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Human Beings as the Story of God: Schillebeeckx's Third Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Philip Kennedy OP
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During the month of his seventy-fifth birthday, November, 1989, Edward Schillebeeckx published the final part of what now stands as a three- volumed Christology. His new book, Mensen als verhaal van God (‘Human Beings as the Story of God’), has taken twelve years to appear. It completes a trilogy begun in 1974 with Jezus, het verhaal van een levende (‘Jesus: The Story of a Living One’), and continued in 1977 with Gerechtigheiden liefde: Genade en bevrijding (‘Justice and Love: Grace and Liberation’). These three ‘opera magna’ combine approximately eighteen hundred pages of reflection on the identity of Jesus of Nazareth and the specificity of Christian faith. What follows is a description of the third part of Schillebeeckx’s Jesus-Quest with an overview of its structure and contents in the light of its two companion volumes, and comments on its governing preoccupation. The description is intended more as an interpretative commentary than a critique.

Professor Schillebeeckx began the exegetical research for the first instalment only a few years after the closure of the Second Vatican Council. His intention in the initial volume was not to provide an apologetical support for official church teaching, but rather to discover what was distinctive about Jesus, not as his individuality is codified dogmatically but as it is found in his practice and preaching, as these are reflected in the early credal formulas of the New Testament. Schillebeeckx sought to examine critically the intelligibility of Christological belief in Jesus of Nazareth for people today (1,33—34). Whereas the first volume addressed the issue of the ultimate identity of Jesus, the second gave more attention to various theologies of grace, especially the New Testament. The most fundamental presuppositions on which the first two books were constructed related to conditions for professing a Christian faith in the modern world. Schillebeeckx maintains that people today will no longer embrace Christianity simply on the basis of authority: conditions for believing must in some way be anchored in contemporary experiences.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 71 , Issue 836 , March 1990 , pp. 120 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Jezus het verhaal van een levende (Bloemendaal: Nelissen, 1974)Google Scholar was issued in English as Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, translated by Hoskins, Hubert, (London: Collins, 1979Google Scholar, and New York: Crossroad, 1981). The second volume appeared as Christ: the Christian Experience in the Modern World, translated by Bowden, John (London: SCM, 1980)Google Scholar. Subsequent references to these books will be made in the body of the article between parentheses. ‘I’ and ‘II’ refer to the English translations of the first and second volumes respectively. ‘III’ will designate the Dutch original, Mensen als verhaal van God (Baarn: Nelissen, 1989)Google Scholar.

2 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Interim Report on the Books ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ (London: SCM, 1980), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

3 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Evangelic Verhalen (Baarn: Nelissen, 1982), p. 5Google Scholar.

4 In English, for example, Schillebeeckx, Edward, Ministry: A Case for Change (London: SCM, 1981)Google Scholar; and The Church with a Human Face (London: SCM, 1985)Google Scholar. Also published in the interim period between the larger Christology books were two collections of homilies and conferences: God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (London: SCM, 1983)Google Scholar; and For the Sake of the Gospel (London: SCM, 1989)Google Scholar.

5 As in, for instance, Schillebeeckx, Edward, Jesus in our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics (London: SCM, 1987)Google Scholar.

6 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Op zoek naar de levende God (Utrecht/Nijmegen: Dekker & Van De Vegt N.V., 1958), p. 3Google Scholar.

7 See Duquoc, Christian, Messianisme de Jésus et Discretion de Dieu: Essai sur la limite de la christologie (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984), pp. 12–13, and 50Google Scholar.

8 See Griffin, david ray, God and Religion in the Postmodern World (Albany: State University of new York, 1989), pp. ix–xiiGoogle Scholar).

9 See Kaufman, Gordon D., Theology for a Nuclear Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.