8 - Karl Barth’s Christology

Summary

'In Christ two natures met to be thy cure.' When George Herbert wrote these words, he captured the essence of Chalcedonian Christology, with all its strange complexity and simplicity, in a single elegant line. It is sometimes overlooked that the interest behind Chalcedonian Christology has always been largely soteriological. Herbert's line, however, makes the point very well. It is the saving work of Christ - to be thy cure - which serves as the guiding intention behind the Chalcedonian definition of Christ's person, just as the definition of his person (following Herbert) - in Christ two natures met - serves as the crucial premise of Christ's saving work. Change the definition of Christ's person - make him less than fully God and fully human at the same time - and the saving cure Christ offers changes drastically as well. In other words, just as it makes no sense to have a high view of Christ's person without an equally high view of his work, so a high view of Christ's work - in particular, of his saving death - cannot be sustained without a suitably high view of his person. The work presupposes the person just as the person conditions the work.