Eusebius on the Three Offices

Now, Eusebius is not everybody's favourite theologian/church historian. He is widely regarded as an Arian, and in cahoots with the Emperor Constantine - a little too sycophantic to worldly power perhaps? The idea of the 'three offices of Christ' comes from a person who had a rather ready eye for formal and hierarchical arrangements. Nevertheless, as you can see below, he is determined to ground Christology in the whole Bible, and the 'three offices' helps him to do that with quite a degree of explanatory power. The meaning and significance of Christ lies in the history of Israel which prefigures him:

Eusebius H.E. 1.iii

Chapter III. The Name Jesus and Also the Name Christ Were Known from the Beginning, and Were Honoured by the Inspired Prophets.

"1 It is now the proper place to show that the very name Jesus and also the name Christ were honoured by the ancient prophets beloved of God.
2 Moses was the first 2 to make known the name of Christ as a name especially august and glorious. When he delivered types and symbols of heavenly things, and mysterious images, in accordance with the oracle which said to him, "Look that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shown thee in the mount," he consecrated a man high priest of God, in so far as that was possible, and him he called Christ. And thus to this dignity of the high priesthood, which in his opinion surpassed the most honourable position among men, he attached for the sake of honour and glory the name of Christ.
3 He knew so well that in Christ was something divine. And the same one foreseeing, under the influence of the divine Spirit, the name Jesus, dignified it also with a certain distinguished privilege. For the name of Jesus, which had never been uttered among men before the time of Moses, he applied first and only to the one who he knew would receive after his death, again as a type and symbol, the supreme command.
4His successor, therefore, who had not hitherto borne the name Jesus, but had been called by another name, Auses, which had been given him by his parents, he now called Jesus, bestowing the name upon him as a gift of honour, far greater than any kingly diadem. For Jesus himself, the son of Nave, bore a resemblance to our Saviour in the fact that he alone, after Moses and after the completion of the symbolical worship which had been transmitted by him, succeeded to the government of the true and pure religion.
5 Thus Moses bestowed the name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, as a mark of the highest honor, upon the two men who in his time surpassed all the rest of the people in virtue and glory; namely, upon the high priest and upon his own successor in the government.
6 And the prophets that came after also clearly foretold Christ by name, predicting at the same time the plots which the Jewish people would form against him, and the calling of the nations through him. Jeremiah, for instance, speaks as follows: "The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord, was taken in their destructions; of whom we said, under his shadow we shall live among the nations." And David, in perplexity, says, "Why did the nations rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ"; to which he adds, in the person of Christ himself, "The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
7 And not only those who were honoured with the high priesthood, and who for the sake of the symbol were anointed with especially prepared oil, were adorned with the name of Christ among the Hebrews, but also the kings whom the prophets anointed under the influence of the divine Spirit, and thus constituted, as it were, typical Christs. For they also bore in their own persons types of the royal and sovereign power of the true and only Christ, the divine Word who ruleth over all.
8 And we have been told also that certain of the prophets themselves became, by the act of anointing, Christs in type, so that all these have reference to the true Christ, the divinely inspired and heavenly Word, who is the only high priest of all, and the only King of every creature, and the Father's only supreme prophet of prophets.
9 And a proof of this is that no one of those who were of old symbolically anointed, whether priests, or kings, or prophets, possessed so great a power of inspired virtue as was exhibited by our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the true and only Christ.
10 None of them at least, however superior in dignity and honour they may have been for many generations among their own people, ever gave to their followers the name of Christians from their own typical name of Christ. Neither was divine honour ever rendered to any one of them by their subjects; nor after their death was the disposition of their followers such that they were ready to die for the one whom they honoured. And never did so great a commotion arise among all the nations of the earth in respect to any one of that age; for the mere symbol could not act with such power among them as the truth itself which was exhibited by our Saviour.
11 He, although he received no symbols and types of high priesthood from any one, although he was not born of a race of priests, although he was not elevated to a kingdom by military guards, although he was not a prophet like those of old, although he obtained no honour nor pre-eminence among the Jews, nevertheless was adorned by the Father with all, if not with the symbols, yet with the truth itself.
12 And therefore, although he did not possess like honours with those whom we have mentioned, he is called Christ more than all of them. And as himself the true and only Christ of God, he has filled the whole earth with the truly august and sacred name of Christians, committing to his followers no longer types and images, but the uncovered virtues themselves, and a heavenly life in the very doctrines of truth.
13 And he was not anointed with oil prepared from material substances, but, as befits divinity, with the divine Spirit himself, by participation in the unbegotten deity of the Father. And this is taught also again by Isaiah, who exclaims, as if in the person of Christ himself, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore hath he anointed me. He hath sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim deliverance to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind."
14 And not only Isaiah, but also David addresses him, saying, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hast hated iniquity. Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Here the Scripture calls him God in the first verse, in the second it honours him with a royal sceptre.
15 Then a little farther on, after the divine and royal power, it represents him in the third place as having become Christ, being anointed not with oil made of material substances, but with the divine oil of gladness. It thus indicates his especial honour, far superior to and different from that of those who, as types, were of old anointed in a more material way.
16 And elsewhere the same writer speaks of him as follows: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool"; and, "Out of the womb, before the morning star, have I begotten thee. The Lord hath sworn and he will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec."
17 But this Melchizedec is introduced in the Holy Scriptures as a priest of the most high God, not consecrated by any anointing oil, especially prepared, and not even belonging by descent to the priesthood of the Jews. Wherefore after his order, but not after the order of the others, who received symbols and types, was our Saviour proclaimed, with an appeal to an oath, Christ and priest.
18 History, therefore, does not relate that he was anointed corporeally by the Jews, nor that he belonged to the lineage of priests, but that he came into existence from God himself before the morning star, that is before the organization of the world, and that he obtained an immortal and undecaying priesthood for eternal ages.
19 But it is a great and convincing proof of his incorporeal and divine unction that he alone of all those who have ever existed is even to the present day called Christ by all men throughout the world, and is confessed and witnessed to under this name, and is commemorated both by Greeks and Barbarians and even to this day is honoured as a King by his followers throughout the world, and is admired as more than a prophet, and is glorified as the true and only high priest of God. And besides all this, as the pre-existent Word of God, called into being before all ages, he has received august honour from the Father, and is worshiped as God.
20 But most wonderful of all is the fact that we who have consecrated ourselves to him, honour him not only with our voices and with the sound of words, but also with complete elevation of soul, so that we choose to give testimony unto him rather than to preserve our own lives.
21 I have of necessity prefaced my history with these matters in order that no one, judging from the date of his incarnation, may think that our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the Christ, has but recently come into being. "

