Bible Stories

Modern theology cannot be understood apart from the influence of the movement of thought in the eighteenth century known as the Enlightenment. This gave a new authority and freedom to human reason. Since then, the supernatural character of the life and work of Christ has often been rejected or watered down. Friedrich Schleiermacher (born 1768) is frequently called the father of modern theology’. He thought of Jesus Christ as divine because of his unique consciousness of God. Jesus was first and foremost the perfect example of a life lived in total dependence upon God.

Although ‘absolutely distinguished from all other men through his essential sinlessness and his absolute perfection’, he was no more than a man.

The Enlightenment spread a questioning, sceptical outlook. This influenced the new movement of historical study of the Bible known as ‘biblical criticism’. These different pressures came together to produce ‘the quest for the historicalJesus’ - the simple, human Jesus of the Gospels who had been buried, so it was held, beneath the complicated doctrines of the church. During the nineteenth century numerous lives of Jesus were written. Most of them portrayed Jesus merely as a man. Here was a Jesus who often simply reflected contemporary ideals, the ideals of liberal theology. He was a supreme religious teacher and hero, a religious genius, rather than God’s incarnate Son.

Christ’s self-limitation

A fresh attempt was also made in the nineteenth century to understand how God could become man without his divinity swamping or squeezing out his human experience. This was the theory of Christ’s kenosis or ’self-emptying’ (from a Greek word Paul used in his letter to the Philippians). In becoming man, it was claimed, the Son of God ‘emptied himself’ of his glory, his perfect knowledge and power, and his universal presence. He did not give up his divine nature, although he may voluntarily have surrendered his consciousness of being divine. So his miracles were signs of the Father’s power rather than his own.

But this ‘kenotic theory’ came under heavy attack. It seemed unreal to split Christ’s divine nature from his divine powers. It almost suggested that God was transformed into man, exchanging divinity for humanity. Nevertheless, the theory has had a lot of influence. Some kind of self- limitation was certainly required by the incarnation. The divine glory of the Son was obviously veiled.

A life wholly open to God

Many recent interpretations of the person of Christ have started with the historical figure of Jesus rather than with the eternal Son. They have worked ‘from below’ rather than ‘from above’. The church’s traditional doctrine worked ‘downwards’; the initiative lay with the Son who entered human life from his eternal pre-existence. This emphasis, which may be called Alexandrian, has been maintained by some outstanding modern theologians, such as Karl Barth (died 1968) and T. F. Torrance (born 1913). They and others have also taught that it was our sinful humanity that Christ shared. Christ’s total identification with human life has been a strong point in most modern interpretations of who he is. Barth developed the idea of ‘the humanity of God‘. God and man, who became one in Christ, were not opposite to each other; the incarnation was not itself a union of two incompatible beings, divine and human. Barth also combined the doctrine of Christ’s two natures with that of his two states: both refer to the two sides of what took place in Christ. His humiliation was God’s becoming man to suffer and die, his exaltation was the life of man raised to true human dignity in obedient fellowship with the Father.

Despite powerful presentations like Barth’s, the doctrine of Chalcedon has run into heavy criticism, especially for its use of the language and concepts of Greek philosophy. Its key terms, such as ‘nature‘, ‘person’ and ’substance’, are static, whereas the New Testament uses chiefly dynamic terms. Titles such as ‘Christ‘, ‘Lord’, ‘Son of man‘, and even ‘Son of God‘ and ‘Word’ describe what Jesus achieved for our salvation, not who he was in his inner nature. The early fathers were concerned with Christ in his basic being, while the New Testament speaks about what he did and experienced.

So the life of Christ is frequently reinterpreted as a human life lived totally in the service and power of God, not as the unique personal union of God himself with humanity. Jesus was wholly open to the will of God. He lived out to the highest degree what it means to serve God and others in love. In this way he became a revelation of God and the one through whom God reconciled us to himself. But this way of portraying Christ makes him different only in degree from other servants of God.

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