Revisioning Christology

Theology in the Reformed Tradition

Oliver D. Crisp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409430056
• eBook ISBN: 9781317063636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Constructive contemporary theology requires serious engagement with the theologians of the past. This book offers a series of studies in the Christology of key representatives in the Reformed tradition engaging their thought for contemporary dogmatics. Thinkers from each of the five centuries in which Reformed theology has flourished are represented - John Calvin; John Owen; Jonathan Edwards; William Shedd; Donald Baillie; and Kathryn Tanner - each of whom in different ways challenge conventional accounts of Christology. The book is organized thematically, linking historic and contemporary discussions of Christology in theology and philosophy by engaging the thinking of these theologians in a collegial way, using their work as means of promoting constructive systematic theology today. Oliver Crisp presents an important contribution to broadening our understanding of Reformed theology by showing how important theologians have taken views often at odds with 'textbook' accounts of the tradition. Written in an accessible style, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, including upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and scholars of Christian theology, philosophy and religious studies.

Chapter 1
Donald Baillie (1887–1954), Paradox and Christology

Our effort, therefore, to deal with the problems that arise from belief in the Incarnation must start with the confession, or rather with the claim, that from the nature of the case their solution cannot be found by us. If any man says that he understands the relation of the Deity to the humanity in Christ, he only makes clear that he does not understand at all what is meant by an Incarnation.

Archbishop William Temple1

One of the classics of mid-twentieth-century Anglophone systematic theology is the study in Christology produced by Donald Macpherson Baillie, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and Professor at the University of St Andrews, entitled God Was in Christ.2 Baillie’s book touches on a number of themes having to do the Incarnation and atonement. One of these is the central place paradox has in Christian doctrine in general, and in the Incarnation in particular. Baillie observes that, ‘The Incarnation presents us indeed with the supreme paradox, and I do not believe that we can ever eliminate from it the element of paradox without losing the Incarnation itself’ (GWC, 106). What is more, ‘It seems plain that it is the presence of this paradox that has always made it so difficult to express the doctrine of the Incarnation without running into error on one side or on the other, so as to lose either the divinity or the humanity’ (GWC, 129). On Baillie’s way of thinking, it would seem that the Incarnation is an inherently paradoxical doctrine.

Our consideration of these matters begins with an examination of the nature of mystery and paradox as it bears upon central Christian doctrines like the Trinity and Incarnation. We then turn in a second section to Baillie’s account of what he dubs the paradox of the Incarnation, to ascertain the shape of his doctrine. The third section analyses whether Baillie’s view offers an adequate explanation of the apparently paradoxical nature of the Incarnation. In the recent philosophical-theological literature there has been some discussion of the relationship between paradox and Christian theology. The final section uses this recent philosophical-theological work to amend Baillie’s doctrine in a bid to offer a more adequate understanding of the apparently paradoxical nature of this central Christian dogma.

Mystery and Paradox in Christian Theology

It is not merely a commonplace but part of the very warp and woof of Christian theology to think that God is essentially beyond our ken. But there are different ways of conceiving the nature of this mystery and its pervasiveness in Christian thinking. To give just two examples of this, consider what St Anselm of Canterbury and St Thomas Aquinas say concerning what we can know of the divine essence, beginning with St Anselm in his Monologion:

Therefore whatever is truly said of his essence is not understood as expressing what sort of thing or how great he is, but rather as expressing what he is. For whatever is a thing of a certain quality or quantity is something else with respect to what it is, and so it is not simple but composite. (Monologion 17)3

Later in the same work he goes on to say, ‘while the same name (substance) may sometimes be shared by both [God and creatures], what it signifies must be understood in different ways’ (Monologion 26). But other things he says elsewhere must temper these words. For instance, in Proslogion 15 he remarks:

Therefore, Lord, not only are you that than which a greater cannot be thought, but you are also something greater than can be thought. For since it is possible to think that there is such a one, then, if you are not this same being something greater than you could be thought – which cannot be.

