Occasionally we take stabs at the subject of Christology but I don’t recall a thread devoted exclusively to such. I’m particularly interested in ante-Nicene thinking, the second and third centuries. Most histories of Christianity tend to give short shrift to this period, hastening to Nicaea. One obvious reason is the relative dearth of primary sources. Because many of the prominent Christological views were later deemed heretical there was little impetus to copy primary texts. We are largely beholden to ideological opponents for accounts of these views. The winning side went back and reinterpreted the NT to provide support for their views. “Heretics” were condemned, or ignored.
But all is not hopeless. In some cases we have multiple accounts to provide us a basis of comparison. Sometimes otherwise obscure heretical views are compared to others we know more about. Some commentators do make a serious attempt to accurately portray their opponents even when they vigorously oppose them. (Such a one is Origen, himself fated to be cancelled by a later generation of Christians for his own unique ideas.)
What got me going here was stumbling on ** you do not have permission to see this link ** written by Oxford Don,
Incarnationist Christology believed Jesus was a pre-existent divine being of some sort who incarnated as a human being. There were variations on this view in the ante-Nicene period. Jesus was either the incarnation of the divine Logos or some sort of Angelomorphic incarnation. Figures associated with these views were Justin Martyr (c. 100-165). Clement of Alexandra (c. 150-215), and Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170–235). In the NT the view that Jesus was the incarnation of a pre-existent divine being of some sort is associated with Paul and the gospel of John. (Note that neither of these NT authors seems to be aware of the doctrine of the virgin birth!)
Far from the unified doctrine imagined by later orthodoxy, ante-Nicene Christology was one big glorious mess. (Although the seeds of what later came to be Nicene Trinitarian orthodoxy can be detected.) Various communities were seeking to interpret their history the best they could. Only much later did one dominant view win out, after centuries of struggle, and even then only at the point of a sword.
The best part of Gaston’ book is his survey of the ideas of the various figures active at the time. His own case for the primacy of DM, less so. It requires him to imagine ridiculously early dates for many of the NT texts. He argues that both Paul and John did not actually believe in pre-existence. For the gospel of John this requires him to make the case that the text is not informed by the Hellenistic concept of the Logos but that it is exclusively derived from Wisdom theology in the Proverbs. For Gaston, Logos theology only came into Christianity with Justin Martyr. By the end of the book I became convinced that Gaston is describing his own previously held unitarian faith position although he is never explicit about this.
There will always be more questions about this subject than answers but I think there are some conclusions we can draw even with the limitations on what we can know. Some scholarly old hat, some still quite controversial. So, in no particular order:
Second Temple Judaism was thoroughly Hellenized.
Far from being an “invasion” of pagan culture, Christianity was a natural outgrowth of Hellenism.
Although triadic formulations existed, nobody in the NT or in the second century thought the Son or the Holy Spirit was co-equal with God the Father. This position is known as Hierarchical Subordinationism. (jeepers!) In this conceptual framework the Son and Holy Spirit were subordinate to the Father in nature, status, and being. Only the Father is eternal, uncreated. This idea later became a heresy but it was completely “orthodox” in this period. (One corollary here is that Arianism, far from being a “heresy”, was merely a variation on traditional Christology. It was Nicene Trinitarianism that was the new-fangled idea. A recurring strategy in the Church has been to couch innovation as “getting back to the way the apostles did things”. See the Reformation.)
Finally, so what was the earliest Christology?
It’s likely that Jesus had some sort of Messianic understanding. But it was probably only after his death and the experience of the Resurrection (however that played out) that he was conceived as having some kind of divine status. So, an Apotheosis Christology. The Ebionites, Jewish sectarian Christians, claimed that they preserved the earliest form of belief, and I think that’s probably true. Jesus was seen as a righteous human being, born of Joseph and Mary, adopted by God as his Son at some point in his ministry, divinized at the Resurrection.
