in orthodox theology.

Apollinarism or Apollinarianism was a view proposed by Apollinaris of Laodicea that

Jesus could not have had a human mind; rather, that Jesus had a human body and lower soul
(the seat of the emotions) but a divine mind.

The Trinity had been recognized at the Council of Nicea in 325, but debate about
exactly what it meant continued. A rival to the more common belief that Jesus Christ had two
natures was monophysitism ("one nature"), the doctrine that Christ had only one nature.
Apollinarism and Eutychianism were two forms of monophysitism. Apollinaris' rejection that
Christ had a human mind was considered an over-reaction to Arianism and its teaching that
Christ was not divine.

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The Issue and Context

The context of the Apollinarian Christology is that of the Alexandrian School of

Athanasius and Cyril, which was strong in declaring for the deity of Christ and the union of
the two natures in his incarnate person. From these presuppositions Apollinarius attacked the
Antiochene dualistic Christology, throughout his concern was soteriological – a Christ less
than totally divine cannot save and the death of a mere man has no redeeming efficacy.

In working out what it meant that Christ was both God and man, Apollinaris first had
to determine how these two seemingly independent conceptions could be commingled. There
was a great difficulty here, because believers can worship God, but refuse to worship a
human being, so the question of our worship of Christ could lead one to think that we both do
and we do not worship this same person, which is clearly absurd. Yet, Jesus was by creedal
affirmation both man and God, so a distinction must made which both allows for his
identification with humanity and his divine nature which allows for both our salvation, and
for his continuance as fully divine. Apollinaris addressed this issue by determining that the
divine Logos assumed human flesh, being “substantially bound together with it.” Without
changing nature, the “uncreated is commingled with the creature” allowing for the Word to
become human in the flesh while retaining that which is distinctively divine and avoiding that
which is distinctively human and sinful.

Apollinaris on Christology

In this part I will explain the Christology of the fourth-century theologian Apollinaris of
Laodicea. I will explore three aspects of his Christology:

1) The relationship between the divine and the human in Christ;

2) The connection of this divine-human relationship to salvation; and

3) The mode of unity in Christ. 

1. Divinity and Humanity in Christ

According to Apollinaris, the “Word became flesh” in Christ through a merger of the
Divine Intellect, or Spirit, and human flesh. Here flesh is understood, in later platonic terms,
as the composite of the physical body and the irrational or animal soul, for “the flesh is not
soulless… even the bodies of beasts without reason are endowed with soul.” Therefore, in
Christ, the Divine Intellect replaced the human spirit, and joined with human flesh: “So
Christ, having God as his spirit—that is, his intellect—together with soul and body, is rightly
called ‘the human being from heaven.’” The implication of this divine-human relationship is
that Christ is not a complete man: He lacks a human spirit.

This Christology resonated with other parts of Apollinaris’ theology. It connected

with his soteriology, as I will demonstrate in the next section, and it also matched his
understanding of human free will. Apollinaris couldn’t imagine the Divine Intellect and a
human spirit cooperating together in one human being. He writes: “If…every intellect rules

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itself, being moved naturally by its own will, it is impossible that two (intellects), willing
things which are mutually inconsistent, should exist together in one and the same subject.”
Two wills together in the same person simply couldn’t function. Elsewhere he argues that the
Divine Intellect would have overwhelmed the human spirit, depriving it of its self-
determination and effectively destroying it: “But to be deprived of self-determination is the
destruction of a self-determining creature, and no nature is destroyed by him who made it.”
Since God would not destroy the human nature He made, Apollinaris thought Christ could
not have possessed a human spirit.

2. Christology and Soteriology

For Apollinaris, the divine-human relationship in Christ is connected to salvation.

Apollinaris argues that human flesh is the source of sin, and is therefore the part of humanity
that requires redeeming. Redemption necessitates Christ taking on human flesh and
overcoming its tendency toward sin. Speaking about salvation as ‘the work of the
incarnation,’ Apollinaris writes: “But if the work of the incarnation is not accomplished in the
self-moved and undetermined intellect, then this work, which is the destruction of sin, is
accomplished in the flesh, which is moved from without and energized by the divine
Intellect.” Christ had to accomplish the destruction of sin in the flesh because the flesh is the
exclusive source of sin. Elsewhere Apollinaris retell that the flesh is the source of passions. It
was this component of human nature that the Divine Intellect had to occupy to achieve
salvation.

3. The Divinity, Humanity, and Unity of Christ

Apollinaris claims that his Christology adequately unites human and divine. He
affirms Christ’s humanity from the analogy of a human being. Just as a human is a composite
of flesh and spirit, so Christ is a composite of human flesh and Divine Intellect, and is
therefore human. “And in this way he was human, for a human being, according to Paul, is an
intellect in the flesh.” Apollinaris affirms the divinity of Christ by noting that God Himself
has taken on flesh as an instrument and acts through it: “God who has taken to himself an
instrument of activity is both God insofar as he activates and human with respect to the
instrument…he uses.” The unity of Christ is also clear to Apollinaris in so far as Christ’s
activity is united. While Apollinaris acknowledges that his view mixes God and man in
Christ, he holds that such mixing alters neither Christ’s Divine Intellect nor His flesh.
Summarizing his Christology, Apollinaris again refers to the analogy of a human being: “If a
human being has both a soul and a body, and these remain themselves when they are in unity,
how much more does Christ, having Godhead and body, retain both conserved and not
confused?” As a human body is a unified composite of distinct elements, so is Christ.

Opposition on his Christology

Theodore of Mopsuestia disagreed with this foundation. He contended that in order

for humanity to be truly saved in a complete way, Christ had to be fully man and fully God.
In fact, it is more important that the soul is connected to the divine, for even though he
acknowledged with Apollinaris that the body was corrupted by sin, he saw the soul not as the

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corrupting influence which must be avoided, but rather as that which must be particularly
saved in order to save both body and soul. He answered the great question of how Christ was
fully man and fully God by stating that Jesus had in fact two natures within him, both
possessing a human soul and the divine Logos. This is accomplished by what Theodore calls
“indwelling”. He had both a human soul and the divine Logos within him, cooperating in a
union which provided salvation and allowed others to participate in this salvation.

Apollinarius was criticized by Gregory of Nyssa for rejecting Christ’s full human
experiences of which the Gospels and the Epistles to the Hebrews give ample proof. The full
salvation of man requires Christ’s full identification with him in all the elements of his
composition. Apollinarianism was successively condemned by the councils at Rome (377),
Alexandria (378), Antioch (379) and finally at Constantinople (381). Followers of
Apollinarianism were accused of attempting to create a tertium quid ("third thing" neither
God nor man). The fundamental objection raised by the Catholic orthodoxy is that if there is
no complete manhood in Christ, He is not a perfect example for us, nor did He redeem the
whole of human nature, but only its physical elements.

Conclusion

As Schleiermacher pointed out, there are two basic heresies relating to the person of
Jesus Christ, and each of them destroys his significance for Christian faith. If we assimilate
him too closely to the common human condition, then he is in the same boat with the rest of
us, and cannot be the Redeemer. If on the other hand we make the difference between him
and ordinary men and women limitless, a difference of kind, we cut ourselves off from him,
and again make impossible the saving relationship. So, the task of Christology is to find the
right balance.

Nicaea:
The Arian controversy of the fourth century is widely regarded as one of the most
significant in the history of the Christian church. Arius teaching provoked a hostile response
from Athanasius.
The Council of Nicea (325) was convened by Constantine, the first Christian emperor,
with a view to sorting out the destabilizing christological disagreements within his empire.
He was determined to re-establish doctrinal unity in the church. This was the first
‘ecumenical council,’ that is, an assembly of Christians drawn from the entire Christian
world, whose decisions are regarded as normative for the churches. Nicea settled the Arian
controversy by affirming that Jesus was homoousios (one in being or of one substance) with
the Father, thus rejecting the Arian position in favour of a vigorous assertion of the divinity
of Christ. The following is the translation of the creed, which the council drafted and required
all the bishops present to sign:
We believe in on God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten that
is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God,
begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into
being, things in heaven and things on earth. Who because of us men and because of our

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salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the
third day, ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead;
And in the Holy Spirit.
But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and Before being born He was
not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is
from a different hypostasis or substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or
change – these the Catholic church anathematizes.
Our immediate task is to investigate the theological attitude of the council, as expressed
principally in this creed.
1. Arianism was placed under a decisive ban. The Son is begotten, not made; He is also
‘true God’ i.e., not God in a secondary degree. Any one who affirms that the Father pre-
existed the Son, or that the Son is a creature produced out of nothingness, or is subject to
moral change or development is formally declared a heretic.
2. In repudiating Arianism the fathers of Nicea shared Alexander’s conviction that
Scripture and tradition alike attested the divinity and immutability of the Word. In his anti-
Arian treatises, Athanasius was to deploy a triple onslaught (attack) based on the church’s
living faith and experience. First he argued that Arianism undermined the Christian doctrine
of God by presupposing that the divine Triad is not eternal and by virtually reintroducing
polytheism. Secondly, it made nonsense of the established liturgical customs of baptizing in
the Son’s name as well as the Father’s and of addressing prayers to the Son. Thirdly, and
perhaps most importantly, it undermined the Christian idea of redemption in Christ, since
only if the Mediator Himself was divine, human being could hope to re-establish fellowship
with God.
3. The creed supplies some hints, stating that as begotten, the Son is ‘out of the Father’s
substance’ and that He is ‘of the same substance as the Father.’ Eusebius explains that the
former simply means that the Son is ‘from the Father,’ not that the Son is ‘a portion of His
substance.’ The latter, Eusebius says, is not to be taken in any corporeal (bodily) sense, nor as
suggesting that the Father’s substance had undergone any change or division rather it
indicated that the Son bore no resemblance to creatures, but was in every respect like the
Father, and that He came from Him and ‘not from any other hypostasis or ousia.’
4. There can be no doubt that as applied to the Godhead, homoousios is susceptible
(open to) of, and in the last resort requires, the latter meaning. Since the divine nature is
immaterial and indivisible, it follows that the Persons of the Godhead Who share it, must
have or rather be, one identical substance. The question is whether this idea was prominent in
the minds of the Nicene Father or rather of the group among them whose influence may be
presumed to lie behind the creed.
5. The doctrine of numerical identity of substance has been widely assumed to have
been the specific teaching of the Nicene council. Nevertheless there are the strongest possible
reasons for doubting this. The chief of these is the history of the term homoousios itself, for
in both its secular and its theological usage conveyed the ‘generic’ sense. Christian writers
seem to have borrowed it from the Gnostics, for whom it signified the relationship between
beings compounded (combined) of kindred (related) substance. It was with this ‘generic’
sense that the word was first applied in Christian theology to express the Son’s relation to the
Father.
6. It is paradoxical (contradictory) to suppose that the Nicene fathers suddenly began
employing what was after all a familiar enough word in an entirely novel and unexpected
sense. The only reasonable inference is that in selecting it for insertion in their creed they
intended to underline their conviction that the Son was fully God, in the sense of sharing the
same divine nature as His Father. Several other considerations lend support to this: First,
Arius himself used more than once homoousios denying that the Son was of the same nature

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as the Father. But it is clear that it was His alleged (professed) divinity nor His substantial
unity with the Father that he was repudiating. Secondly, the issue before the council was not
the unity of the Godhead as such it was the Son’s co-eternity with the Father, which the
Arians denied, His full divinity in contrast to the creaturely status they ascribed to Him.
Thirdly, when the identity of substance of the three persons was fully acknowledged, the
most orthodox theologians continued to use homoousios with the sense of generic (general)
unity.
7. If negatively the council unequivocally (openly) outlawed Arianism, positively it was
content to affirm the Son’s full divinity and equality with the Father, out of Whose being He
was derived and Whose nature He consequently shared. It did not attempt to tackle the
closely related problem of the divine unity.
8. Whatever the theology of the council was, Constantine’s own overriding motive was
to secure the widest possible measure of agreement. For this reason he was not prepared to
bar the door to anyone who was willing to append (add) his signature to the creed. There is
thus a sense in which it is unrealistic to speak of the theology of the council. While different
groups might read their own theologies into the creed and its key word, Constantine himself
was willing to tolerate them all on condition that they acquiesced (agree) in his creed and
tolerated each other.
The Aftermath of Nicea:
1. The Nicene crisis did not come to an end, with the closing of the council. Arianism
proper has been driven underground, but the conflict only served to throw into relief the
deep-seated theological divisions in the ranks of its adversaries. The Church’s new relation to
the State, which meant that the success or failure of a doctrine might hinge upon the favour of
the reigning emperor, tended to sharpen these divisions.
2. Until Constantine’s death in 337, there was a widespread reaction against Nicea. The
Arian leader who had been exiled returned and Eusebius of Nicomedia became head of anti-
Nicene coalition. While the emperor was alive, his creed was sacrosanct (venerated), but
Eusebians were able to engineer the deposition and exile of their principal opponents,
Athanasius, Eustathius or Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra.
3. From 350 to 361 Constantius reigned as sole emperor and made a determined effort to
bypass (avoid) the Nicene doctrine. The genuinely Arian elements in the great anti-Nicene
party now took the initiative and succeeded in getting a thoroughly subordinationist creed
omitting the ban on Arianism.
4. The final phase from 361 to 381 witnessed the overthrow of Arianism and the gradual
conversion of the now dominant ‘Homoeousians’ acceptance of the homoousion. At the
council of Constantinople (381) the Nicene faith was re-affirmed, and the various Arian and
Arianizing deviations were placed under a ban.

Cappadocians:
The following thinkers are called as Cappadocian fathers. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329 –
389) is particularly remembered for his ‘Five Theological Orations,’ written around 380 and
compilation of extracts from the writings of Origen, which he entitled the Philokalia. Basil of
Caesarea (c. 330 – 379), also known as ‘Basil the Great’. This fourth century writer was
based in the region of Cappadocia (modern Turkey). He is particularly remembered for his
writings on the Trinity, especially the distinctive role of the Holy Spirit. He was elected
bishop of Caesarea in 370. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330 – 395). One of the Cappadocian fathers,
noted especially for his vigorous defense of the doctrine of the Trinity and the incarnation
during the fourth century.

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 In his letter Gregory of Nazianzus mounts (prepares) a frontal assault on the central
thesis of Apollinarianism that Christ was not fully human, in that he possessed ‘an immutable
and heavenly divine mind,’ rather than a human mind. For Gregory, this amounts to a denial
of the possibility of redemption. Only what is assumed by the Word in the incarnation can be
redeemed. If Christ did not possess a human mind, humanity is not redeemed.

On the Incarnation: Do not let people deceive themselves and others by saying that the
‘Man of the Lord,’ is without a human mind. We do not separate the humanity from the
divinity. In fact we assert the dogma of the unity and identity of the Person, who previously
was not just human but God, the only Son before all ages, who in these last days has assumed
human nature also for our salvation, in his flesh possible, in his Deity impassible, in the body
subject to limitation, yet unlimited in the Spirit, at one and the same time earthly and
heavenly, tangible (perceptible) and intangible, comprehensible and incomprehensible, that
by one and the same person, a perfect human being and perfect God, the whole humanity,
fallen through, sin might be recreated.

If any one does not believe that holy Mary is Theotokos, they will be cut off from the
Deity. If anyone who asserts that humanity was created and only afterwards endued with
divinity, they also are to be condemned. If anyone brings in the idea of two sons, one of God
the Father, the other of the mother, may they lose their share in the adoption? For the
Godhead and the humanity are two natures, as are soul and body, but there are not two Sons
of two Gods. For both natures are one by the combination, the Godhead made humanhood
deified or whatever be the right expression.

If anyone has put their trust in him as a human being lacking a human mind, they are
themselves mindless and not worthy of salvation. For what has not been assumed has not
been healed, it is what is united to his divinity that is saved. Let them not grudge us our total
salvation or endure the Saviour with only the bones and nerves and mere appearance of
humanity.

The following points are of especial importance:

1. Gregory stresses that Jesus is both perfect God and a perfect human person. Even though
human nature has fallen, through the impact of sin, it remains capable of being redeemed.
And if the whole of human nature is to be redeemed, it follows that the whole of that human
nature must be assumed. He makes a famous phrase, “What has not been assumed cannot be
restored; it is what is unite with God that is saved.” It was Adam’ nous, which originally
violated the commandment so that it became imperative that the Redeemer should possess
one too.

2. It is to be noted the use of the term to refer to Mary. For Gregory, the use of this title
(bearer of God) is a necessary consequence of the incarnation. To deny this title is to deny the
reality of the incarnation.

3. For Gregory “what has not been assumed has not been healed” refers to those aspects of
human nature which have been united to the divinity in the incarnation are saved. If we are to

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be saved in the totality of our human nature, that totality must be brought into contact with
the divinity. If Christ is only partly or apparently human, then salvation is not possible.

Cyril of Alexandria
Introduction:

Little is known for certain of Cyril's early life. He was born ca. 376, in the small town
of Theodosios, Egypt, near modern day El-Mahalla El-Kubra. A few years after his birth, his
maternal uncle Theophilus rose to the powerful position of Patriarch of Alexandria. His
mother remained close to her brother and under his guidance, Cyril was well educated. He
received the formal Christian education standard for his day: he studied grammar from age
twelve to fourteen (390-392), rhetoric and humanities from fifteen to twenty (393-397) and
finally theology and biblical studies (398-402).

He was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444. He was enthroned when the city
was at the height of its influence and power within the Roman Empire. Cyril wrote
extensively and was a leading protagonist in the Christological controversies of the later 4th
and 5th centuries. He was a central figure in the First Council of Ephesus in 431.

Christology of Cyril

Cyril regarded the embodiment of God in the person of Jesus Christ to be so

mystically powerful that it spread out from the body of the God-man into the rest of the race,
to reconstitute human nature into a graced and deified condition of the saints, one that
promised immortality and transfiguration to believers. Cyril's constant stress was on the
simple idea that it was God who walked the streets of Nazareth, and God who had appeared
in a transfigured humanity.

Cyril believed that the composition of the Trinity consisted of one divine essence
(ousia) in three distinct modes of being (hypostases.) These distinct modes of being were-the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then, when the Son became flesh and entered into the
world, these two divine and human natures both remained but became united in the person of
Jesus. This resulted in the slogan "One Nature united out of two" being used to encapsulate
the theological position of this Alexandrian bishop.

According to Cyril's Christology, there were two states for the Son: the state that
existed prior to the Son (Word/Logos) becoming enfleshed in the person of Jesus, and the
state that actually became enfleshed. Thus, only the Logos incarnate suffered and died on the
Cross and therefore the Son was able to suffer without suffering. Cyril's concern was that
there needed to be continuity of the divine subject between the Logos and the incarnate Word
—and so in Jesus Christ the divine Logos was really present in the flesh and in the world.

St. Cyril of Alexandria was a vehement proponent of the doctrine that the only Son of
God had Himself come down from heaven and become the very man who had been crucified
for mankind’s salvation. This doctrine contradicted very influential opponents, who taught
that God had not died for us as a man, but only took to Himself a man who had died. St.
Cyril’s work, That Christ is One, addresses this convincingly and thoroughly because it

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refutes Cyril’s opponents’ arguments while also putting forward many Scriptural proofs
which preserve his central thesis of the oneness of Christ. Through a careful reading of St.
Cyril’s work and the secondary literature, it is clear that the oneness of Christ, based on an
exposition of Scripture, maintains the centrality of the communication of the divine life of
God to mankind through Christ’s death.

Throughout the work That Christ is One, St. Cyril makes much use of Scripture in
proving the essential oneness of Christ. Two passages that predominate in his argument are
Philippians 2:6-11 and John 1:14. The passage in Philippians concerns itself with the self-
emptying (κένωσις) of Christ. For St. Cyril, the κένωσις passage stated that it was only as an
enfleshed One that the Word could save us, and it is as this God-Man, crucified in His flesh,
that He is glorified with the name above every name: Jesus, the name given at His
Incarnation.

In his use of John 1:14, St. Cyril establishes what a sort of rallying cry becomes for
him concerning the unity of Christ. The phrase “the Word made flesh” (ο Λóγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο)
was for St. Cyril proof positive that one could not say that Christ had taken a man to himself;
the very language of the verse precluded such a possibility. Cyril’s insistence on denying “a
distinct human person who self-activates” apart from the Word, however, was problematic
for him, as his Antiochene opponents were quick to accuse him of preaching
Apollinarianism: the idea “that the Word occupies the place of the soul in Christ,” leaving
only a mindless flesh assumed by Christ as an instrument. Cyril counters that, though the
Scriptures do indeed describe Christ as the Word made flesh, and thus imply instrumentation,
we must nonetheless be diligent in teaching “that the body which he united to himself was
endowed with a rational soul, for the Word, who is God, would hardly neglect our finer part,
the soul, and have regard only for the earthly body. Quite clearly in all wisdom he provided
for both the soul and the body.”

To Nestorius’ thinking, it could not be possible for the Word of God to be the one
who was born of the Virgin Mary and crucified on the cross; a theological system which
suffered divinity to endure such indignities would be intolerable. St. Cyril challenges his
opponents’ treatment of Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and
forever.” The Nestorians claimed that “this [man] Jesus who is the same yesterday and today
shall always remain the same, that is ‘recent,’ of yesterday and today, whereas God the Word
co-exists [forever] with his own Father” as a second πρóσωπον in Christ. St. Cyril continues
his use of “ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο” by quoting the gospel of John, stating that Christ himself
said that He was before Abraham (John. 8:58) and came down from heaven (3:13), and
quoting John the Baptist’s testimony that Christ is “a man who is preferred before me
because he was before me” (John 1:29,30). He can and does say that the whole Christ is
before Abraham, for the eternal Word was the same man who stood before the Pharisees.

St. Cyril continues to the Nestorian treatment of Christ’s word from the cross, “My
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46) as well as the passage which states
that the “son learned obedience from the things he suffered” (Heb. 5:7-9). St. Cyril counters

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the Nestorians, who stated that such words of despair and ignorance could only be attributed
to a man apart from the Word. He states that “the Word of God became an example for us in
the days of his flesh, but not nakedly or outside the limits of the self-emptying.” The Word,
then, did these things Himself, but not in His divine, unmovable nature. St. Cyril repairs
again to the Scriptures for proof of his assertion: He Who is eternal according to θεολογíα
“became like us in all things” according to οικονομíα, yet remained without sin. Thus the
Word did indeed “learn obedience,” yet not as a simply divine Word somehow eternally
learning obedience. Rather, the enfleshed Word learned obedience economically in his
humanity. For St. Cyril, this does not diminish the glory of the Word but rather increases it,
for “he who was truly and naturally the Son, and eminent in the glories of the Godhead,
should bring himself to such abasement as to undergo the abject poverty of the human state.”

Simply put, for St. Cyril, if the Son of God is not the One suffering on the cross, then
the divine life of God cannot be communicated to man. St. Cyril’s language in That Christ is
One conveys very clearly that he equated the dividing of Christ into two sons as an
“overthrowing of the divine and sacred kerygma,” and the beauty of the union of the Word
with humanity as “the most wonderful part of the economy.” St. Cyril much prefers the
language of St. Paul who, in speaking with St. Titus, calls Jesus Christ “our great God and
Savior” who was himself given for us by His Father.” If Christ is not Himself our God and
Savior, St. Cyril reasons, we can neither enter into nor progress through the divine life of
God, for the death into which we enter for our salvation is not the death of God which
destroys death, but that of a mere man, whose death is soteriologically impotent.

