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In spite of all the cultural, philosophical and spiritual riches of historic Christianity, Christian faith basically lives only as a profession of faith in Jesus. On the other hand, when critics of Christianity trace its cultural and humane traditions to non-Christian origins in antiquity or the present time, they come up against an irreducible core in the profession of faith in Jesus. Wherever Jesus is acknowledged as the Christ of God, Christian faith is to be found. Wherever this is doubted, obscured or denied, there is no longer Christian faith, and the riches of historic Christianity disappear with it. Christianity is alive as long as there are people who, as the disciples once did, profess their faith in him and, following him, spread his liberating rule in words, deeds and new fellowship. For this reason, it is right that christology should once again have become the centre of Christian theology.
Adolf von Harnack began his lectures on What is Christianity? in 1899/1900 with the observation:
John Stuart Mill has somewhere observed that mankind cannot be too often reminded that there was once a man of the name of Socrates. That is true; but still more important is it to remind mankind again and again that a man of the name of Jesus Christ once stood in their midst.
But who was Jesus of Nazareth, and what is his significance for Christianity? Was he a prophet, who uttered the will of God for men? Was he a redeemer, bringing the salvation for which all men thirst and long? Did he embody God in the world, or true humanity in the sight of God? With what questions should one approach his person and history? What question was he answering by manifesting himself? What question does his appearance not answer? Historical phenomena, and persons above all, give no answer to alien and improper questions. Stupid questions usually produce only the answer that one wants to hear. ‘What you call the spirit of the time, is usually, gentlemen, basically your own spirit’, is the mocking comment of Faust in his dialogue with Wagner about historians’ portraits of the past. And Christians and non-Christians have quite often produced an image of Jesus which suits their own desires. They have idolized Jesus, and then have taken away the idolizations of believers and humanized him again. He has become the archetype of the divine authority and glory which men have longed for. He has become the teacher of a new morality to mankind. He has become the resistance fighter from Galilee. An analysis of the changing ideas of Christ and portraits of Jesus in history shows that they correspond so much to the needs of their age, place of origin and intended purpose that one cannot avoid the suspicion that they are illusory and artificial. The question then arises: Who was Jesus himself, and what does he himself signify at the present day? Do we know Jesus, and who is he in fact for us at the present day?
These questions about Jesus must be seen in a twofold context:
1. There have been disagreements about Jesus since the very beginning of Christian faith. They arose first of all between Christians and Jews in the dispute about his resurrection and enthronement as Christ, the Messiah; then between Christians and pagans in the dispute about his divinity and incarnation; at the beginning of the modern age between Christians and humanists, in the dispute about his humanity and sinlessness; and at the present day, in our own civilization, between Christians and post-Christian atheists in the dispute about the liberation of man and the righteousness of the world. It is important to take into account the whole of this broad context in which the disagreements about Jesus have occurred, for when Jesus is put on trial before the world in this way, Christians cannot regard themselves as judges, but only as witnesses.
2. Since the beginning of Christian faith, however, Jesus has also been the subject of disagreement within Christianity itself. Where is his truth to be found? In the earthly Jesus, who appeared in Palestine in the time of the Emperor Tiberius and was crucified under the Procurator Pontius Pilate—or in the risen Christ whom his church proclaimed and in whom it believed? Although faith has always acknowledged that Jesus is the Christ, this dispute between ‘Jesuology’ and christology runs throughout the history of the church and has become particularly acute in recent times. That the confession that Jesus is the Christ is true, and not a pious illusion, is the issue on which faith stands or falls. This confronts Christian theology with a twofold task:
1. It must show what is really meant by the profession of faith that ‘Jesus is the Christ’. It must demonstrate the intrinsic basis and justification of christology in the person and history of Jesus. Does one have to speak in christological terms of Jesus and his history? Do Jesus and his history demand a christology? How far is it true, as faith believes, that Jesus is the Christ of God? This is the question of the intrinsic truth and rightness of the appeal of faith and the church to the one in whose name they believe and speak. This is not a question posed from outside, but arises from within faith itself, which hungers for knowledge and understanding: fides quaerens intellectum. Is the preaching of Christ appropriate to Jesus, or does it replace him by something else? Does faith in Christ arise with intrinsic necessity from the apprehension of the person and history of Jesus, or are the statements it makes about him the arbitrary affirmations of believers, and personal value judgments?
2. Christian theology must show how far the Christian confession of faith in Jesus is true as seen from outside, and must demonstrate that it is relevant to the present-day understanding of reality and the present-day dispute about the truth of God and the righteousness of man and the world. For the title ‘Christ’ has never been used by faith only to say who Jesus was in his own person, but to express his dominion, future and significance with regard to God, men and the world.
