Christology Archives - Page 2 of 3

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).

August 2, 2024August 3, 2024

Christ: Your Mediating and Conquering King

As we noted in the last section, there is a taxis to the offices of Christ that express the taxis of the Trinity. Christ’s kingly office¹ comes first and enables his priestly work. As the prototype of Christian freedom, Christ possesses all as king. Therefore, he is capable of giving all as priest. As heir of God’s promise of eternal kingship to David (2 Sam 7; Ps 2, 89, 110), Jesus is the true Davidic king (Matt 1:1, 9:27, 15:22, 20:30, 20:31, 21:9, 21:15; Luke 1:32, 1:69; Rom 1:3; Rev 3:7, 5:5, 22:16.). As the king of all creation, Christ is the restorer of humanity’s place within the original creation. In this, he also fulfills the Abrahamic testament and its promise of universal blessing for all humanity (Gen. 22:15-18).²

The True Son of David

As a descendent of David, Jesus is the true inheritor of the promise of the Davidic testament. Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies make Jesus’s literal descent clear. Hence, the affirmation that Jesus is actually David’s descendent is essential to the confession of the Christian faith….

July 6, 2024July 7, 2024

Our High Priest and Suffering Servant Delivers Your Not Guilty Verdict Now

Christ’s Priestly Office

The New Testament repeatedly makes clear that Jesus is not only the kingly Davidic Messiah, but also the supreme High Priest. In this regard, Jesus’s self-understanding and the witness of the New Testament authors stand in both continuity and tension with the expectations of Second Temple Jews. On the one hand, belief in a singular priestly Messiah, or a priestly Messiah who would complement the work of the kingly Messiah, was very widespread in the first century. Indeed, as Crispin Fletcher-Louis has noted, when a messianic claimant insisted he was the Davidic Messiah, he would often find supportive a priest to claim he was the priestly Messiah.¹

Jesus and the New Testament affirm a kingly and priestly role for the Messiah and unite both offices into a single person. Seen in this light, the Epistle to the Hebrews might be characterized as an important confessional document of the early Church. Crucially, Hebrews contrasts Christian messianic belief with the belief of some Jews in multiple Messiahs.

The New Testament authors witness to Jesus’s messianic self-understanding. In so doing, they develop Jesus’s king-priest office using the prophecies and motifs found in three key Old Testament figures: the Melchizedekian priest-king of Psalm 110, the Servant of so-called Deutro-Isaiah, and the Danielic Son of Man.