Cyril speaks of a “narrative of divine life” by which divinity is made available

through the crucified Christ to a human race which then appropriates it. Cyril references a
humanity which had lost communion with the Father via the Holy Spirit. Christ as Word had
no need of restoration to communion, yet in His baptism received communion economically,
as a man, on behalf of all mankind. We see, then, that “the Spirit flew away (ἀπέπτη) from the
human race in the first Adam because of sin, and now, in the form of a dove, alighted
(κατέπτη) back on the human race in the second Adam.” We, thus, through our baptism,
incorporate the reception of the Spirit and are thus able to participate in the life which He
Himself set up. St. Cyril says that, if the Word was not Himself the One baptized in the form
of the death He Himself would undergo, then there would be no way for the Holy Spirit to
come back upon humanity. However, to be baptized into the Son is to be baptized into Christ,
for Christ is the Son who gave Himself for us and reconciled us “in his own fleshly body
through his death.” Through baptism, we participate in Creation’s spiritual (πνευματικῶς)
renewal which is based on the crucified One.

Conclusion

Dominant theme which was non-negotiable for St. Cyril was that the Son and Word
of God had emptied Him and, in a kenotic act, become a man, suffered on a cross, and died
for us so that we might be initiated into the new life of God which His death had made

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available to us. With this as his unshakable focal point, St. Cyril remains for us a true
guardian and sure proclaimer of the Gospel of Christ.

Alexandrian –Antiochene dimension and the varying emphasis on the

divine and human in Jesus Christ:
The Two Natures of Jesus Christ:

The two doctrines to which the patristic period may be argued to have made a
decisive contribution relate to the person of Christ and the nature of the Godhead. These two
developments are organically related to one another. By 325, the early church had come to
the conclusion that Jesus was “of one substance” (homoousios) with God. (The term
homoousios can also be translated as “one in being” or “consubstantial.”) The implications of
this christological statement were twofold: in the first place, it consolidated at the intellectual
level the spiritual importance of Jesus Christ to Christians; secondly, however, it posed a
powerful challenge to simplistic conceptions of God.

It may be noted that the christological debates of the early church took place largely
in the eastern Mediterranean world, and were conducted in the Greek language, and often in
the light of the presuppositions of major Greek schools of philosophy. In practical terms, this
means that many of the central terms of the christological debates of the early church are
Greek, often with a history of use within the Greek philosophical tradition. We may
summarize the main landmarks of the patristic christological debate in terms of two schools,
debates and council, as follows:

The Alexandrian School: It tended to place emphasis upon the divinity of Christ, and
interpret that divinity in terms of “the word becoming incarnate.” A scriptural text, which was
of central importance to this school, is Jn. 1:14, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among
us.” This emphasis upon the idea of incarnation led to the festival of Christmas being seen as
especially important.

The outlook of the Alexandrian school, of which Athanasius is a representative, is

strongly soteriological in character. Jesus Christ is the redeemer of humanity, where
‘redemption’ means “being taken up into the life of God” or “being made divine,” a notion
traditionally expressed in terms of deification. Christology gives expression to what this a
soteriological insight implies. We could summarize the trajectory of Alexandrian christology
along the following lines: If human nature is to be deified, it must be united with the divine
nature. God must become united with human nature in such a manner that the latter is
enabled to share in the life of God. This was precisely what happened in and through the
incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ. The Second Person of the Trinity assumed
human nature and by doing so, ensured its divinization. God became human, in order that
humanity might become divine.

Alexandrian writers thus placed considerable emphasis upon the idea of the Logos
assuming human nature. The term “assuming” is important, a distinction is drawn between
the Logos “dwelling within humanity” and the Logos taking human nature upon itself (as in

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the incarnation of the Son of God). Particular emphasis came to be placed upon Jn.1:14 (the
word became flesh), which came to embody the fundamental insights of the school and the
liturgical celebration of Christmas. To celebrate the birth of Christ was to celebrate the
coming of the Logos to the world, and its taking human nature upon itself in order to redeem
it.

This clearly raised the question of the relation of the divinity and humanity of Christ.
Cyril of Alexandria is one of many writer within the school to emphasize the reality of their
union in the incarnation. The Logos existed “without flesh” before its union with human
nature, after that union, there is only one nature, in that the Logos united human nature to
itself. This emphasis upon the one nature of Christ distinguishes the Alexandrian from the
Antiochene School, which was more receptive to the idea of two natures within Christ. Cyril
writes in the fifth century:

We do not affirm that the nature of the Logos underwent a change and became flesh,
or that it was transformed into a whole or perfect human consisting o flesh and body, rather
we say that the Logos … personally united itself to human nature with a living soul, became a
human being, and was called the Son of Man, but not of mere will or favour.

The Antiochene School:

The school of christology which arose in ancient Syria differed considerably from
Alexandria. One of the most significant points of difference concerns the context in which
christological speculation was set. The Alexandrian writers were motivated primarily by
soteriological considerations. Concerned that deficient understandings of the person of Christ
were linked with inadequate conceptions of salvation, they used ideas derived from secular
Greek philosophy to ensure a picture of Christ which was consistent with the full redemption
of humanity. The idea of the “Logos” was of particular importance here, especially when
linked with the notion of incarnation.

The Antiochene writers differed at this point. Their concerns were moral, rather than
purely soteriological, and they drew much less significantly on the ideas of Greek
philosophy. The basic trajectory of much Antiochene thinking on the identity of Christ can be
traced along the following lines. On account of their disobedience, human beings exist in a
state of corruption, from which they are unable to extricate (clear away) themselves. If
redemption is to take place, it must be on the basis of a new obedience on the part of
humanity. In that humanity is unable to break free from the bonds of sin, God is obliged to
intervene. This leads to the coming of the redeemer as one who unites humanity and divinity,
and thus to the reestablishment of an obedient people of God.

The two natures of Christ are vigorously defended. Christ is at one and the same time
both God and human being. Against the Alexandrian criticism that this was to deny the unity
of Christ, the Antiochene responded that they upheld that unity, while simultaneously
recognizing that the one redeemer possessed both a perfect human and perfect divine nature.
There is a “perfect conjunction (combination)” between the human and divine natures in
Christ

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 CHALCEDONIAN DEFINITION
1. INTRODUCTION.
Right from the beginning of Christian history, leaders of the church have from time to
time met together to make authoritative decisions on different issues which usually caused
problems in the church. Such gatherings are called Church Councils. Most Christian churches
today recognized seven such meetings which were held during the 4 th and 8th centuries CE, as
authoritative in their articulation of Christian faith and church order. Among such councils,
Council of Chalcedon is the fourth council and occupied significant niche in the history of the
church. This Council was called as a result of the controversy concerning the relationship of
the divine and the human in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The intention of this paper is to bring out Christological issues leading to the council
of Chalcedon and to describe the abiding values of the Chalcedonian definition.

2. CHRISTOLOGICAL ISSUES LEADING TO THE COUNCIL OF

CHALCEDON.
The council of Chalcedon was primarily convened in order to solve the issues over the
person of Christ developed in the Christian teaching in the great Eastern Churches of Antioch
and Alexandria.

The theologians of Antioch (or Nestorians) emphasized the importance of Christ’s

complete obedience as man and his victory as a fully human being over temptation and sin
for our salvation. They insisted that Christ’s human nature was quite unchanged by being
united with the son of God. The two natures in the incarnate Christ remained distinct and
retained their proper character. In other words, the Nestorianism holds the view of a dual
personality in Christ. For the Alexandrian theologians (or Eutychianism) Christ’s divine
nature was all important. The incarnation was all about God coming to rescue humanity. At
times they seemed to portray Christ as a divine person merely using a human body. They
hold on the idea of the unity of Christ’s person, but at the cost of implying a mixture or fusion
of his two natures into one. Jesus Christ’s human life and experiences were largely neglected.
He was generally assumed to be all knowing and all powerful.

In order to solve this Christological crisis, prior to Chalcedon, the Council of Ephesus
was held in 431 CE where Nestorianism was defeated. And again in the council held in
Alexandria in 449 CE (which Pope Leo I called it as Robber Council) upheld Eutychianism.
However, the struggle between these two competing view-points was not quite solved. Thus,
finally it culminated to the Council of Chalcedon.

3. THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON.

The fourth ecumenical council, the Council of Chalcedon was summoned by the
Eastern Emperor, Marcian and his wife Poulcheria. It was designed to establish ecclesiastical
unity in the empire by putting an authoritative end to the dogmatic discord caused by
Antiochene and Alexandrian Christology. It was opened on October 8, 451 CE and sat for
about three weeks. The council was attended by more than 500(five hundred) bishops.

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However, from the West only four Papal legates (Official emissaries) and two North African
bishops attended. The most important achievement of the council was its definition. In its key
statement it confesses:

“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 with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with
us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from his 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;; 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, 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.”
To be precise, the definition made it clear that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully
human. These two natures were united in one person but without being changed or confused.
They remained distinct, but they came together in the single person of Christ. The Chalcedon
Council proceeded in two steps to establish its work of unification. First, it reaffirmed the
Nicene tradition; second, it accepted as orthodox the letter of Cyril; and third, it provided a
definition of faith. Although the Chalcedonian Creed became, and continues to be, the
standards for Christological orthodoxy, it did not present continuing opposition from those
who coalesce the two natures into one, such as the monophysite and monothelite heresies in
the succeeding two centuries.

4. ABIDING VALUES OF THE CHALCEDONIAN DEFINITION

Despite many difference, the Chalcedonian definition addressed many problems that
had plagued the church with regard to the person of Christ. Robert L. Reymond listed
out seven points of its significance as shown below:
1. Against the Docetists it declared that the Lord Jesus Christ was perfect in humanity,
truly human, con-substantial (homo-ousion) with us according to the humanity, and
born of Mary.
2. Against the Samosatian adoptionists it insisted upon personal subsistence of the
Logos “begotten of the Father before the Ages”.
3. Against the Sabellians it distinguished the Son from the Father both by the titles of
“Father” and “Son” and by its reference to the Father having begotten the son before
the ages.
4. Against the Arians it affirmed that the Lord Jesus Christ was perfect in deity, truly
God, and consubstantial with the Father.
5. Against the Apollinarians, who had reduced Jesus’ humanness to a body and an
‘animal soul’ (psyche alogos) it declared that Jesus had a ‘rational soul’ (psyche
logike) – i.e., spirit.

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 6. Against the Nestorians it both describes Mary as Theotokos, not in order to exalt
Mary in the slightest, but in order to affirm Jesus’ true deity and the fact of a real
incarnation, and spoke throughout on one and the same son and one person and one
subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons and whose natures are in union
without division and without separation.
7. Finally, against the Eutychianism, it confessed that in Christ were two natures without
confusion and without change, the property of each nature being preserved and
concurring in the one person.

CONCLUSION
Although the Council of Chalcedon was intended to be a reconciliation of differences, it did
not bring the expected peace. On the contrary, it caused a first great confessional split in
Christianity. Parts of the Eastern Church were unhappy about the words used by the council.
They wanted to use the phrase ‘one nature’ (not two) of the incarnate Christ. Consequently,
they became separated and come to be known as Monophysite (Single nature) Christians.
Moreover, the doctrine of Chalcedon was heavily criticized for its use of the language and
concepts of Greek philosophy. It gave more emphasis on who Jesus was rather than what
Jesus had achieved for our salvation, which is the main emphasis of the New Testament.

Whatever the consequent may be, the Council of Chalcedon is remarkable in the
history of the church as it was a deciding council with regard to the person and nature of
Christ. This Council reminded us of how the Church Fathers were careful in church doctrines
and practices as compare to the present church, where the presence of wide-ranging teachings
seems to confuse many Christians.

Unit – IV. Mediaeval and Reformaton Christologies

Martin Luther: The Word of God is the starting point for theology. By Word of God Luther
means the Scriptures, but he also means a great deal more. The Word is the eternal second
Person of the Trinity, which existed in God from all eternity; the Word is God’s power as
manifested in the creation of all things; the Word is the incarnate Lord; the Word is the
Scriptures, which witness to it; the Word is the proclamation through which the Word in
Scripture is actually heard by the believers.

Luther speaks of the eternal Word, the second Person of the Trinity and the unuttered Word
of God. After showing how we think words within ourselves before we express them, Luther
says:

This same picture may be applied to God. God, too, in his majesty and nature, is pregnant
with a Word or a conversation in which He engages with Himself in His divine essence and
which reflects the thoughts of His heart. It is invisible and incomprehensible conversation.
His Word existed before all angels and all creatures existed, for subsequently He brought all
creatures into being by means of this Word and conversation.

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But God has spoken; the Word has been uttered. This is the power through which all things
were made out of nothing, for God’s Word is not just an act of self-disclosure, but is also the
action and power of God. This doctrine, which in the order of logic precedes the incarnation,
in the actual order of our knowledge is possible only through the event of Jesus Christ. That
event is the supreme Word of God through which every other word is to be heard and
understood.

The value of Scripture is not to add to the Word of God in Christ, “for this much is beyond
question, that all the Scriptures point to Christ alone.”

Luther’ understanding of the work of Christ includes all the themes that had become
traditional in his time. What is significant is that in Jesus Christ we hear the word that
liberates us from the bondage to sin, death and the Devil. This is the word of justification.
Justification is first of all, the decree of absolution that God pronounces upon us, declaring us
justified in spite of our sinfulness.

John Calvin’ Christology

1. Introduction: John Calvin is generally acknowledged to be the most influential protestant
reformer and thinker after Martin Luther. He is also one of the most important interpreters of
Protestant Christianity. His influence has been so widespread that not only the Reformed/
Presbyterian Churches but almost all the protestant ecclesial and theological traditions have
been affected by his thought. It is also interesting to note that many of the well known
theologians like Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner were strongly
influenced by Calvin. In fact, Calvin has enriched both theological and ecclesiastical
traditions of Protestant Christianity. Though Calvin has contributed many significance things,
his contribution and works cannot be done on one paper, this paper will mainly focus on
Calvin’s thought about Christology.

2. Christology: Calvin’s teaching on the person and work of Christ is both catholic and
reformed. He adopts the orthodoxy of the early Church Fathers and the councils concisely. At
the same time, he develops his Christology in opposition to the teaching of Andreas Osiander
who taught that if Adam had not fallen, Christ would still have to become incarnate in
fulfillment of creation. In response to Osiander, Calvin teaches that Christ has come for our
redemption. His incarnation has no other purpose than our redemption.

In regards to the nature of Christ, Calvin adopted the Chalcedonian doctrine of the union of
the two natures of Christ. Christ is God incarnate. He is truly God and truly man. The union
of the two nature of Christ that is humanity and divinity is not the result of confusion of

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substance but unity of person. Calvin writes, ‘that he who was to be our mediator should be
true God and man.’

John Calvin: Calvin follows traditional orthodoxy when he discusses the person of Christ
and his work. In Christ there are two natures in a single person, so that “he who was the Son
of God became the Son of man- not by confusion of substances, but by unity of person.”
Although councils may err- and in fact have erred- the first ecumenical councils correctly
represented the biblical testimony regarding the person of Christ.

There are three points at which study of Calvin’ christology may prove significant. The first
concerns his attempts to defend the traditional dogma against its detractors. This is
significant, both because it forced Calvin to spell out his own Christology and because it
serves to illustrate some of the unorthodox ideas held by rationalists and others. Second,
Calvin’ description of the work of Christ in terms of the triple office of king, prophet, and
priest- usually called the triple munus- became common in Reformed theology. Third, his
understanding of the hypostatic union is closely connected with his position on the presence
of Christ in the Lord’ Supper.

The first point at which contemporary controversies forced Calvin to develop his theology
was the reason for the incarnation. Calvin regards that the purpose of the incarnation is for
our redemption. This controversy is significant, for it tended to ground Calvin’ christology on
soteriology.

Another point at which the controversies of his time helped Calvin develops his christology
had to do with the human nature of Christ. The new ‘Marcionites’, (who taught that Christ
did not have an earthly flesh) forced Calvin to insist on the humanity of Christ, and on his
physical descent from Adam. What is significant is that in this discussion Calvin developed a
christology that, while remaining orthodox, tended to emphasize the distinction between the
two natures in Christ rather than the unity of the person and the communicatio idiomatum.
This is fully consistent with Calvin’ opinions regarding the value of humanity before God as
well as with his theory of the presence of Christ in the Lord’ Supper.

Finally another opponent who helped shape Calvin’ christology was Franceso Stancaro, who
held that Christ is our mediator only through his human nature. Against this Calvin asserted
that because the work of redemption took place through the hypostatic union, everything in
Christ that has to do with redemption is to be ascribed to the unity of the person, and not to
one nature or another. The significance of this is that toward the end of his life Calvin came
to emphasize the communicatio idiomatum to a greater degree than he had before.

Calvin discusses the work of Christ in terms of three offices-triplex munus. Christ is at once
prophet, king and priest. The very title ‘Christ’ signifies this triple office, for it means
‘anointed’ and in the OT kings, prophets and priests were anointed. Christ is the prophet par
excellence, because in him all prophecies are fulfilled. The prophecies of the OT had no other
content that Christ himself. This prophetic office of Christ is extended not only to his mouth,
so that his words are prophetic, but also to his entire body, so that in each of his actions, as

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well as in the present preaching of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit can be seen. Christ
is the king of the church as well as the individual believers. As such he rules over us. But his
rule is such that he shares with his subjects all that he has received. The kings of the OT like
the prophets point to this supreme and unique king. As a priest, Christ has come before God
to present himself in sacrifice. In so doing he fulfilled all the ancient sacrifices, which had no
validity other than in him. And he has also made his followers priest, for he has now enabled
them to present themselves before God as living sacrifice.

The third main characteristics of Calvin’ christology is his constant concern to avoid any
confusion humanity and divinity in Christ. In this he tended to agree with Zwingli against
Luther, who emphasized the unity of the person above the distinction of the two natures. He
pointed out that although he divinity of the Second Person was fully present in Jesus, it was
not circumscribed by his humanity. His wondrous descent was such that he was still in
heaven while he was also in Jesus; and when he was being born from the Virgin’ womb he
was still filling the entire universe. This is what later theologians came to call the extra
calvinisticum, and it became a characteristic emphasis of Reformed Christology.

If one were to attempt to characterize Calvin’ christology in a few sentences, one could say
that while strictly orthodox, that christology leans more toward the ancient Antiochenes than
toward the Alexandrians and also that it has a very strong soteriological rather than
metaphysical emphasis.

Calvin understands the work of Christ in terms of satisfaction. Through his obedience unto
death, Christ has merited for us the forgiveness of sins. In this manner God’s justice and love
have been satisfied.

2.1 Humanity of Christ: Calvin developed his Christology in opposition not only to the
teachings of Osiander, but also to those of Menno Simons and Michael Servetus. Those
teachings forced Calvin to insist on the humanity of Christ and on His physical descent from
Adam. Calvin willingly acknowledges that the woman’s seed could not be exempted from
corruption. It was from the fallen human nature. But Christ was free of all stain because He
was sanctified by the Holy Spirit. It is through the sanctifying work of the Spirit in the
miraculous conception that the sinful substance of the woman is cleaned from every taint of
corruption.

Jesus was fully man and nothing inhuman was unknown to him excepting sin (Hebrew 4:15).
He was not only man to his body but even to his soul. He was subject to passions, fears and
sorrows. The sacrifice Jesus undertook was for the purpose of enabling us to have access to
him, ‘so that we might communicate his benefits to all’. That Christ was truly man was
moreover an indispensable condition for our salvation.

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2.2 Divinity of Christ: One of Calvin’s concerns was to avoid any confusion of humanity
and divinity in Christ. Like Zwingli, Calvin argued that the ubiquity of the divine had not
been communicated to the body of Christ and that he could not therefore be present in heaven
and on several altars at the same time. With this context, he pointed out that although the
divinity of the second person was fully present in Jesus, it was not restricted by His humanity,
His wondrous descent was such that He was still in heaven while He was also in Jesus; and
when He was being born from the virgin’s womb He was still filling the entire universe.

2.3 Unity but not Fusion: Calvin is strongly against dualism into the person of Christ-true
God and true man. He opposed sharply Nestorius. Calvin explain the two natures of Christ
that, “the two natures are closely bound up together that Christ is one Person only.” It was
one of his concerns to avoid any confusion of divinity and humanity of Christ. Following the
patristic orthodoxy, he stressed upon the oneness of God-man. But at the same time he
rejected the monophysite commingling of the two natures.

The humanity of Christ would no longer be a true humanity if it participated in the

characteristics of his divinity. Calvin sees that our salvation is jeopardized if Jesus Christ had
not been truly man such a man as we are. So far as we are concerned, everything depends on
the true manhood of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, by a fusion of the divinity and humanity
in Christ, the Godhead would similarly be threatened. It would then be a question whether
God Himself was to be found in Christ or only divine powers. In that way our salvation
would imperilled.

2.4 Sinlessness of Christ: Calvin maintains the sinlessness of Christ. His infirmities were
voluntarily borne and he could have been exempted from them without detriment to his
humanity. We do not hold Christ to be free from all taint merely because He was born of a
woman unconnected with a man, but because He was sanctified by the Spirit, so that the
generation was pure and spotless, as it would have been before Adam’s fall.

2.5 The Work of Christ: The work of Christ consists of reconciliation and redemption. It is
carried out in terms of his threefold office- prophet, priest and king. This is regarded as
Calvin’s contribution to our understanding of the uniqueness and significance of Jesus. As a
prophet, Christ is the herald of and witness to the Father’s grace. He is also the prophet par
excellence because in him all prophecies are fulfilled. Christ is the king who rules over a
spiritual reign of God, which is eternal. He is the King of the Church as well as of individual
believers. As priest, Christ acts as a pure and spotless mediator to reconcile human beings to

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God. He pleads for us as the everlasting intercessor. It is not only his death but also his life,
which has affected salvation throughout the whole course of obedience.

2.6. True God

Calvin stated that unless the God came down to us, human beings are not in position
to reach upwards. “Man in innocence could not penetrate to God without a mediator, much
less could he after the fall.” If Jesus Christ is mean anything decisive to us, we must
encounter in Him the majesty of God and find in Him the One who is truly our God.

Calvin emphasized the majesty of God such that it is impossible for human being to
have fellowship with Him unless He Himself comes down to the level of human beings. “The
majesty of God is too high to be scaled up to by mortals, who creep, requires to be received
with some modification. When Christ is called the image of the visible God, the expression is
not used without cause, but is designed to remind us that we can have no knowledge of our
salvation, until we behold God in Christ. The intention of emphasis about the majesty of God
is that it is impossible for a man to reach God. So as to bridge the gap between God and
human being, no man is fit to do so. It is Christ who is true God; divine who can be the
mediator between the Creator and the creation.

3. Reflection

Rev. H. Vanlalauva commented on the Christology of Calvin that it is Orthodox and

leans more towards the Antiochene2 than towards the Alexandrian position of Christ. It has a
strong soteriological rather than the metaphysical emphasis. The Christological emphasis
gave importance on the savings work of Christ. As mention earlier, Calvin tends to lean more
towards the Antiochene School of Thought. It can be drawn from this that Christ is the centre
of Calvin’s theology. He gave importance on the person and works of Christ.

4. Conclusion: As mentioned above, we cannot deny that John Calvin is one of the most
influential theologian and writer; John Calvin systematized a theology and he is also the most
important person who defends the faith from the false doctrines and teachings. Though, many
unsound teachings on Christology like Andreas Osiander, Menno Simons and Michael
Servetus influenced many people, John Calvin was the very significant person who could
prevent the Church from false teaching. In his final illness, Calvin commented on his own
life: “while I am nothing, yet I know that I have prevented many disturbances…God has
given me the power to write… I have written nothing in hatred… but always I have faithfully
attempted what I believed to be for the glory of God”

Unity V. Classical Theories of Atonement

2
The Antiochene School, attempt to do both justice to the divine element and the historical, human
element in Christ. The unity between the two was described as being of moral nature, a unity of will. In
opposed to Apollinarius, the Antiochene argued that the two nature were not change in such a way that one
merged to the other. Christ possessed divine nature at the same time he was a true man with body and soul.
The Antiochene concept of Christology is Logos-man Christology.