This is the view of Prof Ehrman which I think is correct. Gaston critiques the view that Adoptionism was the earliest conception (a critique I found very useful) but he only succeeded in reinforcing my opinion. If anyone wants to dive deeper and hasn’t already read his works on the subject by all means take a look at
** you do not have permission to see this link **
and
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Of course I’ve only skimmed the surface. I’d love to hear other opinions.
Higher Forces at work? You decide.
Bible scholar Dan McClellan just posted this vid about the Christology of the Gospel of John.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
As I said, one of the weakest aspects of Gaston’s book is his attempt to distance John from the Logos Christology. McClellan does a good job of laying out the issues from the perspective of current critical scholarship.
Fundamental to the discussion is the ancient view of divinity. It was a continuum rather than a binary. You could be divine without being co-equal with God the Father. Only God the Father was eternal, uncreated. But one could be made divine without being either eternal or uncreated. For the first couple centuries that was the consensus view of Jesus. Firstborn of all Creation. But even these early thinkers were uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus having been created just like the rocks and trees. This uncomfort was the seed that eventually sprouted into the idea of the Trinity.
One could also note that the concept of the Divine Image (also cf. Dan McClellan) gives more play to the timelines of all of this than is otherwise possible. Someone who has been entrusted with a Divine Name (as, eg, what might be speculated to be a messenger of God in earlier versions of bible stories that were later cleaned up to “be” God, like the Burning Bush story) can be considered to have characteristics of that Divinity, so that is someone is entrusted with a Divine Wisdom that in the sense of some Proverbs is something like the first created thing through which all other things are created would be virtue of possessing that divine image “be” firstborn of all creation …
… and here is where the timeline magic happens …
… even though they were given possession of that Divine Image sometime in their human life.
Now, the rest of this is a purely speculative extension of this.
While a concept of a Divine Image was not unique to Judeans, that doesn’t mean that the Judean concepts of the Divine Image and broader Roman/Hellenistic concepts of the Divine Image lined up. In Roman/Hellenistic cultures, the Divine Image is the sense in which idols are avatars of their divinities, and the Judean view of those idols (or at least one Judean view of those idols) is that they are idols of false gods.
So maybe, just maybe … the Judean version of the Divine Image combined with the Judean condemnation of the Hellenistic versions of the Divine Image means that the Judean version gets lost in translation. And, of course, actually being the literal begotten Son of God, as opposed to being adopted as Son of God, is not an outrageous idea in Hellenistic culture … that’s what all the demi-gods are … the outrageous part is there being only one God … and if that is accepted, and all of the known demigods are also false, then there not having previously been any begotten sons of the one true God might not be so hard to take on top of that.
Now while the Divine Image concept doesn’t mandate Adoptionism, it does allow Adoptionism to co-exist with language in which the Divine that is in Yeshu’ stretches back toward the beginning of creation. But if that language is carried over without that understanding of the Divine Image, then the “Divine Image lost in translation” hypothesis would imply that Adoptionism is no longer compatible with that language.
(Sidebar: I simply observe that the translators of the KJV screwed their English up on this verse and it bugs me profoundly. It should be ‘who’, not ‘whom’, since in its own clause it is a predicate nominative. They could have, somewhat awkwardly, used an accusative + infinitive construction mirroring the Greek (“whom do people say me to be”), but they chose to use English’s ‘that’ construction.)
Porphyry said
(Sidebar: I simply observe that the translators of the KJV screwed their English up on this verse and it bugs me profoundly. It should be ‘who’, not ‘whom’, since in its own clause it is a predicate nominative. They could have, somewhat awkwardly, used an accusative + infinitive construction mirroring the Greek (“whom do people say me to be”), but they chose to use English’s ‘that’ construction.)
Yeah I cogitated on that “whom” for a while myself. What seduced and undid me though was the “Ye”. Who among Ye could resist such rare opportunities? (May I suggest that we resurrect this archaic nominative pronoun? It might offer some assistance in the gender wars.)
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Being the most humble of men, I blush when I find myself in the vanguard of intellectual inquiry. I bring up the subject of Christology. Then comes Dan McClellan. Now Prof Ehrman himself jumps on the bandwagon!
