The Relationship Between the Person and Work of Christ
The Relationship Between the Person and Work of Christ
Older works of Christian theology often draw a sharp distinction between “the person of Christ” or “Christology,” on the one hand, and “the work of Christ” or “soteriology,” on the other. This distinction is maintained in this present work, for purely educational reasons, in that a full discussion of both areas could not be contained within the limits of a single chapter. However, the distinction is increasingly regarded as being unhelpful, save for presentational reasons. Theologically, the close connection between the two areas is now generally recognized. Among the considerations which led to this development, the following two are of especial importance.
First, the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) drew a famous distinction between the Ding-an-sich (“thing in itself”) and the human perception of this thing. Kant's argument is that we cannot know things directly but only insofar as we can perceive them or apprehend their impact. Although the ultimate philosophical justification of this assertion lies beyond the scope of this volume (and is, in any case, questionable), its theological implications are clear: the identity of Jesus is known through his impact upon us. In other words, the person of Christ becomes known through his work. There is thus an organic link between Christology and soteriology. This is the approach adopted by Albrecht Benjamin Ritschl in his Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (1874). Ritschl argued that it was improper to separate Christology and soteriology since weperceive “the nature and attributes, that is the determination of being, only in the effect of a thing upon us, and we think of the nature and extent of its effect upon us as its essence.”
The second consideration is the growing realization of the affinities between functional and ontological Christologies – that is, between Christologies that make affirmations about the function or work of Christ and those that make affirmations concerning his identity or being. To put it simply: there is a robust link between who Jesus Christ is and what he does.
Athanasius was one of the earliest Christian writers to make this connection explicit. Only God can save, he asserts. Yet Christ is the savior of humanity. What does this statement concerning the function of Christ tell us about his identity? If Jesus Christ is capable of functioning as savior, who must he be? Christology and soteriology are thus seen as two sides of the same coin rather than two independent areas of thought.
This point was also made by Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014), who stressed the way in which Christology and soteriology have had the closest of connections in Christian thinking:
The divinity of Jesus and his freeing and redeeming significance for us are related in the closest possible way. To this extent, Melanchthon's famous sentence is appropriate: “Who Jesus Christ is becomes known in his saving action.” [...] Since Schleiermacher the close tie between Christology and soteriology has won general acceptance in theology: This is particularly to be seen in one characteristic feature of modern Christology. One no longer separates the divine–human person and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, as was done in medieval Scholastic theology and, in its wake, in the dogmatics of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant orthodoxy, but rather, with Schleiermacher, both are conceived as two sides of the same thing.
The importance of this point can be seen by comparing a style of Christology which stresses the humanity of Christ (especially in relation to his moral example: see p. 233) with a Pelagian soteriology (which stresses the total freedom of the human will: see pp. 330–4). For Pelagius (c.354–c.420), humanity had the ability to do right; it merely needed to be told what to do. The moral example of Christ provided this example. This exemplarist view of Christ is thus linked with a view of human nature which minimizes the extent of human sin, and the strange and tragic history of humanity in general. As the English theologian Charles Gore (1853–1932) pointed out incisively over a century ago, in an oft-quoted passage:
Inadequate conceptions of Christ's person go hand in hand with inadequate conceptions of what human nature wants. The Nestorian conception of Christ [...] qualifies Christ for being an example of what man can do, and into what wonderful union with God he can be assumed if he is holy enough; but Christ remains one man among many, shut in within the limits of a single human personality, and influencing man only from outside. He can be a Redeemer of man if man can be saved from outside by bright example, but not otherwise. The Nestorian Christ is logically associated with the Pelagian man. [...] The Nestorian Christ is the fitting Saviour of the Pelagian man.
As will be clear from our earlier discussion of the views of Nestorius, we need to note that modern theological scholarship would no longer agree with Gore's characterization of a “Nestorian” Christology, nor his purely negative assessment of this approach (pp. 223–4). Yet Gore's general point remains important, in that a significant connection is established between Christology and soteriology. An exemplarist soteriology, with its associated understanding of the nature and role of the moral example of Jesus Christ, is ultimately the correlative of a Pelagian view of the situation and abilities of humanity. The ontological gap between Christ and ourselves is contracted, in order to minimize the discontinuity between his moral personality and ours. Christ is the supreme human example, who evinces an authentically human lifestyle which we are alleged to be capable of imitating. Our view of who Jesus Christ is ultimately reflects our understanding of the situation of fallen humanity.