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Introduction

The Atonement is critical it is the central doctrine of Christianity, surrounded by the basic
faith seeking understanding to its complex realm. That does not mean that other doctrines
may be less important or neglected rather each of the doctrines has greater contribution to the
Christianity. An English term originally coined in 1526 by William Tyndale to Translate the
Latin term reconciliation, which has since come to have the developed meaning of the work
of Christ or the benefits of Christ gained for believers by his death and resurrection.

The meaning of Atonement

In its simplest versions of Atonement signifies; to bring together in reconciliation, to make

amends, or to mend. The spiritual activity deliberately undertaken, to correct the repercussion
of evil and work of Jesus Christ ending at Calvary, the redeeming effects upon human of
Christ is obedience and discipline, his suffering (sacrifice) and crucifixion (death). From ‘at
and one’, ‘to make as one’, ‘to unite’, to make into one (at-one-ment), to remove obstacles
preventing a union, or acceptance. The word atonement repeatedly used as a synonyms for
emancipation, atone –ment refers to the end- effect of the process of redemption being at one
with God from whom we were previously alienated and so sharing in the divine life. The
language of atonement also points to the means for removing guilt and reconciling sinners
with God.We have seen that if God be regarded as impersonal Brahman there is no room for
sin and guilt. This is equally true about reconciliation, propitiation, expiation or any other
words used to explain Atonement.

Satisfaction Theory
The ‘ransom’ or ‘bargain’ theory held prominent place for nearly a millennium, until it was
definitely superseded by Anselm’s theory of satisfaction. The learned Italian monk in the
Normandy monastery, who eventually became the archbishop of Canterbury, lived in the time
of an incipient scholasticism. The early scholasticism was very optimistic about the capacity
of human reason to grasp Christian truth, and Anselm was convinced that there could be no
discrepancy between reason and revelation. He was confident that every Christian doctrine
could be completely demonstrated by human logic. He undertook to demonstrate the doctrine
of the incarnation as logically binding on human reason. His book cur dues homo, why did
god become man? Is an attempt to prove the rational necessity of the incarnation? But his
main argument is, through starting from of a dialogue between himself and an opponent,
Boso.The doubts of Boso he meets with his own theory. In his Cur Deus Homo 1098 Anslem
of Canterbury explicitly rejected the idea that Satan had rights and that Jesus Death was a
ransom paid to the devil. He developed the satisfaction theory which motif includes several
variations and emphasis.

The satisfaction theory is predominantly God`s words: its effect is upon God. His offended
honour is restored. But it is even here that the mist serious objection arises. The theory
constitutes a clearage between God and Christ. The later offers the former a satisfaction
which He accepts. And it is as man that Christ makes His offer to God. It is not made clear
that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Him. The atonement does not stand out as

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God’s own work from the beginning to the end. But even more serious is another detect.
What is the conception of God that is at the root of this theory? The picture Anselm has
pointed of God is that of a feudal Lord extremely particular about his honour. God’s glory is
rightly stressed. But there is nothing about the love of God. Of course, Anselm does not deny
God’s love; but it has no organic place in his argument. Of theory which has no need of that
which is the very centre of the Gospel it must be said, not only it is defective, but that it is a
failure inasmuch as it has missed that which is of the essence of the matter. Thereby the
whole thing has been misrepresented. In view of the enormous influence it has exercised on
Christian thought it is difficult to calculate the damage its one sidedness has caused to the
Gospel. The values of this theory have been bought at too high a cost. For Anselm, the sin of
humankind had offended the honour and dignity of God and brought disharmony and
injustice into the universe and a debt payment was necessary in order to restore God’s honour
or to restore order and justice in the universe and this could only be satisfied by the sacrifice
of, Jesus Christ. “Anselm offered compelling biblical evidence that the atonement was not a
ransom paid by God to the devil but rather a debt paid to God on behalf of sinners. Anselm’s
work established a foundation for the Protestant Reformation, specifically the understanding
of justification by faith. The classic Anselmian formulation of the satisfaction view should be
distinguished from penal substitution. Both are forms of satisfaction theory in that they speak
of how Christ’s death was satisfactory, but penal substitution and Anselmian satisfaction
offer different understandings of how Christ’s death was satisfactory. Anselm speaks of
human sin as defrauding God of the honour he is due. Christ’s death, the ultimate act of
obedience, brings God great honour. As it was beyond the call of duty for Christ, it is more
honour than he was obliged to give. Christ’s surplus can therefore repay our deficit. Hence
Christ’s death is substitutionary; he pays the honour to the Father instead of us. Penal
substitution differs in that it sees Christ's death not as repaying God for lost honour but rather
paying the penalty of death that had always been the moral consequence for sin
(Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23). The key difference here is that for Anselm, satisfaction is
an alternative to punishment, “The honour taken away must be repaid, or punishment must
follow”. By Christ satisfying our debt of honour to God, we avoid punishment. In Calvinist
Penal Substitution, it is the punishment which satisfies the demands of justice.

This theory presupposes the idea that Jesus as a man bore the penalty of human sin, and
offered satisfaction for it in our stead. This idea is closely associated with Anselm of
Canterbury (A.D. 1033-1109). Anselm held that man has dishonour and committed sin
against God. Therefore, man is to offer satisfaction for his sin, or else he must be punished.

In Anselm’s view, satisfaction to God can consists of only something which a man does not
readily owe Go, that is a work of supererogation. Since ordinary human already owes his
creator everything he has, he cannot offer satisfaction to God. Only Jesus Christ who was
born without sin can offer God such a work of supererogation. Thus, in Anselm's view
humanity in the person of Jesus Christ has offered God his satisfaction.

Anselm’s theory of satisfaction has been significant and influential, and yet it is also
subjected to criticism. On the other hand Anselm takes human sin seriously and stresses on
the costliness of the atoning work of Christ. However, Anselm overlooked the character of

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Jesus’ death as something that happened to him, and misunderstood it as something that Jesus
had actively done. James Atkinson feels that Anselm lays too much emphasis on the part
played by Christ’s human hood. He says that if the theory is not interpreted in the light of the
dramatic theory, the whole idea of the atonement as an act of God proceeding from God’s
love may be obscured.

Ransom Theory
In mark 10:45 Jesus says that he has come to be a servant rather than to be served- and to
give life as a ransom for many.

The Greek for ‘ransom’islutron. This word occurs in the new testament only in mat.20:28,
but other words from the same root are used, e.g. I Tim. 2:6, ‘who gave himself a ransom for
all’ (antilutron); tit. 2:14, ‘who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity’; the English word ‘redeem’, from the latinredimere, ‘to buy back’(e.g. an object
from pawn) is rightly used here. The word ‘redeemer’ ‘literally means the one who buys us
back by paying the ransom-price.

The idea of redeeming or buying back by paying a ransom was familiar in Jewish and Roman
society in the time of Jesus; and it has again become painfully familiar in recent days through
the practices of hijacking and kidnapping, coupled with the demand for a ransom to secure
the freedom of the victim.

According to Jewish law, the first born in every family belonged to god –hence first born
animals were sacrificed- and so had to be ‘bought back’ by the parents, on payment of a
ransom of five shekels (num. 18:16). Again if a Jew fell into slavery- because of debt or
poverty-he could be ‘redeemed ‘by a kinsman, ‘goel’, who paid the ransom price to his
owner. (Lev. 25:47ff.)

Similarly, among the Greeks and Romans there was an arrangement for the ‘emancipation’ of
slaves, whereby a relative or friend of the slave agreed to pay the ransom necessary for the
release. In this case, the owner and slave went together to the temple of some God; the friend
paid the money in to the temple treasury, and the owner then received the money ‘from the
god’; henceforth the slave was free as far as his former owner was concerned, but was
reckoned to be the slave of god through whom he had been released. This is what Paul
implies when he writes, ‘you are not your own: for you have been bought with a price’ (1 cor.
6:19-20); i.e. ‘you were once the slaves of Satan, but now you belong to Christ, and so are
truly free.

What then does the New Testament mean it uses terms like ‘ransom’ and ‘redemption?’ it
means that we were once the servants and slaves of evil, of Satan; but now Christ, by his
suffering and death, has paid the price to set us free. From now on, therefore, we are his
servants, and Satan has no domination over us. And the ransom-price was not gold or silver,
but ‘the precious blood of Christ.

The theological theory

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Strangely enough, in the period immediately following the apostolic age, comparatively little
stress was laid on the death of Christ. This was the period which felt the influence of
Gnosticism (a kind of jnanavada) and leaders of Christian thought like the apostolic fathers
and the apologists tended to describe the Christian way as the way of true gnosis, or
knowledge, as against the false ways of the Gnostics.

The work of Justin martyr, clement of Alexandria and Origen could be described in this way.
However, eventually- in the time of Origen (c.185-254) and gregory of Nyssa (d.394)-men
did begin to ask the question of what Jesus achieved by his death; and so a theory arose.
Origen, for example accepting the fact that we are ‘bought with a price’, asks the question,
‘to whom was the price paid’?and gives the answer that it was to Satan. the price that Satan
demanded for our release was the blood of Christ, ‘a ransom for many’. When Christ rose at
the resurrection however, the devil was cheated of his prey. This idea of a bargain with Satan,
who is then eventually cheated, is found in other writers also, including St.Augustine.
Obviously this is a case where a biblical picture is being pressed too far, for the ideas of a
bargain with Satan and his being cheated are unworthy of the god we know

. Jesus’use of the ransom picture illustrates two main points- the great power of sin and of
Satan, and the terrible cost of salvation

The says of C.F.Alexanderis that there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.

Penalty Substitution Theory

Since all have sinned and fall of the glory of God they are justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus… this was to show God’s righteousness,
because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the
present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus. Rom
3:23-26.

Therefore Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Rom.5:1In these verses, the words in italics all come from a common Greek origin-
the word dike or justice. God is just (dikaios); all his actions are characterized by justice or
righteousness (dikaiosune); and he justifies or make righteous (dikaioun) those who commit
themselves in trust to Christ. The picture which is in Paul’s mind here is one which was very
familiar to Roman citizens- that of a law-court. The sinner stands before God’s judgment-
seat. The evidence is read out, and it is abundantly clear that the prisoner is guilty- that I am
guilty. The sins that I have committed are more than sufficient to merit punishment. But now
something unexpected happens. Because I have put my trust in Christ, because I have
accepted him as my Lord, he himself stands beside me, stands in my place. And because I am
by faith united with him, God looks at him rather than me. Sin has been committed, and that
sin must be punished; but Christ in my place takes that punishment upon himself, and I am
set free from the guilt of sin. I do not become innocent because I cannot undo the sin; but I do
become free from guilt, because Christ bears my guilt. Luther described this by saying that I
am at the same time righteous and a sinner.

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Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to
god. I pet.3:18. These passages make it clear that the New Testament does speak of
‘substitution’. We have sinned against God and deserve punishment; when the case is tried,
we are guilty; but God himself, the judge, in the person of his Son, stands in our place, takes
our punishment upon himself, and so we are justified-declared free from guilt, and allowed to
go free.

Sacrifice Theory
Christ is the Lamp of God (john.1:29) who takes away the sin of the world; he is our pass
over, who has been sacrificed (1 cor.5:7); he is the hilasterion,the propitiation, the mercy-
seat where God acts to forgive sin. The epistle to the Hebrews exposition of Christ’s work in
the context of the Jewish sacrificial system is a highly effective interpretation directed to the
pre-understanding of the Jewish recipients of the letter.

The Theological Theory

In the Old Testament sacrificial system, it was man who offered to god the prescribed
sacrifices, in order to get rid of his sins. We must have seen how the interpretation of
sacrifice given in Hebrews shows that Christ’s sacrifice is presented by Christ himself, who is
both priest and victims. In the church however, there gradually grew up the idea, associated
with the Lord’s supper, that man must still offer to God a worthily sacrifice; yet there is only
one sufficient sacrifice the death of Christ.

Protestant and catholic theologians have, nevertheless, come very close to each other in their
understanding of the element of sacrifice in the Eucharist.

According to pope Paul VI’s encyclical Mysteriumfidei(1965) the sacrificial character of the
mass consists in the fact in it Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is actualised or re-presented in such
a way that the church is included in and enters into Christ’s act of obedience to the father.
This is comparable to the church of north India’s teaching that in the Eucharist there is a
shewing forth and pleading before the father, Christ’s sacrifice once for all offered, and its
affirmation that the church is a royal priesthood, whose members all have the rights and
duties of a priesthood of believers, offering to God in and with the son the sacrifice of
themselves and all their powers, and showing forth in life and word the glory of the
redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ.

Indian Christian theologians on the whole have not greatly attracted to the idea of sacrifice,
but there have been one or two exceptions. K.M Banerjea (1813-1885), influenced by the
AryaSamajist theory that the religion of the Vedas was the true religion of India, and that all
others forms of Hinduism were corruptions, found certain features of the Vedic religion
which he believed to be fulfilled in Christianity features which seemed to point to an original
cosmic Covenant made between god and man.

v.Chakkarai (1880-1958) also interprets Christ’s death as sacrifice. For him the dominant
idea here is that of the release of power. At the last supper, Christ sees his death as a sacrifice,

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the Saktiof which was to become available to his disciples through participation in the
sacrificial meal of the bread and wine, bringing to them forgiveness and power.

Moral Influence Theory

The third great theory of the Atonement is Peter Abelard`s moral Influence Theory (1079-
1142) It signifies the incarnation itself- God gift of himself in the total life of Jesus, in his
teaching as well as in obedience to death-that God`s incredible love for his creatures is
manifested. It incredible as it seems, God loves us by sending his son into the world. When
we fully recognize this love of God for us, our stony hearts are changed and we find a new
freedom and a new ability to fulfill the best that is in us.(1 John 4:10) but the Epistle of John
continues (1John 4:11) and states if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Abelard also echoes John`s understanding of the effects on human beings of their awareness
of God`s love. In God`s determination not to be separated from humanity, which is
manifested in the Incarnation, in the incarnation, in his forgiveness of sins, and in Jesus`
willingness to endure the Crucifixion, we come to realize the high value that God gives to
humanity. Because we are so prized, we are able to accept ourselves as God does, and we
turn from excessive concern over our sin and guilt. Freed from self-preoccupation, we
become free to love others. Abelard (in his commentary on roman expounded a new theory.
Christ, in all his loving acts, but above all in his suffering and death is the manifestation of
God’s love. Seeing this love we are overcome by it, and inspired to love God is return.
Christ’s love shown on the cross, draws our minds away from the will to sin, and inclines
them to love his more and more. His love frees us from the slavery of sin, fills us with love
for him in return, and gives us the true freedom of the son of God. In modern times the moral
influence theory has been used and developed by a number of western theologians. Christ’s
loving compassion for sinners lifts them from their sin and takes into fellowship with God-
somewhat in the same way as a fine Christian friend can influence us and change our lives for
the better. It is this psychological or subjective influence worked on the minds of the sinner
by the death of Christ that gives this view its name of moral Influence theory. The moral
influence theory has its strong points. It rightly puts God’s love at the centre of the picture in
contrast to Anselm’s view which makes God more like a medieval feudal chief. Here we see
adequate weight being given to the message of great texts on the love of God, like john 3:16.
Again, father and son work together as one, and there is no question of the son appeasing an
angry father. Thirdly- and this is important- the subjective side is adequately dealt with; the
action does not take place merely outside me; my own heart responds to the love of Christ,
and I am changed, in repentance and love.

For the moral Influence theory, sinful humankind that is, us is the greater of Jesus `death. The
Death is aimed at us as a way for God to get our attention. Thus for Abelard Jesus died as the
demonstration of God’s love. And the change that results from that loving death is not in God
but in the subjective influence consciousness of the sinners who repent and cease their
rebellion against God and turn towards God. In this psychological or subjective influence
worked on the mind of the sinner by the death of Christ that gives this view its name of moral
influence theory.

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Reflection

In my personal evolution and close examination of these theories of Atonement, I would like
to promote and boldly admits that the Moral Influence Theory that has made a great impact
on human world as per my context.The death of Christ teaches the whole human world about
significance of being human; and what all can a human personality does in order to serve,
love, and protect one another. The Influential aspect of the theory is very much demonstrated
in Christian societies in the present context of Dalitness and nakedness of marginalized
sections, that how the influence of Christ forcing Christians or followers of Christ to be like
him in order to serve the Others. It is indeed clear that God`s great love for us which we have
experienced in Jesus Christ is amazing.

Unit- VI. Topic: Western Christologies

Friedrich Schleiermacher
Introduction:
In the 19th century, especially in Europe, when there is a high scholarship and rationalism in
philosophical thinking there are some scholastics and philosophers who are willing to deny
and oppose the dogma and orthodoxy of the church. In that context many theologians and
Pastors were formulating their theology attempting to pave the middle way in between the
traditional orthodoxy and rationalism. One of the most influential and important figure was
this F.D.E.Schleiermacher. This paper is going to deal mainly on the Schleiermacher’s
Christology.

Brief Biography of Schleiermacher:

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born on 1 st November 1768 and died on 12th
February 1834. He is one of the most important and influential German theologians. He has
been called the Father of modern theology. Schleiermacher’s mother Stubenrauch was a
woman of keen intellect and deep piety. She guided her son’s earlier education. His father,
Gottlieb, was chaplain to a Prussian regiment in Silesia. Schleiermacher studied at a
Moravian school at Niesky and later at a Moravian College at Barby. In 1787 Schleiermacher
entered the University of Halle. In 1790 he became a tutor in the house of Count Dohna at
Schlobitten in West Prussia. In 1794 he was ordained and became for a time assistant to his
uncle, the aged pastor of Landsberg. Two years later he moved to Berlin to become chaplain
to the Charlie hospital. In 1804 he returned to his old university Halle as preacher and
professor of theology.
The most important of Schleiermacher’s many writings are his Addresses on Religion to Its
Cultured Despisers (1799) and The Christian Faith (1821/2). In both, Schleiermacher can be
seen attempting to chart a middle way between traditional orthodoxy and cold rationalism, to
find a means of re-stating classical Christian convictions in a fresh and modern way which
will not reduce them or dilute them, but rather uncover their real force and depth. He was a
renowned preacher,a pioneer critic of the NT, one of the founding fathers of the discipline of
hermeneutics.

Schleiermacher’s Theology:

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His theology is commonly described as centred on “religious experience.” The description is
a valid one provided it is remembered that he does not build on special or peculiar “religious
experiences” of a mystical or emotional kind. What he appeal to is primordially
(preexistent/previous) human which is the foundation and basis of all other experience. It is
also sometimes called a theology of “feeling” and he himself uses this language. What he is
trying to describe, and to find terms to name, is called “existential awareness,” an awareness
which includes and involves ourselves by contrast with any more or less detached knowledge
of facts and truths quite external to ourselves.
The guiding theological approaches of Schleiermacher are as follows:
Religion is an attack upon dogmatic, creedal orthodoxy. Vigorous assent to Christian dogma
as part of the vitality of faith is excluded. In his Addresses Schleiermacher commends the
cultured despisers of religions for rejecting “the dogmas and proposition of religions.” “They
are not in any case the essence of religion itself.”
All Christian doctrines either are reconstructed so as to conform to the philosophical criteria
or are eliminated. The locus of faith is no longer in what God says (divine revelation) or in
what God does (redemption in history) but primarily in what human experiences. The hope
was that these cultured despisers of religion in Germany who rejected orthodoxy would now
be willing to accept this retooled version of Christianity.

Schleiermacher’s Christology:
Schleiermacher defines Christianity as “a monotheistic faith, belonging to the teleological
type of religion, and is essentially distinguished from other such faiths by that fact that in it
everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.” Christianity is
monotheistic because in it our feeling of dependence is directed toward a single source. It is
teleological because it leads to purposeful activity within the world, with an end to
establishing the kingdom of God. And last everything in Christianity is related to Jesus of
Nazareth because he is the source of the new religious consciousness – the specific piety –
that is characteristic of the Christian faith. This faith is based on the experience of
redemption, which is an element not common to all religions. More than a teacher, Jesus is
our redeemer, because through his person and his interaction with us we are brought into the
new level of existence that is the Christian life. By thus emphasizing the person of Jesus, and
making him more than a mere teacher, Schleiermacher challenged the rationalist tradition of
the eighteenth century which viewed Jesus as primarily a teacher of enlightened natural
morality.
Schleiermacher turns to the consideration of the self, the world and God from the perspective
of the consciousness of sin and grace. When viewing the self under the consciousness of
grace, two subjects are to be discussed; the person and work of Christ as the cause of grace
and the transformation of the self through grace. The redemptive activity of Jesus is due to
his sinless perfection – that is to say, his absolute God-consciousness, which was never in
conflict with his second level of consciousness. This perfection can be explained only by the
existence of God in Jesus. Jesus Christ is both divine and human. Human is defined as totally
passive in regard to God, and God as totally active in regard to the human. The fact that Jesus
as human is totally passive, and therefore absolutely dependent – is his sinless perfection. It is
also the means by which God can be seen as totally active in Jesus, and the union takes place.

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Thus, understood, the traditional statement of the union of two natures in Jesus is acceptable
for Schleiermacher. However, this union is not dependent upon the doctrine of the virgin
birth, which is not to be taken literally. The same is true of the doctrines of the resurrection,
the ascension and the return in judgment, which are not necessary expressions of Christian
consciousness. The disciples knew Jesus to be the redeemer without these doctrines. It is
obvious that we find here in Schleiermacher some common elements of earlier rationalism,
which would persist, in a great deal of the theology of the 19th century.
The work of the redeemer is based upon the definition of his person. This work is the
communication of his absolute God-consciousness to other human beings. He does this by
assuming believers into his own God-consciousness. The redeemer is active in us, as God is
active in him, we are passive in regard to him, as he is passive in his humanity in regard to
God. His redemptive activity is the work of God through him in us. Paradoxical as it may
sound, our action in our redemption is to be passive, just as Jesus was united with God
through his own human act of passivity. We become unconscious of our own life and become
conscious of his life. This is the passage from sin to perfection. It is an act of freedom for us
as well as for the redeemer. We are formed as new persons in him and thus become part of
the new creation, which expresses the original perfection.
In typical Reformed fashioned, Schleiermacher discusses the work of Christ under the
headings of the three offices of Christ as prophets, priest and king.
As prophet, Christ announces the kingdom of God. But one must remember that he also
ushers in the kingdom that he announces, and that he is thus also the end of prophecy. One
cannot separate his teachings from his person and work – and here Schleiermacher is reacting
against the rationalist tradition, which made Jesus no more than a teacher and made a radical
distinction between the teachings of Jesus and teachings about him.
As priest, the redeemer received upon himself the burden of the sins of the entire world. This
does not mean, in the literal sense that he died in our place. What is means is that, because his
sinless perfection was a judgment upon us, he suffered the hostility of the entire world, and
died for it. Since he responded to this situation out of total God-consciousness, and not out of
sin, he opened a new possibility in our world and our history – the possibility of love,
forgiveness, and reconciliation. His suffering is therefore, the necessary culmination of his
work as our redeemer, and ends all priesthood, except that which is a continuation of his
redeeming work. In these statements Schleiermacher is opposing all views of atonement that
would center the work of Christ on a particular moment of his life.
As king, the redeemer creates a people whom he still rules through the ordinances that he
established. He is the provident ruler who gives us all things that are necessary for our life as
his people. The conclusion to drawn from this is that there can be no political religion, no
theocracy and no union of church and state.