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Once you admit that the answer is “no” then the texts open up and you find yourself in a different conceptual world.
Prof Ehrman includes in his discussion what’s called Modalist Christology which teaches that God is one person who appears in different “modes” (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) rather than as three distinct persons.
Modalism was condemned pretty early on and the final nails were driven into the coffin at Nicaea and Constantinople. The funny part though is that even today you still hear people use the imagery of water/ice/vapor to explain the Trinity, apparently oblivious that what they’re describing is a heresy!
I can comment on Rahner, but not Barth.
I think all of his trinitarian theology boils down to his concept of self-communication. God’s self-communication in the course of salvation history is truly a communication of his self. The economic trinity is the immanent trinity. If God communicates himself in a threefold manner (creation, redemption, sanctification), that equally constitutes him as a threefold God, otherwise the self communication would not be a true self communication.
As to the hypothetical question, what if God hasn’t created or redeemed or sanctified, all Rahner will answer is, whatever that God would have been, it would not be the God who has actually communicated himself to us. He won’t let himself be pinned down on the metaphysical causal order (is he triune in himself *causally because* he communicates himself in a trifold manner in the economy? Or does he communicate himself as triune in the economy because he is immanently triune? The identity of economic and immanent trinity runs both ways.)
And I think that is where he tries to draw a hard distinction to historical modalism. The modalists think of the modes as something accidental to God–there is one God and he can fulfill different roles in salvation history.
But for Rahner those roles are not accidental roles that God can just step into or not; they define who God is in himself from all eternity.
It’s been a while but Barth himself denied he was a Modalist. The problem was his terminology. He favored the term Seinsweise which does translate literally as “modes of being”. He was famous for disliking the idea of three “persons” because he felt the concept could not escape Tritheism. His image was of God the Father as the One who Reveals, the Son as the One Who is Revealed, and the Holy Spirit as ontological “Revealing”. Robert, you’re right, Barth saw these “modes of being” as eternal and fundamental rather than chronological. How that actually differs from Modalism I leave to more subtle minds than mine.
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Since I started this thread I’ve discovered a terrific book entitled ** you do not have permission to see this link ** written by German Roman Catholic professor of Ancient Church History, Franz Dünzl. As someone who spent much of their career as an “explainer”, in my case translating techno-gleep into plain English for clients and client’s desires into programmable and testable requirements, I stand in awe of someone who can navigate so expertly through a subject that is famous for driving students to their knees in whimpering despair.
“Brief” is correct; the book is a survey, barely 150 pages. This is definitely the first book on the syllabus for my hypothetical seminar on Christology! Dünzl begins by admitting his own acceptance of orthodox Catholic doctrine on the Trinity but indicates his is a historical-critical approach which takes as its working methodological assumption that the doctrine of the Trinity was the product of centuries of speculation, interpretation, and a not inconsiderable mixture of politics and cultural conflict. He is particularly strong on post-Nicene developments (which is where a lot of what is traditionally considered “Nicene” trinitarianism actually sprang).
Dünzl provides what I think is a helpful clarification of Constantine’s motivation for orchestrating the Nicaean Council. It’s easy for we moderns to take the cynical view that Constantine was simply using Christianity to unify his empire, but as Dünzl points out, even though sympathetic to Christianity, Constantine retained a traditional pagan viewpoint towards the establishment of religion. Christianity was a “cultic” religion, meaning that its task was to safeguard the favor of the deity through prayers and cultic celebrations. Christianity must support the state, of course, because the prosperity of the empire and the successful rule of the emperor was founded on worship free from internal controversy or disruption. So within this framework it’s entirely possible for Constantine to be both devotee and power politician.
That latter blended dichotomy certainly played out in the struggle to define the nature of the Trinity. There were struggles aplenty for both interpretation and power. And at last it became largely a cultural issue. We see the origins of the struggle between church and state. And what ultimately became a split between East and West. Theologically let me run the risk of oversimplifying. In the West the question became, how can the One also be the Three? In the East, how can the Three also be the One? A fascinating story.
