“Christology”: What's In a Word

Extract

Yes, Christology is the logos or science of the Christ. But science is the invention of the Greeks, and while Christos is Greek, too, it does duty here for “Messiah.” The word contains the encounter of Jerusalem and Athens that has been the sustaining event of the whole of Western culture, which, in these days, and notwithstanding the abiding vigour of Indian thought, is increasingly the culture of the world. And already thus far “Christology” proves itself a weasel word. For if indeed we speak of an “encounter” of two “cultures,” then Athens bids fair to absorb Jerusalem as just one more collection of human conventions and nomoi. But if we say that “Christology” signifies the destruction of proud arguments (logismoi) and the capture of every thought unto the obedience of Christ (see 2 Cor 10:4-5), then it may be thought that logos can no longer recognize itself here.

Or maybe this meeting of Jerusalem and Athens inscribed in “Christology” is just a confusion. “Messiah,” originally a title, here means the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and functions as a proper name. So Christology is the science of an individual man. According to the most thoughtful of the Greeks, however, there can be no logos, no science, no episteme, of the individual as such.

Neither for us moderns is science of the individual as such. Chemistry may be about radium, but it isn’t about this radium atom. It’s about the nature of radium, and so tells you about this atom insofar as it has the common nature. But it doesn’t give you the history of this atom, or that one, or any one.