The doctrine of the Incarnation – that the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, became a human being, who suffered and died on the cross for the salvation of the world – is, together with the doctrine of the Trinity itself, the heart and soul of traditional Christianity. No theological doctrine is more foundational to orthodox Christianity – conceived as the set of beliefs hammered out by the Great Councils in the early centuries of the church worldwide. Since the church took the assertion that God was incarnate in Christ to be of ultimate importance, the Councils defined it very precisely, both identifying errors about it and connecting it to the whole of Christian theology. From the beginning of Christianity down to the present, no subject has been the focus of more intense analysis and reflection among theologians. But it is not difficult to understand how the claim that God was incarnate in Christ – whether expressed in the technical terms of academic theology or in ordinary language for the laity – continues to be of great interest to many people. After all, the claim to Incarnation, if true, is the most important claim in the history of the world.
The study of the Person of Christ and his work, Christology, is the central focus of this book. Theologians will have predictable interest in this new reference work in the field of Christology, which is vibrant and expansive. However, students, researchers, and anyone who wants to explore this amazing doctrine further will find that the chapters here are both informative about the development of the doctrine and convey the great significance of its target subject.
There has been a proliferation of excellent work on the Incarnation in the new millennium. A serious student of Christology at any level needs to have familiarity with this work – something we intend to provide in this book. Put succinctly, the goal of this reference work is the following: to introduce the reader to the historical sources, various receptions, and newest currents in christological discussion, moving the dialectic forward on each issue. We structured the book to pursue this goal in three stages.
The volume begins with a discussion of the sources of Christology. We focus on four varieties of sources: the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the first seven Ecumenical Councils. In his discussion of the Old Testament, Gregory R. Lanier argues for an incipient Messianism in the Hebrew Bible, based on five motifs that present features that a future deliverer of Israel will have. Such trajectories, he claims, shaped the reception of later christological sources. Brittany E. Wilson discusses the Christology of the Gospels and the Book of Acts, arguing that those works present Jesus as divine and that a helpful lens for interpreting this divinity is that of divine fluidity – the view whereupon God’s self-manifestation can be broader in time and space than is typically acknowledged in post-Enlightenment scholarship. Madison N. Pierce provides close studies of passages from Romans, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation, taking up multiple trajectories outlined by Lanier to argue that the authors of these New Testament books weave images together to create a bridge between their readership and earlier Jewish traditions. Finally, Matthew Levering presents the Christology of the first seven undivided Ecumenical Councils of Christianity, a teaching he refers to as “Conciliar Christology.” He considers three theological critiques of that Christology from N. T. Wright, Bruce McCormack, and Sergius Bulgakov, arguing from biblical and contemporary theological grounds that each critique fails.
In our second section, the discussion turns from the sources of Christology to the myriad receptions those sources have received. These are needful topics, as any competent presentation of the doctrine itself must elucidate the formation and development of the doctrine through the ages. Here we focus not only on the main divisions already well known in the literature but also on underemphasized receptions, as we explain below.
With respect to the main historical receptions, our authors present the early, medieval, and Reformation receptions of the christological data. First, Donald Fairbairn writes of the thinkers of the second to fifth centuries, using as his framing narrative the acceptance of “two great affirmations”: “that only God can save us, and that only as a human being does he save human beings” (p. 80). Fairbairn’s discussion nicely dovetails with Levering’s conciliar chapter insofar as both are discussing many of the same thinkers and events. Next, Andrew Gertner Belfield discusses the Christology of the medieval receptions, taking special care to center the lesser-known aspects of the medieval narrative, especially Scotistic theologians and thinkers beyond the academic schools – for instance, Mechthild and Julian of Norwich. Finally, Richard Cross represents the Reformation reception of Christology, focusing on Luther and Zwingli, but also contextualizing the Catholic counter-reformation, thus continuing the dialectic Belfield set up between Thomistic and Scotistic thinkers while also introducing the Jesuit Francisco Suárez. From there he moves to later Reformation giants, including the Reformed Francis Turretin and a detailed discussion of the Lutheran Johannes Brenz.
With respect to the underemphasized receptions, in addition to Belfield’s centering of underdiscussed thinkers, we thought it important to engage with modern and postmodern thought and contextualized Christologies as well as the reactions to the christological claims from the other Abrahamic religions. First, Jane Barter does the seemingly impossible – providing a coherent map of the state of contemporary christological debates from Kant to the present, bringing the reader through Hegel, Schleiermacher, Strauss, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Balthasar, Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault, as well as through various contemporary reception schools, including Black and Womanist Christologies as well as Radical Orthodoxy. Next, Wayne Te Kaawa and Victor I. Ezigbo provide an overview of contextualist receptions of Christology, receptions that bring “Indigenous cultures, sociopolitical contexts, and christological beliefs or ideas into dialogical communication” (p. 145). They offer excellent case studies of Māori, Pacific, Indigenous Australian, Native American, and African receptions of Christology. Then, Barbara Meyer presents Jewish responses to the sources Christians use for christological data, including the Hebrew Bible. She discusses four thinkers: Harry Austryn Wolfson, the philosophers Peter Ochs and Emil Fackenheim, and the New Testament professor Amy-Jill Levine. Each encourages Christian theologians to address difficult questions – about the unity of God, about evil, and about Jewish–Christian relations – in the specifically Christian language of Christology. Finally, Umar Ryad takes the reader through an insightful discussion of the place of Jesus in Islamic thought, including both the Qur’an and Hadith literature. He then focuses his attention on two key areas of discussion among Muslims and Christians – the death and return of Jesus and the medieval polemics between Christians and Muslims – before concluding with a discussion of rival views of who Jesus is in Islam.
