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Toward the Renewal of New Testament Christology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Leander E. Keck
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Extract

The study of NT Christology will be renewed if it recovers its proper subject-matter - christology - and its proper scope, the New Testament.

The scholarly literature shows that what is called NT christology is, by and large, really the history of christological materials and motifs in early Christianity, and their ancestry. This massive preoccupation with history has, to be sure, produced impressive results. In fact, today it is difficult to imagine a study of NT christology which is not influenced by this historical analysis of early Christian conceptions of Christ and their antecedents. Nevertheless, the time is at hand to take up again what was set aside - an explicitly theological approach to NT christology, one which will be in-formed by the history of ideas but which will deliberately pursue christology as a theological discipline. It is doubtful whether the study of NT christology can be renewed in any other way. This essay intends to illumine and substantiate this claim by considering briefly the nature of christology, then by reviewing the turn to history and its consequences for the study of NT christology, and finally by sketching elements of an alternative.

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 362 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

[1] The fact that ‘NT christology” is used here in the sense of ‘christology in the NT’ is a matter of style and nuance; it refers to christology as the subject-matter of a particular body of material. In no way does this usage imply that there is a single christology in the NT.

[2] The identity and significance of Jesus can, of course, be expressed in non-christological ways, as in an attempt to identify and assess his impact on Western culture, and through it on the modern world. That would be an historical judgment, comparable to judgments about Moses or Mohammed. A statement of Jesus' identity and significance becomes christological when that significance explicates his religious meaning. Whoever affirms the religious significance of Jesus - a first order state-ment - implies a christological statement (a second order statement). Schillebeeckx introduces the distinction between first and second order statements in order to account for the inevitability of christology. On this basis, ‘living contact’ with Jesus ‘was experienced as God-given salvation’, which in turn produced reflection on the experience, which yielded ‘the creedal affirmation: God himself … has acted decisively in Jesus,‘ (a first order statement); this produces a second order statement designed to explicate the first by focusing on his identity. This whole discussion, how-ever, occurs in a context in which Schillebeeckx wants to explain the movement from a ‘“Theology” of Jesus of Nazareth’ to christology. By the former he means ‘reflection upon what Jesus himself had to say’. However, these are two quite different moves, because reflection on Jesus' message is not the same as reflection on a first-order statement grounded in the experience of salvation. Schillebeeckx, Edward, Jews New York: Seabury, 1979) 545–50.Google Scholar

[3] Current sensibility having outlawed the use of ‘man’ in English theological discourse, ‘humanity’ must serve as a surrogate, despite its intrinsic inability to function as a real equivalent.

[4] Dahl, Nils A., ‘The Neglected Factor in New Testament Theology’, Reflection 73, 1 (Yale Divinity School, Nov. 1975) 5–8.Google Scholar

[5] In this connection, one should ponder Milet's, JeanGod or Christ? The Excesses of Christo-centricity. (New York: Crossroad, 1981).Google Scholar He contends that although Christianity is constitutively bi-polar (God and Christ), the modern difficulty of thinking cogently about God has produced such a one-sided preoccupation with Christ that virtually one religion has been substituted for another - a religion with a one-sided emphasis on redemption.

[6] It should not be overlooked that the formula, ‘Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer’, which is now being substituted, in some Anglo-Saxon quarters, for ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ not only replaces a Trinity of Persons with a triadic functionalism but also constricts the role of the Second Person to redemption - a move which lacks clear warrant in the NT.

[7] To speak of the constancy of grammar vis-à-vis variable formulations is not yet to imply that grammar is static; to the contrary, that grammars have histories also suggests that the ‘grammar’ of christological discourse too undergoes change (not the same as the history of christology, the history of formulations). The matter deserves exploration, which cannot be undertaken here, however.

[8] Braun, Herbert, ‘The Meaning of New Testament Christology’ God and Christ. Journal for Theology and Church 5 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968) 89–127Google Scholar; original, German: ZThK 54 (1957) 341–77.Google Scholar

[9] These terse, and perhaps cryptic, formulations beg for elaboration and substantiation, which cannot be provided here. That will be provided by my forthcoming book, Jesus in New Testament Christology.

[10] Wrede's, William essay, published in 1897, has become available in English only recently in The Nature of New Testament Theology, translated and edited by Morgan, Robert (Naperville/London: Alec Allenson/SCM, 1973).Google Scholar Morgan's own extensive Introduction, which deals as well with Schiatter's essay on the same theme (also included), merits careful reading. The page numbers following the quotations of Wrede refer to Morgan's volume.

[11] Bousset, Wilhelm, Kyrios Christos (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970Google Scholar; original German, 1913).

[12] This essay's contention that the study of NT christology should become avowedly theological in no way entails a repudiation of historical reconstruction or of sociological reconstruction and analysis, which I have defended elsewhere. To the contrary, my ‘On the Ethos of the Early Chriso tians’, JAAR 42 (1974) 435–52Google Scholar (= ‘Das Ethos der frühen Christen’ in Wayne Meeks, A., ed., Zur Soziologie des Urchristentums [Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1979] 13–36Google Scholar) is a programmatic call for NT scholarship to attend to the social realities which shaped early Christianity and which were affected by it. Likewise, over against a tendency on the part of some literary criticism to be a-historical if not plainly ant -historical, I defended the necessity of historical work in ‘Will the Historical-Critical Method Survive? Some Observations’, Orientation by Disorientation (Beardslee Festschrift), Spencer, R. A., ed. (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980) 115–27.Google Scholar In The Bible in the Pulpit (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978)Google Scholar, I sought to show how the historical-critical method can become fruitful for preaching.