Thus the first task of christology is the critical verification of the Christian faith in its origin in Jesus and his history. The second task is a critical verification of Christian faith in its consequences for the present and the future. The former can be called the hermeneutics of its origin, and the second the hermeneutics of its effects and consequences. If one were to limit oneself to the hermeneutics of the origin of christology in Jesus, the resultant account, however true it was to scripture, could easily become sterile and would be condemned to ineffectiveness. If one were to limit oneself to the hermeneutics of the effects of christology in Christianity and world history, the inward justification and authority of faith would rapidly disappear. Thus the one must constantly be related to the other. This tension is itself a characteristic of Christian faith, for the confession of Christian faith always has two aspects: the earthly and the eternal, the particular and the universal, the temporal and the eschatological. The name of Jesus covers the earthly, particular and temporal side of his origin, and the titles attributed to him cover the eternal, universal and eschatological side. The confession that he is the Christ associates a proper name, ‘Jesus’, with titles implying a dignity and a function, such as ‘Christ’, ‘Son of Man’, ‘Son of God’, ‘Lord’ or ‘Logos’. The purpose of these ‘titles of office’ is to state what Jesus is. In them, faith states what Jesus means for it, and what it believes, receives, expects and hopes about and from him. Even in the earliest Christian times they were interchangeable and replaceable. As Christianity passed from one linguistic world to another, a title often became incomprehensible or was understood as a proper name. The ancient Jewish-Christian title ‘Christ’ soon lost its functional meaning and became a name, and was then extended: ‘Jesus Christ is the Lord.’ The same happened to the title ‘Son of man’, which as early as Ignatius is no longer understood in an apocalyptic sense, but as a description of Jesus’ human nature, and is supplemented by the title ‘Son of God’. Other titles disappeared, like ‘Son of David’, and new titles appeared, such as ‘Logos’. Thus the titles changed as faith came to be expressed in new languages and in new historical situations. Just as they were formulated to express Jewish or Greek reasons for faith in Jesus, it is possible on principle to formulate new titles to express, say, Hindu reasons or even Marxist reasons for faith in Jesus. This historical openness and variability of the titles for Jesus, to which the history of Christian tradition bears witness, has, however, a point of reference and a criterion. This is provided by his personal name, Jesus, and the history which concluded with his crucifixion and resurrection. If one wishes to say who the Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Logos, etc. actually is, then one must use the name of Jesus and recount his history. The name of Jesus can neither be translated into other languages nor be replaced by other names, or by the names of other people. His history cannot be replaced by other histories, or by the histories of other people. To say what Jesus is, means and does, one must go to the ancient and modern titles for his office and function, expound them and supplement them anew. The constant in the changes brought about by time, and in the transformations in the concrete form of faith, love and hope, is the name of Jesus, and the essential reference to him and his history in every Christian statement about God, the world and man. But the variables are to be found in the titles and predicates which can always be altered, and which are meant to state what Jesus is for us today. The name says who is meant. The titles and predicates say what is meant. And just as in a sentence the subject governs the predicate, so in christology Jesus must govern the christological predicates. ‘Every christological title represents a particular interpretation of reality, and this means in concrete terms a particular understanding of the way in which man is claimed, questioned, threatened and given hope.’ But ‘the meaning of χριστός, κύριος, υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ etc., when applied to Jesus, is not immediately obvious from the then existing use of these terms—which is by no means to suggest that the existing use is of no consequence for the interpretation. Rather, they only receive a definite meaning when they are applied to Jesus’; as G. Ebeling rightly says.
If this tension between the name and the titles of Jesus, between his historical particularity and the universality attributed to his rule by faith, is characteristic of Christian belief, then we can go a step further. The problem intrinsic to every christology is not merely its reference to the person called by the name Jesus, but also the reference to his history, and within his history, to his death on the cross. All christological titles presumably express what faith receives, what love gives and what one may hope. But the critical point for them comes when, faced with the ‘double conclusion of the life’ of Jesus (M. Kähler), they have to state what it means for the Christ, the Son of God, the Logos, the true man or the representative to have been crucified. The process of the reinterpretation of Jesus’ titles begins not merely with his historical person, but in a radical sense with the historical end of his life. His cross requires christology, as Kähler said, but it is also the mystery behind all christologies, for it calls them into question and makes them in constant need of revision. This is the starting point for the real work of language and thought on behalf of Christian faith. It is not the changes brought by time which in the first instance require faith constantly to ask new questions about Jesus and his meaning for the present day. Historical and social changes do in fact cause old world-views and religious conceptions to become outdated, and lead to the construction of new ones. But this is only one side of christological revisionism. It is he, the crucified Jesus himself, who is the driving force, the joy and the suffering of all theology which is Christian. Since the time of the apostles, the history of faith and theology has been concerned with the mystery of the crucified Jesus himself; and it has been a history of permanent revisions, reformations and revolts, aimed at recognizing him for the person he really is and conforming to him by changing one’s own life and thinking. Christologies rise and are broken down in reference to him. Even if historical life were to be ossified and history were to be brought to an end by people in ‘post-history’, the crucified Christ would still be the spur to Christian faith and would mean that for it at least history could not be concluded. To speak metaphorically, the cross of Christ is the source of a permanent iconoclasm of the christological icons of the church and the portraits of Jesus in Christianity; and the theology of the cross is a kind of iconoclasm of the christological images and titles of the church. It is iconoclasm for Jesus’ sake and is justified and regulated by the recollection of his cross.
Every question presupposes a context in which the question arises. It excludes other questions as irrelevant, and establishes the level of significance on which meaningful conclusions are sought. Which questions provide the basis for understanding Jesus as the person he was, so that for us today he may be revealed as the one who he truly is? In this chapter we discuss the four most important questions which typify the dispute between faith and unbelief about Jesus.
One possible starting point, constantly adopted since the days of the early church, is the fact that man, like every transitory being in the finite world, is concerned with the question of God. Everything that exists and yet does not endure raises the question of a being which exists and endures eternally, and which can give it endurance in the midst of impermanence. Where is this being which is called ‘divine’ revealed, and how is its permanence and immortality imparted to that which every day rushes into decay? ‘God’ here is the answer to the question implied in man’s finitude. This presupposes that being itself, the divine being in its unity, indivisibility and unchangeableness, exists. By contrast, man in his impermanence and the transitory world are questionable. And the question which they pose is that of their participation in the eternal, divine being. In antiquity the divine being was not a problem. Its existence was rarely doubted. It was man in his relationship to God which was the problem. The next step was from the general question of God to the mystery of Jesus. Was the eternal, unchangeable God revealed in Jesus? And the answer was, the one God whom all men seek in their finitude and transitoriness became man in Jesus. ‘He is the image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1:15). ‘In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell’ (Col. 1:19). He is of one substance with God, begotten, not created, God of God, light of light, etc., as the Nicene Creed says in the style of a hymn. The mystery of Jesus here is the incarnation of God, the incarnation of eternal, original, unchangeable being in the sphere of temporal, decaying, transitory existence, in which men live and die. If the mystery of Jesus is the eternal presence of God amongst men, then the salvation of the world is also to be found in him. God became man, so that men could partake of God. He took on transitory, mortal being, for that which is transitory and mortal to become intransitory and immortal.
