Church Doctrine

Volume 4: Reconciliation

McGlasson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532632037
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The present volume is the fourth in a five-volume study of church doctrine.The multivolume set covers the major parts of church doctrine: Canon, God, Creation, Reconciliation, and Redemption. The first volume begins with an introduction to the entire project on why doctrine matters, which stresses the ecumenical, global, and above all biblical horizons of church doctrine as a primary expression of Christian witness.The purpose of this fourth volume is to celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ as the treasure of the church and the power of God for the reconciliation of the world. The gospel bears witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and calls for faith in him as the free gift of forgiveness and new life. The gospel is constantly in motion, tearing down every barrier of human bigotry and prejudice, not only forming a new society, but reforming the church itself.Church doctrine is not a luxury, but a necessity for the living community of faith, by which its witness in word and deed is tested against the one true measure of Christ the risen Lord.

1

The Incarnation

We come now to the central theme of the entire content of the Christian message, which is the person and work of Jesus Christ. “We proclaim Christ crucified . . .” (1 Cor 1:23); that is the sum and substance of our every word and deed as followers of Jesus Christ. God’s reconciliation of the world through Jesus Christ is the whole of the gospel, the good news by which we live and die, the one comfort and encouragement we share with all in the community of faith, the one hope we proclaim to every listening ear in the world, the one joy to which we cling with every fiber of our existence. We can and must distinguish the person and work of Christ for the purposes of rigorous and coherent theological reflection. Yet in the end, the work of Christ is identical to his person, and the person of Christ is identical to his work. We cannot know the true identity of Jesus Christ apart from his redemptive action for the salvation of the world; nor can we fully comprehend his redemptive action apart from a true understanding of his mysterious identity.

Moreover, neither his person nor his work can be reduced to, or abstracted from, a christological or messianic principle. Rather, the subject matter of Christian faith, indeed the entire content of both Testaments of Scriptures is not a principle, but the living reality of Jesus Christ himself, the Lord of all creation, the one Reconciler of the entire cosmos. Jesus Christ himself is the gospel; Jesus Christ is the content of the Christian faith; Jesus Christ is the faith we believe. We reflect in fragments upon the person and work of Christ, but with the earnest and hopeful prayer that our dispersed fragments will be gathered up by the grace of the risen and exalted Lord into his own glorious unity. Nor can Christology be captured in the neat form of a logically deduced set of true propositions, even if the attempt is honestly made to discern those propositions in the pages of the Bible. The biblical witness does not yield logical propositions; it points rather to the living reality of Jesus Christ himself, who is attested with truthfulness only in the dynamic and unfolding doctrine of the church, based on the witness of Scripture.

Scripture as canon is based upon the authority of the risen Christ. Only now, in our volume on reconciliation, is the crucial connection between canon and Christology brought into its clearest light. Theological reflection on the person and work of Christ from a canonical perspective will mean several things, each proven only in the actual results. Fully to grasp the mystery of Christ depends upon turning to both Testaments of Scripture, which, each in their own way, bear witness to the same true reality: which is Jesus Christ himself. Theological reflection means following the witnesses of the Bible to the reality of which they speak, and then returning to those same witnesses in the light of that reality, through the guidance of the Spirit. The canon of Scripture, on the one hand, sets clear boundaries outside of which the gospel is not rightly preached, the true life of discipleship not genuinely pursued. Concerning these boundaries, the creeds of the church, especially Chalcedon, will be brought to bear on a fresh search for contemporary witness to Christ. Yet at the same time, canon allows a great deal of flexibility within those boundaries, and theological reflection must be careful not to say yes here and no there too quickly, as has so often happened in the life of the church, as for example in the great reformation controversies of Lutheran and Reformed Christology. Above all, canon means that there can be no retreat into the past, even here in this most sacred precinct of Christian witness. Even here, the risk of faith must be ventured. Even here, the word of Scripture requires a fresh response of faith in a new generation.

