doctrine #5 - person of Christ

Question: How recognisable do you think the Christ of orthodox Protestantism would have been to the early church?

Initially, it is pleasing to note some difficulty in pinning down some of the specifics: perhaps we have not warped the message over time as much as we sometimes think. As the Council of Chalcedon (451) indicated, provided Christianity recognizes the twofold nature of Christ being “truly divine and truly human” (McGrath, 273) there is a much lesser importance to how people explore or articulate it. Indeed, it appears many models of contemporary thinking are shared with the church of Acts: recogising Jesus as Messiah, as Saviour, as Son of God – terms all used by Paul and other NT authors. Equally, the 20th century rediscovery in recognition of Jesus as the bearer of a new relationship to the Holy Spirit (McGrath, 300) holds forth strongly in post-Pentecost Acts.

However there remain sore points of conflict (Gunton, 245-72.) For example, though Luther declared Christ’s legacy was both pro me (for me) and pro nobis (for us) it appears that we Protestants continues to skew pro me, with a heavy emphasis on personal relationship – leading to the emotive thinking that Scripture must speak to us as individuals for us to truly believe and accept it. Equally we can be tempted to equate our God-consciousness with how Jesus related to God – something Friedrich Schleiermacher was conscious to try and differentiate, and perhaps the apostles would have been shocked by, having walked with Jesus and known his perfection in the flesh. Whilst of course relating to God is a matter of a personal heart – for only we know our own minds – it is often key to reflect on the corporate reverence the early church held Christ in.

Though we might think nothing of calling Jesus God, the NT writers were all too conscious of just how much weight this statement carried – and so on the three occasions it clearly appears in Scripture, the words are picked and chosen with extreme care (McGrath, 281.) Perhaps we would do well to think the same.


Bibliography
K Tanner, ‘Jesus Christ’ in C Gunton, (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, (Cambridge: CUP, 1998) pp. 245-72.
A McGrath, Christian Thelogy: An Introduction, fourth ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) pp. 272-305.