Conclusion:
He has been accused of being the starting point of the “undercover apotheosis (deification) of
human” planned by liberal theology. The point at which he has been most severely criticized
is his concentration on human God-consciousness rather than on revelation, and his
willingness on this basis to forsake the radical ‘otherness’ of the Christian gospel. And yet
seen within the context of the early 19th century the contribution of Schleiermacher to

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Protestant theology was of enormous significance and can be felt to this day. Coming out of
Pietist background, he nevertheless overcame the individualism of Pietism by his emphasis
on the importance of the church. Though greatly influenced by the rationalist and by Kant, he
corrected the rationalist position by insisting on the centrality of the person of Jesus for the
Christian faith, and that faith is not a mere endorsement of civil morality.
Karl Barth (1886-1968)
Karl Barth was widely recognized during his own life time as a modern Church Father. He is
often classed together with Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Schleiermacher because of his
massive, original contribution to theology. Barth’s personal and literary influence profoundly
changed the shape of Christian theology across confessional boundaries, significantly altered
the direction of the Protestant Church, and also left an unmistakable imprint on the polities
and cultural life of the twentieth century.

Barth’s Life and Career:

Karl Barth was born into a Swiss Theologian family on 10 th May, 1886 in Basel, and studied
in Bern, Berlin, Tubingen and Marburg under some of the leading teachers of the day,
notably Harnack and Herrmann. Although Barth never completed a doctorate, later in his life
he was showered with honorary degrees from many great Universities. It was the time when
liberal theology was in full swing and Barth was also nurtured with that dominant theological
course. In 1908 he was ordained to the ministry of Reformed Church and took a position as
assistant pastor in Geneva. Over the course of his ministry from 1911-1921, Barth became
increasingly dismayed with the resources of his liberal theological education and his gradual
discovery of scripture as revelation eventually led to his explosive commentary on Romans in
1919. Later, he moved to Safenwil where he created revolution in theology and turned away
from liberal theology. He wrote more than 500 books, articles, and papers, the most famous
being the 13 volume Church Dogmatics, which was left unfinished when he died in 9 Dec
1968.

Method and Content of Barth’s Theology:

In Barth’s early period, his theology falls within the thought-form of Neo-Protestantism, as
represented above all by the great Schleiermacher- that is, the liberal theology of religious
individualism formulated under the impact of the Romantic Idealist philosophy of the 19 th
century and coordinated with the brilliant culture which it built up Karl Barth described
liberal theology as ‘a theology in the succession of Descartes, primarily and definitely
interacted in human, and particularly the Christian religion within the frame work of our
modern outlook on the world, considering God, His work, and His word from this point of
view, and adopting the critical attitude towards the message of the Bible and ecclesiastical
tradition- to this context, and anthropocentric theology’. In that sense, Barth admits, he was
once a liberal theologian, even an enthusiastic one, in his youth. However, Barth came to see
liberal theology as nothing less than a betrayal of the faith and he turned away from liberal
theology.

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Many factors led to Barth’s radical break with Liberal theology. However, two factors stand
out as especially noteworthy. First, Barth found that Liberal theology was useless in his
weekly task of preaching the gospel to the people of Safenwil. As a result, he undertook a
careful and pain taking study of the Scripture and through it he discovered ‘the strange new
world within the Bible’. He found a relevant message for his parishioners in the transcendent
word in the Scripture and not in the philosophical theology of the Liberal school in which he
had been trained.

During the First World War, Barth began to work on a commentary on Paul’s epistle to the
Romans which were published in 1919. In it he affirmed the validity of both the historical-
critical method of studying Scripture and the doctrine of verbal inspiration, and he stated that
if he were forced to choose between them he would choose the latter. Barth criticized the
Liberal theology for turning the Gospel into a religious message that tells humans of their
own divinity instead of recognizing it as the Word of God. Throughout the commentary he
emphasized the wholly otherness of God, the Gospel, eternity and salvation. These great
truths, he argued, cannot be built up from universal human experience or reason, but must be
received in obedience from God’s revelation.

Barth’s Christology:

(i) God’s Word and the Bible:-

Barth’s theology is a theology of the word. It is the word of God, God’s revelation that is
the subject matter and source of theology. For Barth God’s word is seen in dynamic rather
than static terms. This word, however, consists of three forms or modes. The primary
form is Jesus Christ and the entire history of God’s acts leading up to and surrounding his
life, death and resurrection. This is revelation proper, the Gospel itself. The second form
is the Scripture, which witnesses the divine revelation. The third and final form is the
proclamation of the Gospel itself.

The existence of the three forms of God’s word to human does not mean that we are
confronted with three several words of God. It is one and the same word of God, which is
realized in these three forms. Thus, according to Barth, ‘We have been speaking of three
forms of the word of God, not of three several words of God… It is one and the same,
whether we regard it as revelation, as the Bible, or as proclamation. There is no
distinction of degree or value between these three forms.’

For Barth, the Bible becomes God’s word in an event. The Bible is God’s word to the
extent that God causes it to be His Word, to the extent that He speaks through it. Because
of this view on the Scripture, there caused much controversy and criticism. Liberals
accused him of elevating the Bible to a special position that nearly equaled the traditional
doctrine of verbal inspiration, thus, removing it from historical critical inquire. On the
other hand, Conservatives assailed Barth’s subordination of the Scripture to a non-
propositional event of revelation. However, in Barth’s view the Bible is the Word of God
because again and again, apart from any human decision or initiative, God uses it to
produce the miracle of faith in Jesus Christ. He held the Bible in high regard, placing it

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over every human authority while subordinating it to Jesus Christ himself. He never
appealed to some other authority over against Scripture.

(ii) Christo-centric and Trinitarian Christology:-

The structure of Barth’s theology is thoroughly Christocentric. For him, Christology is
not simply one doctrine alongside others but the centre from which all other Christian
doctrines radiate. Thus, the beginning, centre and the end of every doctrine is the event of
Jesus Christ – his life, death, resurrection, exaltation and eternal union with God the
Father. Jesus Christ is the bridge between God and the word, between God and human,
literally in every respect, not only intellectually, that is from the perspective of revelation,
but also from the stand point of election, creation, reconciliation and redemption.
Barth also understood the doctrine of Trinity as the only possible Christian answers to the
question, “Who is the self-revelation of God?” According to Barth, it is God who has
revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Consequently, Jesus Christ as the unique and
unsurpassable self-revelation of God, is identical with God and therefore both truly
human and truly divine. In his estimation, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit are divine ways of being that eternally subsist within God in absolute unity. Yet
their distinction forms the precondition for God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and his
spiritual presence within the life of the church. Thus, when Barth said, “God is Jesus
Christ and Jesus Christ is God”, he meant of the Trinity. Jesus Christ is the second mode
of the being of God, the reiteration of the Father’s own personality. Thus, the doctrine of
Trinity is analysis of the concept of revelation. He does not mean that we come to the
doctrine of Trinity by analysis of a general concept of revelation; the doctrine results from
analysis of the way in which Scripture ascribes the particular historical event Jesus Christ,
as in fact revelation of God.

(iii) Double movement in Jesus Christ:-

According to Barth, God and human changed in Jesus Christ, which means God became
human in Christ and human becomes God’s children in Jesus Christ. This movement
draws a double movement, downward movement from God to human and upward
movement from human to God. The human existence is grounded in the divine power,
responding to divine initiative in order to become the children of God. Human becomes a
new creation in Christ. Human is no more human as he/she was before. The very being of
God is opened up to human to transform the fallen human to the original state.

(iv) The Nature of Jesus Christ:-

Barth did not make a new attempt to explain the nature of Jesus Christ. He simply
reaffirmed the orthodox teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, particularly the council of
Nicaea and Chalcedon. For him, Jesus Christ is both God and man. He has two natures in
one person as the council of Chalcedon affirmed and the same substance with the Father
as the Nicaean Creed proposed it. As Luther, Karl Barth tried to emphasize on the
efficacy of the work and the value of Christ.

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Evaluation:

Barth’s theological career began with controversy. It comes therefore as no surprise that
controversy has surrounded his own theological method. One of Barth’s greatest
contributions to the 20th century theology is his recovery of the doctrine of the Trinity from
obscurity. Under the influence of Karl Barth theology has returned to serious consideration of
the doctrine of Trinity.

Some conservative protestant theologians have criticized that Barth’s theology is fideistic. In
their opinion it jeopardizes Christian witness and evangelism by undermining any possibility
of apologetics. However, its strength lies in the total reliance on revelation. Because of this,
his theology is truly theological, being free from dependence on philosophical systems or
culture, intellectual fads.

The second controversial point of Barth’s theological method is its alleged Christomonism.
Not only did but make Jesus Christ the centre and heart of his theology, there by being
‘Christocentric’, but he also restricted knowledge of and about God to what is revealed in
Christ. Perhaps Christomonism is too strong a term to serve as a fair description of Barth’s
theology. Though he did not deny the distinction between the Son, the Father, and the Holy
Spirit, his extreme concentration on Christology gives his theology the appearance of being
one sided and of neglecting the roles of the Father, the Spirit and human being in salvation
history.

Barth’s handling of the doctrine of Trinity has not met with universal agreement. Some
critiques have argued that Barth’s treatment is implicitly modalistic; it reduces God to a
single subjectivity by identifying God’s one essence with his person and by employing the
term modes of being for the Trinitarian distinctions.

Conclusion:

Barth’s theology as a whole is a new form of orthodoxy and also dedicated to it in nature. He
had a great impact on the Christian thinking of his contemporary theologians. The problem
seems to be his concept of revelation. Though he affirmed the sovereignty of God; the
primary divine revelation; the sinful nature of human who cannot know God and the priority
of the Bible as the source of theology, yet his theology lack something, His rejection of
natural theology, denial of reason and over Biblicism has been challenged by many
theologians. All these problems seemed to have been developed due to his rigid theology
which denied any other truth.
Albert Schweitzer
Christology is concerned with the study of the identity of Jesus Christ. Within Christology,
there are perhaps two distinguishable areas. The first is interested with understanding the
character of Jesus Christ and has close connections to his actions in life. The second involves
the nature of Christ and deals with issues pertaining to his humanity and divinity. In this
paper we shall briefly highlight the Christology of Albert Schweitzer.

A brief biography of Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965):

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Born on January 14, 1875 in a country village in Alsace (then part of Germany; later part of
France), Albert Schweitzer was the son of a Lutheran pastor. Albert Schweitzer was a
German theologian, preeminent "Historical Jesus" scholar, a concert organist, a philosopher,
and a physician who became a medical missionary in Africa.

From an early age he showed a passion and talent for playing the organ, and was accepted as
a pupil by some of Europe's finest professionals. He later went on to become the world's
leading expert on organ building. In 1893, Albert Schweitzer began his studies at the
University of Strasbourg, receiving a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1899; his studies also took
him to the Sorbonne and the University of Berlin. Later that year he was appointed to the
pastoral staff of St. Nicholai's Church in Strasbourg. In 1900 he obtained an advanced degree
in theology, and within the next two years was appointed principal of St. Thomas College in
Strasbourg, Curate at St. Nicholai, and to the faculty in both theology and philosophy at
University of Strasbourg. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. Along the way, Dr.
Schweitzer published several books on theology, including the most famous, The Quest of
the Historical Jesus, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship
and Passion. Albert Schweitzer died several months after his 90th birthday the 4th.
September 1965.

Christology of Albert Schweitzer:

Albert Schweitzer argues that Jesus Christ is merely the ideal man for humanity, since Jesus
often called himself "the Son of man." He rejected the divinity of Jesus. He also strongly
criticized that the divinity of Jesus was developed later by stating that we cannot have the
clear picture of Jesus without returning to the earlier orthodox position. Schweitzer claimed
that Jesus was an apocalyptic figure whose teaching had been toned down, not exaggerated
by the New Testament writers. This created an added dimension to the debate about the
historical Jesus, but did not fundamentally alter the underlying assumption of the
Enlightenment thought. Modern Christology is therefore divided into opposing camps using
very different principles of theological method. The exponents of traditional ‘Chalcedonian’

Schweitzer reviewed all former work on the "historical Jesus" back to the late 18th century.
He showed that the image of Jesus had changed with the times and outlooks of the various
authors, and gave his own synopsis and interpretation of the previous century's findings. He
maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions,
which reflected late Jewish eschatology. Schweitzer, however, writes: "The Jesus of Nazareth
who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God,
who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final
consecration never existed."

Schweitzer found many New Testament references to apparently show that 1st-century
Christians believed literally in the imminent fulfilment of the promise of the World's ending,
within the lifetime of Jesus's original followers, He noted that in the gospel of Mark, Jesus
speaks of a "tribulation", with his coming in the clouds with great power and glory" (St

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Mark), and states when it will happen: "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be
fulfilled" (St Matthew, 24:34) (or, "have taken place" (Luke 21:32)): "All these things shall
come upon this generation" (Matthew 23:36). "There be some standing here which shall not
taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:28) (or, "until
they see that the kingdom of God has come with power" (Mark 9:1); or, "till they see the
kingdom of God" (Luke 9:27).)Schweitzer notes that St. Paul apparently believed in the
immediacy of the "Second Coming of Jesus": "Then we which are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever
be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4.17). St Paul spoke of the 'last times': "Brethren, the time
is short: it remained, that both they that have wives be as though they had none" (1
Corinthians 7:29); "God ... Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:2).
Similarly in St Peter: "Christ .. Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the
world, but was manifest in these last times for you" (1 Peter 1:20), and "But the end of all
things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7). "Surely I come quickly" (Revelation 22:20).

Schweitzer writes that modern Christians of many kinds deliberately ignore the urgent
message (so powerfully proclaimed by Jesus during the 1st century) of an imminent end of
the world. Each new generation hopes to be the one to see the world destroyed, another world
coming, and the saints governing a new earth. Schweitzer concludes that the 1st century
theology, originating in the lifetimes of those who first followed Jesus, is both incompatible
with, and far removed from, those beliefs later made official by the Roman Emperor
Constantine in 325 CE.

Conclusion:

From the light of the paper it is obvious that Albert Schweitzer supported the humanity of
Christ and rejected the divinity. He said also give attention to the historicity of Jesus than the
divinity of Christ.

Hope Christology – W. Pannenberg

The theology of hope has its origins in the existential gloom of the late 1960s. At a time when
ecclesiastical fortunes were at an all-time low and it seemed that much of Christianity was
headed for some form of “Christian atheism,” a new school of German theologians came to
the fore, propounding what has been variously termed the theology of hope or the theology of
the future. Theology of hope is a way of looking at theology and theological concerns from
the perspective of the future rather than the past or present. Past and present have value only
with reference to the future. Reality is not –yet; it is future oriented. The question of God’s
existence can be answered only in the future, for God is subject to time as it pushes into the
future.
The theology of hope is grounded in the eschatology of Albert Schweitzer from the early 20 th
century, but with a radical redirection. It seeks to point theology toward the future, rather than
toward the past or present. It places a strong emphasis on faith as it relates to history, but
insists that the meaning of history can be uncovered only in its conclusion.
The theologians of hope refuse to dichotomize history into secular and sacred. For them,
there is only one history and God meditates His revelation indirectly through all of it. The

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Christian hope is the anticipation of the historical future, which will be a direct fulfillment of
God’s promises as given to humanity in Christ. The present is meaningful only inasmuch as it
relates to future possibilities.
The theology of hope is also a resurrection theology, although it sees Christ’ resurrection as a
“first-fruits” of the future and interprets its significance by a backward look from the future
rather than vice versa. Christ’ church is to be a ‘disturber’ of society, engaged in a mission of
confrontation as it awaits the eschatological fulfillment of God’s kingdom.
The theology of hope goes beyond traditional theological bounds, seeking to envelop the
whole world, including the fields of politics, sociology, ethics and biology. It considers itself
to be a secular theology and as such has had a definite impact of Third World thinking. The
pillars of this school are Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Johannes Metz.

Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928 - ): Pannenberg, who holds a teaching post in systematic

theology at the University of Munich, presents his theology from the category of history.
With the appearance of his Jesus – God and Man in 1968, he became an influence in the
English-speaking world. A more popular type of theology appeared with the two-volumed
publication of his essays, Basic Questions to theology, in 1970 and 1971.

Approaching a theology: During his studies, Pannenberg had delved (examine) into
philosophy and theology. A study of theology gave him a deeper acquaintance with patristic
and a new appreciation for the place of history. He says, “The subject matter that fascinated
me was the reality of God and the consequences to be derived from the affirmation of that
reality in philosophy and in dogmatics. But now historical experience, tradition and critical
exegesis, together with philosophical and theological reflection on their content and
implications, became the privileged medium to discuss the reality of God. That meant that …
God’s presence is hidden in the particulars of history…We finally arrived at the conclusion
that even God’s revelation takes place in history and that precisely all the biblical writings
suggest this solution of the key problem of fundamental theology.” Such an approach called
for a new method of relating the Person and history of Jesus to the OT’ theology of history. It
was discovered in apocalyptic thought. “In the end it became discernible that it is in history
itself that divine revelation takes place, and not in some strange Word arriving from some
alien place and cutting across the fabric of history.”

History and revelation: Pannenberg sees history as the key to revelation, therefore, he can
be called the theologian of history. For him history is the principle of verifying the future. For
him, all history is God’s revelation. History is so clear in its revelatory functions that its
interpretation can be made without the aid of a supernatural revelation.
It is in the events of history that God discloses Himself to humanity. Nor is this
revelation limited to a “sacred” history; it includes all of history, the totality of all events. In
this manner God becomes known not just as “the God o
The historical Jesus and Christology: Pannenberg’s next major publication after
announcing his new view of revelation was his Christology – Jesus – God and Man. He
began this work with the assertion: “Its teaching about Jesus Christ lies at the heart of every
Christian theology.”
Pannenberg’ christology begins with a methodological concern for the right starting point.
The traditional way of doing christology was to start ‘from above’ with the incarnational
dogma of the ancient church a defined in the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Ever since the
quest of the historical Jesus began in the 18th century, it has become increasingly clear that
church dogma can lo longer be the point of departure in christology but must itself be
legitimated with reference to our knowledge of the historical Jesus and the early Christian

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trajectories of interpretation. Christology today must start ‘from below’ to show that the
apostolic kerygma or ecclesiastical dogma is grounded in the Jesus of history. In starting
christology ‘from below’ Pannenberg does not end with a ‘low christology’. A ‘low’
christology is one which follows the ancient Ebionitic tendency to treat Jesus as a ‘mere man’
in contrast to a ‘high’ christology which finds in Jesus’ unity with the Father the revelation of
the identity of God. Pannenberg ‘ proposal is to do a christology ‘from below’ which is a
true christology ‘from above.’
What is christology? The note of history is struck again. Christology is the
interpretation of the history of Jesus. There is nothing that can be called Christian that is not
based on that. Jesus of Nazareth was a proclaimer of the oncoming Kingdom of God within
the horizon of late-Jewish apocalyptic expectations. Jesus was not one of the apocalyptic
visionaries, but the distinctiveness of Jesus’ message and ministry can be understood only
within the framework of apocalyptic eschatology. That was the context within which Jesus
preached his message of the Kingdom of God and in whose terms that message was heard
and believed. Without the historical event of Resurrection, Jesus would have been one more
zealous eschatological preacher soon forgotten. The Resurrection acted like a magnet to draw
christological titles from numerous sources into the service of announcing the identity and
meaning of Jesus as the Messiah waited by Israel. Thus, in one sense christology began with
the first witnesses to the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus as the Christ was an Easter
event. Yet in another sense christology began in the person of Jesus himself, for the risen
Lord is an empty symbol without connection with the historical life and ministry of Jesus.
In addition to t his strong emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus as the pivot of
christology, Pannenberg offers a number of equally significant, constructive proposals for
christological thought.
(i) He resists the modern tendency to write christology strictly out of soteriological
interests. Tillich’s famous statement that christology is a function of soteriology is
unacceptable.
(ii) Jesus’ unity with God can be established only retrospectively (recall) from the Easter
event. His pre-Easter life has proleptic significance. The idea of prolepsis is the key to
understanding the relation between the present and the future.
(iii) The mode of God’s presence in Jesus is affirmed in terms of God’s revelational unity
with Jesus. From this revelational approach Pannenberg seeks to do justice to the
concern of classical christology to stress the essential unity of Jesus with the Father.
(iv) Through christology Pannenberg opens a way to rethink the doctrine of the Trinity,
thus helping to reinforce the revival of Trinitarian thinking in the 20th century, starting
with the creative initiatives of Barth.
(v) The most striking original idea in Pannenberg’s overall scheme is that of the
retroactive power of the future to create all things from the beginning. This idea lies at
the heart of his incorporation of eschatology into all dimensions of theology,
including in particular his idea of God as the power of the future.

Unit- VII. Christological Reflections from India

Raja Ram Mohan Roy

Raja Ram Mohan Roy is one of the Indian greatest thinker and philosopher. He was greatly
influence in the teaching of Jesus and it was because of the influence of Christianity that he
believe in monotheistic. He was also a social reformer. He rejected all the social evils and

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fight for the better and unity in the society. Thus, this paper will emphasize to the theology of
Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s thought on person and work of Christ.

Biography:

Raja Ram Mohan Roy is hailed as the ‘morning star of Indian renaissance’, ‘the father of
modern India’ and has also been called as ‘Father of Indian Renaissance’. He was born at
1772 from a Brahman family of Bengal. He was the first Indian leader to take Christian faith
seriously, and also has responded to it extensively. He mastered several languages like
Bengali, Sanskrit, English as well as Persian and Arabic. From 1815-1830, he lived in
Calcutta and wrote in Bengali, Sanskrit and English. He was also well known in missionary
circle, politics and in the field of education.

He was a humanist and rejected Sati, infanticide and caste system. He was also influenced by
Quran, Parsee religion, Upanishadic Philosophy and Unitarian belief. He was strictly
monotheistic and anti-idolatrous and his attempt was to recreate human brotherhood and
unity of all religions of humankind. In 1815, he established the Atmiya Sabha, then Brahma
Sabha and later it became Brahma Samaj. He sailed for England in 1830 on a visit which
brought him great fame and popularity. He hoped to return to India for further service of his
people but died in Bristol in 1833. His name is honored in India as a great patriot and pioneer
of social reform.

Person of Christ:

His attitude to Christ is one of reverence, as for a great teacher and a messenger of God but
denies the title ‘Son of God’ attributes divinity. He also rejects the deity of Christ and
accepting an Arian Christology that Jesus was no more than a created being, and not the
creator.

Robin Boyd affirms that Raja Ram Mohan Roy quotes many scriptural passages to prove
what he calls ‘ the natural inferiority of the Son to the Father’ and holds that Jesus is merely
delegated with power from God, but does not possess this power intrinsically. The unity with
the Father implied in certain Johannine texts is merely “a subsisting concord of will and
design, such as existed among his Apostles, and not identity of being”. Even though he does
not accept the title ‘Son of God’ and other scriptural titles of Christ, but always in a qualified
sense, implying that each one is a special gift conferred by God rather than by his right.

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Strangely, he accepts the doctrine of the virgin birth and does not deny the miracles of Christ,
even the resurrection, but insisted that they are unimportant. He also points out that the Holy
Spirit is not so much a person as ‘it’ is an influence, or power, of God- it is not self-existent,
as it proceeds from the Father as does also from the Son. This means that only God is to be
worshipped, not the creatures, and for Him, the Son and the Holy Spirit belong to this lesser
realm. To worship the Son and the Holy Spirit would be equal to primitive Hindu worship.