Barth: 'Jesus Christ the Mediator'

In a brilliant few pages from CD IV/1 (pp. 122-128), Karl Barth identifies the problem with the traditional way in which theology has treated the 'person' of Christ as a separate item to the 'work' of Christ:

This schematism seems logically very illuminating, and didactically useful. At a first galnce it may even seem unavoidable...Yet it is not really calculated to enable us to expound the actual subject-matter...

He goes on to complain that the NT never has a 'Christology' as such set apart or abstracted from what Christ did among men and women. So, he goes on:

We hasten to explain that the being of Jesus Christ, the unity of being of the living God and this living God and this living man, takes place in the vent of the concrete existence of this man. It is abeing, but a being in a history. The gracious God is in this history, so is reconciled man, so are both in their unity. And what takes place in this history, and therefore in the being of Jesus Christ as such is atonement. Jesus Christ is not what He is - very God, very man, very God-man - in order as such to mean and do and accomplish something else which is atonement. But His being as God and man and God-man consists in the completed act of the reconciliation of man with God.

The climax of his argument? His being as his One is His history and His history is this His being.

It's a great point. But perhaps he has been too harsh: of necessity theology makes distinctions but that doesn't imply separations. It treats ideas in their turn, because it is just hard for most of us to think of more than one thing at once!

The Triplex Munus - Christ's Threefold Office

John Calvin in the Institutes II.xv.1:

Therefore, in order that faith may find a firm basis for salvation in Christ, and thus rest in him, this principle must be laid down: the office enjoined upon Christ by the Father consists of three parts. For he was given to be prophet, king and priest.

This is the famous triplex munus, the 'threefold office' of Christ, which has been used by Reformed theologians ever since as a way of describing and classifying Christ's work. Like Calvin's three uses of the law, it has the status of a powerful description of the way scripture hangs together, though it does not arise from an explicitly scriptural use. And that is what makes it a useful piece of theological thinking, so long as its provisionality is recognised. As is quite common, Calvin himself was not the orginator of the triplex munus - but he is its most prominent exponent.


