52 - Chalcedon Revisited

Chalcedon Revisited
By George W. Stroup, III

"In contemporary theology it has been apparent for some time that there are serious problems in the language of Athanasius and the Christological formulas of the early church, and there has been an intensive search for a new idiom and conceptual structure to reinterpret the meaning of 'God was in Christ.' . . . I will sketch briefly some of the insuperable problems in the traditional Christological formulas, some recent proposals for the reconstruction of Christology, and the basic themes to which future Christology must attend."

ALTHOUGH it is unlikely that the whole of Christian faith can be reduced to a single affirmation, and certainly unnecessary to do so, Paul's claim that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (II Cor. 5:19) is at the heart of the Christian confession. Much of the history of Christian thought has been the struggle to understand what it means to say God was "in" Christ, and the question is by no means "academic." From its inception Christian theology has understood Christology to be inextricable from questions about the meaning of soteriology, and for centuries it has been a commonplace in Christian thought that any explication of "God was in Christ" must be accompanied by a specific account of the nature of God's salvific activity of reconciliation. Whatever problems we may have with them, it would be a serious mistake to dismiss the Christological formulas of the fourth and fifth centuries as abstract speculation about Jesus Christ. Clearly what was at issue in the early church's

George W. Stroup, III, the author of this initial essay on Christology, is Assistant Professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was educated at Rice, Yale, and Vanderbilt Universities, and his interest in theology and narrative was signaled by his earlier bibliographical survey of this literature in the July 1975 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.

This essay inaugurates a new series in THEOLOGY TODAY devoted to basic doctrines and questions in contemporary systematic theology. It has been our impression that systematic theologians of late have had relatively little opportunity to talk with each other or to the church about the emerging nature of their discipline. In addition, many pastors seem baffled by what appears to be the overwhelming technical character of much contemporary theological discussion. We hope that this series will begin to bridge that gap, and we welcome suggestions from our readers for themes to be addressed and possible authors.

53 - Chalcedon Revisited

search for an idiom by which it could make its confession was a particular understanding of salvation that was compatible with some interpretations of "God was in Christ" and incompatible with others.¹

At the same time it would be a mistake of equal proportion to canonize the formulas of Nicaea and Chalcedon as eternally valid interpretations of what "God was in Christ" means. Nicaea and Chalcedon are classic examples of the problem of theological hermeneutics, the problem of understanding and interpreting the claims of Christian faith in the context of the contemporary world. The hermeneutical task never ceases precisely because the contemporary world is constantly changing and its encounter with Jesus Christ and the texts and traditions that witness to him is ever new. That does not mean that theological assertions must be consigned to the dark night of utter relativity and that theological claims made in the fifth century have nothing in common with those made in the twentieth. Although problems may vary from age to age, in principle theologians face the same formal task of making Christian faith intelligible regardless of the period or culture in which they are writing. Thus, questions about the identity of Jesus of Nazareth and what it means to say "God was in Christ" are perennial and cannot be answered simply by repeating the confessions of the fourth and fifth centuries. There can be no final and complete answer to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's question: "What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today."²

Those theologians who write for the critical self-understanding of the Christian community are guided but not governed by the formulas and confessions of the Christian tradition. The tradition provides parameters and guidelines for the task of reinterpreting the basic affirmations of Christian faith, but it is the responsibility of systematic theologians to find an idiom that renders faith intelligible in their world. The concepts and idioms that were sufficient for another age may or may not be satisfactory in the present, and those idioms that were unacceptable to an earlier community may suddenly have disclosive power. For example, in his polemic against the Arians in the middle of the fourth century, Athanasius described Jesus Christ as "Very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to His essence, Wisdom Only-begotten, and Very and Only Word of God."³ Similar language had been enshrined at Nicaea in 325, and together with "two natures in one person" it later was canonized by Chalcedon as the church's definitive interpretation of what is meant by the claim "God was in Christ."

¹ For a summary of the history of Nicaea and Chalcedon, see Aloys Grillmeier, S.J., Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon, 2nd ed., rev. (London: Mowbray, 1975), and R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon (London: S.P.C.K., 1961).
² Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, enl. ed., Eberhard Bethge, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 279.
³ Athanasius, "Four Discourses Against the Arians" in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 14 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 4:311.