But because of its origin in the experience of finitude and its context in the hope of immortality, the general question of God which was taken as a starting point assumes a particular concept of God. The divine being is intransitory, immortal, unchangeable and impassible. If these attributes of God are applied to the mystery of Jesus and his death on the cross, they raise the very problems which preoccupied the christology of the early church. How can the intransitory God be in a transitory human being? How can the universal God be in an individual? How can the unchangeable God ‘become’ flesh? How can the immortal God suffer and die on a cross?
Thus in antiquity the general question of God, and the expectation of salvation implicit in it, also provided reasons for not believing in ‘God in Christ’. The access it offered to the mystery of Jesus was at the same time an obstacle to belief in Jesus as the Son of God. The Alexandrian philosopher Celsus clearly formulated this unbelief on the basis of the question about God which it implied:
Everyone saw his suffering, but only a disciple and a half crazed woman saw him risen. His followers then made a God of him, like Antinous … The Christian idea of the coming down of God is senseless. Why did God come down for justification of all things? Does not this make God changeable? Why does he send his Son into one corner of the world and not make him appear in many bodies at once?
The christology of the early church had to come to grips with these and similar objections derived from the concept of God assumed in antiquity. The more it emphasized the divinity of Christ, making use of this concept of God, the more difficult it became to demonstrate that the Son of God who was of one substance with God was Jesus of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate. Consequently, a mild docetism runs through the christology of the ancient church. Anyone who began with the question about what was ‘above’ in terms of the question of God and salvation, as posed in antiquity, found it hard in any real sense to find an answer ‘below’, in the history of Jesus of Nazareth, and even harder to find an answer in the abandonment by God of the crucified Jesus.
But it is not right to call these kinds of christology ‘christology from above’. It is true that the christological answer starts ‘above’ and presents the mystery of Jesus on the pattern of the incarnation and resurrection, the humiliation and exaltation of the eternal Son of God. But the question about God which it assumes is that of finite being seeking the infinite being of God which imparts permanence. Thus it is not necessary ‘to stand in the position of God [oneself] in order to follow the way of God’s Son into the world’. Rather, one must accept the openness of one’s own finite existence in order to recognize its fulfilment of one’s own openness.
The problem of the modern speculative christology of German idealism is somewhat different. After Kant’s criticism of the cosmological proofs of the existence of God, there remained not only the moral proof of God’s existence, but also the ontological proof. Speculative christology made the reformulation of this proof its starting point. But it took seriously the idea that no way leads to God which does not begin in God himself. The question about God is only the subjective side of the objectively prior question of God about man. The knowledge of God presupposes the self-revelation of God. Consequently, God must not only be thought of as substance, but also as subject. For if God is thought of as subject, he is not thought of as the basis of something else, but for his own sake. Man must not think of God in order to provide a basis for the world or for human existence. But if one thinks of God, one must necessarily think of his existence and his subjectivity, otherwise one has not thought of God. This was the origin of the idea of the self-revelation of God, which since Fichte and Hegel has determined the course of speculative christology. It led to a ‘reversal of thought’ from thinking to being thought of, from apprehending to being apprehended, from knowing to being known. If man really thinks of God, then God is thinking of himself in man, otherwise man would not have thought of God, but only of the image of his own thought. If Christ knows himself as the Son of God, then God must know himself in him. If Jesus speaks of God, it is only about God if God speaks of himself in him. According to the view of the speculative christologians of the nineteenth century, the divinity of Jesus could only be concluded a posteriori at the end of his history, as the gospels tell us; but the prologue to the Gospel of John supplies the corresponding a priori of his being and his origin in God. From Fichte on, they interpreted this prologue as the metaphysics of the gospel history. This ‘reversal of thought’ occurs in Fichte:
The originally divine idea of a particular standpoint in time cannot for the most part be asserted, until the man inspired by God comes and carries it out. What the divine man does is divine.
But then follows the typical statement:
In this action it is not man that acts, it is God himself in his original inner being and essence who acts in him and does his work through man.
Schelling similarly gave a speculative basis to christology with the aid of this ‘reversal of thought’, and spoke of the ‘finitization of the divine in Jesus’. Finally, in Hegel, who makes this reversal comprehensible with the aid of mystical theology, the history of Jesus of Nazareth belongs in the whole context of truth, and must accordingly be understood in a speculative way, for ‘truth is the whole’. The ‘history of God’ includes his self-emptying in what is different and alien to him, and the return which he himself has realized. In the words of I. A. Dorner:
Through the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel the idea of the incarnation … came to be acknowledged: it is essential to the idea [of the Godhead] to enter into finitude, to descend into it as its contrary being, but also eternally to elevate itself out of it and to restore itself; and this comes about by the eternal spirit attaining to consciousness, consciously apprehending itself in its absolute essence or its absolute unity with God, and therefore knowing itself as God-man.
But in Hegel not only was the idea of the incarnation thought necessary to God, for the sake of the subjectivity of God, but also the idea of the ‘death of God’. Here the human, finite, imperfect, weak and negative becomes itself a divine element, in God himself. Here again, christology is worked out on the pattern of incarnation and resurrection, humiliation and exaltation. But we cannot describe it as a ‘christology from above’, completely beyond the power of our mind to comprehend. Rather, its basis lies in the wholly meaningful ‘reversal of thought’. It considers itself the metaphysics of the particular, gospel history of Jesus of Nazareth. According to ancient theological doctrine, the order of knowing (ratio cognoscendi) works in the opposite direction from the order of being (ratio essendi). What is the last thing for human knowledge is first with regard to being. Whereas Jesus is not recognizable as the Son of God until his death on the cross and his resurrection, in the order of being he is the Son of God before this history takes place. All knowledge begins inductively ‘from below’ and is a posteriori, and all historical knowledge is post factum; but that which is to be known precedes it. The difference between a ‘christology from below’ and a ‘christology from above’ is only apparent. They are no more alternatives than the famous question: ‘Does Jesus help me because he is the Son of God, or is he the Son of God because he helps me?’ It is only when the inverse relationship of the order of knowledge to the order of being is ignored that such questions are asked.
