9 - Christ and History

Summary

The relationship between Christ and history has been the point of contention between the two major exegetical conversations: the salvation-historical and apocalyptic readings of Paul. The salvation-historical tradition reads Paul as taking Christ to be the climax of God’s covenant with Israel. Christ embodies God’s faithfulness to a journey with God’s people that has stretched over ages. The apocalyptic reading of Paul conceives of Christ’s coming as an apocalyptic, disruptive invasion in this world. Both readings locate Christ and his work in the context of God’s relating to creation in reconciliation, conceiving of the difference that Christ makes as God’s response to the problems of evil and sin. This chapter argues that this betrays an ultimately deficient Christological logic. Based on Colossians and Ephesians, it is argued that Paul makes Christ also central to creation and eschatological consummation, as the pre-orderly center of all that is. This in turn offers a perspective on the relationship between Christ and history that incorporates the notions of “salvation history” and “apocalyptic revelation” in a larger, supralapsarian Christological narrative.