Richardson & Bowden comment:

This (ie, triplex munus) has the advantage of bringing together three important strands of the biblical tradition. It does, however, tend to break up the unity of soteriology, choosing three categories at the expense of others (e.g. shepherd, saviour and servant), and scarcely takes adequate account of the extent to which the OT categories are transformed through Christ – their fulfilment is also in an important respect their abolition.

– A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Alan Richardson, John Bowden



Abolition? Hmm...

Warfield on the call of the example of Christ

Here's BB Warfield, the Princeton great, in full flight on the example of Christ and its call on his disciples:

He did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of self. He was not led by His divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own sould to brood morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice to Him. He was led by His love for others into the wolrd, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice slef once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brough Christ into the wolrd. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there will we be to help. Wherever men fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever me succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them.

B.B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, p. 574

Christ 'for me'

I am starting with Yr 2 Doctrine Moore Theological College tomorrow on a part of the course entitled 'The Person and Work of Christ'. I thought I'd get a famous piece of Bonhoeffer into circulation - this from his 1933 Christology lectures. You have to remember the political circumstances, of course:


"Christ is Christ not as Christ in himself, but in his relation to me. His being Christ is his being 'pro me'. This being 'pro me' is in turn not meant to be understood as an effect which emanates from him, or as an accident; it is meant to be understood as the essence, as the being of the person himself. This personal nucleus itself is the 'pro me'. That Christ is 'pro me' is not an historical or an ontical statement, but an ontological one. That is, Christ can never be thoughtof in his being in himself, but only in his relationshop to me. That in turn menas that Christ can only be conceived of existentially, viz. in the community... It is not only useless to meditate on a Christ in himself, but even godless."

So: Christ cannot besomething or someone remote from us or he is not Christ... The very nature of Christ's mission (check Peter's declaration of Jesus' title) is for others in a suffering way.

Christology and martyrdom

[I will return to the write up of the Providence conference soon, promise!]

Reading Stauffer was interesting. He made the rather obvious point that, if martyrdom is read as an imitation of Christ, then it matters a whole lot what your Christology is in the first place. So, he gives an account of martyrdom which applies his reading of NT Christology.

I think this is true of many contemporary accounts of martyrdom which rest on a rather adoptionist Christology and a subjective view of the atonement. Martyrdom is then primarily an exemplary act, an act of spiritual heroism which is sanctified somewhat after the fact. Or it is a primarily political act whose chief significance lies in its disruption and subversion of power. If you see Jesus chiefly as one who stood up to tyrannical authorities, then martyrdom for you will have this meaning too. And also, it is easier to say that anyone who dies standing up to tyrannical authorities is a martyr after the pattern of Jesus.

A traditional account of the person and work of Christ gives very different results. If for example we take the triplex munus Christi of Calvin, imitating Christ's death becomes more specifically related to the unique and unrepeatable work of Christ. And as such, martyrdom must be read as an extension of Christ's work in the power of the Spirit. It isn't an imitation of it, merely: it actually participates, shares in, the sufferings of Christ himself. The martyr does not become prophet, priest and king: but she shares in the prophetic, priestly and royal work of Christ.
The martyr is a prophet after Christ, because it is an act which speaks. It witnesses to the divine - it is an embodied proclamation of the gospel of Christ. It certainly isn't silent: Stephen's great prophetic speech in Acts 7, for example, continues in the tradition of the OT prophets, and shares their fate of rejection.

The martyr performs a priestly act of sacrifice, offering his or her life up on behalf of others. The early martyrologies have no doubt about the blessing that the martyrs were to the churches; but also, that is was by martyrdom that many came to faith. sanguis semen ecclesiae... This is not some blasphemy in suggesting that Christ's work is repeated, or that Christ is resacrificed in some way. Paul is quite clear in 2 Cor that his sufferings are a rounding out of the sufferings of Christ. The martyrs die for the redemption of the world too: not that their blood pays for sin in the sense that Jesus's does, but in the sense that because of them others come to know Christ.

The martyr is enthroned in death: over and over again we hear of them 'receiving a crown (a stephanos, note!). The martyrs 'overcome'; they 'conquer'. Not because they themselves conquer but becuase, in union with Christ and his death, they share in his victory over the powers.

To complement this schema, I should like to apply the great second-generation Lutheran Martin Chemnitz's christology, too - in his 'humiliation/exaltation' pattern. That's the next step.