54 - Chalcedon Revisited

For centuries these traditional Christological formulas were assumed to be the only proper interpretation of the meaning of incarnation. Neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin raised any serious questions about the appropriateness of these formulas or the intelligibility of their language about Jesus Christ.⁴ But in contemporary theology it has been apparent for some time that there are serious problems in the language of Athanasius and the Christological formulas of the early church, and there has been an intensive search for a new idiom and conceptual structure to reinterpret the meaning of "God was in Christ."⁵

This search for a new idiom has not meant that the tradition has been discarded or the creeds and confessions ignored. On the contrary, in the same passage in which we find Athanasius using the language of Nicaea we also hear him refer to Jesus Christ as "the expression of the Father's Person." To many contemporary ears this second form of discourse about the identity of Jesus as the Christ sounds considerably more promising than the first. The theological challenge, then, is to rework the fabric of the Christian confession through the loom of this alternative idiom, and at the same time to remain cognizant of the previous mistakes the church wanted to avoid by means of its creeds and confessions.

In the remainder of this essay, I will sketch briefly some of the insuperable problems in the traditional Christological formulas, some recent proposals for the reconstruction of Christology, and the basic themes to which future Christology must attend.

I

The public furor created by the publication last year of The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick, is a curious phenomenon.⁶ As the contributors admit in the preface to the book, there is little in it that is new or original. Most of the constructive proposals offered in the book simply repeat the liberal Christologies of the nineteenth century.⁷ But what is particularly odd about the volume is its call for the Christian community to abandon the doctrine of incarnation in favor of some alternative form of Christology which would not be tied to the "two na

⁴ Examine John Calvin's Christology in Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:482-493, and his comments on I Tim. 3:16 in Calvin's New Testament Commentaries, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, 12 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 10:232-234. See also E. David Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. 11 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), pp. 61-100.
⁵ For discussions of the influence of Chalcedon on subsequent theology see Das Konzil von Chalkedon, Band III: Chalkedon Heute, ed. Aloys Grillmeier, S. J., and Heinrich Bacht, S.J., 3 vols. (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1954).
⁶ John Hick, ed., The Myth of God Incarnate (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977).
⁷ See John Hick's contribution, "Jesus and World Religions," in which he describes Jesus as "intensely and overwhelmingly conscious of the reality of God," and as "so powerfully God-conscious that his life vibrated, as it were, to the divine life." Ibid., p. 172. In another essay in this volume Michael Goulder describes Jesus as a member of a class of men and women of destiny; in fact, Jesus is "the man of universal destiny," who "proclaimed a more excellent way and drew behind him a movement." Ibid., pp. 48-63.

55 - Chalcedon Revisited

tures in one person" formula of Chalcedon.⁸ That is an odd plea because it apparently assumes that the doctrine of incarnation, the claim that God was in Christ, is intelligible only in the language and the categories of the fourth and fifth centuries. Obviously, the categories used by Nicaea and Chalcedon are not found in II Cor. 5:19 or anywhere else in the New Testament. They merely were concepts developed at a particular point in the history of the Christian tradition to interpret a reality confessed by Christian Scripture. It is far from clear, however, that II Cor. 5:19 can be interpreted only by means of the categories of substance and nature.

Indeed, for nearly two hundred years Christian theologians have been raising objections to the traditional formulas and arguing that basic Christian claims must be reinterpreted by means of very different categories. One of the earliest challenges to the traditional formulas, and in many respects the most formidable one, was that posed by the first "contemporary" theologian, Friederich Schleiermacher. In The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher argued that it is a non sequitur to speak of one person with two natures, one divine and the other human, for "the expression 'nature' is used indifferently for the divine and the human," and such use leads one "to suspect that such a formula was bound to become the source of many confusions."⁹ Schleiermacher's assessment of the traditional formulas was both an accurate historical judgment and a prophetic statement about how the formulas would fare in nineteenth and twentieth century theology. Although often recited in Sunday morning worship services, the language of Nicaea and Chalcedon did not accomplish what it was intended to do in the Christian community. Those forms of Christology most dreaded by the early church-Docetism at one end of the spectrum and ebionitism at the other-became far more characteristic of popular Christianity than the "orthodox" doctrine. Anyone familiar with the hymnody of American Protestantism will recognize how thorough and complete has been Docetism's posthumous triumph over Nicaea and Chalcedon.