Work of Christ:

He believes that the saving work of Christ accomplished through his teaching and his death is
simply the supreme illustration of those statement that the only object of his mission. Though
he affirms the virgin birth and the miracles and even bodily resurrected, yet his emphasis is
on none of these, but only on the teaching of Jesus. He does not also see the saving
significance of Christ’s life, that is, of the cross and the resurrection. He states that there is no
biblical evidence for such a doctrine of the cross as the all-sufficient means for our salvation,
but repentance instead is the only means.

The plan of salvation is for him a very simple one. ‘This do and thou shalt live’, said Jesus,
and the following of his percepts is ‘the best and only means of obtaining the forgiveness of
our sins, the favor of God, and strength to overcome our passions and to keep his
commandments’. If we repent we receive forgiveness and there is no need for an atoning
death, though we are greatly helped by the supreme example of the Cross.

If we fail to follow Jesus’ teaching as we certainly did, the solution lies in repentance, as Ram
Mohan Roy says that it is ‘the most acceptable atonement on our part to the All-merciful,
when we have fallen short of that duty’. This is the nearest that he approaches to a doctrine of
repentance, faith, grace and forgiveness. He also finds divine injustice if God inflicts
suffering on an innocent person on behalf of others, it would in turn in-consistent with the
justice of God.

Conclusion:

The above discussions affirm for Raja Ram Mohan Roy as a great influential in regard to the
condemned of social evils and inhuman practices. He worked hard to enlighten Indians.
Though he held distinct about Jesus, he had highest respect for Jesus. His understanding
about Bible, Christ, God and Christianity gave shape to a particular Indian theology. Though
his belief in Christ is more or less similar with the Christian belief, his declining Christ as the
son of God and ungiving priority to the resurrection of Christ was the main contrasting belief
to the Chris

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 Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya (1861 – 1907)
Born in Bengal and lived as a contemporary of great personalities like Swami Vivekananda
and Tagore, Brahmabandhap Upadhyay too, had made his marvellous contirbution to the
world, in the field of religion, politics and social philosophy. He was one of the pioneers who
ventured into the independence movement in British India demanding complete freedom
from the British. At the same time he was inspired by many thinkers to bring about a
marriage between Christianity and Hinduism in India - a bold new step in a country which
reserved the rich culture of its own

Early life

Bhavani Charan Banerjee, later known as Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya was born on February
2, 1861 in a Brahmin family in Khanyan, a small village about 30 miles north of Calcutta. He
had his school education in the Scottish Mission School and College education in Hoogly
College. In 1887 he joined the church of the New Dispensation formed by K. C. Sen. In 1888
he went to Hyderabad to teach Sanskrit at the Union Academy.

Conversion

The interest awakened in him in the life and teaching of Jesus grew as a result of his
friendship with the two Anglican missionaries in Hyderabad. He attended regularly the Bible
classes, which they led and gradually became convinced of the truth of Jesus’ resurrection
and of his co-eternal sonship. In February 26, 1891 he accepted baptism. He did not join the
church. But before the end of the year he joined the Catholic church choosing the name
Theophilus which he translated as Brahmabandhav

Works

After baptism his main concern was to develop some indigenous method to preach the
gospel of Christ. The ideal of de Nobili influenced him and in 1894 he donned (worn) the
saffron rob of Sannyasi. In the same year he started a monthly journal Sophia which provided
the main platform to express his views.

In 1900 he moved from Jabalpur to Calcutta and engaged more and more in journalistic
activities. He was drawn to the Advaitic doctrine of Sankara as a means to express Christian
doctrine. In January 1901 Brahmabandhav brought out the Twentieth Century as a monthly
review under the combined editorship of N. Gupta and himself.

Towards the end of 1904 appeared Sandhya as an evening paper, which had an impact on the
political life of Bengal and the whole of India till 1907. In the same year he started The
Swaraj his Bengali Weekly.

Theological method

1. Two aspects of his methodology:

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(a) His whole theological thinking was motivated by his very genuine concern for indigenous
expression of Christian faith and life.

(b) Brahmabandhav had a very concrete method as how this indigenization of Christian
message in India should take place.

2. Indigenization

He says it is a three-fold task: “First to re-educate from the minds of the Indian people the
erroneous and mischievous doctrines (pantheism and transmigration); Secondly, to lay the
basis of Theism by the help of the Vedas; Thirdly, to build Christianity on that foundation.”
Thus the discussion concerning ‘pre-understanding’ and ‘indigenization’ which are now
occupying the efforts of the theologians seem to be anticipated by Brahmabandhav by several
decades.

Theological emphases

We can divide Brahamabandhab’s theology under three main headings.

1. Understanding of Religion

His understanding of Protestant missionaries was that they approached Hinduism primarily to
find fault with the Hindu thinking, hoping that by t his demolition of Hinduism, Hindus will
be converted to Christ. He felt this was too negative an attitude towards Hinduism. On the
other hand, Catholicism with its distinction between nature and supernature gave room for
natural theology built on human reason on which the supernatural grace or the theology of
revelation can be built. This was definitely a more positive attitude towards to Hinduism and
appealed to the nationalistic spirit of the time.

2. Vedic Christian Theology

Brahmabandhav says that Christianity should not come as the destroyer of Hinduism, but as it
is fulfillment. “The primitive (Hinduism) and the new (Christianity) are linked together as
root trunk base and structure, as outline and filling.” Since root is a first and then is the trunk,
foundation is first and then the superstructure so also nature is fist and supernature is later.
Brahmabandhav strives to make Hinduism the foundation on which the superstructure of
Christianity can be built. This is what he calls Vedic Christian theology.

3. Creation and Maya

The main obstacle for him in accepting Shankara’ Vedanta was the latter’s interpretation of
Maya to mean that it is unreal. But later he interpreted Maya to mean not illusion or unreal
existence but a dependent existence – that all things created are depending on God. Then he
was ready to accept the Vedanta as his foundation for Christianity.

For him Maya is not a quality of being dependent. It is also a divine overflow of energy,
which results in the existence of creatures. He says, “Maya is a mysterious divine operation.
It is neither real nor unreal. We cannot explain how the phenomenal multiplicity results from

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the immutable unity, how being is communicated to the finite. Maya is neither real nor
necessary nor unreal but contingent.

4. Understanding of God and Christ

For him God is not Ishwara but the very highest - Brahman or Para Brahman – not Saguna
Brahman. He is keen to understand God as Nirguna Brahman. Boyd observes that
Brahmabandhav “gives nothing but the highest honour” summarizes his christology
beautifully.

He does not use the term avatara for Christ. For him avatara of the Hindu deities is
qualitatively different from the incarnation of Christ. He holds that the human is, according to
Vedanta, composed of five sheaths: animate, vital, mental, intellectual and spiritual.

For this reason Brahmabandhav calls Christ as narahari (nara means man and hari is the
proper name for Vishnu) God-Man. He also rejects the lie of Christian avararism, for
incarnation is far higher than the avatara of Hindus.

5. Understanding of the Indian Church and Organization

He was disillusioned by the church structures. But he did recognize the need for a visible
organized institution for the regular ministry of the Word and the sacraments. He was quite
strong in condemning the Europeanness of the Indian church. This understanding led him to
found what he called a Hindu Catholic Sanyas Ashram. In all this he was far ahead of his
time. Perhaps more than any other Indian thinker he raised the credibility of the Christian
message before the Indian philosophy to its highest level.

6. Saccidannanda Brahman

He contends how much more than a Christian understanding of Saccidananda shows the true
nature of God. Therefore, his concept of God is basically Trinitarian. He understands that this
is a mystery, which can be known only through the revelation in Christ. Two concepts helped
him overcome this contradiction; One is, the understanding of Christ as cit, or the revelation
of God’ inner being. As cit Christ’ uniqueness lies in “his unfolding the mystery of God’s
inner life.” This is also Christ’ claim to his divinity.

Evaluation

He had a very high Christology. In calling Christ Brahman he was very understandable
before the Hindu brethren. His understanding of the Bible as the revealed word of God is
definitely conservative.

His zeal for indigenization of the Christian message makes him an uncalled but sent
missionary to the Hindus. His almost uncritical use of the Thomistic system of nature and
supernature makes him blind to several aspect in theological reflection.

His resort to Vedanta to understand Christ as the higher God in relation to the avatara makes
the difference between Christ and others only quantitative rather than qualitative.

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The famous poem "Vande Sachitanandam" is his own outstanding contribution.

CHENCHIAH CHRISTOLOGY

Pandipeddi Chenchiah, one of the figures of Madras Rethinking Group, was a leading person
in the group. His theology is radically Christo-centric, and Christology occupies the central
place in his theology.

For Chenchiah, Christology means the significance and the meaning of Jesus’ personality. He
expresses that Christology should govern theology, and he maintains that our knowledge of
God apart from Christ lacks the key to interpret the Incarnation, and without the light that
Jesus’ God’s nature does not become clear. To have a clear understanding of Chenchiah
Christology is the aim and purpose of this paper.

2. Methodological formulation:

For the theological formulation of Chenchiah, it would be good to know the shaping factors
of his theology. It should be noted that Chenchiah’s understanding of India was the English
educated, nationalistic and renascent India. This shaped his theological thinking vis-à-vis the
traditional western interpretation of Christianity, traditional Hinduism and Secularism. He
was also deeply influenced by the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo of Pondicherry and the
Philosophy of Yoga by Master C.V.V. Master C.V.V’s teaching is world-affirming, through
creation God reveals himself and demonstrates his power. There is meaning, hope and
promise in this present life, and the release of divine power, or a new kind of spiritual power
brings into being a new quality of life ‘Merry life” which is found in its fullest form in
society. From CVV’s teaching, Chenchiah developed his understanding of the world of the
Holy Spirit and on the nature of the new life in Christ- which is Christian yoga ‘Amrita yoga’
= yoga of everlasting life or Parusuddha atma yoga = yoga of the Holy Spirit. The aspects of
Aurobindo’s thought which helped Chenchiah most were the ideas of a spiritual power which
comes from outside with a transforming strength, and that of the evolution- empowered by
this descent from above- of a new and better type of humanity. From these two persons,
Chenchiah found a line of thought which was fully Hindu and modern Western thought,
especially in the fields of evolution and genetics. Thus, Chenchiah made use of the modern
concept of evolution in elucidating the supremacy and uniqueness of Jesus Christ. He also
belief that each culture has to uncover a particular aspect of the meaning and significant of
Jesus Christ, and that Christ is at work in the Indian scene, made Chenchiah’s biological
language.

The three pillars propounded by Chenchiah for Indian Christian theology are Hindu heritage,
pratyaksa experience of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Among these three
pillars, direct contact with Christ is the goal and the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ and the
Hindu heritage reveals the new facets of Jesus. Chenchiah preferred purna philosophy of the
Isha Upanishad because of its idam line of approach ( idam means ‘this’ in opposition of
Sankara’s ‘neti’ and idam line holds that God indwells the universe, and view everything in
creation is to some extend God). He holds that yoga moves in the direction of Christian

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understanding of life and destiny, and sought to develop a distinctively Christian yoga
‘Amrita Yoga’ or Purusuddha Atma Yoga.

3. Christological formulation of Chenchiah:

Since Chenchiah is radically Christo-centric, he gives much important to the fact of Christ. In
order to understand Chenchiah’s theology, the appropriate starting point is nothing else than
his understanding of Christ.

3.1. The raw fact of Christ:

Chenchiah has propounded that Jesus Christ is the beginning of new life, new species, new
man, new races, new creation and new order in creation. Christ is the partaking of the
immortal nature of God, of the birth of a new race in the creation of the sons of God. Christ is
something new, something different from either God or man, a new emergence or mutation or
product in a biological term. Jesus Christ is a new man, a new creation. In the words of
Jathana in Jesus Christ the new man has emerged, God’s new creation has been inaugurated,
and the new cosmic energy- the Holy Spirit has entered the creative power and his primary
interest is Jesus bearing on man God’s revelation by His acts of creation.

Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God permanently residing in creation. Jesus is the one who bring
heaven to earth to change earth into heaven permanently. He does not embody the forces of
our age. He brings the powers of a glorious age of the future. He brings forth the children of
God and in him we see the actual beginning of a new order. He is a historic person, true man,
active in history that lives today and is still fully human and new. He is the ideal of what man
should be like, and can be like in a concrete possibility.

Chenchiah says that Jesus is the first fruits of a new creation, the first of a new race. He also
asserts that Jesus is the entry into life of something in God, which till now remained outside
creation and entered for the first time into creative order. Then He is the new center of a new
creation, the fulcrum of the kingdom of God, the Lord and Master of a new creative branch of
cosmos, the giver of a new creative energy, the Holy Spirit, the Creator and the Creature in
one. Christ himself sought to establish a new universe with a new cosmic energy- the Holy
Spirit.

The fact of Christ has been clothed by Church doctrine and dogma, mis-interpreted Christ,
made him absolute, equated with God and gain the value of God and act as God. As such
wraps Christ, it is essential to unclothe him in order to know the fact of Christ. The direct
contact/experience of raw Christ, the historic Jesus, who is still with a body and is living, is
very essential since it is the heart of Christian faith and the central fact of Christianity.

3.2. Incarnation:

It is generally accepted by the Church that the incarnation of Christ is the core fact of the
Christian faith, and always-defined Christianity as the religion of incarnation.

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Chenchaih asserts that traditional theology had distorted the nature and significance of the
Incarnation. It was the Church who has made of Jesus an object of worship, made him
absolute and placed him on the right hand of God in heaven.

Chenchiah affirms that Jesus as portrayed in the Bible (Jh 14:28) is less than God. In Jesus
Christ God has come down to us to abide with us forever as a new cosmic energy. God’s
assumption of humanity, including the body was a permanent one, and from now on Jesus is
the power of God and the first fruit of a new creation, a divine humanity, and transcending
mankind. Jesus is the manifestation of a new creation, the effort of God in which the cosmic
energy or sakti is the Holy Spirit, the new creation is Christ and the new life order is the
kingdom of God. Thus, incarnation is perfected human body receiving the full divinity of
God into permanent integration.

In this connection Chenchiah makes a clear-cut distinction between the Hindu and Christian
views on the concept of Incarnation. Unlike the permanency of Jesus incarnation, Hindu
avatar assumed the body for a purpose and mainly concerns on the function of avatar as a
visitor from heaven, and went away to resume his former status after mission is fulfilled.
Where as the Incarnation of Christ is once-for-all ness and incompatible with many avatars of
Hindu. Chenchiah also criticized Barthian theology as it is move akin to the Hindu than the
Christian view.

3.3. Jesus Christ- the fusion of God and Man:

Chenchiah put forth that Jesus represents the fusion into unity of God and Man so that man
may partake of it. Jesus is the bridge and the meeting point of God and Man in whom God
and Man fused and mingled into one. He asserts that God is God and Man is man. Jesus is not
God and is not Man, but is the Son of God and Son of Man, the product of God and Man, not
God-man. Here the word ‘Son’ indicates the measure of unity and newness, which has
emerged in Christ is something less than complete identity with God but more than man.
Jesus is the Son of God because the Spirit of God entered Him. He is the Son of Man because
He was born out of the Mother of man- the female. As the Spirit of God overshadowed Mary
and Jesus was born, He is a new creation- the Lord and Master of a new creative branch of
cosmos. The fusion of God and Man in Jesus is the newness of Christ, the one totally new
factor that has emerged in cosmic history, and the one key to the transformation of man and
the world. Thus, Chenchaih observes that in the person of Jesus ‘Jesus is the first fruit of a
new race in creation- the sons of God’.

3.4. The Cross of Christ:

For Chenchiah, the Cross-is undoubtedly the existence symbol of the Christian faith. The
cross of Christ signifies the tremendous power of love to conquer evil. Though the cross of
Christ and its meaning may be interpreted in innumerable ways but it has only one great
message that is the power of love, which is so sublime that it can conquer without killing and
triumph without trampling and that the cross is the remedy for all the ills, wounds and
sufferings of the world.

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Prior to link the cross with the death of Jesus, it was nothing more than the physical means of
legal execution. But when St.Paul linked the cross with the death of Jesus, the physical death
of Christ become a central part of the Christian message, and means reconciliation between
men to one another and to God. This is because behind the death of Christ is realized the love
of Christ, and thus could no longer remain in enemity with each other. When this truth is
realized, then the cross becomes ever-radiant spiritual symbol and hope of the suffering,
humanity, which stands always on the brink of despair and destruction.

3.5. Salvation:

Chenchiah holds that the uniqueness of Christianity lies beyond the promise of Salvation here
or hereafter. The redemption of Christ is the opening up of the infinite possibilities of new
creation. He maintains that the construction of Christianity making law, sin, disobedience,
cross, propitiations, judgment… misses the beauty and the newness of the Gospels, while a
poetry that stresses of love, resurrection, service, communion, son ship gets us nearer to the
Master.

The content of Salvation that Jesus offers is not merely something negative- a salvation from
…, but essentially something positive. It is lifefulness, abundant, perennial and everlasting
life. It is not only the salvation of the individual, but of the species. It is going beyond
restoration and ground lost. It is not merely to have a particular relationship of God, but
primarily becoming what He has become in Jesus, the Son of Man. In the larger sense,
Salvation means passing into the Kingdom of God, the new created order. It is enabling man
to be perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect. As Jesus presents mankind with new life,
which redeems man from all human limitations, salvation thus includes the redemption of the
body. In short, salvation is the process of reproducing the image of Christ or even of
‘becoming Christ’.

Salvation results not by accepting the fact of Christ. Rather it is by virtue of the existence and
being of Christ, and not by His act. Christ does not save us by suffering on the cross, but
attaining Christhood saves men. In this relation, salvation is to be equated with the saving
fact of Christ. The saving relationship with Christ is far deeper than mere moral influence. It
is biological event, a transforming event caused by a person union with the risen yet human
Christ that changes the whole person, and not merely moral influence. Thus salvation is union
with Christ, transforms into Christ-likeness and attaining Christhood.

3.6. The resurrection of Christ:

Chenchiah asserts that the resurrection of Christ is a necessity of the new order. The conquest
of death and the emergence of new life (everlasting life) was the dream not only of religion
but also of the scientists. Medical science hopes to postpone death and prolong life. This
desire springs from the depth of creation and points to an insistable completion and crowning
of the evolutionary process. Christianity would have been a still-born child if Jesus did not
rise from the grave. It was the vision of new life that made the disciples invincible.

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The resurrection of Jesus is no happy ending, which a sense of justice has invented for a
tragedy of woe. It is the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, of the new world order over the
present, the triumph “satyagraha” over the passion of the warrior and ruler. Chenchiah
observes that in the resurrection the old man has come out with a new vision, which he
cannot throw away from him. Thus, Chenchiah treats the resurrection as another important
factor in Jesus’ life, which shows that Jesus is the new being, who conquered death.

3.7. New creation:

Chenchiah claims that the real uniqueness of Christianity is consist in the doctrine of new
creation and new birth. He asserts that Jesus is the beginning of new species and mankind, the
manifestation of a new creative effort of God, in which the cosmic energy or sakti is the
Holy Spirit, the new creation is Christ, and the new life order is the kingdom of God, and the
children of God are the new type that Christ has inaugurated. The Gospel of Jesus is the good
news of new creation. One who is united with Christ becomes himself a new creation, his life
becomes the yoga of the Spirit, and the sphere of the life is the kingdom of God. The faith
union with Christ is known as the yoga of the spirit.

His conception of new creation and the yoga of the spirit are oriented towards the future-
things to come because of what has been done. New creation opens up vistas of growth and
fulfillment for human being and society. The children of God are the next step in evolution
and the kingdom of God as the next stage in cosmos.

3.8. Christ in Trinity:

Chenchiah believes in the Trinity- of God the absolute who ‘lies beyond our thought,
comprehension and capacity’; of Jesus who is ‘God standing in relation to man’ and has
assumed humanity permanently to bring creation a new order of existence, and the Holy
Spirit who is universalized Jesus. Chenchiah differentiates Jesus from God from the time of
Incarnation in order to identify Him with the third Person of the Trinity after the ascension.
He asserts that the Holy Spirit is the Universal Jesus, presides over the new creation, and
lives in the sons of God as their atman. He also affirms that the Holy Spirit is the power, the
cosmic energy for which he used the term mahasakti- the great power that descended
vertically in the human stream in Jesus. The summarized of Chenchiah’s doctrine of Trinity
is that God the father represents what has not passed into creation. God the Son represents
what of Him has passed into creation. He is the adi purusha- original man/person of a new
creation while the Holy Spirit is Viswakarma of a new world. Jesus is the one who descends
and having descended and abides with us. He is avathari/that descends and tathagatha- he
that is to come to save the world process.

Concluding evaluation: Basing on the raw fact of Christ, Chenchiah has formulated a very
distinct Christology. His Christology seems to be solely in relation to the experience of
Christ. The validity of Christology he propounded is the direct experience of Christ, who is
the new being, new species and new order in creation. The highest human can attaint is
Christhoodness, which is the stage of new creation.

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In against to traditional teaching of the two natures of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully
man, Chenchiah’s Christ is the fusion of God and Man. His concept of Christ’s fusionship
can weakened the natures of Jesus Christ, and a step further will lead to the heretical teaching
of Arianism. Chenchiah’a emphasis on the direct experience of Christ has narrowed Christ
within the Christian community , and thus closed door for other faiths who have their own
religious traditions and figures. His employment of Indian philosophy in the development of
evolution and a biological event is also hard to accept fully as he neglected the divinity and
pre-existence of Christ.

In spite of its weaknesses, Chenchiah Christology has in sighted us to have a deeper and
direct communion with Christ. He too, has deepened and strengthened us to go for a direct
relation with the person of Christ.

Chakkarai Christology
INTRODUCTION: Chakkarai was the one whose personal experience of Hinduism was
deepest and most prolonged, who became a Christian in his twenties as the result of much
thought and deep study of the Christian faith. He made extensive use of the Hindu
terminology in stating his faith and formulating his theology and christogy without
committing himself to any one school of Hindu philosophy. This paper shall give special
attention to his Christology with particularly concern with the avatara conception and with
the problem of the relation of the Jesus of history to the Christ of faith and his characteristic
treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
VENGAL CHAKKARAI (1880-1958) : Vengal Chakkarai Chetty was born in 1880 in a
well-to- do Madras family of the Chetty caste, the highest non-Brahman caste in Tamilnad.
His mother, who greatly influenced him, was a devotee of the Vaisnava bhakti tradition.
Chakkarai received his early education in a Scottish Mission School and then went on to the
Madras Christian College, where he was deeply influenced by William Miller to whom he,
like his brother-in-law Chenchiah, always refers with the greatest respect and affection.
Through his friendship with Miller and his own study of the Bible he gradually came to a
personal experience of Christ, an experience which became the turning point of his whole
life. Writing many years later he tells how it was Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the Cross which
affected him most, leading him to think of Jesus as a mysterious being and ultimately to
accept him as his Lord and Redeemer. He made public profession of his faith and was
baptized in 1903.
Jesus the Avatara: Chakkarai links the idea of God’s self-revelation in Christ with the
concept of immanence which is so popular in Hindu bhakti. Bhakti may indeed describe God
as immanent ‘in the lotus of the human heart as antaryamin, or as the singing bird within the
nest, or as the light within the eye’, but for Chakkarai God’s immanence takes a special form
when Christ become incarnate. It is a ‘human immanence’, when God in Christ comes into
the time-order for the redemption of men, the immanence of Immanuel, God with us.
The study of God, then, begins with the study of Christ, and knowledge of Christ must have
its start in personal experience, in direct contact with this humanly immanent God, the
indwelling Christ. Christ is alive today; it is possible for men to know and love him; and such
encounter is no mere imagination or second-hand speculation.

