Christology Archives - Jack Kilcrease

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024

“I Am With You Always”: Christ’s Absolute Presence with Us

Confessional Lutheran Christology Part II

Martin Luther [steadfastly defended the substantial presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper against other reformers like Ulrich Zwingli.] Luther responded to Zwingli in part by teaching the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature. This doctrine is sometimes incorrectly called “Ubiquity.”¹ As Luther notes, the Bible teaches that Christ is at the “right hand of God.” But this is not a physical location (i.e., a semi-local heaven, as Zwingli had taught). Rather, God’s right hand refers to rather his power and glory, which are everywhere.¹

Hence, Jesus’s body is, in some mysterious sense, everywhere. However, Luther emphasized that Christ’s body does not exist everywhere in the form of infinite multiplication or spatial extension (hence, the inaccuracy of the term “Ubiquity,” which implies spatial extension).³ Rather, Luther drew on Gabriel Biel’s distinction among the various presences bodies can have (local/circumscribed, definitive, and repletive)⁴ Following Biel, Luther affirmed Jesus can exercise multiple modes of presence, including a repletive presence, or divine omnipresence.

Logically, since Jesus is at the right hand of God, he is in some incomprehensible and supernatural sense present at all places as true man.⁵ Beyond the fact that Christ sits at the right hand of God, Luther also argued that if Christ was not omnipresent according to his humanity, his two natures would be divided. The consequent Christology would contradict the Chalcedonian definition:

Wherever this person is, it is a single indivisible person, and if you can say, ‘Here is God,’ then you must also say, ‘Christ the man is present too.’ And if you could show me one place where God is and not the man, the person is already divided and I could at once say truthfully, ‘Here is God who is not man and has never become man.’ But no God like that for me!⁶

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024

Stuck in the Middle: Between “Nestorian” and “Eutychian” Reformers

Confessional Lutheran Christology Part I

When it comes to Luther’s Christology and that of the subsequent Lutheran tradition, we must tread a fine line between the Scylla of claiming the Reformer was an absolute innovator and the Charybdis of claiming there was no meaningful difference between Luther and his medieval predecessors. There are, in fact, some interesting differences between confessional Lutheran teaching and the previous medieval tradition. However, the Lutheran Reformers were faithful students of Scripture and the ancient Church. Discontinuities existed between Lutherans and their medieval predecessors because the Reformers drew out the logic of biblical and patristic Christology. The seeming innovations of Lutheran theologians regarding the metaphysics of the Incarnation were, in fact, valid extensions of enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology, sometimes termed “Neo-Chalcedonianism.”¹

Throughout his career, Luther fought on the same two fronts that the ancient Church had. Like the early orthodox Church Fathers, Luther found himself combating both Nestorian and Eutychian Christological tendencies. As we will see below, in Luther’s mind, the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli played the role of Nestorius. Kaspar Schwenckfeld played the role of Eutychus. Most popular accounts of Luther focus on the Reformer’s conflict with Ulrich Zwingli and his belief that Zwingli was essentially Nestorian. Sadly, this tends to distort the truly balanced nature of the Reformer’s Christology (i.e., rejecting both Nestorian and Eutychian tendencies), and therefore undercuts his continuity with the earlier tradition.

Luther’s Conflict with Zwingli and “Nestorianism”

The major source of strife between Luther and Zwingli was the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.² We will return to this conflict again in a future chapter, but it is worth touching on here because there was a Christological issue at the heart of the Reformers’ debate over the Eucharist. Zwingli, following an undercurrent in medieval theology, argued that there could be no substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper because, as true man, he could not be present in multiple locations simultaneously.

September 1, 2024September 2, 2024

Christology in the Early Church

A definitive moment in the history of Christology came at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. At Chalcedon, the bishops worked out a formula that balanced the concerns of both the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools of Eastern Christology.