Nicaea and Chalcedon pose several questions for the contemporary interpretation of Christian faith. In the first place, there are difficult theological problems which the traditional formulas do not resolve, but only compound and perhaps foster. The most important of these is the one to which we alluded above. Rather than offering a description of Jesus as the Christ that is free from the taint of either Docetism or ebionitism, Chalcedon represents only a "paper solution"; it suggests either that Jesus Christ as fully human and fully divine is some "third type" of creature or that the inevitable result of the "two natures" model is an implicit denial of Jesus' full humanity. The important question, however, is whether the Docetic Christology which appears to be

⁸ See the introductory essay by Maurice Wiles, "Christianity Without Incarnation?" Ibid., pp. 110.
⁹ Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), #96. 1, p. 392.

56 - Chalcedon Revisited

so widespread in the Christian tradition is merely the result of inadequate education in the church or whether there is an ambiguity at the heart of the Chalcedonian formula that leads necessarily to a denial of Jesus' full humanity.¹⁰

In both Protestant and Roman Catholic theology there is considerable evidence that if the church is to rid itself of the specter of Docetism it must find language and concepts other than Chalcedon's.¹¹ At issue religiously and theologically is the Christian confession that human beings can claim by faith God's gift of redemption because it occurred "in" Jesus of Nazareth and is thus an "earthy" and accessible reality. Any interpretation of God's redemptive activity in Jesus of Nazareth which denies Jesus' full humanity, by making him either more or less than human, also compromises Christian belief in the tangible reality of salvation.¹²

Secondly, there are serious conceptual and philosophical problems in the "two natures in one person" language of Chalcedon. Questions have been raised about the logical coherence and the intelligibility of that formula in our culture. Quite simply, one basic problem is that Chalcedon's understanding of what constitutes a person differs significantly from the prevailing philosophical anthropology of our day. The categories of ousia, physis, and hypostasis may not be as static as they often are depicted by contemporary theologians, but the model of personhood implicit in the Christology of Chalcedon is substantially different (in more ways than one) from contemporary interpretations.¹³ What constitutes the identity of a person is a complex philosophical issue. Most recent responses to the question describe personhood not in terms of an innate nature or substance but in more dynamic categories which emphasize the interpretations given to individuals in light of their emerging history. Personal identity is a matter of conscious reflection on the relation between past history and present projection and, consequently, is a hermeneutical concept.

¹⁰ For a more extended discussion of the theological difficulties in traditional christology see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus-God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), pp. 283-323, John McIntyre, The Shape of Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), pp. 82-113, and George Hendry, The Gospel of the Incarnation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958), pp. 92-114.
¹¹ Gerald O'Collins, S. J., provides an excellent summary of the discussion by Roman Catholic theologians in his book, What Are They Saying About Jesus? (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), especially pp. 1-12. Particularly important are Karl Rahner, "Current Problems in Christology," Theological Investigations, 14 vols. (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1965), 1:149-200, Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1976), pp. 230-252, and Piet Schoonenberg, The Christ (New York: The Seabury Press, 1971), pp. 50-105.
¹² Hence, Karl Barth is correct in his observation that the fundamental error of both subordinationism and modalism is that "they try to evade the cross of Jesus Christ . . . They evade it because they start from the assumption that it cannot be accepted as true." Church Dogmatics, vol. IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), IV/1:199-200.
¹³ There is a perceptive discussion of some of the problems in "two natures" language in McIntyre's The Shape of Christology, pp. 101-106. Dietrich Ritschl argues that physis may be "theoretically capable of expressing a non-static state of affairs." See his Memory and Hope (New York: Macmillan, 1967), p. 206.

57 - Chalcedon Revisited

Finally, while the categories of Chalcedon may not be alien to the Bible, they do interpret the identity of Jesus Christ quite differently than do the narratives of the Synoptic gospels. In principle, of course, there is nothing wrong with that; in its search for understanding, faith may use any language that makes intelligible the realities to which Scripture witnesses. However, it may not be accidental that a considerable portion of New Testament narrative appears to be irrelevant to Chalcedon. In the Chalcedonian formula the actual history of the man Jesus is less important than the ontological claims made about his person. The life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus receive far less attention in the Christological formulas than they do in the Synoptic narratives. Criticisms of incarnation Christology, such as those of Wolfhart Pannenberg, are well-founded. Understood as an event that "took place at Jesus' conception and was concluded at his death," incarnation theology leads "to the consequent deification of Jesus' humanity, in contradiction to the humanity of his earthly life."¹⁴ Yet the narratives of the New Testament do not move directly from stories about Jesus' birth to his death and resurrection. What happens in the interim seems to be indispensable to the Synoptic writers for a proper understanding of the whole of Jesus' life and therein his true identity. The problems of using the New Testament for the reconstruction of a "historical Jesus" are well known and frequently rehearsed, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the Synoptics the historical details of the man Jesus-what he taught, deeds he performed, those people with whom he chose to associate-are important for understanding what it means to say he was "the Christ" and that God was "in him."

