317 - The Foundations Of New Testament Christology

The Foundations Of New Testament Christology
By Reginald H. Fuller
268 pp. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965. $5.95.

This book aims not to present the Christology of the NT writers but to lay bare the foundations of their Christology. Fuller first surveys the "tools," the "terms, images, concepts and patterns which the church picked up and used for its christological response" (p. 16). These tools are those

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of Palestinian Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism, and Hellenistic Gentile circles. A key chapter discusses "The Historical Jesus: His Self-Understanding"; "as eschatological prophet he was not merely announcing the future coming of salvation and judgment, but actually initiating it in his words and works. . . . The basic datum of NT Christology is . . . his proclamation and activity which confront men and women with the presence and saving act of God breaking into history and his utter commitment and entire obedience to the will of God which made him the channel of that saving activity" (pp. 130 f.).

Three chapters deal with "The Kerygma of the Earliest Church," with its two foci, "the historical word and work of Jesus, and his parousia" (p. 243); "The Hellenistic Jewish Mission," in which the kerygma was "oriented chiefly upon the present work of the Exalted One" (p. 197); and "The Hellenistic Gentile Mission," which affirmed "the Redeemer's preexistence and incarnation" as well as exaltation (p. 245).

The numerous notes, grouped at the end of each chapter, show the author's wide knowledge of the literature and questions involved. It is an informative book, one of our leading works on New Testament Christology.

I cannot accept, however, the method used to determine what Jesus said and did. Fuller accepts the form-critical method: "where a saying or a tradition about Jesus in the gospels reflects the theology of the post-resurrection church, that saying or tradition must be placed to the credit of the church, rather than to Jesus himself, or to his original history" (p. 116). He uses traditio-historical criticism, which "eliminates from the authentic sayings of Jesus those which are paralleled in the Jewish tradition on the one hand (apocalyptic and Rabbinic) and those which reflect the faith, practice and situations of the post-Easter church as we know them from outside the gospels" (p. 18). That the tradition underwent development we know, but to say that whatever reported word of Jesus agrees with his Jewish background or the early church cannot be accepted as from him is to set up an impossibly rigid and skeptical method of historical study.

Another question concerns the three strata of NT Christology: Earliest Palestinian, Hellenistic Jewish, and Gentile Mission. One might think that these stages are successive in time. But Paul, who represents the Gentile Mission, gives us letters beginning about twenty years after Jesus' death; his earliest letters show a highly developed Christology, which he has had for years. It is difficult to trace a step-by-step development in the church's Christology, particularly since the Hellenistic outlook already appears in the early Jerusalem church.

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I question the idea that Jesus did not speak of himself as the Son of Man, but taught that the heavenly Son of Man, a separate person, would be a "rubber stamp" (p. 123) of what Jesus had said and promised. As Fuller recognizes, the very early church held that Jesus identified himself as the Son of Man, and I think that Jesus did so. In general, this challenging and vigorously written book assumes too rapid a development of Christology with too little initial explicit basis in the words and claim of Jesus himself.

Floyd V. Filson
McCormick Theological Seminary
Chicago, Illinois