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He is the True Man (sat purusa), ‘the original pattern in the mind of God Himself after whom
all men have been fashioned’. He is not a mere man but the essence of humanity, the
mulapurusa or original man, who is to become ‘the spiritual background of all humanity’.
Jesus is the place, the person, where alone we can see man as God intends him to be. Jesus of
Nazareth, then, is the True Man who from the beginning has ‘perfect unity of mind and heart
with God’, a unity seen not only in his deep communion with God through the yoga of
prayer, and in his self-abnegation even to the death of the Cross, but also in his miracle of
love and in his sinlessness.
It is through knowledge of this Jesus that we come to know God. And what Chakkarai is here
striving to impress on is that even today, two thousand after the incarnation, the only
satisfying and effective knowledge of God that we can have is the knowledge we gain
through the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem and who is still ‘Jesus the avatara’. The
incarnation did not end with the crucifixion but is permanent and is still today advancing to
ever new depths of meaning.
The classical Hindu theory of avatara, as we seen, implies that the avataras come into human
history from time to time as need arises, and then disappear, the divine part of their nature
being re-absorbed into God. The Christian incarnation, however, occurs once and for all. The
Logos, having become man in Christ, remains as God-Man forever and is not simply
absorbed back into the Godhead with the discarding of his human nature. In addition, the
incarnation is dynamic, and is still at work today through the power of the spirit. This avatara
did not cease with the Cross nor even with the ascension, but God in Christ continues to be
man, living and working in the lives of believers.
The incarnation or avatara of Christ is thus seen to be no mere theophany but a permanent,
mediating union of God and man in him. But besides being permanent it is also dynamic,
working in the world today, and this dynamism of the incarnation is found in the fact that
God, in Christ, submitted himself to the buffetings of human life and history. The meaning of
the incarnation, then, is not to be seen in some metaphysical or substantial union of God and
man, but rather in Christ’s breaking into the uncertainties of history.
Christ and the Spirit: For Chakkarai the work of the Holy Spirit is the continuing part of the
incarnation or avatara of Christ. He identifies the Spirit with the risen living Christ, at work in
the world today. His Biblical reference for this is John 14:18. “I will not leave you
comfortless; I will come to you”. So also the Holy spirit for him is the risen Jesus
universalized, and indwelling in the devotee as well as working in all history to establish the
Kingdom of God.
The main function of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the things of the Lord. The Pentecost
according to Chakkarai is the third stage of the incarnation, the manger being the first and the
resurrection the second ‘with the coming of the Holy Spirit the great drama of Christian inner
experience began. All sorts and conditions of men were swept into the great stream. A new
spiritual atmosphere came into the ancient church. Those who were molded by its dynamic
force became new creatures,’ observes V. Chakkarai.
The Cross: Chakkarai suggest various ways in which the Cross of Christ carries out the work
of forgiveness and renewal. They are all connected with the release of power, that spiritual
sakti which is given to those who come into contact with Christ through the Spirit. In some
mysterious way the Cross ‘opens a channel’ in the heart of man, by which the divine sakti
flows in a mighty stream into the history of humanity

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Again, he speaks of Christ’s death as a sacrifice, yajna, an idea which has parallels in Indian
religion of the Vedas. Here again the dominant idea is that of the release of power, and he
describes how Christ, at the Last Supper, sees his death as a sacrifice, the sakti of which was
to emerge from eating his body and drinking his blood through the symbolism of bread and
wine.
Jesus of History and Christ of Experience: Chakkarai sees Jesus as being progressively
stripped of his ego until he is completely emptied and so becomes ‘the most egoless person
known in history, and therefore the most universal of all’. The ego was not, he says, entirely
absent in the historical Jesus, but ‘it became so thin that only a different kind of experience
was required to reduce it to nothing’, and that experience came on the Cross. Jesus did not
start off as simply ‘egoless’ in a metaphysical way, his kenosis was ‘achieved’ by a real
process the learning by obedience through the things he suffered, of which Hebrew speaks,
and the self-emptying of Philippians 2, culminating in the degradation and death of the Cross.
Chakkarai now tries to penetrate further, to identify the precise moment at which the
historical Jesus passed over into the Christ. And he finds what he is seeking in the cry of
dereliction on the Cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ those terrible
words through which he himself had first come to Christ. As Jesus went to the Cross he was
stripped of everything that distinguishes a man. Only one thing remained to him on Calvary,
one plank on which to sail out over the dark waves of the Cross, and that was his fundamental
belief in God as his Father and himself as the Beloved Son. Jesus lived in God, as no one else
ever did, but now, at the moment of that dreadful cry, ‘the only plank beneath him was
carried away, and he plunged into the Nirvana or Suniam where God is not’. Here was the
uttermost depth of kenosis, the depth than which nothing could be deeper, as Jesus sank into
the depth of non-being.
But that non-being was not zero, the nothingness of popular imagination. It was more like the
mathematical zero which is the actual beginning of all co-ordinates, or like the vedantic asat
which Brahmabandhab expounded, which is the matrix of being. And so in fact the depth of
the process of humiliation becomes the start of glorification, and from the utter kenosis of the
Jesus of History the Christ of faith arises.
Conclusion: Chakkarai’s theology was primarily Christological. He maintained that instead
of interpreting Jesus’s life, death and resurrection light of a prior conception of God or
Ultimate reality, one should interpret God in terms of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
According to Chakkarai, though metaphysics cannot be avoided, the divinity of Jesus is not to
be interpreted in metaphysical terms, but spiritually and morally as the incarnation of a true
man (Sat Purusha) living in complete communion with the Father in whose image God
created and continues to create all humanity. And unlike the temporary and repeated avatars
of Hinduism, Jesus’ avatarship is permanent and dynamic because once incarnated Jesus
remain forever the God-Man in human history as Mediator of true spiritual communion
between God and humanity.

M.M. Thomas

Sunand Sumithra displays that MM Thomas was a crucial theologian in his own right. He is
not only the most experienced among the contemporary Indian thinkers but also the one who
has read most and written most. In the years to come he may also have the great influence for

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Indian Christian Theology. This paper will attempt to appraise the universal significance of
Christ event for the Christian faith and life in the writings of M.M. Thomas.

Life of M.M. Thomas:

Madathilaparampil Mammen Thomas was born in 1916 in Pannavila, Kerala. His father was
a member of the Orthodox Syrian Church. After schooling at his native place, Thomas went
to Trivandrum to study Chemistry. A layman theologian, Dr. MM Thomas was a member of
the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. With a background and training in sociology and economics,
he was for many years a founder member and Director of the Christian Institutes for the
Study of Religion and Society in Bangalore. From 1968 to 1975 he was Chairman of the
Central Committee of the World Council of Churches. At the end of the 1980s he became a
Governor of Nagaland, in North East India. MM Thomas was quit ecumenical. He looked for
a secular ecumenism, the koinonia of all religious communities and ideologies. He believes
that Christ is acknowledged by people of other religions also, so he argued for Christ-centred
fellowship.

It was during the first year at the college that Thomas came into contact with Christ in a
meaningful way which he describes in his own autobiography:

It was through an evangelical experience as a first year college student in Trivandrum in

1931-32 that Jesus Christ became real to me as the bearer of divine forgiveness and gave my
life, awakened to adolescent rages, a principle of integration and a sense of direction.

Finishing his college study, he went to Perumpavoor Asram, teaching in a school belonging
to the Ashram. He organized his friends into an “interceding fellowship” and regularly
circulated among them some letters apparently of personal nature. At the same time he was
actively involved in the creating of an international fellowship of students as well as an inter-
religious fellowship of students. Here he rejected both evangelism and the exclusive claims of
Christianity, arguing that “love is at the heart of universe” and in love we need not pressurize
one another to change one’s convictions. He also met Pennamma, his future wife, during
these student activities and after ten long year of engagement married her. As he himself
mentions in some of his book, it was his wife who was the primary cause for Thomas’ Christ-
centredness.

Methodology of M.M Thomas:

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Thomas’ theology is contextual and liberative and his method is action-oriented. He looks at
the world, analyses what is happening there and tries to understand what the Christian
solution can be. Thus the first step in his theology is what can be called a contextual or
situational approach. Sumithra pointed out that Thomas theological method from his famous
book The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance. Sumithra’s point were very
important for knowing Thomas’ theological articulation. He argued that Thomas concentrated
on the human situation, and it has some implications:

1) Since the human situation is the starting point Thomas’ theology asks for pluralistic
answers. Apparently this sounds as if his theology lacks the power of conviction. One also
gets quite fragmentary, which he himself admits.

2) His theology is action- oriented. Like the liberation theologians of Latin America
he places praxis before orthodoxy. Responsibility is the key word here. This is what the WCC
calls the action-reflection method. He finds the basis for this in the New Testament: as “faith
working through love.” It is for this reason that Boyd labels Thomas’ theology as “The Way
of Action.”

His Christology and Theological Emphases:

M.M. Thomas’ Christology and his theological implications are ecumenical and quite
universal. Therefore, from his writings we can see that the universal significance of Christ
event for the Christian faith and life for today. The following points are his theological
emphases:-

1) Jesus Christ as the new human:

Thomas observes that salvation is Christ becomes the source of a new human fellowship, at
least at religious worship, and the sacrament of the Holy Communion; and it struck a blow to
spirit rigidities and of an unequal social structure. Along with Moltmann, he affirms, ‘the
experience of an oneness in Christ, of spiritual Koinonia, transcending if not abrogating the
natural and historical divisions among human’ For Thomas, as far as the cross is concerned, it
is “the eternal and ultimate symbol of…condemnation and forgiveness.’ He resolutely rejects
the penal substitution on the cross. To quote him once again, “the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
reveals that self-love has its source not in any accident of circumstance but in the spirit of
human.” Like some earlier theologians he understands that on the cross Kenosis took place,
i.e. the emptying not of Christ’s deity or any other aspect, but of his self. And so the cross

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becomes a symbol and an example for human to imitate. Thomas, like Bultmannians,
believes that Jesus was raised from the death but in the minds of the disciples and so it was a
spiritual resurrection. In any case, Thomas thinks of Jesus Christ as the new human, as the
proto-type of self-sacrificial love.

According to Thomas, cross is the revelation of the divine humanity. In life, death and
resurrection of Jesus, God had acted to save the world is the core of the Gospel. He
emphasizes that Jesus Christ is the source and foundation of humanization. Christ affirms and
judges the cultures. Salvation in personal, social and cosmic, for MM Thomas, sin is also
personal and social. The reality of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ as the true-human and
as the source of renewed human nature and through it whole things. Thomas articulates that
his understanding of Jesus’ redemption of new humanity in this context is

to be present within the creative liberation movements of our time which the Gospel of Christ
itself has helped to take shape, and so to participate in them as to be able to communicate the
genuine gospel of liberation-from the vicious circle of sin and alienation, law and self-
righteousness, frustration and death into the new realm of Christ’s New Humanity where
there is forgiveness and reconciliation, grace and justification, renewal and eternal life. He
also says that in other place, Christ is a new human communion (Koinonia)

,…the basis of the Christian contribution is the faith that the crucified Jesus Christ by
mediating divine forgiveness to all humans in the solidarity of their sinfulness, has made
possible mutual forgiveness between persons and peoples and has brought into being in
history a new human communion (Koinonia), transcending all religious cultural and natural
diversities and divisions.

2) Salvation and humanization:

In his Carey Memorial Lectures of 1970, Thomas explained the importance of the relation
between salvation and humanization for the communication of the Christian faith to the
contemporary context,

The crucial question raised in the theology of mission in the world-wide discussion of it
today is that of the relation between the Gospel of salvation and the struggles of men (sic)
everywhere for their humanity, constituting as this does the contemporary context of the
world in which the gospel has to be communicated. The question, in other words, is that of
the relation between Mission and Humanization.

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Thomas verbalizes the significance of humanization from The Uppsala report on ‘Renewal in
Mission.’ To him, the glorified humanity of the Risen Christ is to be realized not after death
but within the historical process, not by isolated individuals but by human in the
corporateness of their relations in society and to the cosmos. This is sufficient theological
justification for considering participation in the humanization of the world as essential to
mission. For Thomas, the mission of the church is to participate in the revolutions of our
time. The church’s mission is primarily one of humanization and not of salvation. He thought
that Salvation or redemption is only one aspect of humanization, catering to the inward to the
spiritual aspect of humankind. He believes that the recipients of Christian mission are not
individuals anymore but structures such as cultures, religions and ideologies. The method of
Jesus’ salvation is no more proclamation, but now it is participation or as he calls it the
confession of participation. So, he comes to the conclusion that evangelism in our time equals
service.

3) Social liberation:

Thomas rejects the doctrine of human depravity. Human ‘falls’ in his/her destructive and
selfish ambitions and is created in his/her nobler works. This figurative interpretation of the
biblical passages also shows that he does not take the inspiration of the Bible seriously. As
far as the doctrine of God is concerned, there is hardly anything valuable he has written
except a couple of gleanings among all his writings. When he does speak about God he
speaks of God’s action in political history rather than the attributes of God. Thomas argued
that salvation involves social liberation. He utters,

God’s word and deed in Jesus Christ stands as the fulfillment of those in the Law and the
prophets. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself (sic), overcoming human’s
stubbornness to God; and through the cross He (sic) has broken down all walls of partition
among humankind, and united them into a unity in Christ. Salvation includes community and
unity among humankind. God has raised Jesus from among the dead as the guarantee of the
final victory of God and human over all evil in individuals, society and the cosmos, and over
death. Through God’s spirit God has brought into being the Church, the community of those
who believe in Christ to be a witness to the renewal of all things in Christ; to co-operate with
God in it and to be a foretaste of it in its life. In the End, God will transform the Kingdoms of
this world into the Kingdom of God and His (sic) Christ.

4) Gandhism:

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From the beginning of his career Thomas showed enthusiastic interest in studying the
problems of Indian society in dept. Along with his friends of the KYCCA (Kerala Youth
Council for Christian Action) he took up the study of Gandhism and communism which
appeared as competing ideologies in the national struggle for Indian independence. Thomas
was primarily concerned with the search for a valid ideology, which will serve as a suitable
vehicle for expressing Christian social commitment. In Gandhism, Mahatma Gandhi goes:

Non-violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies
dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man
requires obedience to another law—to the strength of the spirit… My service to my people is
part of the discipline to which I subject myself to in order to free my soul from the bonds of
the flesh...For me the path of salvation leads through the unceasing tribulation in the service
of my fellow countrymen (sic) and humanity.

So, Thomas approached the ideologies with the basic conviction that “Christian must involve
themselves with others in creating and promoting ideologies which are informed by Christian
insights and which can help the people in their struggle for justice.” Thomas is of the opinion
that the method of non-violence is the most unique contribution of Gandhi. His criticism of
‘Satyagraha’ is that Gandhi made it a creed having absolute validity. At the same time he
thinks that it is possible to reinterpret this principle with a view to renew and regain its
dynamism so as to use it as an effective technique for social change. According to Gandhi,
people’s participation in mass action was always a safeguard against centralization of power.
Thomas points out that the ‘Satyagraha’ struggles which technique can be adapted
realistically (without coercion and force) to achieve social justice through the mobilization of
people’s power. He point out that “Mahatma Gandhi was a great advocate of the strategy of
developing people’s power as the only safeguard of justice in any political system.”

Evaluation:

1. All of M.M Thomas theologies are able to say that universal. He emphasizes that
Christ affirms and judges the cultures. But the important question is how Christ affirms and
Judges the culture? Thomas’ idea is whether true or not? When we look at the message of
Kingdom of God, The main aim of Christ’s mission is seemed to change the defected life and
culture of human beings, and to made reconciliation between God and human beings and also

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among human beings. The main aim of Jesus’ mission is transforming human being and the
society for better status.

2. When we emphasize social Gospel, i.e. salvation for all humankinds, it is afraid
that the negligence of saving our soul (popularly called as Spiritual salvation). When we have
critically study about the theology of M.M.Thomas, he lacks futuristic salvation. From the
perspective of Systematic theology, the way of salvation is three types like, ‘saved,’ ‘being
saved’ and ‘will be saved.’ When Thomas emphasized that the life of ‘being saved’ i.e.
holistic mission, he used to neglect other worldly mission. So, we can say that his Christology
is not inclusive.

According to Sumithra, Thomas theology which we have outlined thus far is very much
unlike theology, in the sense it looks more like a political or sociological history of human.
This is to the credit of Thomas, for he does not see the spiritual aspects of human isolated but
its integral relations with all other aspects. Sumithra evaluated Thomas’ theology, owing to
his evaluations are very important, we will indicate as under:

1) Thomas has tried to reconcile the biblical revelation with three systems: Marxist
ideology, Hindu Spirituality and process philosophy, but he has failed in bringing this
reconciliation. He has so failed because the character of the biblical revelation is entirely
different from impossible amalgamation; his theology ultimately ends up in one or all of the
following results: Either God’s holiness as given in the Bible will be rejected, or faith as the
connection between God and human will be rejected.

2) Following from such an understanding of God, Christ, human and the world
Thomas’ theology inevitably leads to political action.

3. There is a basic lacks in his approach to the scriptural revelation- he has tried to
find revelation in the revolutions. Thomas has done very little exegesis in all his theological
writings. His writings are more philosophical, sociological, ideological or political, but
almost never have biblical support. Raising in authority he has diluted the scriptures in
authority he has diluted the scriptures radically. It is not just a question of how to interpret the
Bible, but of the very place of the Bible in our Faith.

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Conclusion:

When we have critically examined Thomas’ theological articulation, we can say that he was
an enthusiastic reformer of the society. All of his theological emphases are little bit different
from other Indian theologian like Panikkar, and they communicate with social gospel and
social liberation. All of his theological articulations like Jesus’ incarnation, his death and
resurrection, Divine-humanity of Jesus and so and so forth are conveyed to social liberation
and transformation. He emphasized that Jesus’ salvation should be relevant for us today
context in ways of social transformation, liberation movement, and making harmony in a
pluralistic society etc.

Christological Reflections from India: Stanley J. Samartha

Introduction: Although most Christians today are unwilling to take a totally negative attitude
toward neighbours of other faiths, there seems to be a good deal of hesitation on the part of
many re-examining the basis of their exclusive claims on behalf of Christ. The place of Jesus
Christ in a multi-religious society becomes an important issues in the search for a new
theology of religions. In this paper an attempt is made to deal Samartha’s Christology so as to
have clearer picture of Jesus Christ in an Indian context.

Background: Stanley J. Samartha hails from the South of Kanara district of Karnataka. He
belongs to the church of South India. He studied theology at UTC, Bangalore. He finished his
doctoral dissertation in USA on the philosophy of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. After returning from
his doctoral dissertation, he taught for several years in UTC and became professor of History
and Philosophy of Religion. Then after that he became the principal of Serampore College
and also UTC. Later he became the Director of Programme on Dialogue with people of living
faiths and ideologies, in the World Council of Churches.

Samartha’s Christologies: Samartha’s main contribution is naturally in the realm of

Christology. He has gone before his predecessors like Raymond Panikkar, who says that
Christ is already present there in pure Hinduism but not yet known to Hindus in “ The
unknown Christ of Hinduism” and M.M. Thomas in “ The Acknowledge Christ of the
Hinduism Renaissance” affirms that though Christ is still unknown in the pure Hinduism, he
is already acknowledged in the modern Indian Renaissance. In the Hindu response to the
unbound Christ of Hinduism, he says that Hindus have recognised Christ in their own
traditions and even have responded to him at several levels. As a conclusion he gives a
summary of what an authentic Indian Christology should be and here he takes our advaitic
interpretation of Christ.

In his books he gives excellent guide lines as to what kind of Christology the Indian church
must evolve: “its’s(i.e. the Indian Christologies) central effort should be to acknowledge the
mystery and explain the meaning of theperson and work of Jesus Christ. Its starting point is
the total commitment to Christ as crucified and risen Lord. Its context is one of sharing and

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involvement. It is his conviction that unless Indian Christian theological thinking takes
advaita seriously in both its classical and modern forms it is not likely to make any effective
contribution to the quest for resources to under gird our national life.

Perpectives on people of other faiths: samartha from his childhood had been exposed to the
world that is religiously pluralistic; therefore it is important to know his attitude toward the
other faiths. He stated in his books, that he was from a conservative Christian background
that viewed other religions as false and evil but while he was studying in UTC, he was greatly
influenced by P.D. Devanandan, professor of religion and due to his influence; Samartha
developed a positive attitude toward Hinduism and other faith. But unfortunately he even
went to the extreme where, he is willing to even sacrifice the ‘uniqueness of Christ’ for
promoting a positive attitude toward other religion.

Although the context of religious pluralism is not exclusive to Asian countries, situations
such as those found in India have been characteristically different from elsewhere as religions
in India have existed side by side for several thousand years. Plurality being the dominant
character of Indian Society, Samartha cautioned that his attempt to do theology there without
any reference to other religions would be equal to writing an essay on an elephant without
referring to its ivory, which is not only incomplete and misleading but even dangerous.

Samartha challenged Christian superioriy in thinking that it alone inherits God’s revelation,
the bearer of salvation in the world. In contention, he argued that the dreadful events in the
history of the world such as wars, holocaust, and crusades were fought by westerners and
brought sufferings not just to European nations but also to Asian and African countries,
which had no involvement in their tribal quarrels. Challenging Christians of such unique
claims about salvation, he wrote the question therefore is not about the relevance of the
Christian message in a non-Christian world, but about the credibility of the Christian world
itself. He therefore, thinks that it is ridiculous to claim that one religious tradition has a
monopoly on answers to all global problems.

Theology of Samartha: Samartha’s theology starts with a very question what does it mean to
affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour today in India? In answering this, basic situation
of India ought to be in competition with the whole range of Hinduism but rather be in “co-
operative with it.” The reason for this is that “if the message of the gospel has to become
challengingly relevant to human needs today both the credibility of the saviour and the
meaning of the salvation he offers have to be started afresh,” that is only by involvement and
meeting the present struggle and meeting the present needs. but he say sadly, the Christian
presence is symbolized by the church building on some river bank with the cross on the top
but with its doors shuttered by the gates locked, to be opened only on the following Sunday
while on the other side there are slums and workers and strikes going on. Yet in the middle of
all this, Christ is standing incognito because “The Hindu response to Christ is sufficient
evidence of his presence, even though the manner of the response and its characteristics may
be unfamiliar to those inside the hedges of the traditional church.

Samartha was convinced that the question of inter-religious relationship is not merely about
seeking political adjustment or redistribution of economic resources; rather it involves other
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issues such s socio-political and economic concerns. In order to achieve authentic pluralism
and create a better relationship between religions, Samartha wanted the study of other
religions.

Lord of Lords: According to Samartha a proper understanding of Lordship of Jesus Christ

was urgent for advancing Christian relationship with people of other faiths. It was important
for them to know what it means to affirm is, “Jesus Christ is Lord”, in a situation where
alternative claims were being made on behalf of other “Lords,” by their counterparts in other
faiths. When faced with similar claims and new questions about Lordship among other
relihions and cultures, a relevant interpretation of Lordship and the pluralistic context is also
a theological responsibility of the Christian community. It is critical for them therefore to
struggle with questions such as Does mission mean the conquest of other lords? Does
universality mean simply the extension of Christ’s particularity? Samartha pointed out
towards three possible dangers in confessing Jesus as Lord. First, the perception of the
Lordship of Jesus Christ that would the confession of the Lordship of Christ emerged out of
the early Christian experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Second, is the relation
between the exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord and an inseparable connection to his humility?
Samartha pointed out that the confession “Christ the Lord” reached its high water mark in the
well known Philippians passage where Jesus’ Lordship is significantly combined with his
self-emtying. Third the Lordship of Jesus undermines the Lordship of God. Samartha makes
the case that although the witness of New Testament writers was Christo-centric, Jesus Christ
was Theocentric.