But the criticism that can be made of speculative christology is the same as that which can be made of the christology of the early church. The pattern of incarnation and resurrection, humiliation and exaltation associates the mystery of Jesus with the mystery of God himself. But it makes the particular features of the real, historical human being Jesus of Nazareth and the arbitrary occurrences of his life inessential. The idea of the incarnation of God and even the ‘fearful thought’ of the death of God can be thought necessary for the sake of God, for the sake of his self-realization; but it is difficult to deduce and not particularly easy to reconstruct his incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth and his death in the death of Jesus on Golgotha. The sublimation of history in the spirit always endeavours to apprehend what has happened in its necessity. But the sublimation of history as it has happened into history as it is apprehended of course does not merely preserve it, but also destroys it. In the crucified Jesus on Golgotha there remains something which still resists its sublimation into the concept of atonement. Only a new creation which is based upon the crucified Christ can sublimate the scandal of his cross into a pure hymn of praise. Since C. H. Weisse, therefore, the lack of eschatology in the speculative christology of the atonement has repeatedly been criticized. But this criticism is Christian only if it begins with the elements of the cross of Christ which are not integrated into the system.
Since the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the rise of modern technology, the relationship between man and nature in most fields has been reversed. Man is no longer dependent upon uncomprehended forces in nature and history, recognizing in this dependence his total reliance on the gods or on God. Instead, nature and history have become increasingly dependent upon man. The problem of modern man is no longer so much how he can live with gods and demons, but how he can survive with the bomb, revolution and the destruction of the balance of nature. He usurps more and more of nature and takes it under his control. The vital question for him, therefore, is how this world which he has usurped can be humanized. His main problem is no longer the universal finitude which he experiences in solidarity with all other creatures, but the humanity of his own world.
Thus the christological question is no longer, ‘Is the eternal God in Christ?’, but, ‘Can Jesus be called God, and in what respect and how far is he divine?’ Thus from the time of Lessing to the present day the vital question of humanity has for many become the main question about Christ. Thus J. G. Herder said: ‘Humanity is both the nature and the work of Christ. The divine in our race is education for humanity.’ Whereas in the ancient church the dispute about the relationship of the two natures in the person of Christ was always a dispute about physical redemption as well, and the idea of the real incarnation of God was always associated with the deification of man (theosis) which it made possible, the dispute at the present time about the true humanity of Jesus, his awareness of God, his ‘inner life’ and his freedom finds its basis in the demand for true humanity, authentic life, inner identity and liberation. The point of reference and the purpose of the questions have changed, and Jesus is accordingly manifested in a different way and must supply a different answer. Jesus is no longer understood against the background of discourse about God as ‘God-man’, but as it were in the anthropological foreground as the exemplary and archetypal ‘man of God’. The virgin birth as the sign of his incarnation and the resurrection as the sign of his exaltation have become incomprehensible, as ‘physical miracles of divine power’, in the world view of modern man and give the impression of being purely mythologoumena. On the other hand, the personal sinlessness of Jesus is now explained as a ‘miracle of the love of God’ in the moral world. This sinlessness becomes a moral demonstration of his awareness of God, which is always intense. This brings with it a change in the question of salvation. Salvation no longer envisages the whole world, tormented by its transitory nature. Salvation loses its cosmological breadth and ontological depth and is sought in the context of man’s existential problem, in the form of a quiet conscience, an inner experience of identity or as pure personality. Finally, there is a further change associated with this. If man, driven on by the problem of his existence, is basically aware of everything only within the horizon of his own subjectivity, he also cannot understand anything which is not important to himself and which is not involved in what he does in practice and in his own understanding of himself. Consequently, objective doxological statements about the person of Christ seem to him to be outdated metaphysics. Modern thought is scarcely any longer a thought which wonders and contemplates, but is operational thought. Thus for many theologians since Kant, ethics in the broader sense of the word has replaced metaphysics as the fundamental category for christology.
For Kant practical reason provided the framework of categories for theology and also for christology. Anything ‘which is of no practical use’ does not concern us. ‘Scripture texts which contain certain theoretical doctrines stated to be sacred, but surpassing every conception of reason (even of moral reason) may be expounded for the benefit of the practical reason, while those which conflict with practical reason must be so expounded.’ The doctrine of the Trinity ‘offers absolutely nothing of practical use … And the same is true of the doctrine of the incarnation of one divine person.’ Something similar can be said of the stories of the resurrection and ascension. For ‘articles of faith do not mean what ought to be believed … but what for practical (moral) purposes it is practical and useful to accept, even though it may not be possible to prove it, but only to believe it.’ Thus the revelation of God can only be what is in agreement with what reason understands to be ‘appropriate to God’. ‘In this way all expositions of scripture, in so far as they concern religion, must be made in accordance with the principle of morality intended in revelation, and without this are either in practice empty or even hindrances to good.’ For we understand only him who speaks with us through our own understanding and our own reason. Therefore ‘the God in us’, i.e. the free conscience, is ‘himself the interpreter’.
Within this context of practical reason, Jesus becomes the ‘personified idea of the good principle’. The final purpose of creation, the ‘man alone pleasing to God’, is in God from eternity in the form of the idea. Because we are not the originator of this idea, it can be said that it has come down to us from heaven, that it has taken on humanity.