So it would appear that according to St Anselm we can express things about the divine nature, even though the divine nature is such that it is ‘greater than can be thought’ – something beyond human comprehension.4

Now, consider St Thomas:

Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God ‘whether He exists,’ and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him.

Hence we know that His relationship with creatures so far as to be the cause of them all; also that creatures differ from Him, inasmuch as He is not in any way part of what is caused by Him; and that creatures are not removed from Him by reason of any defect on His part, but because He superexceeds them all.5

Aquinas does not deny that we can know things about God from his effects seen in the natural order. But we cannot apprehend the divine essence through human reason alone. God’s essence is forever beyond us. Thus, there appears to be a subtle but important difference between the scope of human knowledge about God as conceived by Anselm and its scope as conceived by Thomas. But, like all traditional, orthodox theologians, both agree that there is a profound sense in which the divine nature is beyond human apprehension.

One very influential strand of medieval theology claims that God is so mysterious that we cannot positively affirm anything substantive about the divine nature, strictly speaking. On this way of thinking, religious language is intimately connected to apophaticism, the so-called ‘negative way,’ according to which our approach to God must be by stating only what God is not, rather than what God is. The ‘brilliant darkness’6 of God’s nature is forever beyond our understanding. We can only hope to say something about what he cannot be, from this creaturely side of the boundary that separates us from God.

We can express the conceptual hard core of apophaticism in the form of a thesis: nothing we think, say or believe about God is strictly true of God as he is in himself. Following William Alston, let us call this the Divine Mystery Thesis, or DMT.7 An important source of material for the DMT can be found in the paradoxes and puzzles into which Christian theology so often seems to run. As Alston puts it, ‘Despite strenuous efforts by the best minds, the explanation of how there can be only one God but three divine persons and how one and the same individual, Jesus Christ, can be fully human and fully divine seems to persistently evade our grasp … So strong has been the aura of mystery that pervades traditional Christianity that the movement of natural religion (explored in Hume’s famous Dialogues) was impelled by a hunger for a form of religion in which everything would be clear and simple, well within the grasp of any normal human intellect.’8

But one need not affirm the DMT to find the doctrines of the Trinity or the Incarnation puzzling or paradoxical.9 Many Christian theologians not enamoured of the DMT have thought that fundamental doctrines such as the Incarnation appear to be paradoxical, but are not in fact contradictory.10 But there are different ways in which this claim could be construed, theologically speaking. It may just be that comprehension of (say) the nature of the Incarnation is beyond what we currently understand. In which case, it is possible that at some future time, either in this life or the next, human beings may come to apprehend much more about the Incarnation – perhaps even understanding it without paradox. Alternatively, it may be that central tenets of Christian doctrine such as the Incarnation are not obviously contradictory, although by their very nature they are beyond the ability of human finite ratiocination to fathom. In which case, such doctrines will remain forever mysterious to human minds.

It seems to me that many theologians would want to affirm one or other of these claims even if they do not endorse the DMT. Often one finds Christian thinkers who aver that we cannot fully comprehend the Incarnation. Whether their expectation is that at some point in the future believers will be able to understand the doctrine is often less clear, or not explicitly stated. But it does not seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility that human beings will never fathom the central mysteries of the faith. There may even be good theological reasons for thinking that the further one penetrates the mysteries of the faith, the greater the number of puzzles and paradoxes that are generated. As Jonathan Edwards observes at one point,

I am far from asserting … any explication of this mystery [of the Trinity] that unfolds and removes the mysteriousness and incomprehensibleness of it: for I am sensible that however, by what has been said, some difficulties are lessened, others that are new appear; and the number of those things that appear mysterious, wonderful and incomprehensible are increased by it … No wonder that the more things we are told concerning that which is so infinitely above our reach, the number of visible mysteries increases.11