A thought about Christology

In the temptation/testing of Jesus we do not observe so much the victory of moral rectitude, or finally of one human being who has developed the strength to overcome; but rather we find an example of dependence on the Word of God and trust in his will. He overcomes not by being superhuman, but by being MORE PROPERLY HUMAN. He is victorious by following the human vocation as it was originally given...

We need our Athanasiuses

The rejection of Arianism may have made Christian language more complex; but at least it has militated against an intellectual complacency in the face of the unsettling effects of the gospel…Theology continues to need its Ariuses. – Rowan Williams, 1983


Athanasius’s gift was that he could see exactly what was at stake: he recognised what was being lost in the Arian way of putting things. His passion was for human souls, and for their salvation, primarily. So this was not an abstract debate for him: he could see that salvation itself was what mattered.

Four things:
1) God is mystery, but God reveals himself, in Christ Jesus. The unknowability of God is no longer simply inaccessible. As Williams says, 'there is no overplus of 'unengaged' and inexpressible reality, nothing that is not realized in and as relationship, in God'. In Jesus we are given God, not merely a piece of him. If we are to hold God as mysterious and respond in awe and wonder and speechlessness, it is to be from our worship and thankfulnes: a kind of visceral negative theology, far from the rational negativity of Arius.

2) God reveals himself in Jesus to truly save. If you took the Arian seriously, what account could you give of the salvation of human people? (see quote)..Athanasius once said ‘God became man in order that we might become God’ – that is, that we might share in the life of God himself, God become one of us. (see 1 John 3:2 - ‘we shall be like him’). If Christ was not fully God, how could we ever be assured of God’s saving of us? How could we ever know God in a saving way?

3) God dies for us on the cross. Athanasius could also see that the cross itself does not work if you describe it Arian terms. If on the cross we have a lesser God then how we can not say that there we see nothing but divine child abuse, a torturing of the innocent Son by his commanding Father? Rather, if we understand the cross according to orthodox teaching, then we will understand that the victim was a willing participant in the salvation of the world in his own death. The Son submitted, but did so from a position of free equality with the Father.

4) The love of Christ is truly God’s love. This has huge pastoral ramifications of course, but also practical ones: because here in the submission of the Son to the Father without a loss of equality of being or dignity we see in essence the nature of Christian love. [See Allison quote] The love that Christ expressed on the cross was divine love: and it is the love we are called to echo in our relations too.

Athanasius was a curmudgeonly genius: perhaps we ought to say, that much as we ‘need’ our Ariuses, those who will ask the right questions, we also need our Athanasiuses: those who will remind us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself; and that in Christ we truly and fully have the eternal God.

Necessary Heresy 2: Arius, or, do we really know God?

Arius is perhaps the most famous heretic of them all - not the least because of his formidible opponent, Athanasius! I belong to an Anglican diocese that has been accused of Arianism: of subordinating the Son to the Father. As always, a terminological difference is part of the problem, I think. I would be ready to drop the word 'subordinate' in exchange for 'ordered' so as to indicate to all that I believe the Son is vere Deus, vere homo... Of course one of the ugliest dynamics of being called a heretic, is that when you are called so by the vituperative and quote-twisting kind of person we were called it by, you start to believe that the heresy must be orthodox. It does your head in! (Of course, as Williams shows, it is doubtful if Arius himself was actual Arian, but never mind that...)

G.L.Prestige writes:

Christianity and monotheism alike were imperilled by the Arian attack on Athanasius and the doctrine of the Trinity; for if Christ were not truly God, salvation through His cross remained a purely human, subjective and imperfectly realised aspiration; and if He were in the strict sense a 'second God' - as certain even among those of substantial orthodoxy somewhat loosely called Him - then there was an end to all faith in one controlling ruler of the universe and one undivided object of worshipful devotion.' p. 76

The stakes are very high on this one.

Arius was incapable of uttering an apparent contradiction and revolted from the supposition that vast, intricate problems might present more than one aspect. His two-dimensional mind regarded the divine mystery of revelation in the flat, foreshortened, without depth or background, like a diagram in Euclid...

For heresy, rationalistic short-cuts are almost always the downfall. As Athanasius clarified it:

If you contemplate the Father, who is one distinct presentation of the deity, you obtain a mental view of the one true God. If you contemplate the Son or the Spirit, you obtain a view of the same God; though the presenation is different, the reality is identical. p. 89

But what was the peculiar attraction of Arianism?