By no means are these the only difficulties that Chalcedon poses for a contemporary confession of Christian faith. Questions have been raised also about the scope and nature of salvation in that peculiar brand of Christocentrism spawned by the Christological formulas.¹⁵ Those interested in defending the traditional formulas at all costs can insist quite properly that these objections do not constitute a concerted indictment, that some objections are more pertinent than others, and that it is possible to answer some without answering all of them. Collectively, however, these objections to the traditional formulas do explain why many contemporary theologians are searching for alternative interpretations to what it means to say "God was in Christ."

II

Not every contemporary theologian has been convinced that the incarnation must be reinterpreted in categories other than those used by the traditional formulas. One of the most important exceptions in the Protestant tradition is Karl Barth, who argues that Chalcedon's

¹⁴ Pannenberg Jesus-God and Man, p. 301.
¹⁵ One example is Eugene TeSelle's Christ in Context (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975).

58 - Chalcedon Revisited

description of the relationship between God and humanity "has become normative for all subsequent development in this dogma and in dogmatics."¹⁶ Barth accepts the traditional interpretations of "God was in Christ" and devotes most of his attention to a reinterpretation of the last half of II Cor. 5:19, "reconciling the world to himself." The Christology of the massive fourth volume of his Church Dogmatics is more concerned with reinterpreting the doctrine of reconciliation than it is with reworking the meaning of incarnation. Barth insists that the two "states" of humiliation and exaltation must be understood in light of the two "natures" and vice versa. In addressing himself to this question Barth has some fascinating things to say about the nature of redemption and atonement, but he ignores the correlative question about the relationship between God and Jesus of Nazareth. Because Christology is so closely tied to soteriology, there is good reason to suspect that the one cannot be reconstructed in isolation from the other.¹⁷

Paul Tillich, on the other hand, acknowledges the validity of many of the objections to traditional Christological dogma. Repeating the same arguments Schleiermacher used, Tillich concludes that Chalcedon "raises the right question but uses wrong conceptual tools."¹⁸ In place of what he believes are static concepts, Tillich advocates dynamic ones which he thinks better describe the reality of human being. "God was in Christ" means that the reality of New Being, or "essential unity between God and man," has become a reality in Jesus of Nazareth. In Tillich's interpretation a proper Christology requires elements of both incarnation and adoption, and their relation is "paradoxical" in much the same sense as the doctrine of justification. While there is still considerable confusion in Tillich's description of the relation between New Being and Jesus of Nazareth, he does insist that the words, deeds, and suffering of Jesus are necessary in order to understand how New Being comes to expression in Jesus.¹⁹ The problem is that it is not clear that Tillich has any real need or use for New Testament narrative except to insist that New Being has appeared at a particular point in history. Except for the cross and resurrection, the only other event in the Synoptic narratives important for Tillich's Christology is Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, which he misinterprets in its context in Mark.

Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Rahner also recognize the difficulties in the traditional formulas and offer provocative Christologies that appeal to new ontological and anthropological categories. In quite different ways both want to speak of an "openness" in human being which is the ontological referent for statements about the incarnation.²⁰ But while both Rahner and Pannenberg understand history to

¹⁶ Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/ 1:133,
¹⁷ For Barth's discussion of the incarnation, see Church Dogmatics, IV/2:36-116.
¹⁸ Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957),11:142.
¹⁹ Ibid., pp. 121-125.
²⁰ Rahner develops his theological anthropology in Hearers of the Word (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), and relates it to his Christology in essays such as "On the Theology of the Incarnation" in Theological Investigations, IV: 105-120. Walter Kasper offers an interesting appraisal of Rahner in Jesus the Christ, pp. 48-52. For Pannenberg's use of "openness" see his What is Man? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), pp. 1-13.

59 - Chalcedon Revisited

be an essential feature of human being, it is not clear that the whole history of the man Jesus is of decisive importance for either of them.

