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The Christology Of the New Testament
By Oscar Cullmann
342 pp. Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1959. $6.50.

This is Professor Cullmann's, most important work; Christ and Time is of course a notable volume, but the book under review would seem to sum up, as the author intimates in his preface, the work of a life-time of teaching-and, we may add, of study. Concerned as it is with the inter-

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pretation of Jesus Christ which Dr. Cullmann believes is found in the New Testament, it can be compared with Professor Vincent Taylor's final volume of Speaker's Lectures, on The Person of Jesus Christ, and there is indeed a certain similarity between the two books-readers of Taylor's work will -recall that he notes the publication of the Cullmann opus in Tübingen in 1957.

The difficulty of reviewing this book springs from two different sources. First, Professor Cullmann says in his preface that reviewers should not dismiss his views without exegetical reasons for doing so-and the present reviewer is not by profession a New Testament scholar; hence he can make no claim to speak with authority on that aspect of the study. But second, the manner in which Professor Cullmann presents his findings is such that one would wish to insist, against him, that Christology is not merely a functional but an essential or ontological judgment concerning Christ, must necessarily appear to be intruding ideas that are not intrinsic to the treatment found in the actual text. None the less, comment must be made; and as it is apparent that Professor Cullmann's book will exert considerable influence, I shall venture to disobey his admonition and speak quite generally about his treatment of the New Testament material.

First, however, it is necessary to give some indication of what in fact the Swiss scholar finds in the New Testament. He discusses first "the Christological titles which refer to the earthly work of Jesus"; these are Prophet, Suffering Servant of God, High Priest. Next come those titles which "refer to the future work of Jesus": Messiah, Son of Man. A third section deals with the titles which "refer to the present work of Jesus": Lord, Saviour. And finally, there are the titles which "refer to the preexistence of Jesus": Word, and Son of God, with a concluding discussion of "the designation of Jesus as 'God."' It is Professor Cullmann's contention that all these New Testament descriptions have relevance to what we might call the biographical life of Jesus; that is, they are in one way or another reflections of an awareness that Jesus himself possessed-an awareness that he fulfills the prophecies found in the Old Testament Scriptures. Our author is not prepared, as I understand him, to claim that such an interpretation of our Lord's mission as the total New Testament portrays is, so to say, to be "pushed back" into the mind of Jesus himself. But he is concerned to maintain that there is a genuine continuity between our Lord's own personal awareness and the developed description of the significance of that awareness which, say, the Fourth Gospel, St. Paul, and the Epistle to the Hebrews affirm.

Throughout, it was the heilsgeschichtlich thought of the primitive Christian community that dictated the way in which the significance of Jesus was understood; Hellenistic influences were not so important, if

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important at all. And behind that understanding of Jesus as "salvation-event" is his own self-awareness, interpreted by the first believers in such terms that the centrality of the Lord was seen and stated in language which had its roots in the Jewish patterns of thought in respect to God's dealings with his people and with the world. And what is the enemy which the primitive Church was combating? It was Docetism, or the denial that the historical life of the Lord was the center of the total divine action for the salvation of men.

Now one might say, so far so good. But there are reservations to be made. Sometimes one has the feeling-justified or not-that Professor Cullmann puts altogether too much stress on what our Lord may have thought about himself. Nor is he alone in this, of course. It would appear to be a very prevalent notion that unless the interpretation of his own significance that Jesus entertained is identical with that which the earliest Christians, and their successors too, accepted, then that later Christian apprehension of his significance is highly suspect. I do not say that Cullmann makes this claim; I only say that it is difficult, time and again, to be sure whether he makes it or not, and that the appearances anyway are that he is prone to do so. But granted that he does not fall into this, which I can only regard as an error, there is no question at all that he is sure that it is the New Testament categories themselves which provide us with the proper "titles for Jesus"; and that since these titles are, in his view, without exception "functional" in nature, he is inclined to feel that the Christological development which went on to interpret Jesus in "essential" terms is a false development.

It is at this point that I should wish to protest. For surely the fact must be that the function which our Lord fulfills is a clue to who he is. Is there not a danger, found these days in a somewhat sophisticated form, that we shall refuse to make any "ontological" assertions about Jesus and rest content with describing him in terms which are drawn only from his "work"? And is not this an error similar to, though in many respects different from, the Ritschlian refusal to proceed beyond "valuational" judgments to "existential judgments" about him? And, finally, did not William Temple say the last word on the Ritschlian error when he remarked that a Jesus who has the value of God must in some sense or other be genuinely and really divine? Which is by way of saying that if indeed Jesus was interpreted as fulfilling the "functional" offices which Cullmann claims the New Testament asserts of him, the Church was right in going yet further and saying that One who fulfills these "functions" must also in some real sense be that which he does.

I am not at all sure of the justice of these comments. But at any rate, this is the reaction of one reader to Professor Cullmann's book. Let it

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be said, however, that The Christology of the New Testament remains, none the less, one of the highly important works of our time; the survey of the total New Testament picture is unexcelled; the "Biblical Christ," in Tillich's phrase, emerges clearly; and whatever problems we may find in detail, and whatever difficulties we may feel in the implicit confining of Christological judgment to "work" rather than "being," we have here a masterpiece of New Testament scholarship with which every student must reckon.

W. Norman Pittenger
General Theological Seminary
New York, New York