This should not be a terribly surprising conclusion given that we are dealing with the difference between humans of limited intelligence and a divine being of infinite intelligence. It is not particularly daring to think that, if there is a God, there are some things he understands that we never will. One might even expect that to be the case. Some contemporary philosophers have conceded that such unfathomable mysteries obtain with respect to what are comparatively much more mundane matters, such as comprehending the mind–body problem. Here the idea is that because human beings do not have the right ‘hardware’ with which to be able to successfully grasp the nature of the difficulty in question, it will remain beyond our grasp until and unless we evolve beyond our current state of intellectual development. In this connection the British philosopher Colin McGinn writes,

it is surely possible that we could never arrive at a grasp of P; there is, as I said, no guarantee that our cognitive powers permit the solution of every problem we can recognize. Only a misplaced idealism about the natural world would warrant the dogmatic claim that everything is knowable by the human species at this stage of its evolutionary development (consider the same claims made on behalf of cro-Magnon man).12

If this is feasible with respect to the mind–body problem, it is surely possible that the same sort of reasoning obtains, mutatis mutandis, when we are faced with making sense of the doctrines of the Trinity or Incarnation. Even if one thinks that our human reflections on the Trinity or the Incarnation always generate paradoxes or antinomies that we cannot resolve, this does not necessarily mean that such doctrines are contradictory in nature. Nor does this necessarily imply that we cannot say anything positive about the divine nature – as we saw with St Anselm and St Thomas. In a similar fashion, one could claim that the mind–body problem may elude humans until and unless they evolve, and yet that the problem itself is not irresolvable in principle.

To sum up thus far: in historic Christian theology there is a deep-seated connection between apophaticism and the DMT. One source of data for the DMT is fundamental doctrine the paradigms of which are the Trinity and Incarnation. But, although this connection between apophaticism and the DMT is both strong and deep, one need not affirm either to find central doctrines of the faith apparently paradoxical in nature. Whether one thinks that such apparent paradox is in principle comprehensible by human beings or not is moot, depending on how deep one thinks the mysteries of the faith actually are, and how optimistic one is about human intellectual evolution.

This brings us to the nature of the paradox involved in the Incarnation in particular. I take it that paradoxes yield or entail self-contradictions, as when someone says ‘what I am now saying is false,’ which is an instance of the infamous Liar Paradox. It is a paradox because if the speaker is uttering the truth, he is lying; but if he is lying, he is uttering the truth.13 A contradiction is thereby generated. Is the Incarnation a paradox of this sort – is that what is meant when theologians say ‘the Incarnation is inherently paradoxical’? There are certainly Christian thinkers who seem to think so. Some even revel in the contradictions they claim Christian doctrine generates – as if there is something virtuous in crucifying the intellect on the cross of paradox and contradiction.14 But surely this is gravely mistaken.

There is a distinction to be made between what we might call a real paradox and an apparent one. The doctrine of the Incarnation, like the doctrine of the Trinity is, I take it, an apparent, not a real, paradox. By that I mean, the Incarnation (again, like the Trinity – though I shall not continue to refer to both doctrines from now on since our focus is Christology), appears to be paradoxical in nature, but is not really paradoxical. Real paradoxes, such as the Liar Paradox, generate or yield self-contradictions. But it would seem to be self-evident that no true Christian doctrine can be self-contradictory, since this would be to violate a fundamental law of logic. And, as far as I can see, no truth can be had which violates the law of non-contradiction.

Now, there is much that can be learned from a real paradox, and some real paradoxes yield philosophically interesting problems (the Liar Paradox being one such). But the Incarnation is not a real paradox. It has often been suggested that the Incarnation is a real paradox because it is a doctrine that teaches Christ is one person with a divine and a human nature. But, it is said, an entity cannot be both human and divine – that is paradoxical, in the sense of being a real paradox that generates contradiction.15 But this is erroneous. We have some idea of the concept ‘human being,’ though the necessary and sufficient conditions for what counts as a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Donald Baillie (1887–1954), Paradox and Christology
• 2 John Calvin (1509–1564) on the Motivation for the Incarnation
• 3 Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), Idealism and Christology
• 4 William Shedd (1820–1894) on the Theanthropic Person of Christ
• 5 John Owen (1616–1683) on Spirit Christology
• 6 Kathryn Tanner (1954–) on Incarnation as Atonement
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index