Christology

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CHRISTOLOGY

In traditional systematic theology, Christology is the study of the Person and attributes of Christ, in particular the union in Him of divine and human natures. The study was motivated by a solidly practical interest for the worship of Christ is the life of the Church. Consequently the Church has ever been under the necessity of explaining, both to its own faithful and to those without, how worship of Jesus, a man, can be combined with monotheism.

In the unsystematic fashion characteristic of Sacred Scripture, the authors of the New Testament had bequeathed to the primitive Christian community a double premise, viz, that Christ as a Person was indivisibly one and that He was simultaneously fully divine and fully human. The necessity of showing how these two affirmations could be held together in synthesis (the central problem of Christology) was not immediately felt. Confronted with the crude dissents of Ebionitism and Docetism, the Apostolic Fathers and the apologists simply repeated the gospel message either word for word or in carefully chosen equivalent terms.

Toward the close of the 2nd century, a new group of thinkers, steeped in Greek philosophy, entered into the life of the Church and rapidly propelled Christology into its most decisive epoch. Later historians (e.g., A. von Harnack, O. Cullmann) profess to find at this juncture a major setback for authentic Christianity, charging that the Hellenic influence diverted faith from its true object and turned the Church down the path of sterile speculation. In rebuttal it can be shown (1) that the passionate theological debates that raged from the 3rd to the 7th century could have been avoided only by a universal agreement to refrain from thinking about the central Figure of Christian worship and (2) that, given the right to think and the possibility of thinking incorrectly (a possibility that was repeatedly verified in fact), the Church was compelled to ponder ever more profoundly the gospel message in order to produce an apt reply to each freshly appearing heretical subtlety. The epoch opened in 318, when Arius published his daring conclusion that the Son was not God but merely a creature. There followed: Apollinarianism, which sought to mutilate the humanity of Christ by denying Him a rational soul; Nestorianism, which beheld in the Incarnation a merely affective, extrinsic union between two persons, one divine and the other human; monophysitism, which coupled belief in the one Person of Christ with the contention that He therefore possessed only one nature; and monothelitism, which confessed two natures in Christ while denying Him two wills. To list those who struggled in the orthodox cause against these mischievous heresies would be to reproduce almost the entire roster of the Fathers of the Church. The outstanding champions, however, were St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Pope St. Leo the Great, and St. Sophronius in Jerusalem. Under their respective leadership the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea I (325), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), and Constantinople III (680) fashioned the dogmatic definitions that to this day remain the clearest expression of the Church's faith in its Lord.

Medieval Christology strove to make explicit and to systematize the theological truths latent in the earlier dogmatic pronouncements. Christ's several kinds of knowledge, His possession of various types of grace, and the freedom of His human will received large attention. The attempt to interpret metaphysically the hypostatic union aroused much dispute among the schools. These preoccupations of the medieval scholastic theologians formed the basis of Catholic works on Christology until the mid-20th century.

Since then Christology has undergone a paradigm shift. No longer simply explicating the hypostatic union, it seeks to recapitulate the entire development of the Christological tradition in order to mediate Christ's redemptive significance in the contemporary cultural context.

See Also: jesus christ (in theology); jesus christ, articles on; theology; theology, history of; theology, influence of greek philosophy on.

Bibliography: Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al., 15 v. (Paris 1903–50; Tables générales 1951–), Tables générales 2:2548–2655. a. michel, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al., 15 v. (Paris 1903–50; Tables générales 1951–) 7.2:1445–1539. a. grillmeier Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (Freiburg 1957–65) 2:1156–66. g. sevenster et al., Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7 v. (Tübingen 1957–65) 1:1745–89. w. sunday, Christologies Ancient and Modern (New York 1910). h. m. relton, Studies in Christian Doctrine (New York 1960). h. m. diepen, Douze dialogues de christologie ancienne (Rome 1960). k. rahner, "Current Problems in Christology, " Theological Investigations, tr. c. ernst, v. 1 (Baltimore 1961) 149–200. t. e. clarke, "Some Aspects of Current Christology" in j. e. o'neill, ed., The Encounter with God (New York 1962) 33–58. b. leeming, "Reflections on English Christology" in a. grillmeier and h. bacht, Das Konzil von Chlakedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3 v. (Würzburg 1951–54) 3:695–718.