Borrowing some suggestions from Isaac Dorner, Pannenberg insists that it is a mistake to interpret the incarnation either as something already consummated at the beginning of Jesus' life or as something which became a reality only later in Jesus' life. The incarnation can be understood only retrospectively as a statement about "the whole of the life and the person of Jesus as both came into view in the light of his resurrection."²¹ From the perspective of the resurrection we see that Jesus is the Christ in his complete dedication to God, his "personal community with the Father." There is, then, no question of a synthesis of two natures in Jesus Christ; rather, "in his particular humanity Jesus is the Son of God."²²

The problem with Pannenberg's position is twofold. Although he does offer a philosophical anthropology of sorts, based on the category of "openness," he does not explain the relation between openness and history or, more importantly, the relation between "personal individuality" and "life history." In the concluding chapter to What is Man?, he briefly discusses each of these concepts. A human being's historicity, he claims, "is based on his inherent openness to God," and the meaning of particular events in a person's life can be determined only "in the context of his life history."²³ But Pannenberg does not explain how personal individuality is related to life history.²⁴ Secondly, as a result of this first problem, it is not clear that Jesus' life, teaching, and ministry are of real importance for Pannenberg. It is the resurrection that confirms and validates Jesus' true identity, but, except for Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom, Pannenberg has little to say about Jesus' ministry. This neglect of the teachings and ministry of Jesus may be one reason Pannenberg has not yet discussed the social and political implications of Christology.

Process theologians also have turned their attention recently to the reinterpretation of traditional Christological formulas. As one would expect, John Cobb and David Griffin reject a Christology that interprets incarnation by means of substance categories. In some detail, Cobb discusses the dilemmas and contradictions in the Christological language of the creeds, and, in agreement with Piet Schoonenberg, suggests that it is possible to retrieve the legitimate intentions of Chalcedon by reinterpreting them in an Antiochene rather than an Alexandrian spirit.²⁵ With the assistance of Whitehead, Cobb describes the Logos as "immanent in all things as the initial phase of

²¹ Pannenberg, Jesus-God and Man, p. 307.
²² Ibid., P. 342.
²³ Pannenberg, What is Man?, pp. 139-14 1.
²⁴ He admits as much in an important footnote in Jesus-God and Man, n. 59, p. 304.
²⁵ John Cobb, Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), pp. 163-173.

60 - Chalcedon Revisited

their subjective aim," and the actualization or incarnation of the Logos as that creative transformation which is the Christ.²⁶ To say Jesus is the Christ means that in him the lure of the Logos "to the fullest possible human realization" is actualized, and he is "the highest embodiment of humanity."²⁷ However, neither Cobb nor Griffin appeals to the details of the Synoptic narratives as warrants for their arguments; in fact, only rarely do they examine any New Testament texts. It often seems that for them it is the philosophical scheme that determines the identity of Jesus rather than the narratives that describe his life.²⁸ Given the attention in the gospels to the importance of the resurrection, it is hard to imagine how Griffin can write a book on Christology without mentioning the resurrection, except to say in the preface that it has no "constitutive importance for Jesus' person" and that Christian faith "is possible apart from belief in Jesus' resurrection.²⁹

The most creative attempt in recent years to respond to the Christological problems we have outlined has come from Hans Frei. In place of the traditional Christological categories, Frei applies a different model of personal identity to New Testament narratives about Jesus. Questions about a person's identity take two forms: "What is the person like?" and "Who is this person?" The first asks for specific events which disclose different facets of a person's character, or what Frei, with the help of Gilbert Ryle, calls "intention-action" description. The second question raises the more difficult issue about the persisting, final identity of a person in the midst of the many events and changes that make up individual identity, or what Frei calls "self-manifestation."³⁰ He then applies this model of personal identity to the Synoptic narratives and discovers that Jesus is "most of all himself" in the passion narrative, where he appears "in his unadorned singularity" as "the unsubstitutable person he is."³¹ The result is a dramatic reversal in the narrative and consequently in the identity of Jesus. Previously in the narrative Jesus had received his identity from the history and hopes of Israel, but in the passion story "Jesus identifies the titles rather than they him."³²

As intriguing as Frei's argument is, it is not without its problems. His model of identity description represents a clear break with the model of personhood employed by Chalcedon and much of the theological tradition. It is not clear precisely how intention-action and self-manifestation are related to each other. On both literary and theological grounds Frei can argue that "Jesus' individual identity