We can represent to ourselves this ideal of a humanity pleasing to God … only as the idea of a person who would be willing not only to discharge all human duties himself … but even, though tempted by the greatest allurements to take upon himself every affliction, up to the most ignominious death, for the good of the world and even for his enemies …
As far as he can, Kant avoids the name of Jesus in these discussions, in order to present the idea of mankind pleasing to God as a pure example of practical faith; for the personification of the idea has only a mediating character. ‘Even the Holy One of the gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him to be such.’
Schleiermacher, on the other hand, considered that the mediating factor between the ideal and the real, between theoretical and practical reason, being and consciousness, lay in direct awareness, in ‘feeling’. By this he meant the basic characteristic of human existence. Here is the seat of the religious factor, in the emotional nature of the whole of life, before human activities are extended into knowledge and practice. Consequently, Schleiermacher did not attempt to discuss Christ in terms of theological metaphysics, yet did not restrict himself to a christology of moral example. In the context of the basic characteristic of existential life, he developed a christology of the personal relationship of faith to Jesus.
The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of his God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in him.
In negative terms, the Redeemer was distinguished from all men by his essential sinlessness. In the context of the rule of the consciousness of God over knowledge and action how is Jesus manifested? The personal development of Jesus must be thought of as quite free from everything which can be described only as struggle. The purity of Jesus is without the traces and the scars of a struggle. This archetypal potency of his consciousness of God must have been, from the beginning to the end, perfect in him, and perfectly historical. Its redeeming effect therefore consists in Jesus empowering our weak and efficient consciousness of God, and in his drawing us into the constant potency of his own consciousness of God. Here Jesus is not only a moral example, but a productive archetype of redeemed being.
For productivity belongs only to the concept of the ideal and not to that of the exemplary. We must conclude, then, that ideality is the only appropriate expression for the exclusive personal dignity of Christ.
Just as for Kant practical reason became the hermeneutic criterion for christology, so since the time of Schleiermacher the criterion for many has been the present experience of redemption in the empowering of our consciousness of God. But this also sets limits to this empowering.
The facts of the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, and the prediction of His return to Judgment cannot be laid down as properly constituent parts of the doctrine of His Person … The disciples recognized in Him the Son of God without having the faintest premonition of His Resurrection and Ascension.
Nor does his death on the cross add anything new or special to the redeeming effects which derive from his sinless life.
For the subsequent Jesuology of Protestantism, the examples of Kant and Schleiermacher made clear how a starting point in moral practice, the consciousness of God, one’s own personal existence or the identity of the self had power both to provide and obstruct insight. It showed Jesus as true man to those who had lost or not yet found their humanity, and were seeking it. As the perfect Man of God, Jesus is the fulfilment of our destiny as the image of God which we have not fulfilled. Wherever he is manifested in this problematic situation, his truth and our truth is experienced. ‘If he (i.e. man) finds the revelation which most successfully resolves the discord in his innermost being, then for him this is the true revelation’, said A. Tholuck. Thus the metaphysical problems of the eternal being are replaced by the existential problems of man in his world. An ‘a priori theory based on anthropological needs’ replaces the cosmological a priori. When this is realized, the gap between modern Protestant christology and that of the early church seems less, as indeed the former has always asserted. It has only altered the context and purpose of the question about Jesus. The problems are very similar. Both ways of posing the question proceed from a universal in order to assert its truth and to verify it in the concrete form of the person and history of Jesus. The unresolved problems for both are first, the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth and, secondly, his abandonment by God on the cross.
For questions about Jesus to start from the existential problem of man hinders an answer based upon him as he is as, much as did the question about God posed in antiquity by finite being. Why should Jesus of Nazareth, of all people, be the moral example or the redeeming archetype of true humanity? Why cannot the desire for humanity, for freedom from the world and a quiet conscience pay equal attention to Moses, Socrates, Buddha and the others? Jesus may be obliged to give an answer to the general question of humanity, but he can only represent a relative answer as one amongst many, for tolerance and a plurality of patterns of true humanity have been one of the requirements for humanity since long before the Enlightenment. What is left of the ‘absolute claim’ of Christianity? The answer given is often that in the whole history of human thought no one better has been found, or else that by chance of fate we are heirs of the Christian tradition. But if we give this answer, we are only adding to the price to be paid for the early Christian certainties of faith, which regarded Jesus as the final revelation of the one God, and therefore made the world Christian in the way which it has continued to be with some degree of permanence down to the present day. This absolute claim, which is no longer asserted, but seems to be accepted as tradition, and in institutional form, is of course the central problem of modern Protestant Jesuology. Like Celsus in the past, D.F. Strauss said: ‘It is not [the mode of idea] to lavish all its fullness on one exemplar … it rather loves to distribute its riches among a multiplicity of exemplars which reciprocally complete each other.’ The general existential question of the idea of moral humanity pleasing to God can lead to following the moral example of Jesus, but can also lead to determined unbelief in Jesus or to the tolerant placing of Jesus in the long series of heroes and helpers of mankind. The absolute claim of Christianity, which could no longer be defended, made E. Troeltsch a philosopher, but made the ‘philosophical faith’ of K. Jaspers intolerant of it. It is possible to interpret Jesus as the perfect man to those who by tradition are already Christians, but hardly to pagans and post-Christian atheists. Jesus can be understood in this way, but why must one necessarily go to the trouble of doing so? Thus modern christology always assumes faith, and states that Jesus can be understood in this way in faith. But it rarely says why one should have faith, and have faith in Jesus in particular. Thus it becomes a modern christology which is accepted within its own circle, but has virtually nothing to say to non-believers, unbelievers or those who hold a different faith.