What does it mean to confess Jesus Christ in our global society today?

a. Chalcedon

As we have seen,1 in the Nicene Creed the early church, on the basis of Scripture, confesses the unique and majestic reality of God as unity in diversity, diversity in unity. While using concepts drawn from Greek philosophical terminology, the creed in fact affirms with crystal clarity the astonishing biblical view: that the one God is an eternal relationship of love, a living communion of mutual love and mutual interpenetration. To use the technical vocabulary of the creed, God is one essence in three persons, or modes of being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. An arid, Greek philosophical transcendental theism was thereby rejected, in favor of the biblical-based reality of the triune God. While the doctrine of the Trinity as attested by church doctrine is not to be found with exact expression in the Bible, the triadic formula of the biblical witness points to the triune reality, and as Calvin in particular stresses, non-biblical words are perfectly legitimate—even essential—when they are used cautiously and prudently to draw out the clear teaching of Scripture into the light of day. The creed is not set alongside Scripture as a second source of divine revelation (Tradition II); rather, the creed is the church’s living answer to Scripture, echoing the rule of faith that is in fact the genuine content of Scripture itself (Tradition I).Thus, Scripture and tradition are joined together in the service of divine truth for the sake of church and world.

In the creed of Chalcedon (451), a different question is raised and answered: namely, what is the relationship between the humanity and divinity of Christ?2 While Christology may have preceded the confession of the Trinity in the early development of Christian thought, the full implications of the true divinity and true humanity of Jesus Christ were not drawn out until after the doctrine of the Trinity received its comprehensive formulation. Now, there are obviously profound similarities in the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Once again, the issues raised in Chalcedon are clearly found in Scripture, yet the creed makes use of non-biblical concepts to reach essential theological results. Or again, the creed rests upon the authority of Scripture, and makes no claim to revelatory status (Tradition II), and yet the creed offers itself as the church’s clear affirmation of the rule of faith concerning the vital issue of the identity of Jesus Christ as testified in Scripture (Tradition I). Yet there is also a basic difference in the logic of the creed, a difference that reflects the multifaceted theological role of Scripture as canon. The Nicene Creed quite simply draws a line, a boundary, which completely excludes the teaching of Arianism. Arian teaching is heresy. The issue is simply: yes or no. By contrast, the Chalcedonian creed, while it clearly draws boundaries excluding two extreme positions (Eutychianism and Nestorianism) as heretical, is largely based on the effort to build a consensus between three equally legitimate alternative christological schools of thought in the early church: the Alexandrian and the Antiochene in the East, and that of the West. The creed effectively and clearly says no to the two extremes, but then allows for a measure of flexibility within the one rule of faith. Just as canon protects against false doctrine, yet with equal importance and legitimacy protects the inherent complexity of divine truth, so too must the creeds of the church honor the inherent logic of the content of Christian witness. In that sense, the role of the creed is more heuristic in nature: seeking to protect the mystery of Christ, without offering a final and exclusive definition, which only comes through renewed encounter with the risen Christ through the witness of Scripture in each new generation of the community of faith.

A very brief outline of the issues raised by the Chalcedonian creed is now in order. Numerous passages in Scripture bear witness to Jesus Christ in a simultaneous twofold movement from above to below, and from below to above. Paul summarizes the basic content of the “gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 1:1–4). Three issues are instantly raised by the passage: the humanity of Christ (according to the flesh), the divinity of Christ (Son of God with power), and the unity of the two in one person (Jesus Christ our Lord). Now, that is not to say that Paul is espousing the Chalcedonian definition; it is rather to say that the theological concern evidenced in the Chalcedonian definition is accurately discerning a twofold movement in the one identity of Christ that is repeatedly found in Scripture. Or again, John 1:14 declares: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The same christological dynamic appears: a movement from above (the Word became flesh), from below (and lived among us), and the unity of the two (and we have seen his glory). Once again, this is not Chalcedonian Christology, but biblical witness. Nevertheless, the creed is struggling legitimately to understand that to which the biblical witness points, the true subject matter: Jesus Christ himself.

The creed of Chalcedon is as follows: “So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the Virgin God-bearer (theotokou) as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures (in duo phusesin) which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union but rather the property of both natures (tes idiotetos hekateras phuseos) is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being (eis hen prosopon kai mian hupostasin); he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us.”3 Known henceforth as the two-natures doctrine, the creed affirms that Jesus Christ is both truly divine and truly human, yet in on...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part IV: RECONCILIATION
• Chapter 1: The Incarnation
• Chapter 2: The Cross
• Chapter 3: The Resurrection
• Chapter 4: Justification and Sanctification
• Chapter 5: Faith
• Chapter 6: Prayer
• Bibliography