Bible Stories

It must not be forgotten that the traditional doctrine of the incarnation remains the official teaching of most branches of the church. It is embodied not only in the early creeds but also in the great church confessions of the century following the Reformation. At its beginning in 1948 the World Council of Churches declared itself to be ‘a fellowship of churches which accept the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour‘. In 1961 this basis was expanded to confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) clearly assumed the church’s traditional teaching ‘concerning Christ the Word of God made flesh’. Its own statements dealt chiefly with Christ’s historical place in God’s dealings with mankind.

Nevertheless many hold today that the belief in Christ’s person arrived at by the church in the early centuries is no longer adequate for today. Some claim that it does not even make sense: a human being could not be divine as well without ceasing to be truly human. Rudolf Bultmann (died 1976) has popularized the theory that the New Testament’s statements about Christ are largely ‘mythical’. Phrases like ‘becoming man’, ’sending his Son’, ‘raised from the dead’ and ‘at the Father’s right hand’ must not be taken literally. These ‘mythical’ statements use a pre-scientific, outdated world- view to express what Jesus Christ meant to the early Christians. Their meaning for human life today can be discovered only by stripping off the mythical form of expression. This meaning, according to Bultmann’s view, belongs entirely to this world. There is no ‘other world‘ for the Son of God to ‘come from’ or ‘return to’. Bultmann and his followers wanted to set Christ free from the strange world of first- century Palestine, and to let the gospel be heard by modern men and women in their own language and forms of thought.

In recent years, scholars have argued for a distinction in the Gospels between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’. It is often claimed that the first Christians were not interested in what Jesus said and did in Nazareth and Galilee, but only in the risen and exalted Lord Christ. Their gospel-message of the risen Christ has strongly coloured the presentation of Jesus in the Gospels, so that it is now difficult to discover what Jesus was really like. Certainly, the Gospels were written to present Christ as Saviour and Lord, but this did not rule out a keen interest in what really happened. Christian faith affirms that the risen Christ we trust and worship is none other than the Jesus who healed and taught and hungered and died.

In modern times theologians have often put forward exaggerated contrasts about the person of Christ — between who he was and what he achieved, between Chalcedon and the New Testament, between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. Such exaggerations may help in the long run to produce a more balanced picture of Christ. Theologians must always aim to bridge the gulf between the world of Jesus and our culture, between Nazareth and Jerusalem and Tokyo and Nairobi. Christ is the Saviour and Lord of twentieth- century people too, and must be presented in terms that are full of meaning for them. But we must beware of the temptation to create our own image of Christ. ‘The political Christ‘ has recently become very popular. Attempts have been made to portray him as a liberator, a forerunner of freedom-fighters and the champion of the oppressed. These portrayals have rightly drawn attention to neglected aspects of the Gospels. But the church’s beliefs about Christ will outlive, as it has already outlived, attempts to fit him into current fashions, merely contemporary programmes or ideals. Christ is greater than them all.

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