The whole Jesuology of modern times, which for the reasons given is derived from the life of Jesus, is faced in the double conclusion of the life of Jesus with the same unresolved difficulties as the christology of the early church and that of speculative idealism. Since his resurrection from the dead is filed away as a miracle which cannot be posited by the physical world, and therefore as a mythologoumenon from the past, it becomes intolerable to take into account his abandonment by God to his death on the cross in all its severity. Thus the attention is turned away from his death and concentrated upon his life and preaching. His death on the cross is seen only as the consummation of the life he lived, of his obedience or of his freedom. And yet basically, in the light of his preceding life, no adequate interpretation of his death on the cross can be found. The crucified Christ no longer has any place in the context of questions about practical action, the consciousness of God, personal identity or the certainty of faith. A criticism of modern Protestant Jesuology ought not to be based upon an extra-historical point of view, or on a previously assumed concept of God, but upon the point of view of the crucified Christ, who in his own way is outside history, outside society and outside the question of the humanity of living men. The transcendence of the crucified Christ is not metaphysical, but the transcendence of concrete rejection. It also cuts across the anthropological needs and existential questions to which the presentation and discussion of Jesus in modern Jesuology relates him, and radically alters the examples and archetypes which are found in Jesus.
We can come closer to the person and history of Jesus by doing today what the disciples did, entering into dialogue with Jews and taking their questions seriously. The expectations and language which formed the background to Jesus’ life, against which the disciples saw and listened to him, do not simply belong to the past, but in substance are still a living reality alongside Christianity in Judaism and atheistic messianism. Here the questions asked about Christ are not: ‘Is the eternal God man in Jesus?’ or, ‘Can the man Jesus be called divine?’ but, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ This was the question put by the Baptist to Jesus, and in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus replies, ‘Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offence at me’ (11:2ff.). This is an indirect answer. The events which took place around Jesus and at his word speak on his behalf, for they are the signs of the messianic age. The gospel which comes in the miracles to those without hope, and to the poor in his preaching, upholds and authenticates Jesus. His office is upheld not by the incarnation of the eternal Son of God nor by the archetype of true humanity, but by the future of the kingdom which is inaugurated in and around him. Here the question is that of the future of the history revealed by the Old Testament promises, the messianic expectation of the kingdom. It manifests Jesus, with his preaching and his signs, as ‘he who is to come’. The divine world above does not descend to earth in him, nor does man, seeking his identity, find himself in him. A new future for God, man and the world in their history together is being inaugurated. In terms of the open questions of the Old Testament and the apocalyptic promises, and the existential experience of Israel in exile and alienation, Jesus is revealed as the one who fulfils these promises. This of course can be described superficially as a proof from prophecy. But what is meant is that the person and history of Jesus have been manifested and understood as open to the future of God in the way which was characteristic of the distinctive existence of Israel amongst all the nations. This is a different openness from the general, metaphysical question of finitude, and raises questions different from the general anthropological questions about man’s humanity. Properly understood, the question of the redeeming future of the history shared by God, man and the world includes these questions about God and about man’s humanity, and is not narrower, but broader than both. If we start from this point, it is no longer a matter of indifference or chance that Jesus was a Jew, appeared in Israel, came into conflict with the guardians of his people’s law, and was condemned and handed over to the Romans to be crucified, and that, because he appeared to the disciples, they proclaimed him as ‘raised from the dead’. The messianic question, ‘Are you he who is to come?’ seems to have been the earliest question about Christ. It is the context in which the earliest witnesses of Christianity spoke the language which was most natural to them and to Jesus himself. Whenever this question is ignored as peculiar to its own time, it is harder to understand Jesus.
But can a pagan ask this question without first having become a Jew? Does the return to the messianic question not make prophecy and apocalyptic a precondition of Christian faith, as the law and circumcision were in their time? Is this not a re-Judaizing of Christianity? I do not think so. As a result of the continuous influence of Judaism and Christianity upon the societies in which they were and are present, the experience of reality as history open to the future, and with it messianism, has become universal. The effect of the Bible was to bring an eschatological awareness into the world (E. Bloch), and the universal longing for redemption became a future hope. Without this orientation towards the future, the experience of reality as history is hard to maintain. This is clear from present-day attempts, now that these hopes have been abandoned, to suppress history or bring its study to an end, and to bring it under bureaucratic control. It is also shown by the attempts, after the loss of these hopes, to embed the experience of history in a new confidence in nature, in order to rid history of its terrors.
But the messianic question not only points to its answer in Jesus, but also hinders that answer. It is the complex of messianic problems which raises the essential conflict between Judaism and Christianity. Their dispute about Jesus is conducted on the basis of their common question about the future. This dispute is between an atonement, which is already believed to be present, and a real redemption which lies in the future. It is also continued in the dispute over Hegel between Christianity and messianic atheism.
The Jew is profoundly conscious of the unredeemed nature of the world, and in the midst of this unredeemed condition he recognizes no enclaves of redemption. The conception of a redeemed soul in the midst of an unredeemed world is of its very nature totally alien to him, it is inaccessible by virtue of the very foundation of his existence. This is the basic reason for Israel’s rejection of Jesus, not a purely external or national conception of messianism,
explains Shalom Ben-Chorin. But does anyone who believes in Jesus really regard himself as a redeemed soul in the midst of an unredeemed world?
