Christ and Controversy

The Person of Christ in Nonconformist Thought and Ecclesial Experience, 1600–2000

Alan P.F. Sell

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781610976695
  9781498261586
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630875459
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

What may happen when Christians take doctrine seriously? One possible answer is that the shape of churchly life "on the ground" can be significantly altered. This pioneering study is both an account of the doctrine of the person of Christ as it has been expounded by the theologians of historic English and Welsh Nonconformity, and an attempt to show that while many Nonconformists held classical orthodox views of the doctrine between 1600 and 2000, others advocated alternative understandings of Christ's person; hence the evolution of the ecclesial landscape as we have come to know it. The traditions here under review are those of Old Dissent: the Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians and their Unitarian heirs; and the Calvinistic and Arminian Methodist bodies that owe their origin to the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.

1

Introduction

Confronted by a vast territory, in this book I shall understand by “Nonconformist,” not the Roman Catholics, but the most long-standing traditions of English and Welsh historic Dissent: the Congregationalists, Baptists, and Presbyterians (some of whom segued into Unitarianism); together with those later arrivals on the Nonconformist scene, the Methodists, both Calvinistic and Arminian, and the orthodox Presbyterians of varying stripes who came together in the Presbyterian Church of England (1876). I shall not refer to those who have come and gone (the Muggletonians and Sandemanians, for example), or to those groups—the Plymouth Brethren and the Pentecostal and Black Churches among them—that have been formed since 1800. My terminus year is 2000.

I begin with a statement of the obvious: there is not a “Nonconformist Christology” that is distinct from all others. What we find is that from the time of the English Reformation onwards Nonconformists have concerned themselves with a miscellany of Christological topics; but that is not all. Christology has been far more than an armchair hobby or the subject of coffee house discussions. It has played a significant role in Nonconformist ecclesial experience. It is not an exaggeration to say that more secessions within Nonconformity have been prompted by, or at least justified by reference to, divergent views of the person of Christ than by any other aspect of Christian doctrine. Certainly the doctrines of creation, the particular theories of the atonement, and party lines regarding the last things have not, in England and Wales, led to as much troubling of the Nonconformist ecclesial waters as have differing views concerning Christ’s person.

This study is abstractive in nature. It is possible, no doubt legitimate, and many would say necessary, to construe the whole of Christian doctrine—from creation to eschatology—through a Christological lens, but in this book the focus is strictly upon the person of Christ as such. Thus, for example, the discussion is conducted more or less in isolation from soteriology. I shall not dwell upon the Christological offices of prophet, priest, and king, because they are more readily accommodated under the heading of Christ’s work. I do not, of course, think that Christ’s person can satisfactorily be dissociated from his work. On the contrary, Christ does what he does because he is who he is; the incarnation precedes the cross, both temporally and logically. It is undeniable that throughout the Christian ages (except when specific doctrinal questions are in view, as here) the question of Christ’s person has been raised in consequence of the understanding—indeed, in many cases of the personal appropriation—of his work. Thus the earliest Christians did not occupy themselves by pondering the two nature doctrine of the person of Christ. They had found forgiveness, new life, salvation in Christ crucified and risen, and their question was, “If this is what Jesus has done, who must he be?”1 This is the question that many Nonconformists (and others) have sought to answer as they have taken the cross as their starting-point for theological reflection. P. T. Forsyth was characteristically to the point: “Our approach to Christology,” he declared, “is through the office of Christ as Saviour. We only grasp the real divinity of His person by the value for us of His Cross.”2 Forsyth’s student, H. F. Lovell Cocks underscored the point: “What Christ is can only appear in what He has done for us.”3 The same theologian may sum the matter up: “The earliest believers did not first believe in Christ’s deity, and then receive the forgiveness of God and the reconciliation through Him. It was the other way about.”4 With this I agree, but Christians have nevertheless interpreted Christ’s person in a variety of ways, and it is perfectly proper to present and discuss their findings. As before, I have P. T. Forsyth on my side: “The theology of the incarnation is necessary to explain our Christian experience and not our rational nature, nor our religious psychology.”5

