Posted on by Jack Kilcrease

How Can We Do Authentic Theology Today?

Christianity is a religion centered on salvific events in history.  It makes claims about an eternal God and his transcendent truth. Yet, at the same time, it paradoxically finds its sources of knowledge about the eternal God in the finitudes and contingencies of history.  The historical embeddedness of Christianity not only pertains to biblical revelation, but also to the subsequent task of Christian theology.  

Because Christian theology is embedded in the historical, it is also always contextual.1  New Testament scholarship of the previous two centuries made much of how our first documented Christian theologian, the Apostle Paul, expressed his theological vision in the form of occasional letters to his congregations.2 This pattern continues in the history of Christian thought.  Starting with Ignatius of Antioch and moving onto Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Schleiermacher, Newman, Barth, and Rahner all theologians address a specific context even in their non-occasional writings.3  In each generation, theologians must look to the Word of God, test the present proclamation of the Church against it, and apply it to the challenges of the contemporary Christian community.4  

Applying the Word of God to new contexts entails relating the content of revelation to what the surrounding culture’s beliefs about reality.  Christian theology is an incarnational discourse embedded in the concrete world of history, culture, and experience. Therefore, biblical teaching about the old and new creation, as well as the Lordship of Christ, cannot be hermetically sealed against the claims of the surrounding culture.  Rather, when theologians apply the Word of God, they must explicate and relate doctrine to what historically and culturally situated people see as the nature of reality. 

This may take the form of pushing back against the claims of the wider culture.  It may also take the form of translating the biblical worldview and the gospel into a new historical/cultural idiom.  Translation is essential to the task of theology, something which we will explore at greater length below.  Even when theologians use the biblical revelation to critique the idolatries of the wider culture, the thought-forms they utilize to explain the Bible will invariably be borrowed from the culture they are pushing back against….

“The Infinite is Capable of the Finite”

[But how can a transcendent God enter the contingencies of history?And how can theologians convey objective divine revelation when we only have access to relative historical knowledge?]

The works of Hans Urs von Balthasar5 and Wolfhart Pannenberg contain two helpful responses to the question of historical relativity.6  Both theologians improve on Karl Barth’s response to the problem of relativity by maintaining the absolute and eschatological nature of the Christian revelation while not compromising its full historical incarnational embeddedness….

From the perspective of classical Lutheran dogmatics, Balthasar and Pannenberg offer helpful suggestions.  For both Balthasar and Pannenberg, one should look for the absolute (in both an ontological and eschatological sense) embedded in the temporal.  This insight correlates well with the Lutheran doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum in Christ and its attending principle that the “finite is capable of the infinite” (finitum capax infiniti).7  In historic Lutheran teaching, God’s infinity means that he is capable of all possibilities, including communicating himself through the finite.  In response to the Reformed tradition’s often confused critiques of the Lutheran capax, Gustaf Aulén suggested that the principle might be better articulated as the “infinite is capable of the finite.”8  The Lutheran capax provides a basis for articulating how the particular and historical in Christian theology participates in and manifests the absolute.  

As Luther9 and the later Lutheran symbolic writings10 assert, within the person of Christ the divine and human realities exchange without abrogating their distinction.  Martin Chemnitz divided this exchange into three genera. He termed the last one the “genus majestaticum.”11  According to the genus majestaticum, the fullness of God’s glory is communicated to the finite human nature of Jesus.12  Jesus’ humanity embodies the fullness of God’s glory (Col. 1:19) in the midst of history and its relativity. Therefore, he can embody the fullness of God’s eternal truth (Jn. 14:6, Col. 2:3).  The finite and relative become the vehicle of the infinite and eternal. 

The fullness of God’s glory in Christ, and its complete manifestation in his resurrection, also reveal the goal of history (Eph. 1:9-10). History’s telos is the universal communication of God’s presence to his creation at the eschaton (Dan. 2:35, Rev. 21:22).  Moreover, the glory of God embodied in the historical and risen Christ can transcend both time and space. This occurs via his promise to make himself known in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the Church: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20, also see: Mt. 18:20, LK 10:16).13 

Trinitarian Exchange as Translation

The self-communication of God finds expression in the communicatio idiomatum of the Incarnation. But God’s eternal nature as triune is the ultimate root of this self-communication.  The very life of the Triune God is an eternal event of exchange and self-communication.  The Father, as the font of divinity (fons totius divinitas), eternally speaks forth his Word in the begetting of the Son.14 An exchange of realities occurs in the self-communicative act of begetting. Having received himself from the Father from eternity, the Son returns himself to the Father by his spiration of the Spirit, whom he received in an eternal act of begetting.  In the spiration of the Spirit, the eternal exchange of the Trinitarian life is complete: the Father giving himself fully to the Son, the Son returning himself to the Father in the Spirit, and the Spirit receiving himself from both the Father and the Son. 15

Analogically, this great exchange within the life of the Triune God could also be seen as a kind of self-translation.  In human life, translation is always itself an exchange of realities, in effect, a communicatio idiomatum.  A translated work of literature retains its reality and meaning. But it also takes up a new language and idiom, thereby communicating itself through these new mediums.  The original work and the new idiom into which it has been translated exchange realities. 