In all its forms and manifestations, Judaism has always held firmly to a concept of redemption which understood it as a process which takes place under the public gaze, on the stage of history and in the medium of society, that is, which definitely takes place in the visible world … By contrast, the view of Christianity is one in which redemption is a process in the intellectual sphere and in the invisible, which takes place in the world, in the world of every individual, and brings about a hidden transformation, to which nothing external in the world need correspond … The reinterpretation of the prophetic promises of the Bible to apply to the realm of the inner life … has always seemed to the religious thinkers of Judaism an illegitimate anticipation of what could be manifested at best as the inward aspect of a process which essentially takes place in the external world—and which could not be manifested without this process,
said Gershom Sholem. But does Christian faith really represent such an interiorization of salvation? It is true that in historic Christianity there has in fact been both an abandonment of the real and universal hope of redemption, and at the same time a cessation of suffering over the unredeemed state of the world. There are two sides to this. On the one hand, one can say that the imminent expectation of early Christianity was disappointed, and was then replaced by cult, morality and metaphysics. On the other hand—and historically there seems to me to be much better historical evidence for this—one enthusiastic certainty of fulfilment followed another in Christianity. The kingdom of redemption was seen as already present in the church, or in the Constantinian state, in one’s own exclusive denomination or in the Christianized secular world. Historical Christianity has lived not so much under the shadow of its original disappointment, as by the anticipation of the kingdom. This gave rise to the triumphalism of the theocratic state or the state church, which regularly led to the persecution of the Jews and other representatives of unfulfilled messianic hope. A faith which worships Christ as God without his future, a church which understands itself as the kingdom and a consciousness of atonement which no longer suffers from the continued unredeemed condition of the world, a Christian state which regards itself as God here present upon earth, cannot tolerate any Jewish hope beside itself. But is this still authentic Christian faith?
It is true that faith lives by the anticipation of the kingdom through and in Jesus. But this is not a spiritualization or individualization of real salvation. Nor is it an enclave of redemption in an unredeemed world. Nor is faith a redeemed soul which still regards the unredeemed world with indifference. It is the eschatological anticipation of redemption, an anticipation through and in one who was an outcast, rejected and crucified. The memory of the crucified anticipator of the kingdom makes impossible for a Christian any spiritualization or individualization of salvation, and any resigned acceptance of participation in an unredeemed world. Did not Paul develop from the ‘sufferings of this present time’ and the ‘groaning’ of the enslaved creation, and from Israel (Rom. 9–11), an eschatological christology of the crucified Jesus? Did he not understand the gospel for the godless, the Spirit and faith, baptism and the eucharist as anticipations of the redemption of the whole longing creation? Did he not regard the crucified Christ as the representative and central figure of the universal future in which God is ‘everything to everyone’ (1 Cor. 15:28)? Even for Christians, Jesus, the crucified, cannot be understood without suffering for the unredeemed condition of the world, or without the hope of the kingdom which he has revealed to all the godless. In view of the misery of the creation, the fact that the atonement is already accomplished, although its struggle continues, is incomprehensible without the future of the redemption of the body and of the peace which brings the struggle to an end. ‘For Jesus is he who is to come. Everyone who truly encounters him, encounters him from the future, as the life to come, as the Lord of the world to come. Otherwise he cannot be our Lord … Only as he who is to come is he the one who came. As he who is to come, who reveals a new future to the godless, he is present.’ Israel and the church have drawn further apart in the course of the dispute about Jesus. ‘For the Jews the Messiah has tended to disappear behind the kingdom of God. For the Christian church the kingdom of God has tended to disappear behind the figure of the Messiah’ (Shalom Ben-Chorin). Since the beginning of Christianity, what Israel had to say about the one man tended increasingly to be overshadowed by what it had to say about the one time, and its message about the Messiah was replaced by its message about the messianic age to come. Christian christology made the hope of the Messiah suspect in Judaism. On the other hand, the Jewish expectation of the kingdom, with its realism, made realist and futurist eschatology suspect amongst Christians. On this level, after the long history of divergence, a history of convergence is wholly conceivable. But the more profound difference lies in the kind of life which each lives. The life of a Jew takes place within himself, in the sight of God. The life of a Christian takes place in the sight of God and Christ. What does this mean for the redemption of the world, which both feel to be unredeemed? Does redemption depend upon the repentance of man? If it does, redemption will never come. If it does not, it seems to be irrelevant to men. The Jewish answer could be described by saying that God forces Israel to repent through suffering. The Christian answer is that God brings the sinner, whether a Jew or a Gentile, to repentance through his own suffering in the cross of Jesus. The ultimate difference between Jews and Christians lies in the attitude to the crucified Christ. For Christians, this must also bring about a breakthrough in the direction of messianic expectations and questions, and provide a new basis for hope in an unredeemed world.
So far, we have dealt with the question of Christ in its various forms as the assumption and preliminary to the understanding of the person and history of Jesus. Our conclusion was that a starting point in a universal can both reveal and obscure the concrete element of his person and history, so that in the framework of any universal question, both faith and unbelief are possible. It also became clear that the tentative answer implied in the questions had to be corrected, reinterpreted and radically changed in the light of Jesus’ individuality and his concrete historical death upon the cross, if it was to do justice to Jesus and his history. A universally relevant christological conception of the incarnate Son of God, of the redeemer or of the exemplary human being cannot be Christian, without an indispensable reference to his unique person and history. If the question of Christ, whatever form it takes, is to do justice to Jesus himself, its relationship to him must not be one of questioning, but of being questioned; must not be one of demanding an answer but of giving an answer. It cannot simply manifest him as its object, but must be aware of its object as a subject. Otherwise it would never be in contact with Jesus himself, but only with that in him which was originally implict in the question.