As Dünzl admits, if you follow logic only, Arius definitely had the better case. I can never free myself from the perception that Trinitarian theology is largely Word Salad, designed to perform a theological sleight of hand, that works very well as long as you don’t consider it too closely. In the end a Divine Mystery, a brilliant solution to a problem Christianity created for itself.
addendum: Sadly it appears that none of Prof Dünzl’s other books have been translated. This is particularly irksome since on the list I see a tome entitled
Dangit. Somebody with German get on the stick!
Well, legerdemain of a sort surely but “superficial” is not my term. There is a qualitative difference between a Harry Houdini and a boardwalk carny. We are advised not to look too closely how the laws and the sausage are made lest we be disillusioned. Someone wishing to retain a pious belief in “Divine Inspiration” should probably not look too closely at how the doctrine of the Trinity came to be. The only real answer is the one provided by Dunzl in the conclusion of his fine book. One must see the workings of the Almighty within the messiness and confusion of living. But this becomes the problem when one is unable to do so. Beyond all this there is only recourse to “Mystery”.
A good translation is a long and arduous process, even if one knows both languages extremely well. Even if I had the time and patience, there are other works that would probably have a higher priority.
Indeed. If only the academy could agree to learn and work in a single language . . .
File this one under “How the other half lives”.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
White is a Calvinist apologist. Smith is a Unitarian apologist.
This “debate” is unsatisfactory on multiple levels but it does provide us a view of what I would regard as a fundamentalist approach and a devout response to that approach.
White is quite honest and open about his presuppositions. And it’s these presuppositions that show the weaknesses in his argument. From his opening statement-
So does the Bible teach the Trinity? Well, that depends on whether you define the necessary consistent conclusion of the teaching of the entirety of the Christian scriptures as fulfilling the Bible teaching or whether you demand specific terminology to be used for a teaching to be present. So if you look up the word “Trinity”, it’s not going to be found in the Bible anywhere. So you automatically dismiss it. I am saying that when you believe in Sola Scriptura, scripture is your sole infallible rule of faith and Tota Scriptura, believing in all of scripture that the necessary conclusion is that you will believe in the doctrine of the trinity which means I believe that the Unitarians are either bringing in an external traditional lens tradition that keeps them from seeing that God is described and and Jesus especially is fulfilling things in the New Testament.
Both men think that the Bible is univocal, speaking with but one voice, though of course they disagree on what that one voice is saying. There might be differences in approach or aspect between the various Biblical writers but they are all seen as essentially collaborators. This approach to the text must necessarily follow from an acceptance of sola/tota scriptura. There can be no theological or revelatory progression. All doctrine must be present entire, right from the beginning.
This is what is truly frustrating about such debates among various flavors of the faithful. I would want to examine these beginning propositions. If we ignore this aspect then the whole “debate” becomes terminally ahistorical. What they are arguing over is not some abstract idea of Trinitarianism that fell from between the clouds one day in mid-first century Judaea but Nicene Trinitarianism, which became official doctrine after centuries of argument between various groups of Christian believers. (In conversation with Hellenism of course.)
This kind of debate winds up getting bogged down in arguments over the interpretation of a string of Bible passages completely divorced of context.
Sooo… the historical/critical approach is to begin by demonstrating the diverse Christologies present in the NT and tracing the development of the idea of what only much later came to be accepted as orthodox doctrine.
Way too broad for a single formal debate.
Thanks for the video, Stephen. I’m looking forward to watching it.
White’s opening statement does really say it all.
Stephen said
the historical/critical approach is to begin by demonstrating the diverse Christologies present in the NT and tracing the development of the idea of what only much later came to be accepted as orthodox doctrine.
Indeed.
Not one Christ but many.
I will say I’ve often wondered about the move from Oneness to Trinitarianism. Although I’m sure more than one person has made the move, the only one who comes to mind is Greg Boyd.
It might be time for me to read ** you do not have permission to see this link ** of his.
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