²⁶ Ibid., p. 76.
²⁷ Ibid., p. 171.
²⁸ Both Cobb and Griffin discuss the "problem" of the historical Jesus, particularly in relation to Bultmann, but unlike Bultmann neither of them lingers over the details of a text. See Cobb, Christ in a Pluralistic Age, pp. 97-110, and David R. Griffin, A Process Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), pp. 195-205.
²⁹ Griffin, A Process Christology, p. 12.
³⁰ Hans Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), pp. 36-44, 86-101.
³¹ Ibid., pp. 134-135.
³² Ibid., P. 136.

61 - Chalcedon Revisited

comes to focus directly in the passion-resurrection narrative rather than in the account of his person and teaching in his earlier ministry."³³ Yet Frei's interpretation of the dramatic reversal raises questions about a conflict between the teaching and ministry of Jesus and his self-manifestation in the passion story. Precisely what is the relation between the prophet from Galilee and the crucified and risen Christ? It is here that historical inquiry is unavoidable and must take precedence over a realistic or "history-like" reading of the text. Frei's use of the term "history-like" obscures an essential feature of personal-identity, regardless of who that person is. It is a person's history, that series of interpreted events that constitutes an individual's past, which provides the material for assessing intentions and actions. Any theological description of Jesus' or God's identity that ignores their respective histories and their confluence in the ministry and passion of Jesus runs the risk of some form of Docetism.³⁴ It would be unfortunate if Frei's interpretation of Jesus' identity were subject to an Antiochene protest that his history and humanity have not been preserved. That question is particularly urgent in light of Frei's discussion of the relation between Jesus and God. Apparently Frei believes that "God was in Christ" means that in the passion story Jesus' intentions and actions are "increasingly identified" with God's. The relation between Jesus and God is not one of simple subordination, but what Frei calls "the motif of supplantation and yet identification."³⁵ It is "neither a simple unification nor a simple distinction," but an interrelation that remains "irreducibly complex," if not confused.³⁶

III

In addition to the proposals we have discussed, there have been several other interpretations of what the church means by its claim "God was in Christ." As we have seen, there are problems common to all of these proposals and their resolution makes up the future agenda of Christology. The problems are difficult and will not be easily or quickly solved, but it is possible to discern the future direction of Christological discussion.

In the first place, inquiry into the identity of Jesus Christ must begin with those narratives that provide the only access to the constitutive events of his life. We must begin with the narratives of Scripture rather than with dogmatic preconceptions about who Jesus must be. There are enough presuppositions in the text without saddling it with others. Christology, after all, is theological reflection based on the narratives of Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament, and the confessions

³³ Ibid., p. 142.
³⁴ Gordon Kaufman escapes the taint of Docetism by insisting that God's self-manifestation is found "in the historical personage Jesus-his total life, death, resurrection," but he does insist on speaking of an identity of "being" between God and Jesus. See his Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective (New York: Schribner's, 1968), pp.176-209.
³⁵ Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ, p. 118.
³⁶ Ibid., p. 124.

62 - Chalcedon Revisited

of the Christian tradition. It is not a question of beginning with one rather than another; from the perspective of Christian faith the narratives are continuous and each event is intelligible only in relation to the others. Those theologians are undoubtedly correct who argue that Jesus' true identity is not known fully and finally apart from his death and resurrection. That does not mean, however, that Christology should focus on the passion narrative at the expense of Israel's history and Jesus' teaching and ministry. The resurrection may vindicate Jesus and conclusively identify him as God's means of reconciliation, but apart from Jesus' ministry it is wholly unclear who has been vindicated and what reconciliation means.

Christologies have been characterized by a methodological distinction between those that begin "from below" with the events and historical reality of the man Jesus and those that begin "from above" with claims about the reality of the incarnation.³⁷ Although the distinction has been helpful in sorting out important theological differences, in several respects it also has muddied the waters and made reconstruction in Christology more difficult. The problem is that the dichotomy between "below" and "above" may be, at best, artificial. Although Chalcedon consistently insisted on the oneness of Jesus Christ, it may be that different interpretations of his narrative history are necessary for a proper interpretation of his true identity. In other words, the reader may need both Mark and John in order to understand fully the identity of Jesus Christ.

