5 - Christ

Summary

“In the fullness of time, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law, that we might receive adoption as children.” So the Apostle Paul teaches his community in Galatia (Gal 4.4–5). Christology, in all its height and breadth, is caught up in these few brief rounded phrases. The Apostle joins together a particular notion of time – that is, gathers to a fullness, pleroma – with a Divine action, to send or send out. This sending comprises elements of the life of Jesus Christ, His existence as a mortal, a child of Eve, and as a Jew, one born under the Law. The Apostle gathers this whole complex into a single purpose: to redeem creatures from the structure of the cosmos, the stoicheai, and to adopt us as children, both Jew and gentile, as Divine heirs. Other crystalline verses from Holy Scripture – the Prologue to the Gospel of John; the Carmen Christi or Christ hymn, as it is often styled, in Philippians 2; or the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel to Mary or from angelic hosts to shepherds, keeping night watch – have been taken by theologians, early and modern, as touchstones for Christology. These must find their way into any full examination of the structure and telos of this doctrine. But Galatians 4 remains the keystone.