Chris to Logy From Below and Above

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Monday, September 17, 2007

Christology from Below vs. Christology from Above

(John 1:1-4, 14, 18)by The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th.D.© 17 September 2007

It is becoming ever more common for modern Christian scholars to speak of

a Christology from below. The problem is not so much the statement itself asit is with what they do with it. By this they mean that we must begin with

the human Jesus and work our way back to the divine Son of God. They may

challenge us that though John unequivocally begins with the Word as thesecond person of the Holy Trinity, yet Matthew begins with the Virgin Birth

of the lowly Jesus. True, but Matthew quickly adds that He was Immanuel,

which means “God with us.”

Yet the modern approach—contra 2,000 years of church history—begins with

the historical man Christ and seeks to work back to God, if indeed it everarrives at God, and whoever “God” may be. Of course, this nearly always

results in a thoroughly human but not divine Christ. As Carl Henry rightlyobserves of this position:

Despite its deep ecclesial inroads, modernistic theology failed to stifle

transcendent Christology. Modernism’s Christological inconsistency Lawtontraced to a vulnerable and indeed “wrong starting-point.” “In the realm of

pure Christology,” he commented, it is “inexcusable . . . to begin with

Christ’s humanity and human life, and . . . to work upwards . . . to theconfession of his Deity. Those who do not begin with the fundamental

Christian assumption that ‘the Word was made flesh,’ but . . . attempt toshow how . . . a complete man as they suppose Christ to have been was

united to God” cannot but end in confused and self-contradictory views.[1]

But the modern approach is basically to ignore John’s Gospel and to beginwith a human Jesus, who—surprise, surprise—never quite reaches full

divinity. James Dunn even says that it would be “irresponsible to use the

Johannine testimony on Jesus’ divine sonship in our attempt to uncover theself-consciousness of Jesus himself .”[2] Yet St. Athanasius in his masterly

defense of the deity of Christ in the early church (from the Council of Nicea325) constantly uses the Gospel of John for the self-consciousness of the

Son of God, as did the other early fathers.

But how does the Gospel of John begin? It begins with the divine Word,eternal in being (“in the beginning was the Word”), states that He was with



the Father from all eternity (“the Word was with God”), was Himself of thesame essence as the Father (“the Word was God”), and that He was the

Creator (“All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing wasmade that was made”).

It is only after the Christology from above is given in clear terms that Johngives us the Christology from below: “And the Word became flesh and[tabernacled] among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only

begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). We cannot

appreciate verse 14 and the Word becoming flesh unless we first know whoHe was.

But the Christology from below is allegedly the “scientific” approach of modern criticism, allowing the documents to speak once the faith of the

Church has been stripped out, which in turn means no supernaturalism. As

Henry rightly says: “The notion that the biblical writers believed in miraclesbecause as pre-scientific men they were ignorant of the laws of nature is

preposterous.”[3]

Such arrogance assumes that the last one hundred fifty years is the measureof all things, that those who were there and saw the miracles invented them

(read: lied), and that only now in this scientific age can we truly know whathappened then. Of course, no historical fact can be scientifically tested by a

repeated experiment, and the only way we can know any historical event is

by documents and eyewitness testimony. It is not the objective history of the early church and the Gospels that is the problem, but the assumptions of

the modern scholars and their never ending search for the “historical Jesus” that predetermine what they see.

Of course, Chalcedon and the whole Church for 2,000 years have a

Christology from above, beginning with the Second Person of the HolyTrinity, the Son of God. But there is much talk today of a functional Christ,

meaning that it does not matter who Christ was, only what He did wasimportant. But as the Church has noted from Nicea in 325 on, what He did is

predicated on who He was. Functionality is based on ontology. To restate

this: “Ontology and soteriology mutually condition one another.”[4] Or toput this in our terms, what Christ did was based on who He was.

The modern theologian considers his philosophical views as more

substantive than God’s revelation. Once again, Henry is on target:

The recurring appeal to regnant modern philosophy as sufficient reason for

abandoning incompatible views [such as rejecting Chalcedon] rests on a

presumptive culture-pride more than on truth. Modern philosophy is not



necessarily superior to ancient philosophy; at its best it even sometimesechoes enduring aspects of ancient philosophy. Nor has “modern philosophy”

achieved a consensus. Nor is it necessarily superior to the philosophy of thefuture; the philosophy of the end-time will prevail over it.[5]

Let us forever remember that the Incarnation is not from below, not frommankind, but it is from above, from the realm of eternity. To put thisanother way, the Incarnation is by addition, not by subtraction. It was the

eternal, divine Son of God who added to Himself perfect humanity that

constituted the Incarnation, not the boy of Mary who somehow realized Hehad a divine mission one day when He was about thirty years old. Even at

age twelve He said that He had to be about His Father’s business (Luke2:49).[6] It was God the Son who became man, not a son of man who

became in “some sense” divine. It was the eternal Son of God whoconstituted the Person of the Incarnation, for He had been the Son from all

eternity, not a human person who “somehow” became divine or cognizant of

some divine mission, as is often stated today. Amen.

Documents

Chris to Logy From Below and Above