Secondly, if the language of Chalcedon is no longer acceptable because it presupposes a model of "person" unintelligible to us, then the claims of Scripture and the intentions of Chalcedon must be reinterpreted by means of another model of personal identity. Unless one is willing to argue that "person" means something unique when applied to Jesus of Nazareth, theological confessions about his true identity must be made in the language of contemporary philosophy and its understanding of what is meant by "person" and "personal identity."³⁸ Karl Barth has argued that God alone "is the person" and that we can know what "person" means only in reference to God.³⁹ But if that unique notion of "person" is applied to Jesus Christ, it leads inexorably

³⁷ Pannenberg discusses this distinction in Jesus-God and Man, pp. 33-37. His revision of this distinction appears in a recent article, "Christologie und Theologie," in Kerygma und Dogma, 21. Jahrgang, Heft 3 (Juli/September, 1975), pp. 159- 175. See also Walter Kasper's argument that all christologies from below "are condemned to failure" and his sketch of "a pneumatologically orientated Christology" in Jesus the Christ, pp. 230-274.
³⁸ There is an enormous literature on this topic in contemporary philosophy. See Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (New York: The Viking Press, 1959), Sydney Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), and the two recent collections of essays, John Perry, ed., Personal Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
³⁹ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol.II: The Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), II/ 1:284.

63 - Chalcedon Revisited

to the problems outlined above. Jesus Christ becomes either some third type of creature, a God-man, or a deity walking the earth in the guise of human being. In order to make the confession "God was in Christ" intelligible, it must be made clear what is being claimed about the identity of Jesus Christ and his relation to God.

Theological claims about the person of Jesus Christ must attend both to the texts which identify him and to discussions of "person" in contemporary philosophy. Despite its use of "two natures" language, Chalcedon affirmed, against the Nestorians, the oneness of the man Jesus. There are not two wills, minds, selves, or sets of intentions rattling around in Jesus Christ. But as long as "person" is understood in terms of the categories of nature and substance, there is no way out of that impasse. The only solution is to interpret the personal identity of Jesus Christ by means of the more dynamic categories of history and narrative.

An essential feature in such a reconstruction of Christology will be the historicity of humanity and its necessary articulation in some form of narrative. It is primordially true that in order to identify persons we tell stories about them, regardless of whether that person is our aunt, next-door neighbor, or Jesus of Nazareth. In some instances these "identity narratives" can be "true" without being historically accurate. But that is not the case with Jesus Christ. Because of its understanding of the nature of salvation, the Christian faith's confession that Jesus is the Christ is a historical claim that cannot be adjudicated apart from an examination of the historical details of his life. That does not mean that a "historical Jesus" can or must be reconstructed from the New Testament. It does mean that an emphasis on the narrative form of the New Testament can not ignore the question of the historical context and accuracy of the text. A proper interpretation of "God was in Christ" is dependent on both the narratives of Scripture and their historical investigation.

Finally, a "narrative Christology" is not simply the repetition of the New Testament texts nor a Christology in narrative form. It is theological reflection that understands narrative to be the primary genre in Scripture and an essential form for articulating personal identity. To confess that Jesus is "the Christ" and that god was "in him" is to claim that he is Israel's annointed one, the promised Messiah, and that "in him," in his history, all the promises of God finally will be fulfilled. The "dialectic" in Christian narrative is that the present identity of the resurrected Christ is unintelligible apart from the history of Israel and the life and ministry of Jesus. But in the same breath, we must add that the resurrected Christ is also the crucified Messiah, and as such he reinterprets the meaning of "Messiah" and the destiny of Israel. Consequently, "God was in Christ" is not a statement about Jesus' being; it is a confession that his history and his identity are a part of the history and identity of God. That entails an ontological claim about the relation between God and Jesus of Naza-

64 - Chalcedon Revisited

reth; the use of history and narrative rather than being as categories for the interpretation of personal identity does not mean a surrender to subjectivity.

In a narrative christology, it becomes clear, as perhaps it does not in the traditional formulas, that there can be no separation of theology from ethics. The resurrected Christ is the same Jesus who in the Synoptic narratives is found with the poor and the oppressed and who dies on a cross. From the perspective of narrative christology, to be baptized and to live "in Christ" (II Cor. 5:17) is to discover that one's personal history is neither lost nor forsaken. It is reinterpreted in light of and by means of that yet unfinished narrative of Jesus Christ.