The Goal of Salvation: Stanley J. Samartha understands that the salvation in Christ is
wholistic beyond human or social or cosmic history. It includes the consummation of all life,
the disclosure of the ultimate meaning or creation. It is definitely not a return to the beginning
but enrichment and fulfilment, a move through the struggles and conflicts over coming evil in
love and finding final fulfilment in his fullness of God himself. Thus there is no
exclusiveness in Christology in India. On the contrary, “it is the declaration of the
universality of the unbound Christ….. Christ transcends all culture.” So Stanley J. Samartha
concludes by saying Christ is always involved in human situations, wherever the struggle for
justice, freedom and taught is going on and demands that his followers also participate in his
crucifixion and resurrection and he cannot be bound or indentified neither with any particular
cultural situation nor a particular system thought.

Conclusion: Samartha in his writing teaches us that today Christians must not have negative
judgemental attitudes towards the people of other faith around them rather we must cultivate
friendly attitude saturated with divinely inspired love and genuine concern. Sartha in his work
tries to establish that Chris is there in every religion and that Hindus have recognised Chris in
their own traditions. Hetried to develop theology from an advaitic interpretation and tried to
develop a Theocentric Christology, that Christ is found to be present in the most important
areas of Hindu life and thought. Samartha suggests that a Theocentric Christology avoids the
dangers of exclusivism and will be helpful in establishing new relationship with neighbours
of other faiths. He says that Jesus himself was Theocentric; therefore a theocentric

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Christology provides more theological space for Christian to live together with neighbours of
other faiths.

From my understanding he developed a very great theology which had helped the people of
even other faiths to know Christ more closely and in a deeper way rather than finding Christ
in a western way that is the theology that is from the west. His claims of Christians should be
more willing to move beyond not only exclusiveness but also inclusiveness is very true to its
essence because people claim to be Christians but none of them have the characters or
qualities of that a Christian should possess all are selfish in his/her own ways.

Samartha says that dialogue is the essential method a Christian should accept in order to
convince a person of other faith because to be part in dialogue means that we are part of
God’s continuing work among fellow human beings. Even Jesus was open to have fellowship
with people of other faiths like the Samaritan woman, the centurion etc. we as the church the
ekklesia of God being a true community has to be a sign and a symbol of forgiveness and
reconciliation and also to be new creation. Samartha also emphasised that it is through
dialogue the church has to proclaim to the community that Christ is the way, the truth and the
life.

To conclude Samartha’s view on Christ and his Christology has done a remarkable job in
developing Christologies that is very much essential to all human beings and making Christ
available to all people of all faiths and to establish a very good relationship with all people.
His aim in making Christiologies “from below” has been more useful to Indians rather than
having theologies which has no links and no connections with people of India. But to
critically evaluate him he even went up to extent of to sacrifice the ‘uniqueness of Christ’ for
promoting a positive attitude toward other religion. This in a way is not acceptable for any
Christian that he may forget or compromise over the ‘uniqueness of Christ’ because Christ is
the only One God who has died for the sins of the human beings and there is no other God in
any other religion that has done a great sacrifice nor could be able to do it in the future.

Appendix: samartha asserts that in a word of many scriptures, Christian scripture alone
cannot be considered unique. This is against the biblical, historical, and evangelical as they
view that Bible is truly the only, final, authoritative word of God. samartha moved forward
for a revised Christology, however it was not through diminishing the centrality of Jesus
Christ to Christian life or diluting the Christological substance in theology. Samartha’s
understanding of finding Christ in all religion in different forms cannot be taken as it is
because in other there are different forms of understanding about Christ and they have
different cultures so it is very hard for a Christian to have an exclusive claim in different
culture.

Dalit Christology: (A. P. Nirmal)

Who are the dalits? (i) the broken, the torn, the rent, the burst, the split (ii) the opened, the
expanded (iii) the bisected (iv) the driven, asunder, the dispelled, the scattered (v) the down
trodden, the crushed, the destroyed (iv) the manifested.

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What is dalit theology? This question according to Webster may be answered in at least
three different ways:
The first answer may be that it is a theology about the dalits or theological reflection upon the
Christian responsibility to the depressed classes.
Secondly, the answer may be that it is a theology for the depressed classes or the theology of
the message addressed to the depressed classes and to which they seem to be responding.
Thirdly, the answer may be that it is a theology from the depressed classes that is the
theology which they themselves would like to expound.
This question, according to Webster, may be answered in at least three different ways: The
first answer may be that it is a theology about the dalits or theological reflection upon the
Christian responsibility to the depressed classes. Secondly the answer may be that it is a
theology for the depressed classes, or the theology of the message addressed to the depressed
classes and to which they seem to be responding. Thirdly, the answer may be that it is a
theology from the depressed classes, that is the theology, which they themselves would like
to expound.
Nirmal would say that a Christian dalit theology will be produced by dalits. It will be based
on their own dalit experiences, their own sufferings, their own aspirations and their own
hopes. It will narrate the story of their pathos and their protest against the socio-economic
injustices they have been subjected to throughout history. It will anticipate liberation which is
meaningful to them. It will represent a radical discontinuity with the classical Indian
Christian theology of the Brahminic tradition. This Brahminic tradition in the classical Indian
theology needs to be challenged by the emerging dalit theology. This means that a Christian
dalit theology will be a counter-theology. Basically, it is the common dalit experience of
Christian dalits along with the other dalits that will shape a Christian dalit theology.

Historical dalit consciousness: It is the primary datum of a Christian dalit theology. The
question of dalit consciousness is really the question of dalit identity, the question of their
roots. Deuteronomy 26: 5-12 is taken as one of the biblical foundations because it has
tremendous implications for a dalit theology. A creed, a confession, a faith affirmation must
exercise in laying bare the roots of the believing community. ‘A wandering Aramean was my
father’ recalls the nomadic consciousness. To confess that ‘once we were no people’ is also
an integral part of a confession, before we come to the claims ‘now we are God’s people.’. It
is only when we recognize one’s root, one’s identity, we become truly confessional. A truly
confessional theology has to do with the question of the roots, identity and consciousness.
The historic Deuteronomic Creed has paradigmatic value for dalit theological construct.

The dalit need an activist struggle for liberation, a movement informed by its action towards
its theological reflection. Their pathos should give birth their protest. Their protest should be
so loud that the walls of Brahminism should come tumbling down. A Christian Dalit theology
will be a theology full of pathos, but not a passive theology.
The Question of God:
The God whom Jesus Christ revealed and about whom the prophets of the OT spoke is a
Dalit God. He is a servant God – a God who serves. Services for others have always been the
privilege of dalit communities in India. Unfortunately the word ‘service’, ministry or
diakonia has lost its cutting edge. Originally the word diakonia was associated with the
waiting at the dining table. The ‘servant’ therefore, means a waiter. Our housemaid or the
sweeper who cleans commodes and latrines are truly speaking our servants. It is precisely in
this sense that our God is a servant God. God is a waiter, a dhobi, all such services have been
the lot of dalits. This means we have participated in this servant-God’s ministries. To speak

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of a servant-God therefore, is to recognize and identify Him as a truly dalit deity. The gospel
identified Jesus with the servant of God of Isaiah (Is. 53:2-8).
The language used to described the servant language is full of pathos. This is the language
use for God – the God of dalits. This is also the language that mirrors the God of dalits and
dalit themselves.

Dalit Christology:
The dalit proclaim and affirm that Jesus Christ whose followers we are was himself a dalit –
despite his being a Jew. Both his humanity and divinity are to be understood in terms of his
dalitness. His dalitness is the key to the mystery of his divine human unity.
(i) Geneology (Mt. 1: 1-17): Among Jesus’ ancestors there are few names which should
startle and shocked us.
The first name is that of Tamar, the daughter in law of Judah. She outwitted her father-in-
law by sleeping with him and conceiving from him.
Secondly, there is Rahab – the harlot who helped the Israelite spies.
Thirdly there is the king of Solomon. We should not forget that Solomon was the
illegitimate child of David. These small ancestry of Jesus are suggestive of his dalit
conditions.
(ii) The Son of Man: The title is used in three different ways – it means person in an
ordinary way. Secondly, the Son of Man saying is indicative of Jesus’ present sufferings and
imminent death. Thirdly, it is the eschatological Son of Man sayings.

The second group of Son of Man sayings is significant for developing a Dalit christology.
These sayings speak of the Son of Man as encountering rejection, mockery, contempt,
suffering and finally death.
(iii) Another features of Jesus’ life is his total identification with the dalits of his day.
Again and again Jesus is accused of eating and drinking with publicans, tax-collectors and
sinners of his day.

Another episode from Jesus’ ministry, full of significance for a christian dalit theology is
that of the Cleansing of the temple (Mk 11: 15 – 19)
(i)It refers to God’s intervention in history. Jesus’ action would seem to be that of the
Messianic king on his final visit to his father’s house and people and embodying God’s
ultimate judgment upon the life and religion of Israel.
(ii) Jesus’ cleansing of the temple was in line with the prophetic and antithesis between
prayer and sacrifice and he like the prophets before him upheld the first and condemned the
second.
(iii)Jesus’s anger was directed against the greed and dishonestly of the dealers and the way
there fleecing the poor. But we must note that Mark omits any reference to Jesus’ anger.
(iv)The incidents must be understood in terms of its implications for the Gentiles. All the
buying and selling and money exchaning took place inthe part of the temple precincts which
were reserved for the Gentile worship. It was the Gentile court. The Gentiles had no access to
the inner precincts where the Jewish worship proper was conducted. The bazar that was held
in the Gentiles court thus effectively prevented them from conducting their worship in a
peaceful and quiet manner. Jesus, the Messianic king thus restores to the Gentiles their
religious rights.
There are many other examples of Jesus’ sympathy for the dalits of his day. But his dalitness
is best symbolized by the cross. On the Cross he was the broken, the crushed, the split, the
torn, the driven a sunder person – the dalit in the fullest possible meaning of that term. The
Son of Man feels that he is God-forsaken. That feeling of being God forsaken is at the heart

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of the dalit experiences and consciousness in India. It is the dalitness of the divinity and
humanity that the Cross of Jesus symbolizes.
To say that we are Christian dalits and not just dalits has christological implications, which
must be faced boldly. It means first of all that we proclaim and affirm that Jesus Christ
himself was a dalit despite his being a Jew. It further means that both his humanity and his
divinity are to be understood in terms of his dalitness. His dalitness is the key to the mystery
of his divine hman unity. His dalitness can be traced at his genealogy as given in Matthew
(Mt. 1:1-17). The Son of Man saying is indicative of Jesus’ present sufferings and imminent
death which is also significant for developing a dalit christology. These sayings speak of the
Son of Man as encountering rejection, mockery, contempt, suffering and finally death. Jesus
suffered from the dominant religious tradition and the established religion. He underwent
these dalit experiences as the prototype of all dalits.
Another feature of Jesus’ life is this total identification with the dalits of his day. Jesus
is accused of eating and drinking with publicans, tax-collectors and sinners of his day. The
Nazareth Manifesto has tremendous significant for the dalit. Jesus made two illustrations that
indicate that the liberation he talked about is meant for the dalits and not for non-dalits. The
gospel that Jesus brought was the gospel for dalits. The whole situation change at Jesus’
explosive words and we read, ‘when they heard this all in the synagogue were filled with
wrath.’ (Lk. 4: 16-29). The Nazareth Manifesto is really a manifesto for dalit.
Another episode from Jesus’ ministry full of significance for a Christian dalit
theology is that of the cleansing of the temple (Mk. 11: 15-19). The suggestion coming from
Lightfoot maintains that the incident of the cleansing of the temple must be understood in
terms of its implications for the Gentiles. All the buying and selling and money exchanging
took place in the part of the temple precincts, which were reserved, for the Gentile worship. It
was the Gentile Court. The Gentiles had no access to the inner precincts where the Jewish
worship proper was conducted. The bazar that was held in the Gentile court thus effectively
prevented them from conducting their worship in a peaceful and quiet manner. Jesus the
Messianic King thus restores to the Gentiles their religious rights. Lightfoot’ interpretation
makes sense to the Indian dalits who had to struggle for the temple entry rights and we know
about temple entry legislation in the various states of India. We the Indian dalits know what it
means to be denied that entry to the temple and to be denied the right to pray and worship. In
his act of restoration of the Gentile rights to worship we see a prefiguration of the vindication
of the Indian dalit struggle for their prayer and worship rights.
Jesus dalitness is symbolized by the Cross. On the cross, he was the broken, the
crushed, the split, the torn, the driven asunder man, the dalit in the fullest possible meaning of
that term. My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He cries aloud from the cross. The
Son of God feels that he is God-forsaken. That feeling of being God-forsaken is at the heart
of our dalit experiences and dalit consciousness in India. It is the dalitness of the divinity and
humanity that the Cross of Jesus symbolizes.

Women’s perspective on Christ: (Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel)

Problems:
(i) The Maleness of Christ
– that the redeemer was a man and thus protected the male species from
misdeeds
- Strengthened the customary arguments of female inferiority and the dangerous
nature of women
- In the Vatican Declaration of 1976 against the admission of women to the
priesthood, it says that the woman can never be admitted to the priesthood because

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 in the practice of his office the priest represents Christ and the woman can not be
Christ’ image: ‘Christ himself was and remains a man’.
(ii) Dogmatic expression of the Church’ understanding of Christ
- The understanding of Christ’ death as a ‘sacrificial death’ has legitimate both the
selflessness of women and their subjection. Further, the resurrection theme is far
removed for many women because they are just beginning to unfurl healing
powers for themselves and for the problems of the world. The emphasis on the
uniqueness of the salvation event is for many an expression of the Church’s claim
to absoluteness. Christological patterns of thinking appear to come out of a
patriarchal context and are without existential access to women, at least for the
present.

The relationships in which Jesus lived were those of the family the group of disciples, and the
women. This is where the feminist theologians draw a significant christology distinct from
the classical christology.
i) The Jesus story seen from the perspective of women shows the human Jesus, not
the man Jesus.
ii) It shows a model of new life which replaces the old system of superiority and
subordination – the model of mutuality.
iii) From this perspective the dogma of death and resurrection is opened up and
becomes an existential experience of illness and health, of dying and becoming
new which is oriented by the women’s story.

Christological confession:
i) The first christological confession in the gospel of Mark is spoken by a woman,
the Syrophoenician. Her address Kyrie is not predicated out of politeness. A
‘qualified christology’ is expressed in it. It stands even before Peter’s confession
and it anticipated the confession of the gentile soldier at the cross.
ii) The Samaritan woman unfolds a large number of Christ titles in her conversation
with Jesus at the well. The title ‘Saviour of the world’ is used by the Samaritans
who believe because of ht witness of the woman, and it is the most original one.
Instead of speaking of the people who are to be healed, it speaks of the cosmos
which it to be healed, this glove which is loved by God and which has rebelled
against him. Here the healer of the cosmos concretely heals the religions and
people that are torn apart.
iii) Martha makes a confession in the story of resurrection of Lazarus: Your are the
Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world. This confession is unique the
NT: into the world, the cosmos, the object of God’s love, into the power which
rebels against God, Christ has come. Martha therefore, pulls Jesus very deeply
into this world, just life she herself is very much in this world, practical and sober,
experiencing the physical death of her brother. But knowing that in this cosmos
there is already new life.
The Christ confessions of the women in the gospel of John have a particular dimension: they
look beyond humanity to the whole earth, to the globe. They are not anthropocentric but
rather cosmocentric, not oriented to the individual human but rather to the cosmos. Here
salvation occurs. Here, with the Christ who has come, the separating power of death which
tore apart sister and brother and the law of the religious divisions which divided Jews and
Samaritans is lifted.
The consequences of this christology would be:
i) To return to dignity and value to women’s experiences in church and theology.

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ii) To let the figure of Jesus again become alive in marginal groups
iii) To experience his life and his death in ever new concrete forms
iv) Through this, to comprehend anew and realize the this-worldliness of God in the
cosmos.

ADIVASI AND TRIBAL THEOLOGIES

NIRMAL MINZ

Nirmal Minz belongs to the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran church. He has a ThD
from the University of Chicago and has served as the principal of Gossner Lutheran
Arts College at Ranchi. He also served as the Bishop of North west Diocese of
Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church.

1. His Writings
2. “Mahatma Gandhi and Hindu-Chirstian Dialogue”
3. “Rise up my people and claim the Promise: The Gospel among the Tribes of India.”
4. “A Theological Interpretation of the Tribal Reality in India”
5. “The meaning of Tribal Consciousness”
6. Dalit-Tribal: A search for Common Ideology

7. His Thoughts
The main concern of Nirmal has been the development of a theology that is relevant
to the tribal people of India. Along with the Dalits, the tribals also are the Indigenous
people but they are faced with severe oppression at social, economic, cultural and
political levels.They are deprived of basic socio-cultural ingredients that constitute
their identity i.e. land, labor and language.According to him, the main characteristics
of Tribal religion are 1. no written scripture, religion of oral traditions. Rituals,
teachings and principals are transmitted orally from generation to generation. 2. no
images of the divine. Natural objects are adored. 3. nature-human-spirit continuum is
the vision. 4. worship of ancestors

8. Tribes represent an egalitarian society in India. Men and women are treated as equals
and work together in fields. Sing and dance together in the open dancing ground as a
Community. Songs and dance are integral part of their life. the tribal world view is
very similar to the biblical worldview. A tribal person exists because the other person
exists. The others are ancestors, the community, the created world and God. This
world view has enabled them to be more open to the Gospel message.The
relationship between the material, social and spiritual world’s is one of the key
principles in the tribal world view. The natural, the human and the supernatural are
integrally intertwined with each other. There is a nature- human- spirit continuum in
the tribal experience and thought. Their belief in ancestral spirits as part of human
society, andtheir observances of totems are key to their self understanding. The
indigenous people acknowledge their integral relationship with nature. The system of
gotra is a direct relationship with plants, trees, birds. The tribes have totems like lakra
(tiger), kujur (creepers), toppo (bird) etc.Trees, animals and birds are directly related
to humans. they are respected and annually there is a fest of the totem reinforcing this
relationship.Minz states that tribal folk songs, tales and creation myths can be used for
Christian theological interpretation. Jesus Christ as savior of the world can be
interpreted through tribal culture. For eg. In Munda and Oraon folk tales there is the

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 idea of a ‘suffering boy’ sent by God to save the people from the oppression of the
Ashurs. But he did not die. He came out with a shining body as a gold.He states that
there should be a way to bridge the gap between Dalits and Tribals. The tribal
consciousness of an egalitarian society in which there is common ownership of means
of production, distribution according to needs can contribute to the formation of an
ideology of adi people in their struggle for liberation in India. Thus with certain
elements of distinction there is a possibility for a common dalit-tribal theology.

Unit- VIII. Emerging Christologies from the margins

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology is a Christian theology in which the teachings of Jesus Christ are
understood in terms of a liberation from unjust political, economic, or social conditions. In
the 60s a new social and intellectual movement appeared in the Latin American continent.
The movement is rooted in the Christian faith and scriptures and seeks its ideological super
structure based on the religious reflection in close association with the church organization. It
is typical not only for Latin America but for the entire Third World and any social situation
of oppression.

Members of the religious orders are committed to the vow of poverty and do not own
property individually, nevertheless they enjoy a standard of living and security that separates
them from the daily agony of the poor. The question then arose for some of them what is the
ideal of poverty in a situation where most are suffering dehumanizing poverty and what
should the church and Christians do about it?

The need of Liberation Theology

We cannot expect science and technology to solve our problems and answer our questions
about the meaning of life. They are marvelous tools for understanding and dealing with the
material world, but tell us little or nothing about why it exists and how we should live in it.
To answer those questions we need a vision, a transcendent understanding of ourselves that
goes beyond the present moment and material world.

The emergence of Liberation theology

The diffuse movement we monolithically call liberation theology was born in Latin America
in the late 1960s. In the 1968 the bishops of Latin America assembled in Medellin, Colombia
to develop a pastoral strategy for implementing Vatican II in their continent. The document
they issued, shaped by theologians like Gutierrez and Segundi, called for a radical
transformation of the Latin American church, along with the sociopolitical structures of the
continent. Soon after Medallion Gustavo Gutierrz published A Theology of Liberation in
which he insisted that Christians must commit themselves to the liberation of the poor and
oppressed. It differs from previous systematic expressions of the faith: it seeks to interpret the
Christian faith from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. Liberation theology thus
emerged as a result of a systematic, disciplined reflection on Christian faith and its
implications. It arose principally as a moral reaction to widespread poverty caused by social

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injustice in that region. The theologians who formulated liberation usually do not teach in
universities and seminaries, they are a small group of catholic or protestant clergy and have
direct contact with the grass- roots groups as advisors to priests, sisters or pastors.

Social and Religious Roots of Liberation Theology

The theology of Liberation, though explicitly mentioned for the first time in 1968 in a speech
by a Peruvian theologian delivered in the fishing port of Chimbote, has roots in religious and
social movements that swept the Latin American continent in the 50sCatholic bishops were
concerned with the increasing influence of protestant missionaries, the growing secularization
of the population and the spreading of communist ideas [these were topics of the First
plenary meeting of CELAM –Latin American Bishops conference –in 1955 in Rio Janeiro).
Church problems were aggravated by the lack of the clergy to serve poor people in the
country and the visible complicity of the church with an unjust social order. The social
situation in Latin American countries gave rise to revolutionary movements in Cuba,
Venezuela, Guatemala, and Peru. In Brazil, persants became militant and the radicalized
middle-class people went to work directly with the poor. A Brazilian educator; Paulo freire
developed a new method for teaching literacy to the masses of peasants through the process
of ‘conscientizacao” consciousness –rising. All these movements and problems arose directly
from the conditions of abject poverty, how 70 percentage of the population lived in a socio-
economic analysis of the structure of Latin Americann society, some Christians and
missionaries began to utilize Marxist tools without, of course, embracing the philosophy of
dialectical materialism.

Liberation Theology

The concern of Liberation Theology can be classified in the following proportions.

1. An interpretation of the Christian faith is out of sufferings, struggle, and hope of the poor.

2. A critique of society and the ideologies sustaining it.

3. A critique of the activity of the church and of Christians from the angle of the poor.

Basic principles of theology of liberation

Facing enormous problems in the society, some theologians realized that the traditional
theology concerned with religious dogmas and abstract religious concepts lost any relevance.
It became an abstract speculation removed from the original spirit of the gospel message and
out of touch with real life. On the social level it served the rich. They realized that if one
really cared for and believed in the Christian ideals, one had to answer the question; how to
be a Christian in a concrete historical situation? The basic concern in Latin America shifted
thus from ‘whether one can believe what Christianity affirms to what relevance Christianity
has in struggle for a more just world’. Out of such consideration was born ‘liberation
Theology; outlined for the first time by a Peruvian Theologian Gustavo Gutierrez a few
weeks before the Medellin conference. Gutierrez defined theology as a’ critical reflection on
praxis in the light of the word of God’. Liberation Theology has two basic principles; first, it

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recognizes a need for liberation from any kind of oppression- political, economic, social,
sexual, racial, and religious. Second, it asserts that the theology must grow out pf the basic
Christian communities and should not be imposed from above, that is, from the infallible
source book or from the magisterium of an infallible church. It explores the theological
meaning of human activities.

