Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Christology 101 [was: There are two years left]
References: <1992Sep11.172645.7469@ac.dal.ca>

hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:

>I hereby retract all my hasty comments and offer my apologies to Charles 
>Hedrick. He knows about 1,000,000 times more about this subject than I do.
>I repent myself in dust and ashes. One last comment - there was no offense
>or criticism intended in any of my posts. 

Thanks.  I realize that.  I thought it was clear that you were trying
to learn something, which is why I tried to be careful in giving you a
response.  I was actually surprised to see so many people agreeing
with me.  I'm generally more "liberal" than most of the Christian
participants here.  My expositions of the Trinity and Christology are
intended to be orthodox, but I would recognize them as rather near the
borderline in some ways.  So I keep expecting to be jumped by some of
my more conservative colleagues.  (See the appendix.)

One interesting thing to come out of the discussion was Publius'
response, that the Logos was dwelling in the entire person of Christ.
I find that a good way of describing things.  (However the term
"indwelling" has an unhealthy association with Nestorius, so one has
to be very careful to be clear on how it's being used.)  One of my
problems with much Christian writing is the tendency to divide Jesus
into human and divine parts, which sort of alternate, depending upon
what he is doing.  I believe God is in Christ, not *despite* his being
human, but precisely in his humanity.

--------

Technical appendix.

The reason I say that my position is borderline is that I'm very close
to Theodore of Mopsuestia.  He was condemned as heretical in the 6th
Cent.  I think that this condemnation was undeserved, and was due to
the actions of some of his followers whose views were not as carefully
formulated as Theodore's.  But there are dangers in Theodore's
formulation, which I need to be sure not to fall into.  Theodore, and
the rest of the Antiochene school, used the basic concept of
indwelling.  As Publius says, the Logos dwells in Jesus' entire
person.  The danger of this view from a theological point of view is
(1) that it tends to look like Jesus' role differs from ours only in
degree, not in kind.  God dwells in many people.  Indwelling by the
Logos can be simply inspiration.  (2) that it tends to cast doubt on
whether the Logos is actually the subject of Jesus' human life and
human experiences.

Theodore himself realized these dangers.  To distinguish Jesus from
other human beings in whom God dwells, Theodore argues that the Logos
indwells Jesus in a special manner that does not apply to the rest of
us.  "The Logos unites himself to Jesus from the moment of Jesus'
conception, and as Jesus' human life goes on, .. the reality of this
union comes to fuller and fuller expression until, in the
resurrection, the human being and the Logos show that they have always
been, so to speak, one functional identity -- one /prosopon/ or, to
use the inadequate English equivalent, one "person".  Thus Theodore
teaches a "prospic" [personal --clh] union -- a union which has its
root in the fact that by God's gracious initiative this human life is
perfectly at one, in its willing and acting, with the Logos".  (This
quote, like others here, is from the introductory remarks by editor
Richard Norris in "The Christological Controversy".)  

The second danger mentioned above is that indwelling does not do
justice to the fact that God is actually said to be the subject of
Jesus' actions and expereriences.  I believe Theodore also tried to
deal with this.  (The following is from Theodore, not the editor.)
"Having indwelt him, he [the Logos] united the one assumed as a whole
to himself and equipped him to share with himself in all the honor in
which he, being Son by nature, participates, so as to be counted one
person in virtue of the unon with him and to share with him all his
dominion, and in this way to accomplish everything in him."  He also
tried to deal with the touchstones of Jesus' birth and crucifixion.
In this case, I think he waffled just slightly.  Here's what he said
on the resurrection: "'Was God crucified, or a man?'  That is to say,
one must answer, 'Both, indeed, but not in the same sense.'  The
latter was crucified in the sense that he suffered and was nailed ...,
but the former because he was with him..."  This may be somewhat weak.
I agree with Theodore's basic model of a functional union.  However
part of the union is that God experiences what Jesus experiences,
though indirectly, and Jesus' actions are God's.  The basic answer
that both God and a man were crucified, but not in the same sense, is
certainly orthodox.  I think Athanasius would agree.  But the rest
of that statement seems to deny that God really suffered.  Certainly
there's an element of vicariousness in the way God experienced it.
But I think the identification is somewhat closer than implied by
the wording he uses.