[13] For a more extended discussion of this point, we my ‘Is the New Testament a Field of Study? or, from Outler to Overbeck and Back’, The Second Century 1 (1981) 19–35.Google Scholar

[14] Boers, Hendrikus, ‘Jesus and the Christian Faith: New Testament Christology since Bousset's Kyrios Christos’, JBL 89 (1970) 452.Google Scholar

[15] Moule, C. F. D., The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar (his italics).

[16] According to John Knox, early Christian non-use of ‘Prophet’ for Jesus reflects the fact that this title had been appropriated by the disciples of John the Baptist. ‘“The Prophet” in the New Testament Christology’, Lux in Lumine (Pittenger Festschrift), Norris, R. A., ed. (New York: Sea-bury 1966) 22–34.Google Scholar It is more likely, however, that the major strands of early Christianity found ‘prophet’ incapable of embracing the soteriological correlates which they wanted to express.

[17] Taylor, Vincent, The Names of Jesus (London: Macmillan, 1953) 1.Google Scholar

[18] Barr, James, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961) 234.Google Scholar

[19] Friedrich, Gerhard, ‘“Begriffsgeschichtliche” Untersuchungen im Theologisches Wouml;rterbuch zum Neuen Testament’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 20 (1976) 151–77.Google Scholar Friedrich, under whose leadership Kittel's project was completed, also defends the Dictionary against Barr's criticism by noting that Kittel followed L. Weingerber (1927), who contended that word and concept are inter-related. Friedrich's views on the need for a NT concept-lexicon are found in ‘Das bisher noch fehlen de Begriffslexikon zum Neuen Testament’, NTS 19 (1972/1973) 127–52.Google Scholar

[20] Barr, , Semantics, 209.Google Scholar

[21] Hahn, Ferdinand, The Titles of Jesus in Christology (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1969)Google Scholar, especially the chapter on ‘Christ’.

[22] Vielhauer, Philipp, ‘Ein Weg zur neutestamentliche Christologie?’ EvTheol 25 (1965) 24–72Google Scholar; ‘Zur Frage der christologischen Hoheitstitel’, ThLZ 90 (1965) 569–88.Google Scholar

[23] See, e.g. Meier, John P., ‘Salvation History in Matthew. In Search of a Starting Point’, CBQ 37 (1975) 210–12.Google Scholar

[24] So Kingsbury, Jack Dean, ‘The Composition and Christology of Mt 28:16–20’, JBL 93 (1974) 573–84.Google Scholar

[25] Although the phrase theios anir is absent from the NT, its use in recent scholarship is unclear; sometimes it is used virtually as a title, at other times as a category (like ‘hero’), a motif, an image, or a concept. For an assessment of its role, we Kingsbury, Jack Dean, ‘The “Divine Man” as the Key to Mark's Christology - The End of an Era?’, Interpretation 35 (1981) 243–57.Google Scholar Kingsbury calls it a concept.

[26] Hengel, Martin observed, ‘The multiplicity of christological titles does not mean a multiplicity of exclusive “christologies” but an accumulative glorification of Jesus. Christology and New Testament Chronology’, in Between Jesus and Paul (London: SCM/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 41Google Scholar (German original 1972).

[27] See, e.g. Kingsbury, Jack Dean, Matthew: Structure, Christology, Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), chap. 2.Google Scholar

[28] See also Güttgemanns, Erhardt, Der leidende Apostel and sein Herr. F.R.L.A.N.T. 90 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966) 46Google Scholar, 196 for similar observations.

[29] Käsemann, Ernst called attention to the fragmentariness of the material in ‘The Problem of a New Testament Theology’, NTS 19 (1973) 242–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[30] For a suggestive exploration of narrative christology, we Boring, M. Eugene, ‘The Christology of Mark: Hermeneutical Issues for Systematic Theology’, Semeia 30 (1984) 125–53Google Scholar, especially pp. 136–45 (Vol. 30, Christology and Exegesis: New Approaches, appeared in summer of 1985).

[31] See Sanders, E. P., ‘Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: A Holistic Method of Comparison’, HTR 66 (1973) 455–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SCM, 1977) 12–18.Google Scholar

[32] A clear instance of a well-known work based on exactly the opposite point of view is Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology (New York: Scribner's, 1971)Google Scholar; volume I of this unfinished work bears the title ‘The Proclamation of Jesus’. Even if one were to grant that Jeremias has reconstructed accurately the teachings of Jesus as well as Jesus' understanding of his mission, that reconstruction is precisely not part of the theology (and hence of christology) of the NT.

[33] The common distinction between two-stage and three-stage christologies also relies on pre-existence as the key. There are of course, other ways of classifying NT christologies. For example, one can group them according to the genre in which they are found (doxological materials, terse formulae, narratives, etc.), or according to what they emphasize in the Christ-event (e.g. the character of Jesus' public mission, herald of the Kingdom, death). The advantage of using pre-existence is that it keeps in focus the shape of the event as a whole.

[34] See the four essays on the subject in Smith, D. Moody, Johannine Christianity (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1984) Pt 2.Google Scholar

[35] Concern for this question is one of the themes in Brevard Childs, S., The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).Google Scholar

[36] In formulating this issue I was stimulated by the programmatic article by Knierim, Rolf, ‘The Task of an Old Testament Theology’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 6 (1984) 25–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar