Christology

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bauckham
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
The One ◽  
Divine Identity

Christology is concerned with the identity of Jesus Christ. This essay explores Paul’s Christology with the help of the various categories that make up a concept of personal identity: name, narrative, character, relationships, and roles. In the case of Jesus Christ, however, the issue of identity is complicated by the fact that Paul not only understands Jesus to be a human individual, but also, in some sense, includes him in the divine identity of the one and only God. This essay explains this puzzle in terms of a Christology of divine identity.

The New Testament and Intellectual Humility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Macaskill
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Sacrificial Love ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

This book examines how the New Testament scriptures might form and foster intellectual humility within Christian communities. It is informed by recent interdisciplinary interest in intellectual humility, and concerned to appreciate the distinctive representations of the virtue offered by the New Testament writers on their own terms. It argues that the intellectual virtue is cast as a particular expression of the broader Christian virtue of humility, which proceeds from the believer’s union with Christ, through which personal identity is reconstituted by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Hence, we speak of ‘virtue’ in ways determined by the acting presence of Jesus Christ, overcoming sin and evil in human lives and in the world. The Christian account of the virtue is framed by this conflict, as believers within the Christian community struggle with natural arrogance and selfishness, and come to share in the mind of Christ. The new identity that emerges creates a fresh openness to truth, as the capacity of the sinful mind to distort truth is exposed and challenged. This affects knowledge and perception, but also volition: for these ancient writers, a humble mind makes good decisions that reflect judgments decisively shaped by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. By presenting ‘humility of mind’ as a characteristic of the One who is worshipped—Jesus Christ—the New Testament writers insist that we acknowledge the virtue not just as an admission of human deficiency or limitation, but as a positive affirmation of our rightful place within the divine economy.

The Metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards’s “Personal Narrative”: Continuous Creation, Personal Identity, and Spiritual Development

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-206
Author(s):  
Christopher Woznicki
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Continuous Creation ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
The One

Summary Central to evangelical piety is the theme of “conversionism”. Among historical figures who embody this characteristic of evangelical piety one finds that Jonathan Edwards plays an important role, in part, because of his 1740 “Personal Narrative”. In this essay I examine the metaphysics underlying Edwards’s view of conversion in his “Personal Narrative”. Special attention is given to Edwards’s doctrine of continuous creation and to a feature that underlies his understanding of spiritual development, namely the One-Subject Criterion. I weigh two options for how Edwards may coherently hold to continuous creation and the One-Subject Criterion: Mark Hamilton’s relative realism/endurance account and Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism. I conclude that given the textual evidence Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism is to be preferred over Hamilton’s view.

scholarly journals Criminalisation of Beggars: the Causes and Consequences of the Phenomenon

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-141
Author(s):  
Witold Klaus
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Informal Social Control ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
Permanent Home ◽  
The One ◽  
Governmental Control ◽  
Ways Of Life

All authorities desire to control various aspects of their subjects’ lives. Those in power claim to do it in the name of protecting the peace and safety of all citizens. For one of groups perceived to be the most dangerous is the one whose members evade formal or informal social control – they do not work, do not have a family or are estranged from them, they have no permanent home. Therefore, to make sure that no one is out of the reach of governmental control, criminal law is utilised against them and whole ways of life, and the everyday behaviours of vagrants and homeless people began to be criminalised. And this process is still ongoing. The law thus punishes a person for their personal identity, and not for specific improper or harmful behaviour undertaken by them. In this paper I would like to analyse the problem of criminalisation of beggars throughout Polish history, and present how it impacted (and still impacts) upon the lives of the poorest and the most excluded parts of Polish society.

Responsibility and the Moral Subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-150
Author(s):  
Gerald McKenny
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Taking Responsibility

For Barth, responsibility is the characteristic feature of the human being as the hearer of God’s command. In its address to human beings, God’s command constitutes them as subjects who are answerable to it. Jesus Christ is the one to whom the command of God is addressed and who answers it; as such, he is the responsible subject on behalf of and in the place of other human beings. Yet in taking responsibility for other human beings in this way, God also makes them responsible—for being in their conduct those for whom God has taken responsibility. Insofar as God has taken responsibility for our responsibility, Barth rejects the tendency of modern responsibility to presume that everything is up to us. Yet insofar as God also makes us responsible, and thereby constitutes us as subjects, Barth retains another key feature of modern responsibility, which is its urgency. While answerability or accountability is the key aspect of responsibility, Barth also leaves room for the imputability of actions to agents and the liability of persons for the effects of their actions. One problem with Barth’s account of responsibility is that his insistence that we are constituted as responsible from outside ourselves, by God’s command, he leaves unclear how it is truly we who are responsible. Another problem is that if we are made responsible by the responsibility Jesus Christ has taken for us, it appears that only Christians know themselves to be responsible.

scholarly journals Tjaart van der Walt: slaaf van Christus – δοῦλος Χριστοῦ

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (2/3) ◽  
Author(s):  
E.J. Smit ◽  
Fika J. Van Rensburg
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Vice Chancellor ◽  
The One ◽  
As If ◽  
Successes And Failures

Tjaart van der Walt: slave of Christ – δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Tjaart van der Walt has carried an array of titles: from Boy, to Young Man, to Mister, to Reverend, to Doctorandus, to Doctor,to Professor, to Rector, to Vice-Chancellor, to CEO, to Ambassador! But the one title he gladly accepts, is “slave of Christ” – or in the Greek he loves so much: δοῦλος Χριστοῦ (doulos Christou)! This has become typical of him and his life: a slave taking his instructions from Jesus Christ as his Owner, his Κύριος (Kurios), being willing to – in each situation and in relationship with any person or organisation – put on his slave clothing, roll up his sleeves, and serve! In this narrative of the life of Tjaart van der Walt we do not want to share lists of successes and failures, but rather we survey the serving life of this “slave of Christ”, as if from an Archimedes vantage point. The present, November 2011, is this Archimedes vantage point.