The second half of the book delves into contemporary christological discussions. It is not that these topics are new – the twenty-first century was not the first era to consider the relation between the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, or between the Incarnation and the Eucharist, or between holiness and the incarnate Christ. Rather, each of these questions has produced a body of literature in the last twenty years, and we intend to introduce the reader to and advance those discussions. We divide the second half of the book into two sections, the first on the relation between Christology and systematic theology, the second on the relation between Christology and philosophical theology, recognizing, of course, the overlap between those two approaches.
Thomas Schärtl begins the systematic theology section with a discussion of the relation between the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity, weaving the dialectic through questions of models, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and the theology of revelation. Oliver Crisp follows with an analysis of the interrelations between the Incarnation (what God did) and the Atonement (why God did it), focusing especially on models of the Atonement and its scope. James M. Arcadi then asks what an understanding of the Eucharist would look like, were it modeled on the theology of the Incarnation, arguing that a christological pattern provides a helpful aid to understanding the theory and practice of the Lord’s Supper. Next, Christa L. McKirland writes of the interrelations between Christology and pneumatology, focusing on the scriptural and theological evidence for different views of the relation between the Son and Spirit, for example, the Filioque. In the final contribution in this section, Thomas H. McCall turns to the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, focusing especially on four rival theories of the dereliction on the cross.
The final section of the book focuses on four questions concerning Christology and philosophical theology. Joshua R. Sijuwade begins the section with a discussion of the various metaphysical models of the Incarnation on offer, including discussions of the different accounts of what a human nature is, the different suggestions for the number and types of human components (e.g., body and soul) involved in the Incarnation, and various traditional and recent objections to the presented models. Then, Eric Yang discusses various responses to the seemingly fundamental philosophical problem with the Incarnation: the apparent logical inconsistencies that arise from the claim that one and the same person is both divine (and so has the impressive divine prerogatives) and human (and so has the necessary human limitations). In the following chapter, Mark C. Murphy addresses questions surrounding Christ’s holiness, including the explanation of Christ’s sinlessness, whether he is necessarily sinless, and the compatibility of that sinlessness with Christ’s being tempted or being free. Finally, Michelle C. Sanchez addresses the intersection between Christology and political theology, focusing primarily on the span of history from the First World War through today. She traces a careful thread, starting with W. E. B. Du Bois, through Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt, to Karl Löwith and Ernst Kantorowicz, then Sylvia Wynter and beyond to Giorgio Agamben, approaching political problems as theological problems.
Finally, a word about the design and aim of this book, in part by reference to what this book is not. There is a species of book, an excellent and necessary variety of book, that we might call for lack of a better term retrospective review. Such works bring the reader up to speed on a complex topic. They are primarily historical, more descriptive than evaluative. They seek more to objectively present a scholarly discussion than to lead that discussion into new frontiers. The Oxford Handbooks series are books of this variety, and they fulfill their mission exceedingly well. The Oxford Handbook of Christology is particularly excellent. If the reader is looking for a retrospective review of the literature on Christology through the ages, she will do no better than that volume. It comes as close as humanly possible to providing an exhaustive retrospective overview, as evidenced by its prodigious size and word count.
Happily, our present project follows a different vision for serving scholars, researchers, and students – a vision impressed upon us by our editor, the magnificent Beatrice Rehl, when she asked us if we would be willing to edit this volume. The Cambridge Companions, she informed us, are intended to be forward-facing. They certainly engage the past; how could they not? But they aim, in addition, to introduce new research questions and trajectories. That is the main value of this volume. What is the current state of discussion and emerging avenues for study on the Incarnation and, say, the Atonement? The Incarnation and political theology? This volume focuses on current discussions and their trajectories, prioritizing leading the discussion forward over cataloguing the past. We became inspired and excited by this creative vision for a major, forward-facing reference work on Christology and trust that readers will readily see how it both surveys and advances the field of Christology.
The vision included the volume being trim and efficient. However, with a wordcount determined according to the law of the Medes and Persians (Dan 6:8–12), there are many areas of Christology that we could not fit into the book. And even the topics we do include had to sometimes be compressed skillfully by the authors according to the concept of this volume. For instance, the medieval era, spanning over one thousand years, received seven words per year for expressing the reception of the christological teaching and the trajectory of research to come (on that method of measuring, this sentence alone is worth almost seven medieval years). Indeed, as editors, we know that there could have been an entire volume devoted solely to the work done during this expansive period of time. But what were we to do? Dividing the medieval era into multiple contributions would then mean cutting an entire chapter on pneumatology, or Islamic receptions, or political theology, but these are important areas, too. Thus, we chose to find a balance for the book between representative breadth of coverage and depth of treatment that promises to benefit experts, researchers, teachers, and novices alike.
By noting our need for selectivity, we hope the reader will sense the scope and magnitude of the scholarship on Christology, which offers plenteous further study for the interested person. The reader will notice, for instance, that the reception of Christology into the arts is missing from our table of contents. And anyone familiar with the science-religion discussion in culture will suspect that evolutionary biology will have great relevance to christological claims to the true humanity of Jesus Christ. In fact, the editors here have produced a Cambridge book on this exact subject. We could continue reciting a litany of other significant topics in the vibrant and growing area of christological study that have not found their way into this volume.
In the end, after much debate and soul-searching, we developed a strategy for what to include, and what to omit, so that the most salient topics in the larger Christology discussion could be presented in a fresh, forward-looking reference volume. We ultimately arrived at the architectonic divisions and topical focuses outlined above. The contributors have done amazing work in putting flesh on the skeleton we created; we are thrilled with the outcome, which we now offer to you.