Thus we cannot conclude our discussion of questions about Christ without pointing to the remarkable circumstance that in the synoptic gospels the question of Christ is not only posed to Jesus by others, but is also asked by Jesus himself. Jesus is presented not only as the answer to the question which man asks, but as himself asking the disciples who he is. ‘Who do men say that the Son of Man is?’ They reply, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ The follows the question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Peter replies, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus replies: ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven’ (Matt. 16:13ff.). The passage shows how contemporaries thought of Jesus, on the pattern of great figures of the salvation history of the past, as prophetus redivivus. Jesus’ question about himself to his disciples was not, as his answer to Peter’s confession of faith shows, a curious test question, but an open question. Thus the Jesus of the synoptic gospels is speaking indirectly of himself. The claim he made could obviously not be comprehended in one of the titles of Israel’s tradition of salvation history, or one of the titles in the history of the hope of a later Israel. It is as though he wanted first of all to draw out a recognition of himself, as if he depended upon the revelation of himself through God and those who believed in him. The question of his historical self-consciousness or self-understanding, whether he called himself ‘Son of Man’ or ‘Christ’, is never answered unambiguously. It is more important to realize that according to the synoptic gospels the earthly Jesus lived in a way which was singularly open to the one from whom he awaited his revelation, and that he spoke in relation to the future which his identity would bring about. It is also important that it is he himself who calls his disciples to answer him. ‘He existed for the one who he was to be,’ O. Weber rightly says. Here, however, he is actually pointing beyond his own earthly reality into a future the freedom of which he respects … (he is) in the totality of his being an enigma, a question, a promise, demanding fulfilment and response,’ says E. Käsemann. The life, words and actions of the Jesus of the synoptic gospels are centred not upon himself, but on the future which is called the ‘kingdom of God’. His God and Father is to reveal him as the one who he truly is. The kingdom of God, which he proclaimed to be imminent and realized in practice, shows him as the one who he is in truth. What Matthew explicitly presents as a question about Christ put by Jesus himself to the disciples, was, as far as we can tell historically, a basic feature in Jesus’ actual life.
No customary or current conception, no title or office which Jewish tradition and expectation held in readiness, serves to authenticate his mission, or exhausts the secret of his being … We thus learn to understand that the secret of his being could only reveal itself to his disciples in his resurrection.
It is above all in the exceptional claim of Jesus, which goes beyond all traditional and contemporary titles, that the starting point for the formation of christology is to be found. If Jesus had appeared as a rabbi or a prophet in the succession of Moses, he would have raised no questions. Only the fact that he is, and acts as though he were, someone different from the figures which his age remembered and hoped for raises a question about him. Thus it is he, he himself, who first raises the specific question of Christ. In his words and in his life, Jesus is open and dependent upon what is to come from God. The question about himself which according to Matthew he asks of the disciples, derives from the fact that he is open to the future and that his centre is outside himself. By the answer of faith the disciples place themselves within this openness to the future, accept his truth by their confession of faith, and hope at the same time to be revealed with him in his future.
What are these answers of faith to the open question presented by Jesus? They begin by recalling the memory of similar figures in the past, Moses, the prophets and the Baptist. They then recollect the hope of Israel, the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of David. Thus the staggering novelty of Jesus is first of all conceived by their recollection of the past, or of what has previously been promised. Consequently, the expectation of the renewal of Israel, the return of its earliest days and the restitution of Zion came to be associated with him. But the future for which Jesus lived and of which he spoke presents a different appearance. It is no longer the righteousness of God glorified in the law, but that righteousness revealing itself in prevenient grace. This departure from the continuum of Israel’s salvation history and the development of its hopes also made the novelty in Jesus a scandal, and led to his rejection and crucifixion. When the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, they were proclaiming the future of the crucified Christ, a novelty which is determined by the very difference of Jesus, to which his crucifixion bears witness. And therefore the novelty represented by Jesus can no longer be described by recalling anything similar in history or in the future hope, and becomes an open question, which demands answers which are a confession of faith. The titles from history and the future hope are changed, applied to the novelty which is Jesus and, as we say, are reinterpreted. But basically the novelty in Jesus cannot be contained in the category of repetition, and recollection itself is changed. What ‘Son of Man’ or ‘Christ’ now mean can no longer be rooted in the reality of the sufferings and expectations of Israel, but must find their realization in the person and the history of Jesus. This made the way open for a degree of creativity in Christian faith. It was set free by the novelty in Jesus and by the question which he represented. The question of Christ in the form ‘Who do you say that I am?’ is posed by Jesus himself and by the twofold conclusion of his life, from life into death and from death into new life. The fact that the centre of his existence is outside himself, and that the end of his life is open in two directions, has determined the scope of this question. If he exists for the sake of the one who is to be, then his question and his openness to the future are greater than all the answers which believers and non-believers can give. This question of Christ can only be answered by a new creation, in which the novelty which is Jesus is no longer a novelty, and his cross is no longer a scandal, and in which they have become the basis and the light of the kingdom. By confessing Jesus as the Christ, faith also confesses that this future of his is real. Its confession of Jesus does him justice when it also anticipates the future for the sake of which he existed, died and was raised. Consequently, when faith confesses Christ, this cannot be a final ontological or factual judgment, which could only ever relate to a closed reality. Nor can it be an arbitrary subjective value-judgment on the basis of devout experience. If it is in accordance with Jesus himself, it is an anticipatory judgment of trust and confidence, and therefore, for all its certainty with regard to the person and mission of Jesus, is nevertheless provisional in an eschatological sense. For it anticipates the future in which, as the Revelation of John (5:12) says, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!’ and ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes’ (7:17). The confession of faith takes the form of an anticipatory doxology. In the ‘unredeemed world’ it is already a demonstrative expression of the rejoicing of the redemption, and by this very fact makes suffering because of the ‘unredeemed world’ a conscious pain. For faith too, then, the question of Christ which is raised by the novelty in Jesus and his history is greater than all the titles attributed to him which describe him as ‘the eschatological event’. For the openness of the person and history of Jesus is open, beyond the believer’s confession of faith, to the new creation and the liberation of the whole longing creation. It is therefore not closed either by faith or by the church, but only by the redemption itself, that is, by new and liberated being. Thus it is profoundly significant that the name of Jesus and his history remain fixed, as fixed as his death, whereas the titles of Christ which are a response to his openness are historically changeable with the passing of time, and in fact change history.
Thus christology is essentially unconcluded and permanently in need of revision. In its very concentration upon Jesus and his history, Christianity is in the fullest sense pro-visio and promissus, for it points forward to the new age and new creation, in which the crucified Christ can no longer be a scandal and foolishness, because he has become the basis of the proclamation ‘I make all things new’ (Rev. 21:5). And therefore the confession of faith in Jesus concludes with the future hope, ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (22:20), and thereby places the true starting point at the end.