But I think what led to the condemnation of Theodore was not his views
so much as the way they came to be explained by his followers.  In
particular, Nestorius.  (The fact that Nestorius managed to discredit
Theodore, but Athanasius was not discredited by Apollinaris, seems to
have been due to some nasty church politics.)  He adopted a more
extreme view, which denies that God participated in any real way in
Jesus' birth or death: "God has been joined to the crucified flesh,
even though he has not shared its suffering."  That qualification,
that God did not share in the sufferings of Jesus, is obviously
unacceptable to any orthodox Christian.  It's a denial of the reality
of the Incarnation.  Nestorius seems also to have been somewhat of a
flamer.  I've looked at his response to a very moderate and friendly
letter from someone on the other side.  It's worthy of Usenet.

Since I want to see myself as orthodox, I need to make it clear that
while I start from Theodore's basic viewpoint, I take it in a
direction which I believe is different from Nestorius.  Historically
what happened is that Nestorius' more moderate colleagues accepted a
compromise position that combined their appreciation for the reality
of Jesus' human life (something that many in Athanasius' party didn't
seem to do justice to) with the Alexandrian insistence that the Logos
himself is the subject of Jesus' actions and attributes.  Translating
into my Antiochene terms, the point that must be emphasized to avoid
Nestorianism is that Jesus' actions and attributes are also God's,
even if somewhat indirectly.  (This indirectness is accepted even by
Athanasius, as we will see below.)  Jesus' death is God's
self-sacrifice.  Jesus is not just a human being who is inspired by
God.

To summarize the final synthesis, which is presented at Chalcedon, the
editor says: "Orthodoxy consists in the acknowledgment that Jesus is
one subject, who is properly spoken of both as God -- the divine Logos
-- and as a human being.  To give an account of Jesus, then, one must
talk in two ways simultaneously.  One must account for all that he is
and does by reference to the Logos of God, that is, one must identify
him as God acting in our midst.  At the same time, however, one must
account for him as a human being in the ordinary sense of that term.
Both accounts are necessary."  However Chalcedon does not specify a
specific explanation of how that can be the case.  "There is a sense,
therefore, in which .. Chalcedon solves the christological problem by
laying out its terms.  Its formula dictates not a Christology but
formal outlines of an adequate christological language."

Within this outline of acceptable language, there are still two
approaches, which are roughly Antiochene and Alexandrian.  The
Antiochene approach tends to start with Jesus as a human being in whom
the Logos dwells.  The Alexandrian approach tends to start with the
Logos and describe how he took to himself humanity.  But in order to
be orthodox, these approaches must be seen as saying the same thing
from two different viewpoints.  Ultimately, we need to take into
account the emphases of both.  The Antiochene must make it clear that
the Logos dwells in Jesus in such a way that the Logos is actually the
subject of Jesus' actions and attributes.  The Alexandrian must make
it clear that the Logos took to himself a real human life, which
maintains its human integrity.  Thus in either case, all of Jesus'
attributes and actions must be seen as both part of a true human life,
and as God's.

Note by the way that both viewpoints suggest a certain "indirectness"
in the identification of God and the human being.  What started all of
this discussion was an assumption that "Jesus is God" is to be taken
directly, without any qualifications.  From the Antiochene point of
view, I hope it's clear where this indirectness lies: Jesus is not
simply God.  He is a human being in whom God dwells in a special mode.
From the Alexandrian view, there is a similiar indirectness, but seen
from the other side.  Athanasius makes "a distinction between the
Logos *in himself* and the Logos *with his flesh* or body.  Tears,
hunger, ignorance, and the like do not belong to the Logos in himself;
they belong to him by virtue of his incarnate state.  They are proper
to the flesh which is proper to the Logos.  One might say, therefore,
that they belong to him only indirectly (though not, for that reason,
the less truly)."