Teaching the Faith in Early Christianity: Divine and Human Agency

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-164
Author(s):  
Peter Gemeinhardt
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The present paper investigates the relationship between divine and human agency in teaching the Christian faith. While Christian education actually was conveyed by human beings (apostles, teachers, catechists, bishops), many authors claimed that the one and only teacher of Christianity is Jesus Christ, referring to Matt 23:8-9. By examining texts from the 2nd to the 5th century, different configurations of divine and human teaching are identified and discussed. The paper thereby highlights a crucial tension in Early and Late Antique Christianity relating to the possibilities and limitations of communicating the faith.

scholarly journals ’n Kerkregtelike verkenning van die belewing van kerklike eenheid in en oor volks- en taalgrense

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Le R. Du Plooy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One

This article investigates the problem of church unity, paying special attention to unity within and across boundaries of language and culture. The problem is approached from a church canonical point of view. A synopsis is given of the resolutions and viewpoints of the three Afrikaans Churches in South Africa. The reasoning behind the different points of view of these Churches which all adhere to reformational traditions and which all function and work in the same country, is discussed critically. Finally an attempt is made to indicate a few canonical parameters which may be regarded as guidelines to address the problem of unity and diversity in the one Church of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul and the God of the Gift

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-140
Author(s):  
Wesley Hill
Keyword(s):  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Divine Essence ◽  
Real Roots ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The One ◽  
Divine Identity

John Barclay’s book Paul and the Gift complicates a simple opposition between categories of “history” and “being” when it comes to sketching a Pauline doctrine of God. On the one hand, Barclay sees Paul’s understanding of the divine identity as basically narratival and “actualist”: God defines his character in and through the Christ-event. But by tracing the Pauline and post-Pauline placement of Jesus in a pre-existent eternity and as the agent of creation, Barclay also shows that the patristic and later theological tradition’s deployment of the language of divine essence has real roots in the Pauline tradition as well.

Barth and Reformation Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-115
Author(s):  
Randall C. Zachman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church ◽  
Free Word

Karl Barth seeks to restore the Gospel to the centre of Protestant theology by orienting dogmatic theology to the witness of the prophetic and apostolic authors of Scripture and to the theology of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Barth especially endorses Luther’s claim that the proclamation of the living and free Word of God in Jesus Christ lies at the heart of the commission laid on the church, and that the task of theology is to test the truth of that proclamation. However, Barth becomes increasingly critical of Luther and Calvin when they distinguish God revealed in Jesus Christ from God in Godself and when they distinguish a Word of God in Scripture—be it a Word of the Creator or the Word as Law—that is distinct from the one Word of God, Jesus Christ. Barth also disagrees with Luther and Calvin regarding the sacraments, insisting at the end of his career that Jesus Christ is the one and only sacrament of God.

‘The One Jesus Christ’: Romans 5:12–21 and the development of Karl Barth's christology

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orrey McFarland
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

AbstractAlthough many Barth scholars have begun to argue for the necessity of evaluating Barth's theology as an interpretation of scripture, so far these efforts have focused more on hermeneutical questions and less on the specifics of Barth's exegesis, the specific ways his conclusions derive from that exegesis, and the interplay between his exegetical work and his theology. Accordingly, this article seeks to contribute to Barth studies by tracing the development of Barth's christology through his exegesis of Romans 5:12–21 in the first edition of the Romans commentary and Barth's later essay Christ and Adam – specifically how he understands the function of Christ's particularity in relation to his universal soteriological significance. These works have been selected not only because they give extended treatments of the text but also because there is a wide timespan between them. Furthermore, in contrast to the second edition of Romans and the Church Dogmatics, these texts remain relatively untapped, and will consequently provide a unique entry-point into Barth's exegetical work. By looking at Barth's theological development through his exegesis of Paul's text, we have a benchmark by which both to trace Barth's development and to critique it: does Barth do justice to both the particular and universal aspects of the christology of Romans 5:12–21? In this way, I intend to take seriously Barth's recurring assertion that his project succeeded or failed by how well it functioned as biblical interpretation. It will be demonstrated that the early Barth was unable to allow Christ's particularity to have much of a soteriological function in his interpretation of Romans 5:12–21, and was thus compelled to downplay the particularity of Christ which is emphasised in the text and instead emphasise his universality as the only aspect of soteriological value. By contrast, the later Barth grounded Christ's universality precisely in his particularity; that is, the Christ-event only had universal soteriological consequence because it was the action of a particular, historical Jesus. Yet, despite any problems we might find with Barth's interpretations, both works display Barth as an interpreter seeking to grapple with the nuances of scripture and with one of the central issues of the biblical text, and of soteriology in general: the relation of the one to the many.

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