1. It interprets Christian faith out of the suffering, struggle, and hope of the poor.

2. It critiques society and ideologies sustaining it, pretend not to lay down specific rules for
how to struggle for justice, but stresses that a responsible commitment with class conflict is
an expression of love for one’s neighbour. Though solidarity with the poor theologians or
liberations advocate the transcendence from class division to a new type of society.

3. It critiques the activity of the church from the angle of the poor.

The main theme, liberation, is considered at three levels of meaning which are
interconnected. At the social and political level liberation is an expression of aspirations of
the oppressed classes and peoples. This liberation emphasizes the conflict in the economical,
social, and political, process between the oppressed and oppressors. At the human level the
liberation is conceived as a historical process in which people develop consciously their own
destiny through the social changes.

Jesus Christ the Liberator

Jesus’ identification with the oppressed and the despised, and his commitment to bring about
change by acting out the values of the religion of God, is the primary insight of Liberation
theology. While liberation theologians do not outright deny Christ's deity, there is no clear-
cut, unambiguous confession that Jesus is God. The significance of Jesus Christ lies in His
example of struggling for the poor and the outcast. The Incarnation is reinterpreted to
represent God's total immersion into man's history of conflict and oppression. By His words
and actions, Jesus showed us how to become true sons of God - that is, by bringing in the
kingdom of God through actively pursuing the liberation of the oppressed.

Conclusion

The analysis of the social situation by concerned church workers leads to the formulation of a
social theory and provides a tool for liberation theology. The social theory becomes
dialectical if it envisions the possibility of a systematic change. Liberation theology too opts
for the social changes through the life behavior of Jesus Christ. It incorporates all the social
aspects as well.

CHRISTOLOGY IN BLACK THEOLOGY

BLACK THEOLOGY: JAMES H. CONE

Introduction

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James Cone was an American black theologian, born in 1938. He studied at Garrett
Theological Seminary and North Western University, Evanston. Like most Colleges and
Seminaries students of his generation, he studied Philosophy and Theology from the pre-
Socrates to modern existentialism and linguistic analysis from Martin martyr, Irenaeus,
Origen, Karl Barth, Bultman and Tillich. He was expert on Karl Barth and knew well the
theological issues that shape his theology. Cone later becomes a Professor at Union
Theological Seminary, New York and a pioneer in Black theology. He is the author of
numerous articles and books regarding Black theology. Cone concluded his formal education
with a Ph. D dissertation on Barth’s anthropology.

The Origin and Concept of Black theology

The term Black theology is a product of North American black Christianity. Its origins lie in
the response of Black Church leaders to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and especially
black power. The main object of this theology is developing theology within the black
experience rather than duplicating the theology of Europe or White North America. It
represented the theological reflections of a radical black clergy seeking to interpret the
meaning of God’s liberating presence in society where blacks were being economically
exploited and politically marginalised because of their skin colour.

Black theology is a form of liberation theology and a protest theology. It emerged out of the
experience and pains of oppression of the blacks for the liberation. It refers about variety of
black theologies which has as its base on Justice and equality of black people among the
white people. Black theology has its centre in the theme of oppression of black people by
white people. This theology maintains that African Americans must be liberated from
multiple forms of bondage social, political, economic and religious. This formulation views
Christian theology as a theology of liberation, a rational Study of the being of God in the
world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of
liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ.

Major Themes of Black Theology:

1. Black theology emphasizes the blackness of God. How do we speak of God in
a suffering world, a world in which the blacks are humiliated just because they are black?
God is a God of oppressed and revolution and who participate in the liberation of the black.”
The white God is an idol…and we blacks must perform the iconoclastic task of smashing the
false image. (Cone)
2. The definition of Jesus as black is crucial. The historical Jesus who identified
with the oppressed must be black if he continues to be present among the black. Jesus is
black not in facile racial sense, but theologically, in a situation where the colour of a
person’s skin determines his/her opportunities in life; the gospel is not color blind.
3. Eschatology is interpreted in existential terms. “Hell-future makes little
impression on blacks living in a hell-present” (Cone)
4. Sin is structural and relational.

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Methodology of the Black theology

a) The Concept of God and Jesus Christ

James Cone, compared black people struggle with Israel’s bondage in Egypt, by saying
United States to Egypt, and he predicted that oppressed people will soon be led to a promised
land. For Cone, the theme of Yahweh’s concern was for “the lack of social, economic, and
political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in society. Cone also says that the same
God is working for the oppressed blacks of the 20th century, and that God is helping
oppressed blacks and has identified with them, God Himself is spoken of as black. Also
Jesus’ work is considered as liberation for poor people. Becoming a slave himself, He opens
realities of human existence formerly closed to human. Jesus is seen as a non-white, social
liberator who focused on the emancipation of the poor and of the marginalized, and many
parallel are made with the emancipation efforts of black people in the United States. Christ's
message is interpreted as encouraging black power.

Cone saw Christ from the aspect of oppression and liberation. Cone uses the Gospel of Luke
to illustrate this point: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. ‘In
Christ,’ Cone argues, ‘God enters human affairs and takes sides with the oppressed’. Their
suffering becomes his suffering. So that only he died on the cross and resurrected and living
in this world and delivering people from their bondage. Jesus was considered as black by the
black people. This brings simply the sense of freedom of black people who find in the Jesus
of the black gospel liberation which was denied them by white Christianity.

b) Black Power

It has been argued that it is the spirit of Christ himself in the black - white dialogue which
makes possible the emancipation of blacks from self- hatred and frees whites from their
racism. Through black power, blacks are becoming worthy human and whites are forced to
confront them as human powers. Black power in politics means blacks controlling their
political destiny by voting for black people and perhaps eventually forming a coalition with
poor whites against middle-class whites. Economically it may mean building stores for black
people. Religiously it means an inner sense of freedom from the structures of white society
which builds its economy on the labour of poor black and white.

c) The Use of the Bible

The Bible is the witness to God’s self- disclosure in Jesus Christ. Thus the black experience
requires that Scripture be source of Black Theology. Scripture enabled slaves to affirm a view
of God that differed radically from that of the slave masters. Black theology’s notion of the
Bible as the word of God carries the implication that there is such a thing as a non ideological
appropriation of scripture. Black theologians has told about the scripture is the absolute non

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ideological word of God that can be made ideological only by being applied to the situation
of oppression.

e) The Concept of Church

The church is the focus of social expression in the black community where the blacks can
express freedom and equality. It is a unity in total commitment to each other in a corporate
life in Christ, a life of action which has liberation as its goal. Thus the church and politics
have formed a cohesion where the theological expression of the desire for social freedom is
carried out.

f) Salvation

Salvation is freedom from the oppression and pertains to blacks in this life. Proponents of
black theology are concerned specifically with the political and theological aspects of
salvation more than the spiritual. In other words, salvation is physically liberation from white
oppression, or "The white enemy" rather than freedom from the sinful nature and acts of each
individual person. Presenting heaven as a reward for following Christ is seen as an attempt to
dissuade blacks from the goal of real liberation of their whole persons.

Conclusion

Black theology is an attempt to deliver and regain the equal respect to the black people, from
their bondage and suffering of the life which is made by white people. It is a recent
development as a formal programme of theology. It has yet to emerge as a experienced
project. It has to become practical in everywhere by everyone. Because the teaching of Jesus
mainly focuses on love your neighbour as yourself. Through this way as a Christian, church
and Christian minister we can make harmonious life and peaceful life in this society. Then
only our theology can make real sense in our world.

Black theology first appeared in the period of civil right movement in the United States in the
1960’s. However, its root goes back to the centuries of experience and suffering. Black
theology affirmed the value, aspiration, culture and story as the story of courageous people
undergirded by faith in God, who have struggled against oppression and survived despite
long and brutal mistreatment. First, as an enslaved people; and then as repeated targets of
racist attitude and practices in both the wider society and the established churches. Black
people have made a distinctive witness to the God of the Gospel. Black theology emerges
from this history and social context. Yet it is not wholly derived or determined by this
context. While emphasizing that what people think about theology is shaped by their
particular history and status in a given society. Black theology, however, insisted that the
faith of the black people cannot be explained by any kind of reductionism, the Christian
gospel speaks with power, both out of and to the experience of black people.

Black Christology: For Black Theologians the political meaning of liberation is the best
illustrated in the Exodus, and its eschatological meaning was found in the life, death and

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resurrection of Jesus Christ. The epic of the Exodus of the Israelites from their enslavement
in Egypt into the dignity of freedom and nationhood inspired a lot to all the Black peoples
too. Another confirmation of the Black people in relation with the Gospel is that, the Gospel
which Christ has proclaimed does exist, and the same Gospel is also found in each and every
culture in an imperfect form. The interaction of the Gospel and culture in a particular context
helps the people to understand the hidden Gospel in their own culture. The articulation of
faith in Jesus Christ with the help of that hidden Gospel often make more effective and
meaningful. They strive to discern, understanding, interpret and impart the word of God and
its meaning for the historical, religious, cultural and their social life.

According to Black theologians the encounter with scripture through the lens of their
experience and faith of the black community result in the rediscovery of the good news of
God’s liberation of the oppressed. Reading the bible through the eyes of the people who
struggle for freedom and centering their interpretation on the person and work of Jesus
Christ, a number of black theologians declared that ‘Christ is Black’. In their view Christ is
black because of his solidarity with the poor and outcasts in his ministry and in his death by
crucifixion alongside two criminals. James Cone writes, “Christ is black … not because of
some cultural and psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ
really entered into our world where the poor, the despise and the black are, disclosing them
that he is with them enduring their humiliation and pain, and transforming oppressed slave
into liberated servants.” (James Cone, God of the Oppressed).

Black theology acknowledges Jesus as savior fully divine and fully human. It charges,
however, that the real meaning of this orthodox affirmation has often been obscured and even
subverted by racist mind. In other words, although Christ is confessed by the established
churches to be both divine and human, the true humanity of God incarnate did not seem to
include the suffering humanity of black people. Evidence to this is the support given by many
white churches in 19th century America to the institution of slavery. Black theology
concentrate on the meaning of the ministry, cross and resurrection of Christ of the poor and
the despise of the society. As Cone contends the identity of Jesus must be seen in who he
was, who he is and who he will be. Jesus is who he was – the one who lived with poor and
died on the cross; Jesus is who he is – present now with the poor helping them to struggle for
the maintenance of humanity in a situation of oppression. Jesus is who he will be – the
coming Lord who empowers the oppressed to keep on keeping on even when their fight
seems fruitless. For black theologians the history of salvation attested in the bible is marked
by the scandal/study of particularity from the exodus of the people of Israel from Egyptian
bondage to the ministry of Jesus among the despise today. When they emphasize that God’s
partiality towards the poor black theologian, however, does not deny the universal scope of
grace. Most theologians reject an inordinate focus on the particularity of blackness that would
jeopardize the universalism of the gospel and turn the Christian message into a radical
ideology. Like other liberation theologies, black theology insists that confessing Christ is
inseparable from following Christ. This is not an expression of anti-intellectualism although
it could be employed into them and it is instead a rejection of the damaging separation of

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theology and ethics, theory and practice, mind and body, person and society, and church and
world that are seen against the integrity of the gospel and the invisibility of human lives.

CHRISTOLOGY IN FEMINIST THEOLOGY

Feminist theology arises out of women’s experience of oppression and discrimination in

society. It is a form of liberation theology, and concerns the liberation of women and of all
people from all kinds of dominations and oppressions. Feminist theology seeks to provide a
new human community based on the value of mutuality and reciprocity in the light of God’s
promise of a new creation. Feminist theologians consider that traditional theology has been
constructed to the exclusion of women’s experience and hence, has become male bias. They
believed that Christology is one of doctrines most used to oppressed women. They seek to
reinterpret it to uncover a more inclusive and significant understanding of Christ in relation of
women’s experience.

Feminist theologians hold that traditional christology has taken the maleness of Jesus to be a
presupposition for the maleness of God, and used it as a theological basis to hold that God
should be imagined exclusively as male, or that only a male image provide a proper model
for God. They believed that when God, the highest power in the universe is named or
interpreted exclusively in male term, an eventual implication follows that women are lesser
images of God, or that they are natural inferior to man. Similarly in relation to Jesus maleness
the incarnation of the Logos of God as a male is traditionally interpreted as ontological
necessity. As a result it has come to be held that just as God has to be incarnated in male, so
only the male can represent Christ. In responding to this view Feminist theologians argued
that God created both male and female in the divine image, so that neither male nor female is
greater than the other in the divine image, nor can God be imagined exclusively either male
or female. In their view the maleness of Jesus is essentially a historical option, something
analogous to his Jewish identity rather than ontological necessity. Therefore, the maleness of
Jesus cannot be used as a theological basis for the subordination of women.

In their further discussion Feminist theologians pointed out several liberation traditions from
the Gospel that provide the basis for interpreting the significance of Jesus Christ in relation to
women’s experience. The following are some of these traditions.

1. Feminist theologians pointed out the prophetic vision of Jesus’ ministry. They
emphasize that in Jesus’ vision of the reign of God the establish order of social and
religious hierarchy is turned upside down. The last become the first and the first
become the last. It is the outcast and those of the periphery of the established structure
who are counted first. As Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza puts it, “His announcemtn of
eschatological reversal – many who are first will be last and those last will be first
(Mk 10:31; Matt 19:30; 20:16; Lk 13:30) – applies also to women and to their
impairment by patriarchal structure.” (Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of
Her, 121). This reversal, feminist say is not intended to substitute the old system of
domination by a new one; rather the advent of God’s reign breaks the old pattern of
domination and create a new community in which power and leadership are

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 transformed to become vehicle of liberation and empowerment for the oppressed male
and female alike.
2. Feminist theologians claim that in Jesus’ ministry of establishing God’s kingdom
woman had great responsibilities including leadership. They argued that the ministry
of Jesus began as a movement of the poor, in which women too exercise leadership
role alongside men. So, women became disciples of Jesus; they followed him by
leaving their families and home. Some wealthy women among them even supported
the ministry providing financial support out of their own resources (Lk 8:1-3).
Prominent figures among them including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Salom,
and Mary the wife of Clopus. Besides these there were also important unnamed
figures like the Samaritan woman who announced the good news of Messiah arrival,
the Syro-phoenician woman who pleaded with Jesus to allow salvation to be granted
to gentiles. Moreover, feminist theologians also pointed out that some women
disciples were with Jesus right up to his hour of suffering, they stood by the cross and
knew where he was laid, and were the first to receive and proclaim the good news of
is resurrection. On the basis of this tradition feminist theologians claim that both in
his earthly and risen life Jesus included women in his community not as subordinate to
male, not as sisters equal to their brothers. They quote Paul’s statement which seem to
reflect this feature of early Christian community to substantiate their view, “there is no
longer Jews or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Feminist theology is also
deeply affected by context. Third World women from Asia, Africa and Latin America
also looked at Christology from the context of their area, as woman in their own
historical situation and struggles for liberation. In general, Third World feminist
theologians accepted the mainline western feminist theology but do not simply take it
for granted that western Christology is applicable to their non-western context.
Although there were differences among them, most Third World feminist theologians
focused on the historical Jesus and emphasized what Jesus did rather than who he is.
In their view, Jesus was liberating in his ministry classless among women and men,
and suffering in solidarity with the people and marginalized. Jesus is a fully liberated
human being who empowers people to have courage to struggle in the face of injustice
and oppression.

8. ECO-THEOLOGY

Etymologically, the term ecology is derived from the Greek word oikos, which means
house.
9. Therefore ecology refers to earthly habitation which human beings share with other
living things and the mutual relations between organism and their environment. So
basically ecology is a biological study fo ecology examines how the indiscrete use of
the nature by humans over the years has resulted in many ecological problems such as
pollution of soil, air, water along with many other destructions of plants and animals.
In recent times, ecology is understood in a more wider sense It includes understanding
of ourselves and our environment as part of our nature and showing us the inseparable
link between us and the planet on which we live. Modern technology and
development ideology as understood and practised has polluted the earth and led to
the ecological crisis making all life forms in danger. The poor, the oppressed, esp
women, dalits, tribals are the most affected by ecological crisis.

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 10. Ecological crisis seeks eco-justice. A genuine theology of nature , of the earth and of
matter has to be developed as this provides the base for eco-justice. We have to re
think God-human-world relationship, reaffirm our interrelatedness with nature.
11. Lynn White Jr. one of the prominent American historian of science critiqued the
contribution of Christian religion to the ecological problems in his provocative article’
the Historical roots of our Ecological Crisis’ which was published in Science in 1967.
he placed the blame of the current ecological degradation to an unholy alliance
between modern science and the anthropocentric Genesis creation account. According
to the Christian belief, human beings are the crown of the creation and therefore they
have the freedom to exploit and to use the nature in any manner. He argued that Judeo
Christian theology is anti earth because 1) the Bible affirms human dominion over
nature and establishes a trend of anthropomorphism and 2) Christianity makes a
distinction between human beings as created in the image of God and the rest of
creation has no ‘soul’ or reason’ and so is inferior. The critique of Lynn White was
groundbreaking and ever since this criticism, there have been many attempts to
redeem Christian theology from anthropocentrism. Hence, an eco theological
perspective began to be adopted in the areas of biblical interpretation and doctrine.
Four main reasons for the emergence of eco-theology are: 1. as a critique of
traditional theologies which are anthropocentric and andocentric. 2. because of
ecological crisis. 3. Failure of traditional theologies. 4. eco-theology emerged in the
context of the encounter with the people of other faiths concerning the relationship
between human kind and nature.
12. There are different stands of eco-theology such as social ecology, creation theology,
eco-feminism, eco-spirituality. 1. Social ecology follows a liberation theology model
for its methodology seeking to see nature liberated from bondage. It sees ecological
crisis as a justice issue Hence eco-system is seen as intimately related to social issue.
Social change is needed to achieve justice towards creation. 2. Creation theology-
starts with biblical creation story. It views Traditional theology as the one that has
misinterpreted biblical texts. It affirms the inter connectedness of God-human-nature.
Salvation is all for the whole cosmos. 3. eco-feminism-there is a natural nexus
between women and nature.Ecology is an issue of women since both are dominated
and subjugated by males. This nexus is very deep and women esp dalits and tribals are
the direct victims of ecological crisis.
13. Eco-theology books
1. Green Liberation
2. A Christian response to ecological crisis
3. Ecological Challenges and Christian mission
4. The body of God: An ecological Theology
5. Vedic-vedantic vision in Indian Christian theology of nature

Unit-X Who do you say I am? Autobiography ical Christologies

What is Christology?
In the light of the Christian faith, practice, and worship that branch of theology called
Christology reflects systematically on the person, being and doing of Jesus of Nazareth. In
seeking to clarify the essential truths about him, it investigates his person and being (who and
what he was/is) and work (what he did/does).
In facing and tackling certain Christological questions, historical, philosophical and
linguistic considerations play a crucial role. They can be distinguished as follows:

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History: How do we know who Jesus was/is and what he did/does? Obviously the first
answer must be: we know Jesus and know about him from human history and experience.
The quest of the historical Jesus will make us examine his background in the story of Israel,
his earthly career, his influence on the origins of Christianity and the subsequent development
of Christological thinking and teaching. In pursuing the reality and meaning of Jesus’ person,
being and work we will examine some themes from Jewish history, and from the origins of
Christianity and in particular from the development of Christological reflection and teaching.
(We know Jesus through the historical and experiential sources).
Philosophy: Our questions about Jesus’ ‘being’ and ‘doing’ raise a whole range of questions
of a more or less philosophical nature. What is the status of experiential knowledge? Can it
supply any reliable information or evidence about Jesus? Where personal testimonies differ,
whose experience counts? Philosophical considerations necessarily turn up when Christology
raises questions of hermeneutics (the role of tradition in the work of interpretation), and
questions of epistemology (the evidential status of experience and the dependence of
Christian faith upon historical knowledge).
Is it logically consistent for someone to be simultaneously fully human and fully divine? If
we cannot positively justify this conceptually, can we at least show that it is not blatantly
impossible? Or is this simply as impossible and blatantly inconsistent as calling someone a
married bachelor? To reach a reasoned position here, one needs clarify the notions of
humanity and divinity. What counts as being, in the strict sense of the word human and/or
divine? What do human nature and a divine nature mean and entail? How could one person
be at the same time fully human and fully divine? What does personhood mean?
This is a simple illustration of the role of philosophy in clarifying concepts and testing
possibilities. Philosophy comes into play in hammering out concepts that have a certain
clarity, examining whether some claims are coherent and judging whether some claims are
blatantly incoherent to the point of impossibility.
Language: How far can our language go in expressing Christ, God and other worldly
realities? In religious worship, practice and reflection, language gets used in extended or
special ways. Jesus’ own symbolic language about a lost coin, a lost sheep and a lost son
represent and perceptibly express truths about the invisible God and the divine designs in our
regards. If we put together various particular symbols, the whole Exodus narrative functions
as a symbolic story, in which basic truths about God and our existence vis-à-vis God get
imaginatively expressed. We are guided towards the ultimate realities not only by abstract
concepts but even more by symbolic language.
It is important to note that in Christology, we are dealing with mystery, the mystery of of the
ineffable God and for that matter, the corresponding mystery of the human condition. In
particular, we should not forget the indirect, analogical and symbolic character of our biblical
, liturgical and theological language about God. The historical development of theology
reminds us of the inadequacy of all attempts to approach the divine mystery. Any affirmation
about God has to be qualified with a corresponding negation and the recognition that God
infinitely surpasses our human categories. In fact, Christians do not hold that mere language
can be rich enough to express everything about Christ, or at least everything that they wish to
express about who he is and what he has done. Much of the Christian tradition of
Christological interpretation has come through various styles of life, commitment towards
those in need, public worship’s symbolic gestures, music, painting, sculpture, architecture
and other non-verbal forms of commitment.
Reasons for Studying Christology
Understanding, accepting and interpreting Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God and the world’s
savior immediately touches upon our personal identity, deepest needs and final destiny. To
answer Jesus’ question ‘Who do you say that I am? (Mk. 8:29) by confessing him as Son of

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God is in effect to state who we think we are. To acknowledge in Jesus of Nazareth the
mystery of the divine presence among us entails committing ourselves about our own
personal identity (Who do I say that I am?) Here no confession of faith is possible without
accepting the innermost truth about ourselves, the meaning of our own existence and the
nature of our ultimate goal. In sum, when we identify Jesus as Son of God, we take an
ultimate stand on the mystery of human being.
Christian believers worship and act together within the community of the church. This fact
recalls a further motive for the systematic study of Christ’ person and work. To admit that our
theory and practice of Church life is and should be shaped by our belief in Christ is to accept
the more basic task. We should use all the resources of faith and reason to express and
interprets faithfully who Jesus is and what he does for us.
The multi-faceted Christian dialogue with various world religions and ideologies recall the
motivation of studying Christology in the present world. How should Christological
reflection be renewed? How should an articulate Christian belief interpret and present the
death and resurrection of Jesus to Hindus or Islam?

Sources:
What sources provide the appropriate material for our systematic account of Jesus’ identity
and function? Where can we learn about Jesus Christ and find what Christians have believed
about him and one because of their faith in him? One can rightly maintain that for
Christology there is only one source, the self-revelation of the Triune God which reached its
ultimate expression in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, was then transmitted and
interpreted through the apostolic traditions, and finally received its fixed record in the
written scriptures. However, we can expect to find the truth about Jesus Christ within the
Church. Faith in him began in the context of that community has been expressed in countless
ways by members of that same community, and will be properly articulated only within that
same context.
The Christ of the present: The Christ of present Christian experience extends beyond the
sectors of liturgy and teaching to the entire life of Christians. This is the Christ of the Church’
doctrine, life and worship.
The Christ of the future
The Christ of the Christian tradition
The Christ of the Christian origin

Have a nice examination

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