Again, apart from the question of the relation of the Father to the Son, I shall refer to the doctrine of the Trinity only so far as that is necessary to sketch the Trinitarian context within which discussion of the person of Christ and, indeed, the ecclesial disruptions to which I shall refer, are alike rooted; and I shall not pursue the theme of the believer’s union with Christ which is central to the Christian doctrine of humanity. Yet again, the pursuit of apologetic attempts to “prove” the divinity of Christ from his miracles, or the scrutiny of the several quests of the historical Jesus, would take us too far afield. To repeat, the focus here is upon the person of Christ as this has been discussed in, and as it has shaped, the major streams of English and Welsh Nonconformity. We shall find among the running themes from the seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century that of the eternal generation of the Son; we shall witness the procession of some Nonconformists from either Calvinism or Arminianism (sometimes through Arianism) to Unitarianism—a clamant issue with ecclesial implications in the long eighteenth century and to a lesser extent subsequently; we shall note the way in which, in the wake of modern biblical criticism, and inspired by certain aspects of German theology, some Nonconformists developed kenotic Christologies; we shall consider some modern assessments of the Chalcedonian Formula; and we shall discover that from about 1950 onwards Nonconformist theologians have not produced substantial systematic studies of Christ’s person. I emphasize the term “theologians” because I cannot here accommodate biblical scholars; nor can I plough the rich field of Nonconformist hymnody, from which (to step into a hornet’s nest) it was, conceivably, once more possible for Nonconformists at large to imbibe more aspects of Christological doctrine than is always possible from some latter day hymnic effusions.6 Unless the context indicates a wider reference, I shall throughout mean “the doctrine of the person of Christ” when using the term “Christology.”

Two cautionary words must be uttered before we proceed. First, in treating the subject of Christ’s person we cannot avoid the fact that we are thereby confronted by mystery. I do not invoke mystery in order to excuse a refusal to think, still less with a view to sanctifying irrationalism. Two Nonconformists saw point I have in mind: “If by a doctrine of the person of Christ we mean a theory that will explain his person, it is from the nature of the case impossible. The idea of the God-man, however inevitable it may be, is in itself but a symbol; it is not a fully intelligible notion.”7 Furthermore, “We dare not forget that no part of Christian doctrine is more exposed to the menace of mere intellectualism than Christology.”8

At the same time, faith seeks understanding, and to respond to the intellectualist menace by suppressing our questions and resting upon blind faith would be a sad exchange; it would also betoken a failure to attempt an answer to the question that Jesus posed to his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” (Matt 16:15). The history of the doctrine of the person of Christ is in large part the history of attempts to answer that question. One of the most significant attempts made is that of the theologians who devised the Chalcedonian Formula, to which I referred in passing, which was promulgated in the year 451. I mention it now because it enshrines many of the Christological issues that were still alive when the Nonconformists came upon the scene and, indeed, that remain alive to this day. It reads as follows:

Following the holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance [homoousios] with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, in the last days, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer [Theotokos]; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence [hupostasis], not parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.9

Positively, the major claims are that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine; that he has two distinct natures, but is not two distinct persons, but one; and that he was eternally the Son of God—“begotten of the Father before the ages” (eternal generation). Negatively, the view of Arius (d. 336) (opposed by Athanasius {c. 296–373}) that Christ was the Father’s pre-eminent creature—a subordinate divinity, and that there was a time when the Son of God was not, is repudiated, for Christ is declared to be eternal and of one substance with the Father. Again, the “four famous adverbs” (italicized above) rule out the views of Eutyches (c.378–454) that Christ’s humanity was absorbed into his divinity; of Apollinarius (c. 310–c. 390), who, in teaching that the human soul of Jesus was replaced by the divine Logos, emphasised Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity; and of Nestorius (post 351—post 451), who was long thought to have maintained that in the incarnate Christ there was both the eternally begotten Son, and the Son born of Mary.10 Here are themes that shall be resumed as we proceed. We shall see that the Chalcedonian Formula is open to criticism; but my point here is that the Chalcedonian divines cannot be rebuked for, to put it crudely, not elucidating the mechanics of the incarnation. They knew when they were confronted by mystery, and their Formula was a confession, not an hypothesis, still less a full-blown explanation. We may permit the Anglican theologian, John Burnaby, to draw the moral for us: “In principle . . . Chalcedon warns us against all theories of Incarnation. For theories must aim at making an idea of an event intelligible; and they can only do that by bringing their subject into line with the rest of our experience. But the event of the Incarnation is strictly uniqu...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Classical Affirmations and Alternative Stances in the Seventeenth Century
• Chapter 3: Nonconformist Christology in the Eighteenth Century
• Chapter 4: Representative Ecclesial Repercussions in Eighteenth-Century England
• Chapter 5: Representative Ecclesial Repercussions in Eighteenth-Century Wales
• Chapter 6: Christological Contributions and Ecclesial Developments 1800–1891
• Chapter 7: The Proliferation of Nonconformist Christology 1891–1950
• Chapter 8: The Decline of Nonconformist Christological Endeavour 1950–2000
• Chapter 9: Epilogue
• Bibliography