Similarly, the Father’s communication of himself in the person of the Son means that the divine ousia retains its reality while at the same time taking upon itself the new idiom of the person of the Son.  We also see this phenomenon when considering the Holy Spirit. Through the spiration of the Spirit, the Son also communicates and translates the divine ousia into a new idiom of the person of the Holy Spirit.16

The humanity of Christ both participates in and ectypally reflects God’s life of eternal self-communication.  Since the humanity of Christ is anhypostatic, it finds its center of identity in the person of the eternal Word.17  Hence, the humanity of Christ participates in the Son’s eternal reception of divine glory from the Father’s act of begetting.  The participation of Christ’s humanity in divine glory allows the eternal Word to translate itself into the idiom of humanity.18  

As true man, Jesus affects another translation and exchange in the form of what Luther called the “happy exchange” (der fröhlicher wechsel, commercium admirabile).19  In his earthly life, Christ placed himself in solidarity with sinful humanity and took upon himself its sin and death.  In exchange, Christ gives humanity his life and righteousness through the cross and empty tomb. 

The risen Jesus, exercising the fullness of his divine glory in the power of the Spirit, affects another translation and communicatio idiomatum by authorizing the apostolic kerygma and the Word and Sacrament ministry of the Church (Mt. 18:20, 28:18-20).20  Through the apostolic ministry, Jesus translates his eternal reality and saving work into the preaching of the apostles condensed into the New Testament.  As true God and man, Christ is also present to his Church. Here, he continues to exchange sin and death for life and righteousness through the sacraments and the preaching office.  

It is, therefore, ultimately the presence of the risen Jesus and the exchange of realities of he affects that makes theology possible. Theologians must work within the Church because Christ promises his continual presence there in Word and Sacrament ministry.  Much like his incarnate person, the theology of the Church which depends on the presence of Christ. Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, manifests the infinite and absolute in a specific, contingent historical context.  Through the teachers and pastors of the Church, the risen Christ translates himself into the theology of the Church in the same way he translated himself into his incarnate life: through the work of the Word and the Spirit.

Figure 1: Rev. Paul T. McCain’s very helpful chart of the “Communication of Attributes in the Person of Christ,” last revised May, 2000
Rev. Dr. Lionel Windsor’s “Language of Chalcedon” Chart, https://www.lionelwindsor.net/2009/12/22/the-language-of-chalcedon/
  1. Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997-1999), 1:ix. ↩︎
  2. Frank Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 221. ↩︎
  3. See: Hans Küng, Great Christian Thinkers: Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher, Barth (New York: Continuum, 1994). ↩︎
  4. CD I/1.11-17. ↩︎
  5. See the following: Aidan Nichols, Not Bloodless Myth: A Guide to Balthasar’s Dramatics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000); idem, Say it is Pentecost: A Guide to Balthasar’s Logic (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001);  idem, The Word has been Abroad: A Guide to Balthasar’s Aesthetics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998);  Matthew Levering, The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His Trilogy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019). ↩︎
  6. See the following: Carl Braaten and Philip Clayton, eds., The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016); Stanley Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005); F. LeRon Shults, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999); E. Frank Tupper, The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1973). ↩︎
  7. See: Kurt Hendel, “Finitum capax Infiniti: Luther’s Radical Incarnational Perspective,” Currents in Theology and Mission 35, no. 6 (2008): 420–433. ↩︎
  8. Gustaf Aulén, The Faith of the Christian Church, trans. Eric Wahlstrom and G. Everett Arden (Philadelphia: The Muhlenberg Press, 1948), 57. ↩︎
  9. For example, see Luther’s Sermon on Colossians 1:18-20; WA 45:300; Sermons on the Gospel of John; LW 22:491-492. Also see summary in: Marc Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ, Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology, trans. Edwin Robertson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishers, 1982), 212-230, 335-340. ↩︎
  10. FC, SD VIII; CT, 1014-1049. ↩︎
  11. Martin Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971), 171-232, 241-247. ↩︎
  12. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 241-247, 267-488. ↩︎
  13. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 423-466. ↩︎
  14. See discussion in: Johann Gerhard, On the Nature of God and On the Trinity, trans. Richard Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 312; Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1951-1953), 1:416-417. ↩︎
  15. See discussion in: Bernd Oberdorfer, Filioque: Geschichte und Theologie eines ökumenischen Problems (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001); A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque
    History of a Doctrinal Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). ↩︎
  16. See similar argument in: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “God Is His Own Exegete,” Communio 13, no. 4 (1986): 280-287. ↩︎
  17. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 68-72; John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Book, 1969), 38-40, 59-64. ↩︎
  18. Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 2:152-242; John Schaller, Biblical Christology: A Study in Lutheran Dogmatics (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1981), 68-78; Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles Hay and Henry Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 314-315. ↩︎
  19. Freedom of a Christian (1521), LW 31:351. ↩︎
  20. See: Johann Anselm Steiger, “The Communicatio Idiomatum as the Axel and Motor of Luther’s Theology,” Lutheran Quarterly 14, no. 2 (2000): 125-158. ↩︎

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

Cover image from “Who Is Jesus?,” the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, accessed June 17, 2024, https://www.lcms.org/about/beliefs/who-is-jesus; other images from “Trinity Sunday,” The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod Calendar, June 4, 2023, accessed June 20, 2024, https://calendar.lcms.org/event/trinity-sunday/.