*The attempt of the Council of Chalcedon to balance the integrity of Christ’s two natures with his one unified person*

The Council of Chalcedon Resolves Christological Controversy

Prior to the Council, St. Cyril of Alexandria had supported the formula of “one incarnate nature” (mia physis) to preserve the unity of the person of Christ.¹ To Antiochene theologians, this formula sounded very much like a Docetic denial of the humanity of Christ.² Cyril had never meant to deny the full humanity of Jesus. Rather, he had hoped this formula would affirm Christ’s unitary subjectivity. Lacking later terminological precisions, Cyril used the terms “nature” (physis) in a manner synonymous with “person” (hypostasis or prosopon, i.e., person or center of identity).³

Nevertheless, some drew more extreme implications from Cyril’s formula and promoted a form of overt Docetism. The key figure in this controversy was Eutyches of Constantinople, who held that the two natures in Christ had been melded into a single divine-human hybrid nature.⁴ Many claimed that Eutyches faithfully upheld Cyril’s confession and therefore vindicated him at a second council held at Ephesus (the “Robber Synod”).⁵

Finally, with the encouragement of Pope St. Leo I’s Tome regarding the two natures,⁶ Roman theologians came together at the Council of Chalcedon.⁷ With the Alexandrian school, the Council Fathers emphasized the unity of the person of Christ. With the Antiochene theologians, the Council Fathers strictly adhered to the duality and integrity of the two natures in Christ. In this formula, many might be tempted to see a completion of the doctrine of the person of Christ.⁸

August 11, 2024August 4, 2024

Did Jesus Intend to Die For You?

One major challenge for post-Enlightenment Christian dogmatics has been New Testament scholars’ doubt that Jesus prophesied his death or intended it to atone for human sin.¹ These same scholars suggest that the post-Easter Church pondered Jesus’s death after the fact and concluded that God must have intended it for some good purpose. Early Christians then developed the idea (found as early as the proto-creedal formulas of Paul, 1 Cor 15:3-4) that Christ died to pay for human sin. Contrary to these claims, a significant amount of evidence demonstrates that Jesus, our High Priest, did believe his mission was to die and that his death would be an atoning sacrifice for sin.

Jesus Was Not A Stoic

Confessional Lutheran theologians can make several responses to the critical scholarly consensus. First, the Gospel authors do not depict Jesus’s passion predictions in a stoic or disinterested manner. The Gospel traditions hand down statements of Jesus that suggest genuine pathos and anxiety about his coming sufferings: “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Lk 12:49-50).

In this vein, the Synoptic Tradition witnesses to the distressed prayers of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46). In these prayers, Jesus repeatedly asks the Father to change his mission and withdraw the cup that he must drink. The “cup” Jesus speaks of is very clearly a reference to the “cup of wrath” mentioned in a number of Old Testament passages (Isa. 51:17, v.22, Jer. 25:15). Therefore, this “cup” refers to his sacrificial death on the cross.²

August 4, 2024August 7, 2024

Christ’s Priestly Atonement as Fulfillment and Transfer of Righteousness

Jesus’s sacrifice of himself on the cross fulfills the three main functions of sacrifice in the Old Testament: praise, atonement, and covenantal ratification. First, Jesus was able to fulfill God’s law as the one true and obedient representative human. He accomplished this purely as an act of praise to the Father and not out of compulsion or obligation.

Christ possessed the fullness of divine glory and was therefore completely free from the law. Consequently, he was uniquely capable of fulfilling the law as a sacrifice of praise. Jesus is the perfect person of faith (Heb. 12:2-3) who trusted that he shared all things with the Father (Phil. 2:6-7). Therefore, he could perform obedient service not because he had to redeem himself or curry favor with God, but only to glorify the Father: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (Jn. 17:4).

Christ’s Death as Atoning Sacrifice

Secondly, Jesus’s death was an atoning sacrifice for sins. Under the old covenant, sin entailed death. As St. Paul wrote: “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:32). Sin necessarily calls for retribution proportionate to the crime in the form of lex talionis. For example, under the Noahic covenant in Genesis 9, taking life must result in the murderer forfeiting his life (Gen. 9:6). Likewise, under Levitical law, the same principle holds true: “you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exod. 21:23-25).